Snapchat pays $1 mn to creators of viral short videos

Snapchat, since November 2020, has maintained a $1 million daily pool, which it pays out to creators of each day’s top-performing videos on Spotlight, its short-form video service. The payout is determined based on how many views a video gets in comparison to that of highly viewed snaps.

According to CNBC, this is meant to draw more creators to make videos for Spotlight, which in turn will help Snapchat attract and retain users. The company said Spotlight has grown to more than 10 million monthly active users, and has over 175,000 video submissions per day. The app overall grew to 265 million global daily active users in its fourth quarter of 2020, from 249 million in Q3.

Alberto, a content creator, who is on track to becoming a millionaire said he initially made short videos for more exposure. “I wasn’t quite sure how much money was in there,” he told CNBC. Alberto snapped a quick video with his girlfriend at dinner one night, posted it and didn’t think much of it. Two weeks later, he got a notification that the video had made him $94,000. “When the first check came in from Snap, I thought it was a typo,” he shared.

Since then, Alberto’s been working to post 20 to 40 videos daily under the handle @evanthecardguy where he has 111,000 subscribers. He says that as of March 18, he’s made around $900,000 from his videos, where he does magic tricks, challenges and just basically anything that fits sort of a “game show hype”.

“Traditionally, a platform comes out like TikTok and it kind of steals the attention from other places, but Snapchat seems to kind of be reigniting,” the content creator pointed out. “People think of Snap as a way to make stories and communicate with friends. I think it would be really interesting if they use this moment to really make Snapchat a place for influencers.”

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Sarah Callahan, a content creator with 725,000 subscribers on the app, told CNBC that Spotlight is definitely making a big splash in the community. “Spotlight gives a ton of people a voice and allows anyone to do anything with it, but the more you post, the more you do, the more money you’ll make with it. All creators on there are consistent and they are doing it as a business.”