And yet again – we find ourselves in the early stage of a potential revolution.
Just a day after Instagram announced that it was testing its influencer marketing paid subscriptions model, TikTok told the Information, “TikTok is testing the idea of allowing creators to charge subscriptions for their content.”
That’s BIG news.
And while both tech giants are still in the early stages of testing, we believe that it can be a part of something gigantic.
So what’s this paid subscription model all about?
And what does it mean for businesses looking forward to running strategic influencer marketing campaigns?
Let’s have a look.
What is the TikTok Paid Subscription Model for Influencers?
It’s important to note that there’s not much information out there related to this. Nothing has been confirmed as of now – so this isn’t concrete information we’re rolling out. It’s more of a guesswork and how we think things will look like after the rollout of a paid subscription model.
Right now, the only way for influencers to earn money on TikTok is by collaborating with brands – who don’t mind paying them the top dollars to put their products and services in front of their followers. But moving forward, with Instagram and TikTok showing interest in the paid subscription model, it seems that they are allowing influencers to monetize their content.
It’s unclear how the paid subscription model will work. But it seems that influencers can choose to monetize some of their content. Their followers will have to pay a certain subscription fee to unlock that particular creator’s content.
We’re not sure whether the fee will be the same for all influencers. But we guess that influencers can set their own rates. This means if an influencer in the health niche wants to monetize some of their content, they can charge a monthly subscription fee of $5.
Maybe less, maybe more.
What Does the Paid Subscription Model Mean for Businesses?
We don’t think that TikTok or Instagram will encourage influencers or creators to monetize their whole channel.
It’ll just mess up their algorithm.
So, what does it mean for businesses? Obviously, businesses want to get their products and services out in front of as many of their prospects and customers as they possibly can. So – they’d obviously be against the paid subscription model.
In our opinion, they’d never agree on influencers monetizing their campaigns.
However, it’ll at least help businesses gain insights into an influencer’s engagement rate.
For instance, if an influencer’s followers are actually paying a subscription fee to access the influencer’s content, then it means that the influencer’s engagement rate is high. Their followers look up to them and don’t mind paying a certain subscription fee.
This way, businesses can learn more about an influencer’s engagement rate and be able to filter the influencers with low-engagement rates from the ones that have higher engagement rates, making the ‘picking the influencer’ part much easier for them.
While things are up in the air, we’re waiting for confirmation from Meta (Instagram’s parent company) & TikTok.
We’ll only know when these tech giants roll out more details.
Until then, it’s a lot of guesswork and predicting.
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