How to make money on social media before the platforms will pay you

Your audience exists. The monetisation does not.

You have 800 followers on Instagram. 2,400 on TikTok. 340 on YouTube. 1,200 on X. The audience is real — they watch every video, like every post, share the ones that resonate. You have been making content for eight months. You are not famous, but you are not nobody either. You have an audience.

What you do not have is a way to get paid for any of it.

YouTube will let you join the Partner Program — and start earning from ads — when you hit 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the last 12 months. TikTok's Creator Rewards Program requires 10,000 followers and 100,000 video views in the last 30 days. Instagram's various monetisation tools require professional accounts, brand partnerships, and in most cases an invitation. X (formerly Twitter) requires a paid Premium subscription, 500 verified followers, and 5 million post impressions in the past 90 days before it will share any ad revenue with you.

You are below every one of those thresholds. You are also producing content that real people are watching, sharing, and connecting with. The disconnect between "audience exists" and "monetisation does not" is the structural reality of being an early-stage creator in 2025. And it is what an Shandle in your bio is built to fix.

The platform monetisation walls — what each one actually requires

YouTube Partner Program (YPP). Minimum 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 valid public watch hours in the last 12 months — OR 10 million Shorts views in 90 days. Then AdSense approval (separate process, can take weeks). Then country eligibility. Then a 45% YouTube cut on every dollar of ad revenue you earn after all of that. For a small creator hitting just the threshold, YouTube ads typically pay $1-$5 per 1,000 views — meaning a video with 5,000 views might earn you $5-$25 gross, $2.75-$13.75 after YouTube's cut.

TikTok Creator Rewards Program. Minimum 10,000 followers and 100,000 video views in the last 30 days. Videos must be longer than one minute to qualify for monetisation. Available only in select countries (US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, Korea, Brazil, Mexico, and a handful of others). The legacy Creator Fund paid notoriously low rates — typically $20-$40 per million views, meaning a viral TikTok with 1M views might earn the creator the price of a single coffee.

Instagram monetisation. Reels Bonuses are paused for most creators. The Creator Marketplace requires brand approval. Subscriptions are limited to select markets and creators meeting specific thresholds. For most creators with under 10,000 followers, there is no direct monetisation path through the platform itself.

X (Twitter) Creator Revenue Sharing. Requires X Premium (a paid subscription you pay for), 500+ verified followers (also tied to Premium), and 5 million post impressions in the past 90 days. Even with all of that, payouts depend on ad volume in your country — and the supported-country list excludes most of South Asia, Africa, and much of Latin America.

The pattern is the same on every platform. The threshold is high. The payout — once you reach it — is small. The country list excludes most of the world. And the entire mechanism is built around advertising revenue the creator does not control and does not see clearly.

The country list nobody puts on the front page

If you are a creator in Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, or dozens of other countries, the platform monetisation question gets sharper. It is not "what threshold do I need to hit?" It is "does the threshold even apply to me?"

For most of these countries, the answer on most platforms is no. YouTube's Partner Program has a country list. TikTok's Creator Rewards has a country list. X's revenue sharing has a country list. Instagram's various monetisation tools have country lists. A creator in Lagos with 50,000 YouTube subscribers — well above the threshold by every standard metric — still cannot access YPP if YPP does not operate in their country. A TikToker in Manila with 100,000 followers can hit every engagement metric and still not qualify because the Creator Rewards Program does not pay out in the Philippines.

The "global creator economy" is not actually global on the monetisation side. It is a US-centric infrastructure with the rest of the world treated as the audience, not as creators with a right to earn from their own audiences.

YouTube's Partner Program operates in approximately 100 countries; TikTok's Creator Rewards in roughly 12. The largest creator markets in the world by audience size — Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines — are excluded from most direct platform monetisation, regardless of how large their creators' audiences become.

— YouTube Partner Program country availability; TikTok Creator Rewards Program documentation, 2025