As a gig worker driving for Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, or other gig apps, you likely spend a lot of time in your car between orders. But what if you could spend that downtime producing content about your gig work and earning even more money? Yes, making money on TikTok is a real thing! When can you start making money on TikTok? Keep reading to find out!
Content creation has taken the digital world by storm. Since the launch of short-form social video platforms and features like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, millions of individuals have opted to become content creators to make money as a side hustle or full-time career.
In fact, many of the successful creators are gig workers who have opted to share their gig work journey on social media. What may have started as a creative outlet to share their experiences on the road has turned into another stream of income, which is greatly appreciated when you have an unstable income.
Does this inspire you to pick up your phone and start filming between gigs? Now you may be wondering where to start and how to get paid on TikTok. Don’t worry, we’ll break it all down for you so you have everything you need to monetize your gig work on social media!
In this blog, we will primarily focus on TikTok as it is one of the fastest growing platforms and has a massive, established gig work community.
Getting Started with your TikTok
The first thing you are going to want to do when you start your TikTok is to set up a relevant username, ideally, one that has to do with gig work and an optimized bio. To optimize your bio, you are going to want to include the state you live in if you’re comfortable sharing, what gig platforms you work on, and any other additional relevant information like Top Dasher, etc. Here is an example showcasing delivereazy on TikTok.
Once you’ve got these all set up, you’re ready to learn how to start creating video content for TikTok.
Producing Content for TikTok
Before you can start generating income and getting paid from your TikTok, you need to be producing content frequently. As a rule of thumb, you should try to post as many TikToks as you can to begin rapidly growing your following, but no more than 4 a day because that becomes spammy. The more you post, the more chances you have to reach your target audience and gain followers.
Producing daily content may be overwhelming to someone just starting on their social media journey, so it’s okay to start slow and pick up the pace over time.
Once you have created your TikTok videos, you can reshare them to other platforms, like Instagram reels, to build a following on both.
Now that you know how frequently you should post let’s take a step back and figure out what kind of content you should post.
What Kind of Content to Post
As a gig worker on TikTok, it is entirely up to you what kind of content you would like to post. Different creators post a wide range of content depending on their interests, expertise, and value they think they bring to their target audience. For some, their goal is to educate fellow gig workers, and for others, it’s to entertain gig workers with content that they can relate to.
Some options for types of content include:
- Advice or tips and tricks for gig workers
- Documenting gig work earnings
- Ridealongs for deliveries
- Gig work story times
- A combination of all of the above
As a creator, you have the freedom to stick to one of the above niches or combine two or more. You don’t even have to show your face if you do not feel comfortable with that!
Experimentation is also key here. You could start by posting within one type of video, for example, multi-gig apping tutorials and then try something else after a while. Alternatively, you could try a little bit of everything to see what performs best. By experimenting with a variety of videos, you can gain an idea of which videos gain the most traction, in the form of views, likes, and shares, and this will help you to understand what your audience connects to the most.
Batch Creating Content
Many creators on TikTok may find it challenging to be consistent as some days, you will be so busy with gigs that you don’t even have a second to film. Finding the time to create content can be draining, but content batching is a popular way to avoid this struggle.
With content batching, you can set aside a specific time to plan and create several pieces of content for the week. Once your content is ready, you can keep the video in your TikTok drafts and post it when you’re ready.
When you are further along in your social media journey, you can choose to experiment with platforms like Hootsuite, Later, or TikTok’s built-in scheduler which allow you to schedule your content to be published at the time and date of your choice. These platforms aren’t necessary when starting off, but they can help you maintain a posting schedule once you become more serious about your platforms.
Growing Your Audience
When you create content for social media, you want to be making sure that your content is always targeted toward your niche audience. Why? Because if you are sharing gig work-specific content, you want to make sure that your video is sent out to people who will be interested in and are actively seeking out gig work content. With relevant targeting, you are likely to see greater engagement and an increase in followers who enjoy your content!
One way to target your content is by conducting hashtag research. Using hashtags that are related to your gig work, will increase your searchability and make your content far more likely to come up on the for you pages of individuals who are interested.
By using the wrong hashtags, you could risk bringing a large audience to your post who are uninterested in the content, and then experience short watch time or minimal engagement. This will impact how TikTok promotes your content to others.
Finding the Right Hashtags
You will want to create a hashtag strategy for your social posts. To create a hashtag strategy, you must research relevant hashtags within your niche and list hashtags you can use across your videos.
When finding hashtags on TikTok, you can type in a keyword relevant to you in the search bar. For example, if you drive for Uber Eats, you can type in “Uber Eats Driver” and toggle to the Hashtags tab and see a whole list of similar hashtags and the number of views each one has.
When creating your hashtag strategy, you do not want to overuse the same hashtags. You want to ensure that you combine a mix of popular and less popular hashtags to maximize your potential for visibility. We can consider less popular hashtags the hashtags that are sitting at under a million views, and more popular hashtags as tags with over a million views.
It’s still okay to use hashtags that are larger than a million views, even 100 million views, it can just be harder to stand out among videos in a concentrated hashtag. A good tool for discovering new hashtags and analyzing their popularity is Metahashtags.
Start Earning Income from your Content
Now we get to the juicy part–likely the part you’ve been waiting for. When do you start making money on TikTok from your gig work content?
