Professional comedian reveals how much money he makes on YouTube compared to TikTok: ‘Love this transparency’
A professional comedian is earning lots of praise after sharing his insight into how much TikTokers make per video view.
The 25-year-old comic, Ben Brainard, posted the revealing clip in early 2021. Since then, the video has helped drive an ongoing debate about how much TikTok pays its top creators.
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Brainard has more than 2.4 million followers on TikTok, where he posts as @ben_brainard, and around 375,000 followers on YouTube. Despite that difference, he says he makes far more money from YouTube.
Brainard begins his clip by discussing some of his issues with TikTok’s financial infrastructure, while also acknowledging that the app has been “great” for his career.
Then Brainard breaks down his earnings. Around the two-minute, 20-second mark, he shows how much he made from TikTok, YouTube and Facebook during the month of December.
According to Brainard, he made $4,046 from his Facebook videos in December 2021, or $2.53 per thousand views. On Youtube, he made $5,267, or $0.26 per thousand views.
Meanwhile, TikTok paid him $476, which was about $0.02 per thousand video views. This was despite the fact that his TikTok page drew the most views of all three platforms.
Brainard’s breakdown came in response to a megapopular YouTube video by vlogger Hank Green. In that clip, Green criticized TikTok for “underpaying” its creators.
One of the issues Green and Brainard both pointed to is the fact that YouTube pays creators through a somewhat straightforward monetization system. Basically, top-tier YouTubers earn 55% of all ad revenue earned from their videos.
Meanwhile, TikTok’s monetization comes through its Creator Fund, which pays out a small portion of earnings to any eligible creator who earns more than 100,000 views per month. While those earnings are also dependent on video views, the scale is often much smaller than on other platforms.
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The reasons for this disparity are complicated, but a big part of it comes from the fact that TikTok’s Creator Fund comes from a preset, finite pool of money. So, as more TikTokers hit that 100,000 view threshold, each piece of the fund gets smaller and smaller.
“When TikTok becomes more successful, TikTokers become less successful,” Green said in his video.
Brainard earned plenty of praise for discussing these issues so openly. Many popular TikTokers chimed in as well.
“I make pennies on average each day,” one user wrote.
“Love the transparency,” another added.
“Thanks for speaking up on this!” another wrote.
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