What you should know about making money through social media 

With monetization and brand partnerships, social media is no longer just for connecting.

Social media is quickly growing in popularity, with many people spending a good portion of their time on it every day. It serves many purposes such as connecting people seamlessly across the world, providing entertainment and being a source of information. One big aspect of social media is that users can make money on its platforms.  

Which platforms can you make money on? 

Most social media sites allow their users to monetize their content. However, a few platforms are more favourable for content creators than others. These platforms include YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X (formerly Twitter).  

When thinking about making money on social media, whether as a career or an additional source of income, it is important to know which social media platforms are among the most popular or have many active users. 

According to Made in CA, Facebook is the most popular social media website in Canada with over 26 million users and 22 million users on Facebook Messenger. Instagram is the second most popular social media platform in Canada with over 20 million monthly users, while both TikTok and X draw in over 14 million Canadians every month. YouTube is also another popular social media application in Canada with 17.6 million monthly users.  

Globally, Facebook also ranks as the most popular social media platform with over 3 billion monthly average users (MAUs). To round out the top ten, YouTube ranks third with nearly 2.5 billion MAUs, Instagram is fourth with over 2 billion MAUs, TikTok places sixth with over 1.2 billion MAUs and Snapchat lands in eighth, with over 750 million MAUs. X comes in at 13th with over 550 million monthly active users.  

How do you get paid? 

Each social media platform has unique guidelines regarding monetization and paying creators — most payment is generated through ad revenue.  

Facebook pays its creators through ads they can place in their videos and articles. To receive ad revenue on videos, users need to meet specific requirements such as having at least 10,000 followers on their page (not a profile) along with a minimum of 600,000 eligible minutes viewed in the last 60 days and living in an in-stream ads eligible country, among other criteria.  

Users can also make money through monthly fan subscriptions, brand collaborations, and live video streams where your viewers can buy and send you “stars.”

The YouTube Partner Program allows creators to get paid on the website. To be eligible for this program, you need to have a channel with at least 1000 subscribers, 4000 valid public watch hours in the last 12 months or 1,000 subscribers and 10 million valid public Shorts views in the last 90 days.  

You will be notified if you are eligible for this program if you have selected the option to do so. YouTube will then prompt you to link a Google AdSense account to your YouTube channel, if you have not done so already. This will allow you to monetize your content by running ads on your videos and sharing a portion of the revenue with YouTube.  

There are other ways that you can make money on YouTube without being a part of the YouTube Partner Program, but this is the main way for creators to get paid for their content. There are, of course, guidelines and policies regarding monetization on YouTube, which you will have to adhere to. 

Instagram offers multiple ways for its creators to make money, from selling items on your own Instagram shop, sponsored brand deal posts, and being a part of the Instagram Creator Fund.  

By setting your account as a “creator,” you will be able to monetize your content through Instagram’s features such as IGTV ads, Instagram Live Badges and Gifts, and Subscriptions.  

Users on X can monetize their content as well, but only if they are subscribed to X Premium. There are three tiers to this subscription. The Premium and Premium+ tiers allow users to monetize their content.  

Costs are a monthly CAD $10 or $105 per year and a monthly CAD $20 or $210 per year for the Premium tier and the Premium+ tier, respectively. Subscribing to these options gives creators a wide variety of perks, including payment for posts, access to creator subscriptions and, for the Premium+ tier, the ability to write articles.  

Subscribers to the Premium or Premium+ tiers must meet some requirements to collect ad revenue on their posts, such as having at least 500 followers and accruing at least five million impressions over the last three months. Users can also only get ad revenue on organic impressions from other verified users, so you will not be able to profit from accounts that are not Premium or verified accounts.     

Canadian content creators on TikTok have found getting paid on the platform more difficult than others.  

While TikTok has something called the Creator Rewards Program, this program is currently only available in seven countries,  and Canada is not one of them. The program replaced TikTok’s old ‘Creator Fund’ and requires users to have at least 10,000 followers and 100,000 views over the last 30 days. It is only available for TikTok users in the U.S., U.K., Brazil, France, Germany, South Korea, and Japan. 

TikTok users can get paid for their posts, but without the creator fund, it is not as much as other platforms such as YouTube or Facebook.  

What are the pay rates on these platforms?  

Given its nature, there are no steady and consistent pay rates on social media, especially when starting out. On certain platforms, you can make more or less depending on many aspects including impressions, engagements and reach.  

With certain social media platforms, you can earn money by posting on, for example, YouTube and Facebook, and collecting ad revenue on those posts. As you establish yourself and your following, you can dictate your own rates for sponsored posts, collaborations, and the like.   

As you grow your platform, more opportunities will be made available to you. You might work with bigger brands, collaborate with bigger creators or improve your portfolio to help you land your dream job.  

Take TikTok for example. While you may not make as much from a popular post on TikTok compared to other social media platforms, you can use this popularity to your advantage by establishing a presence on social media and a following that can support you. 

Social media can open up many paths for your career, whether you plan on being a full-time content creator or want to bolster your career. It can provide you with another source of income.