Everyone Should Be Making Money from Social Media

People on average spend over 2 hours a day on social media, making tons of money for unbearable influencers and billionaire CEOs by staring at cancerous brain rotting content and meaningless ads.

It’s barely even entertainment anymore, it’s information overload. In other words…

…addiction.

In a way, social media has caused generations to be brainwashed into working mini part time jobs, making money for tech CEOs by staring at brain rot.

When you’re spending this much time on something, you should be making money from it. That’s the problem with social media today: the concentration of revenue is too small. Too many consumers, too few creators. That’s why I believe everyone who spends significant time on social media should be making money from it - even if it’s only a small side income.

If you don’t feel the need to combat the amount of time you’re wasting on social media, you should at least be spending a portion of this time building one, or a few accounts on a number of different platforms so you can make money off of the rampant overconsumption of social media content.

Here’s the 5 best ways you can make money on social media in 2025 and beyond.

YouTube (Long)

YouTube has long been the Godfather of social media, and has evolved from a community-based platform into a rival for TV as we know it.

If you’re an expert in a certain field, or maybe you just have a desire to entertain people, long form YouTube videos are the perfect place to start.

Admittedly, YouTube can take a while to get off the ground, but the rewards for doing so are huge. The barriers to entry for monetisation are high for YouTube, and they include:

• 1,000 subscribers

• 4,000 hours of watch time OR 10,000,000 shorts views in 90 days.

Complete these and your account will be monetised for all content.

The income potential for YouTube is huge, but competition is fierce. For long form content, you can expect $2-$5 per 1,000 views, depending on the content you post, and thus the value of your audience to advertisers.

YouTube videos can take months or even years to perfect, but it has the potential to be a life changing project, and a lucrative one at that.

YouTube (Shorts)

YouTube saw the popularity of TikTok, and shamelessly copied them by introducing YouTube Shorts a number of years ago, and this is another legitimate income stream if this is something that you’re interested in.

Shorts tend to get a lot more views than long form videos, so for that reason, the ad revenue per view is way lower. But, short form content is easier to make, meaning you can create more videos in the same amount of time.

You can even use Shorts to link to, and promote any long form videos you’ve made, creating a synergistic relationship between the two as you grow a media powerhouse on YouTube.

TikTok (Content)

TikTok has exploded in the past half decade or so, and along with a growing user base comes growing revenue opportunities.

As a creator you start in what’s called the Creator Fund: a revenue stream funded by advertisers, which has very low payouts. But, as you grow, you will be allowed to join the Creator Rewards Program. This is where you need to focus your efforts.

The CRP is a program that pays out very generous sums of money to creators who make videos over 1 minute long, as long as they generate over 1,000 qualified views. The RPM for said videos vary, but you can earn up to $1 per 1,000 views on these videos. For short form content, that’s pretty lucrative.

The requirements are as follows for the CRP:

• You need 10,000 followers.

• You need to have 100,000 video views in the past 30 days (seriously, not as difficult as it sounds if you know what you’re doing)

But, there is a slight catch. Once you ditch the Creator Fund for the CRP, you can’t go back. This means that any videos you make under 1 minute can’t be monetised.

It’s not a dealbreaker, but it’s worth considering if you’re looking into TikTok for a revenue stream.

TikTok (Shop)

Sticking with TikTok, thousands of creators are making money via commission through TikTok’s e-Commerce branch, creatively named ‘TikTok Shop.’

This is where creators make videos advertising products to sell to viewers. It can range from…

• Cushions

• Books

• Furniture

• Gym Supplements

• Clothing

Anything you can think of, it’s on there, and this avenue is only getting bigger and bigger.

The requirements to be accepted for TikTok shop are lower than those of the CRP. You only need 1,000 followers as opposed to the 10,000 for the CRP.

Commission rates vary depending on what you plan on selling, and to succeed, you will need to focus in on a specific niche (kind of like all of these avenues) rather than trying to do everything all at once.

TikTok Shop can be a lucrative earner, and a number of businesses thrive solely by selling through TikTok. Give it a go if you think this will cater to your strengths.

Twitter

Twitter started paying users a few years back when Elon Musk bought the platform.

Although, since then, the platform has become a cesspool of clickbaity slop and bots who clog up comments sections with horrendous AI generated reactions, there’s now a legitimate opportunity to make money.

The metric for making money on Twitter is through impressions. Simply, the more people that see your tweets, the more money you’ll make.

The money is poor, I’ll admit. You’ll need one heck of a following to make a living just through Twitter ad revenue, but it’s still a worthwhile avenue to look into if you spend a lot of time on the platform.

To qualify, you need:

• Twitter Premium. The cheapest subscription allowing you to get paid is something like $8 a month. It also boosts engagement though, so it’s often a worthwhile investment once your content picks up traction.

• 500 followers.

• 5 million impressions in 3 months (this averages to around 55k a day)

In truth, it’s easy to qualify. All you need is to spend maybe 20 minutes a day to spam comments for the impressions, and build a small following.

Of course, you need to still be building something worthwhile so people stick around, but the barriers to entry for monetisation are not high.

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