Short creators on Instagram and Facebook will soon lose a way to make money on the platforms.
Meta is ending its Reels Play bonus program, which rewards content creators when they reach certain goals for views of their videos. The change, first reported Through Business Insider, affects creators on Facebook and US creators on Instagram. The company will not be offering any new or renewed Reels Play bonus deals, but will honor existing commitments in the next 30 days, it said. Business Insider.
“We are developing the test of our Reels Play bonus on Instagram and Facebook as we focus on investing in a suite of monetization solutions to help creators earn a steady stream of income,” said Paige Cohen, a Meta spokesperson. . The edge in an email. “We will look at how we can implement the program more specifically, for example in potential new markets.”
The Reels bonus program has had its ups and downs since Meta launched it in 2021 to try and compete with TikTok. Initially, creators saw huge payouts – sometimes tens of thousands of dollars. But over the course of 2022, some creators reported that payments had decreased and it became more difficult to earn the same amount of bonuses.
Cohen noted that creators can still make money through things like subscriptions and brand partnerships. The Reels bonuses were part of Meta’s two-year, $1 billion in cash that the company promised would go to creators through 2022.
Similar incentives at other companies are also slowly dwindling. There was something of a gold rush on Snapchat in 2020 when the company announced it was coming pay $1 million per day for hit content on its TikTok-esque feature, Spotlight. That amount was gradually reduced throughout 2022 and other monetization methods were introduced, such as ad revenue sharing. YouTube initially offered cash payouts to let creators create content for its TikTok clone, Shorts, but announced last fall that it was moving to a revenue-sharing model.
Other companies, such as TikTok, restructure funds for creators and encourage new types of content. The short video app recently announced an updated fund that will only reward creators who create videos longer than a minute. Monetizing directly from platforms has been a problem: under the original TikTok fund, some creators even reported low earnings for viral videos.