If you are wondering how to start making money on TikTok, this is a good place to begin. As a TikToker, your primary sources of income will mostly come from partnerships/sponsored posts and affiliate marketing.
What is a Sponsored Post?
A sponsored post is when you get paid to post a video of yourself promoting a product or service. With sponsored posts, you do not get paid based on success metrics, such as likes or saves on your post. Instead, you get paid a previously decided-upon amount immediately after posting.
You have likely come across many sponsored posts over the years, seeing influencers talking about their “new favorite conditioner” and not even realizing they were getting paid hundreds of dollars to create the video.
To begin securing sponsored post gigs, you will need to grow your following. This brings up the question of how many followers to get paid on TikTok? Sponsors will likely want to see at least 1,000 followers, as it takes at least 1,000 followers to become considered a nano influencer. The more followers, the more likely you are to secure sponsorships. Still, if your posts get good engagement and you are highly active, some companies may be willing to sponsor you with fewer followers.
TikTok also has its own method of paying creators called the Creator Fund! If you have 10,000 followers and 100,000 video views, you can become part of the TikTok creator fund where TikTok will pay you directly for creating content, depending on the number of views and engagement each post gets. So do people get paid on TikTok? Yes, they do! And often times they make lots of money.
How Much do Sponsored Posts Pay?
The amount you get paid for a sponsored post depends on a few factors:
- The company’s budget
- Your social media following and engagement rates
- The rate you are willing to accept or can negotiate
These factors are all crucial in determining your pay for a sponsored post. For example, if you have a lot of followers but hardly get any views or likes on your posts, you may not receive an excellent sponsorship offer.
There is, however, always the opportunity to negotiate this rate and to set boundaries for yourself in knowing what deals are worth it for you to take, and what isn’t worth your time.
In general, sponsorships for a short 30-second to a one-minute video can pay anywhere from $10-$500 for a nano-influencer and up to an average of $5,000 per sponsored post for those with more followers and an actively engaged audience.
Some food for thought: Actor Dwayne Johnson charges well over $1,000,000 USD per sponsored post!
How Do I Get Sponsored?
There are two common ways to get sponsored for your gig work content.
The first way to get sponsored is the less proactive way. It is to continue growing your social media presence and using relevant captions and hashtags so that companies can find you when looking for content creators.
The second way is to create a media kit, which is like a resume for content creators, and reach out to relevant brands on your own time.
With your media kit, it will be a virtual file that includes all the essential information surrounding your social media that a brand will want insights into. For example, your follower count, average like count, previous brands you have worked with, the success of those campaigns, and more.
Your media kit will help brands understand how far their marketing campaigns can go with you, and if you can help them meet their brand goals, etc. They will use your media kit to determine if you are the right fit to work with them.
Once you have your media kit, you can begin reaching out to brands you are interested in partnering with and ask them if they would be interested in sponsoring your content.
Pro Tip: The best way to secure sponsorship is to post an organic (non-sponsored) video promoting the product ahead of time and showing the team the success metrics of that post to encourage them that it is worth their while to sponsor you.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is similar to sponsored posts, but instead of being paid a one-time sum for posting content, it is a longer-term partnership. As an affiliate, you engage in an agreement with a company, saying that you will post about them on your social media. You will be paid a particular amount when someone takes a specific action, like purchasing a product or downloading an app.
Similar to sponsored posts, brands will reach out to you if they are interested in making you an affiliate. If no brands are reaching out to you, you can take matters into your own hands. Check out sites such as CJ Affiliate, or Rakuten where you can find open affiliate marketing opportunities that may be relevant to you.
Usually, there are some limitations to affiliate marketing programs like capping your total potential earnings. The amount of money you will receive as an affiliate depends on the size of the company, the scope of its affiliate program, and the ease of converting a customer.
For example, if as an affiliate, all you need to do is ensure someone downloads an app, your pay as an affiliate will likely be low because this is an easy action to complete. If you need someone to download an app, make an account, and spend 10 hours on that account to be considered a successful conversion, then your payment will be a lot more.
Affiliates generally earn between $5 and $200 per successful conversion but this will vary between brand, industry, and the type of product or service.
As you can see in the photo below, we have a screenshot of gig work content creator ethanshustle’s TikTok, where he is promoting his affiliates. Ethan is a perfect example of a full-time gig worker whose primary source of income is gig work, but who also utilizes social media as an opportunity to increase and enhance earnings by being a part of ‘DoorDash TikTok’ the side of TikTok for Dashers. He promotes his affiliates and includes all of their links in a Linktree in his bio.
Go for it!
Now that you have the tools to get started on social media as a gig work content creator, you are ready! Make sure to follow @movesfinancial on TikTok and Instagram to keep up to date with all things gig economy.
If you’re looking to get started as a content creator to promote your gig work or want to expand on your income streams, you can also contact us to learn more about the affiliate program with Moves!
If you need some inspiration to get started on your gig work on social media, we recommend you follow the gig work content creators we mentioned in this TikTok!
Emilie has been with Moves since January 2022 as a Growth Marketing Intern. She is in her fourth year of university and is passionate about exploring the world of personal finance. As a self-identified hustler, when Emilie is not at Moves, she can be found teaching beginner marketing boot camps at her university or working at one of many local concert venues.
