👉 Background: TikTok is the often-addictive, often-controversial social media platform that helped uncover mens' fascination with the Roman Empire.

👉 What happened: While traditionally TikTok has generated its revenue through ads, it is now reportedly testing out a paid ad-free subscription tier on their app in the US. That means users have the option to pay $4.99 USD a month to avoid seeing ads.

👉 What else: With ad-spend slowing down globally, TikTok's been searching far and wide for ways to diversify their revenue streams. First it was TikTok Shop and now they're entering the subscription arena.

What's the key learning?

💡Build the crowd, then sell the VIP pass. Many content-led businesses need to build a dedicated audience before a sustainable revenue stream.

💡And many of these content-led businesses follow a similar playbook when it comes to monetisation:

• Step 1: Grow an audience by offering free content and hook in users so they keep coming back to the platform.
• Step 2: Throw in some ads sporadically to test out users' willingness to consume ads...
  Step 3: Add more ads... and more ads.
• Step 4: Offer the antidote to those ads - like an paid ad-free tier.

💡We've seen this playbook work for Spotify and Netflix. And now, we're seeing X, Meta and even TikTok test it out too.

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