When someone goes viral on TikTok, people usually assume that they end up rolling in cash. But for Reesa Teesa, TikTok’s latest main character, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Her “Who TF Did I Marry” series, which tells her 3.2 million followers about her former husband, went viral this year. It is a saga that rivals J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings,” both in terms of plot and sheer length. There are more than fifty parts of the series, and each edition has racked up tens of millions of views.
But in a new TikTok post-viral-fame, Teesa revealed a surprising truth.
“Wanted to come on here and tell you guys the stories about the amount of money that I’ve made on TikTok with this whole ‘Who TF Did I Marry?’ series is wildly inaccurate,” she said in the video, which garnered 3.2 million views.
“I didn’t get approved [for the creator fund] until midway into the series,” the creator continued. “So all the videos I did beforehand weren’t even counted for the creator fund.”
It’s worth noting that the $2 billion TikTok “Creator Fund” shut down in December 2023. The new “Creativity Program Beta” replaced it, and this is likely what Teesa is referring to. (Teesa did not respond to our request for comment via Instagram direct message.)
While the Creator Fund, in many ways, was a letdown, the Creativity Program Beta is even more disappointing. Especially considering its more stringent requirements on video length.
As Teesa points out, there are also “eligible views” requirements for the fund. This, Teesa added, ends up translating into “not that much” monetization on her end.
But in the end, Teesa ended up not even being eligible for that pittance. She says TikTok suspended her from its monetization program for the cardinal sin of reuploading her own content.
“For the next 30 days, I am not making any money from the videos. I am merely making these videos from the heart,” Teesa said.
“So for the people who think I’ve made 80-something-thousand, a hundred thousand, three hundred thousand — I am so sorry to disappoint you, but the actual number is nowhere near,” Teesa continued. “I am not quitting my day job.”
If nothing else, this is a damning indictment of TikTok’s deeply flawed monetization system. Technically, TikTok claims there are 14 ways to earn on their platform alongside funds like gifts from live streams, the creator marketplace, branded content, and paywalled Series content.
But in the long run, it feels like it may not be a profitable landscape for many creators.
