I didn't plan this at all. Like two months ago I was scrolling through tiktok at 1am and saw someone in the comments mention this app called stembl. Apparently indie artists pay you to use their songs in your videos, based on how many views you get.
Thought it was bs. Signed up for the waitlist anyway because I had nothing going on that night. Got in about a week later. Picked a song from some artist I'd never heard of and threw it on a cooking video because it had a good vibe. That video ended up doing like 40k views which is decent for me, I usually sit around 5-10k. Made $14 off it.
$14 is whatever but my brain did the thing where you find cash in an old jacket. Like I was gonna make that video anyway. I just used a different song.
Been doing it about 6 weeks now. Some videos flop and I get like $1-2, others do alright and I'll see $8-15. Best one hit 120k views, got $47 from that. Total so far is around $180 which yeah, not quitting my job, but it's genuinely more than the creator fund ever paid me for the same amount of views.
The weird part is it actually changed how I approach making videos. Before I was just posting stuff and hoping for the best. Now I think about what song fits the content and it somehow makes the videos better? Having a specific sound to work around gives more direction I guess.
Song selection is kinda limited still since it's new. But the tracks are from real artists trying to get heard so they're mostly decent, not random stock music garbage.
Anyway if you're posting on tiktok and making basically nothing from the creator fund, might be worth checking out. I'm not getting rich but $180 for what I was already doing feels like I found a cheat code or something.