Every era has its end, and for Pinterest, it seems that the Sun is finally setting for its ‘Creator Rewards’ program. First things first, anything that has the word ‘program’ after any other string text that connotes a collaboration almost always has something to do with monetization, so this is somewhat of a downer for Pin creators. 

Pinterest’s Creator Reward scheme did just that – provide an incentive for creators to live up to their namesake and create themed Idea Pins based on monthly prompts and get paid for it. Such a setup enabled the platform to encourage Idea Pin activity and to guide said Pin toward more engagement. Pinterest was essentially hitting two birds with one stone – but now, it seems that Pinterest, just like that long-lost lover that could’ve been, is moving on. 

Create to the End

Nothing beats starting off a body with a quote or, in this case, a report. This is from The Information:

“After the program’s conclusion on Wednesday, [Pinterest] will pay a one-time bonus to creators in the program who participated in at least one reward goal in August, September, or October, a Pinterest spokesperson said. The company declined to share how much it was giving away in bonuses or how many people were part of the creator rewards program.” 

Thank you The Information for that information, and while that transition could’ve been smoother, what we can glean from this is that various social platforms do and have offered similar incentive mechanisms, with varying levels of success. They’re good initially, but for the most part, they tend to become unsustainable, especially as the partner list grows. In many ways, it should be expected as direct platform payments, save for YouTube, are designed to ideally help guide creators get into their main monetization avenues, not gear them towards building reliance on these payments. Snapchat had similar issues with its Spotlight program, while TikTok continues to struggle on the same front.

Note that the Creator Rewards program differs from Pinterest’s ‘Creator Fund’. The creator fund is basically a $500k allocation that incentivizes creators to keep posting; think of it as prize money simply for showing up. However, unlike the rewards program, the Creator Fund is specifically aimed at supporting communities and creators ‘that have been disproportionately underrepresented’, making it more of a budget and not a direct revenue stream.

The Wrap

And so, another era ends, this time, on Pinterest. Creator monetization remains a tough nut to crack, seeing as how something so complex is near-impossible to standardize and link to a centralized payout system. Yes, YouTube does a good job at paying its top creators out, but that doesn’t mean that they’ve perfected the art of quantifying each creator’s worth. The good thing to note here is that options are at least evolving and while it’ll still be some time before anyone gets it 100% right, the journey toward that will most certainly be rewarding, especially for those who are behind the driver’s wheel.

Sources 

http://bit.ly/3udViTL