Creator Sydney McDonald thought the TikTok Creative Challenge was a scam when she first saw an advertisement for it while scrolling through the app last year. The ad’s claim that creators could earn thousands of dollars in a few months made McDonald suspicious.
Now, the program is one of the 25-year-old’s most lucrative income streams. The Arizona-based lifestyle influencer has averaged $46,000 a month in early 2024 by creating user-generated content, UGC for short, for brands through the program, according to documentation viewed by Business Insider.
The Creative Challenge, launched in June, is a forum for creators to submit UGC-style ads at the request of brands. Users are initially given 10 “slots” to create videos for companies they’re interested in. If a brand accepts a submission, the video goes through a few rounds of revisions, after which it’s posted on the brand’s accounts.
The creator earns a share of the revenue — which is determined by the brand — that the video generates.
“You have to be really, really great at editing videos and understanding a brand’s needs to find success,” said McDonald, who also works with TikTok to promote the program to creators. “It’s the brands that decide how much money they want to put behind your video, and sometimes they aren’t very specific about what they’re looking for, so you have to figure out what they want on your own.”
Creators are also incentivized to keep using the program through bonuses paid by the platform, which can range from $300 to $1,000, a TikTok spokesperson confirmed to BI. For a few months, the program was invite-only but it has since opened to any user based in the US who is 18 years old or older and has at least 50,000 followers.
This program is the newest in a line of monetization features TikTok has introduced in the past few years, such as the Creator Rewards Program and affiliate commissions for its shopping product.
Five creators BI spoke with said they’re earning thousands of dollars a month through TikTok’s Creative Challenge. Two of them said their earnings have helped them wipe out their debts, save for large purchases like houses, and upgrade their overall lifestyles. BI verified each of their earnings with screenshots of their TikTok Creative Challenge dashboard.
“Honestly, it’s one of TikTok’s best-kept secrets,” creator Muaaz Shakeel said. He earned $1,378 in December through the ad-revenue sharing and bonus features and plans to ramp up his UGC content this year. “Seeing how much some of my friends are making has inspired me to go all in,” he said.
Short ads helped a creator couple wipe out their credit-card debt
Creators Christina Johnson and Corey Barton heard about the Creative Challenge when one of Barton’s friends told him last February how much money they could be making. At the time, the couple had accumulated thousands of dollars in credit-card debt and had taken up jobs delivering Amazon products to stay afloat.
Within the first month of making UGC content for gaming brands, Johnson had earned $4,500, which persuaded Barton to start the program, too. The couple completely paid off their debt in two months using their Creative Challenge earnings. BI verified this with documentation they provided. Five months later, they’ve almost met their savings goal for a down payment on a house. Johnson earned $20,529 from the program in January, while Barton earned $17,533 that month.
Johnson, 34, said the program “has completely turned our life around.”
“There’s a huge learning curve, though,” she said. “It takes time to learn how to make a video that isn’t super obvious that it’s an ad.”
UGC coach Caitlin Jenco, who discovered the program in late August and earned $2,309 within three months, said that based on her experience with the Creative Challenge and teaching others how to make money, creators who can think like brands will find the most success.
“If you understand sales, marketing, and paid advertisements, you’ll thrive,” the 23-year-old said. “Many creators who focus on organic content for their platforms might have a tough time because of that.”
It’s why online communities have popped up on Discord and other platforms in the past few months to help more users crack the code on the program.
Discord chats, coaching, and TikTok-organized mentors
Shakeel heard about the Creative Challenge through a TikTok mentor, one of the creators who had been a part of the program when it was invite-only and is now tasked by TikTok with spreading awareness for it.
“Many people who first join don’t really know how to make a successful UGC ad,” 26-year-old Shakeel said. “I didn’t at first, so there’s decent money to be made just by giving others that information and resources.”
Johnson and Barton, the creators who pulled themselves out of debt with their earnings, said a Creative Challenge-focused Discord organized by creator Jordan Erickson helped a lot with the initial questions they had about the program. They eventually branched out to create their own Discord with 35 creators who wanted more mentorship, especially for those focused on gaming content.
McDonald similarly uses her expertise to train and recruit more users for the program but does it for TikTok directly. The company sends her to conferences and other cities to talk about how it works, including the earning potential. She said TikTok has covered travel to these events and pays her to mentor new creators in the program, based on their performance.
McDonald said many creators she’s met along the way have told her they’ve discovered the program through creators like her.
“TikTok is so big that every branch is basically its own startup, so TTCC realized early on they needed our help getting the word out there,” she said, referring to the Creative Challenge. “There are dozens of brands being added every day, so they just need more users to join at this point.”
