Product strategy to grow creator earnings on TikTok
Company: TikTok
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
As a product manager at TikTok, you are asked how you would help creators turn the content and activity they put on the platform into income. Explain which creators you would focus on, what keeps them from earning today, what you would build for them, and how you would know it worked.
```hint Find who is underserved
Earnings on a short-video platform are very uneven. Before proposing features, work out which group of creators gets little from the ways TikTok already pays people, and why keeping that group earning matters to TikTok as well as to them.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Is the main goal to keep creators posting on TikTok instead of moving to rival platforms, to grow TikTok's own revenue, or both, and which wins if they conflict?
- Should I pick a creator tier myself (newcomers, mid-sized accounts, top creators), or are sellers and small businesses that post videos in scope too?
- Do I need to cover markets where in-app shopping or LIVE gifting is unavailable?
- How much extra sponsored or commercial content are we willing to put into viewers' feeds?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A goal that links creator income to TikTok's own interests, such as creator retention and content supply, and a view on how the platform shares in the value.
- A reasoned choice of creator segment, grounded in how existing earning paths (rewards for views, LIVE gifts, subscriptions, shopping, brand deals) serve some creators and miss others.
- Pain points specific to that segment, with solutions prioritized by impact, effort and risk.
- Success metrics measured per creator rather than as total payouts, plus guardrails that protect viewers' experience and trust.
- Risks such as an overly commercial feed, fake engagement and creators moving deals off the platform.
### Follow-up Questions
- Your feature raises creator earnings, but viewers start skipping sponsored videos much more often. How do you decide whether to keep it?
- How would you stop accounts with bought followers from capturing most of the new income?
- Should TikTok take a cut of brand deals arranged through its tools, and how would you set it?
Overview: A TikTok product strategy prompt about helping creators earn more from their content. It tests choosing an underserved creator segment, diagnosing why existing earning paths fall short for them, prioritizing new monetization features, and defining creator-level success metrics with viewer-experience guardrails.