When do you pay a TikTok creator?

You've agreed the number with a creator. You worked it out from your own plan rather than a number you looked up, they've said yes, and the product is about to go in a box. Then somebody asks when the money leaves, and nobody has an answer ready.

It's a fair question. But it's a shorter question than the number was, because most of what settles it is already sitting in the agreement you just made.

What is the fee attached to?

Not the video. The thing you agreed to buy.

Those sound like the same object and they aren't. A video going up on their account and a file going to your ad account are not the same purchase — you picked one before anybody filmed, and they built the shoot around which one it is. Buy a post and the thing you're paying for happens on their account, on a day you can both see. Buy a file and it happens when the file reaches you, and there's no posting date in the deal at all.

That's what the fee sits on. Not how the video does afterwards. Whether a posted video worked is a separate judgment, made against the sentence you wrote, and it happens after the thing you bought already exists. It answers a question about the campaign. It was never a term of the purchase.

For the espresso maker: you're buying a post. The sentence is that it makes café-strength coffee with nothing living on the counter. The brief fixes that sentence, one continuous take at the stove, and the pot reading as something already in the kitchen rather than something being unboxed. Two rounds. The pot ships to them Monday.

Why isn't there a number to look up?

For the same reason there wasn't one for the fee.

A schedule you copy off a page was built for a job whose shape you can't see. You don't know what that job was buying, how many rounds it allowed, or when its video had to be live — and those are the things that decide where the dates fall. Lift the schedule and you've imported somebody else's answer to a question they were asked about a different job.

So we're not going to hand you a split. What you get instead is a test, and your own agreement to run it against.

For the espresso maker: a schedule built for a file with no rounds would put every date in the wrong place here, because this job posts and this job has two rounds in it.

What makes a moment usable?

A moment you can pay against has to be one you can both point at, on the same day, without either of you having to be talked into it.

That's a low bar, and two of the usual answers don't clear it.

It rules out how the video did. There's no day on it, and whether it did its job is a judgment you make against your own notes rather than one the two of you make together. Hang the fee on it and you've turned a question about the campaign into a condition on somebody's pay — and made the thing you already bought conditional on something you didn't.

It rules out anything you can't put a date on. "When the campaign wraps" sounds like a date until somebody has to write it down. Wrapped when the last video is up? When the paid ads stop? When you've finished looking at it? If the two of you would answer differently, it isn't a moment. It's a mood.

What survives is duller than either, and your own agreement already holds some of it.

For the espresso maker: "once it's doing well" and "after the campaign" both fail. The first has no day on it. The second has three days on it, depending on who you ask.

Which moments does your agreement already have?

Two of the things you settled before the shoot already point at dates, without having been written for that.

Where it posts. It decides which moment you're waiting for. If you bought a post, that's the video going live, and it carries a timestamp neither of you can argue with. If you bought a file, it's the file arriving. Either way the moment is the thing you bought coming into existence, and it has a date.

How many rounds. When you've agreed rounds, "delivered" isn't a single day — a draft arrives, notes go back, something returns. The date isn't the first draft. It's the last round closing, and you can both name that day because you both agreed what a round was before any of them happened.

There's one more date, and it comes before anything is made: the day they accept. Nothing exists yet on that one, which makes it a different kind of date from the other two.

For the espresso maker: not one of the three was put there as a payment date. The two rounds were agreed to cap changes, and there's a posting day at all only because you're buying a post rather than a file.

Who's out of pocket in between?

Both of you, in turn — and that's the whole reason a split is worth thinking about.

Between the day they accept and the day the video exists, whoever has the money is holding it against something nobody can look at yet. Pay it all up front and that's you. Pay none of it and it's the creator: they've given up their time, covered whatever the shoot cost them, and, if you bought a post, put your product in front of their own audience, all against a line in an agreement.

Neither of those is a claim about the other side. It's just where the exposure sits at each point on the calendar, and it moves as the job moves. Splitting the fee moves a piece of it back the other way. Leaving it whole leaves all the exposure in one place.

If you do split, split on the dates you already have rather than at a fraction that sounds fair. A piece on acceptance and the rest when the video is live is two days you both already hold. A piece "around filming" is not, because filming is a day you're told about rather than one you can see.

Then write it into what you agree before the shoot, alongside the reuse and the rounds. Do it there because of what changes once the video exists: any term you left open is a new ask, put to somebody who by then knows exactly which video you want.

For the espresso maker: part of the fee goes on acceptance, before the pot ships. The rest goes when the video is live, and it can't be live until the second round closes, so the two dates already sit in the order they need to.

Frequently asked questions

They asked for the whole fee before the shoot. What is that a question about?

It's about the calendar.

It's the same question you're answering, from the other side, so answer it the same way — against what you're buying and when it exists. If what you land on still puts a date on each side of the split, neither of you is carrying all of it. If you'd rather not, say what you can do and why. The reason is a date, and dates are easy to say out loud.

We bought a long reuse window. Does anything wait for it to end?

No. The usage rights you bought are a term on a video that already exists, and it starts working the moment it does. Nothing about it gets made or handed over later.

So the end of the window isn't a moment in this at all. It's a date on your own plan, not one in the agreement. Leaving a slice of the fee behind it would mean holding money against something they already finished doing.

See what this looks like for your brand

Got a number agreed and no idea where the dates go? We'll put your agreement on the table and mark them with you.

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