Can You Earn Passive Income on TikTok? (30 Day Challenge)

I made 90 videos to try to go viral in one month

My resolution and goal in 2023 was to attempt twelve 30-day passive income challenges.

Mission accomplished.

I started a YouTube channel one year ago to document every challenge. Today I am very excited to share all about my final 30-day challenge: TikTok.

I made 3 videos a day for 30 days and learned a TON! I’m going to share my process, video strategy, challenges, successes, and 10 things you need to know to succeed!

Why TikTok?

TikTok has been on my radar for years but I avoided it on purpose. I didn’t want to get sucked into the distracting app. Plus, short-form, quick content was not a strength of mine.

That said, I gained a ton of short-form content experience in January 2023 when I made 125 YouTube Shorts in 30 days. I knew I could leverage that experience, plus research, to give myself a shot at having a viral video.

Getting monetized wasn’t the goal as that looks to be extremely difficult. The requirement for the partner program is 10,000 followers and 100,000 views in the last 30 days.

Instead, my goal was to start a new profile focused on promoting my 4 personal finance books — especially my new one: Ready, Money Mindset, GO! (the results of my September challenge). I thought one viral video mentioning the book would accomplish just that and help me sell more copies.

#BOOKTOK Explained

In my research, I quickly learned that #BookTok is a big deal for book sales. In fact, many bookstores and book sections in big box stores feature a stand of “as seen on BookTok” books that have gone viral on the platform.

I did recognize one key problem:

Those books all went viral because of BookTok readers who review and recommend books.

It’s users with huge followings that react to books, give audible or silent reviews, share their book haul, rank their favorite book of the month, share quotes, and more.

Immediately I wondered if anyone had ever mentioned any of my books. I quickly created my account @frankie_calkins_author (go follow!) so I could search my name and books and…

Nothing.

No surprise. I’m a nobody indie author. And let’s be honest, personal finance isn’t a sexy topic. It’s not romance, mystery, or fantasy. THOSE are the categories that go viral.

My TikTok Income Plan

So, it was up to me.

It was up to me as the author to make a new account and try to post compelling content about my book and book topic “money mindset”. To get a boost in book sales, I could only hope I’d have one post go “viral”.

I decided to make 3 videos a day because I didn’t think I had the time for 4 (I‘m a new Dad after all!). Either way, consistency is key. I vowed to not miss a day.

After way too much research on how to sell books as an author on TikTok, I got to work. I made a brainstorming list of all the video content I wanted to make — mostly create my version of popular posts I saw and ideas from research.

Here’s a look at that list now. Feel free to steal my best ideas!

Spoiler: this turned out to be a case of great planning, but bad execution.

However, it wasn’t all bad. Let’s talk about my videos and how the month went week by week.

Week 1 Videos

First, I posted myself reacting to seeing my new book hit #1 best seller using trending music. Crickets.

Then I went to my planning list and picked out the one to rank all 4 of my books. Obviously, I chose my new book as #1. That had over 500 views pretty quickly so that was encouraging.

Next, I posted one of my most popular YouTube Shorts and it hit 800 views within an hour. Very encouraging! But it didn’t mention any of my books — it was a story about learning a tough money lesson as a kid. Fun video, but off-topic.

I knew I needed to post about my book so I took a minute from my book trailer and posted it and once again, over 800 views. Solid.

A problem arose a few days in...

My wife and I had previously planned to take a staycation at a nearby cabin. It was going to be very difficult to make new content since my book ranking video took me a solid hour from start to finish. Plus, a new baby in a new place.

I came up with a plan.

Before leaving, I found and organized all my YouTube Shorts from last January so I could post the best ones on TikTok. This would save me a ton of time and effort.

Why reinvent the wheel when I simply didn’t have the time? This was a great idea in theory.

For the next few days, I re-posted YouTube Shorts and prioritized ones that mentioned my books. I sprinkled in a few new ones here and there.

Week 2

In week two I found myself posting one original a day and two YouTube Shorts.

However, all this reposting of old content might have gotten me in trouble with the algorithm. The content was unfocused. It was about all sorts of personal finance topics and many videos were very different in tone and style.

For this reason (I think), I hit the dreaded 250-view “jail” as I heard it referred to by many. No matter what I posted for the next two weeks I was maxing out at around 300 views.

Week 3

Mid-month I felt pretty discouraged. My 40 videos were about 70% “old” content. It became frustrating to make new content, spend an hour on it, and still hit the same 250-view cap.

More frustrating, a few of my videos got flagged by TikTok. I’m still not sure why. Perhaps they fell under the category of “unoriginal” and TikTok somehow knew these were YouTube Shorts reposted.

I’ve also heard talking about money can be tricky because TikTok is sensitive to spam and get-rich-quick schemes. Luckily, I was able to contest one successfully and that didn’t happen again.

I did make one key observation: my passive income content was driving more engagement, specifically likes. I went from 0-10 likes on a video to 20–40 likes on most passive income videos.

Therefore, I decided to move away from book content and money mindset videos. I was going to lean instead into passive income content exclusively for the rest of the month…

Week 4

At this point, I stopped making original content but I tried to give my old videos fresh edits like headlines and trending music. I also spent more time adding relevant passive income hashtags (a variety of popular and less popular ones) and more time on the thumbnails and captions. I found posting in the evening was doing well so I posted then.

Right now you’re probably thinking I didn’t reach my goal of having 1 viral video and selling a bazillion books. And if you think that…

You’d be right of course. It’s hard to see if I saw a lift in book sales at all.

However, things did improve. In the final 10 days of December, I was consistently getting 20 or more likes per video, plus a couple of saves. I was finally getting comments (however, half were crypto spammers). And I was gaining around 3 followers with each new post!

Minor Goal Victories

Beyond my viral video goal, I did also set attainable goals to reach 100 followers and 1,000 likes by the end of the month.

I’m happy to report, at the end of 30 days I ended up with 124 followers and 958 likes.

Pretty darn close. I’ll call it a win.

As a bonus, several of my followers are celebrities!

By that, I mean fake celebrity profiles. But it never gets old seeing famous names pop up. You always think “Maybe Danny Devito or Ryan Pineda or Ali Abdahl really did follow me!” No, they didn’t…

10 Things I Wish I Would Have Done Differently

Looking back at my original video brainstorm there were some great ideas in there. I regret not staying focused on those. I didn’t let the algorithm help me find the right audience. I got impatience with poor results. I failed to make two-thirds of my video ideas, which brings me to my 10 big regrets.

If you’re new to TikTok or thinking of starting, this is the helpful part:

1. Make fewer videos. Trying to make 3 a day made it very difficult to want to make original content. I knew I didn’t have hours a day to commit to this project so I should have pivoted to 2 or even 1 in the beginning.

2. I should have stayed focused on my author brand and new books — aka, my original list of ideas as I just mentioned.

3. I wish I didn’t bounce around to different finance topics. I think it’s okay I posted content from YouTube but I should have only posted videos about money mindset, the topic of the book I was promoting.

4. I should have focused on getting a BookToker to review my book. I could have offered free copies to #BookTok creators but I assumed most would charge a fee. Plus, I honestly didn’t know where to start.

5. I should have used fewer hashtags. Only now do I remember a tip to only use 2 to 3 hashtags max. I was loading my description with 8-10 hashtags on most posts.

6. I should have followed people in my target audience. I noticed following people did lead to a follow-back. Knowing this, I should have taken the time to follow people who seemed to like money mindset and book videos.

7. Similarly, I should have only liked and viewed TikTok videos in my feed related to my topic of money mindset and booktok. I often got distracted and found myself looking at random videos for 30-minute sessions and liking videos about sports, desk setups, vacation recommendations, and more. Anything you can do to train the algorithm helps!

8. I wish I would have focused on driving comments. I assume comments are very valuable as an engagement tool. Perhaps controversial statements or ridiculous stories could have led to more comments.

9. I’m not sure putting “author” in my username was the right move. Perhaps @frankie_money-mindset or something related to the topic my book would have been more appealing to others.

10. I should have made my profile private to friends and family. This was a weird tip I learned early on but forgot to implement. Who knows if it’s true? However, my first two dozen followers were friends and family who all have different interests. Ideally, you only want followers who like your core topic. This would be another critical signal to send to the algorithm.

Final Thoughts

There you have it. That’s my full TikTok challenge story, my thought process, and my results. Plus, 10 things I wish I would have done differently in retrospect.

TikTok was a learning process. I struggled to push through and complete my goal, especially when the results weren’t there. That said — I did it! I made 90 videos in 30 days.

In 2023, I rediscovered how committed and persistent I can be. It was the only way I was going to complete my twelve passive income challenges.

I’ll have a lot more thoughts about my year of passive income challenges in my next article, but I do want to say I’m incredibly proud of myself for following through on such a difficult resolution/goal for the year.

Also, thank you to all of you who watched one of my videos or read an article. Big thank you to those of you who left a like, high five, or sent some positivity in the comments. You all kept me motivated to keep going!

I hope you achieve all of your resolutions and goals in 2024. Let me know if you have a big project you’re tackling in the new year!

For me, being a great Dad is my big goal!

PS: Check out my YouTube channel to watch all my challenge recaps!

This article contains Amazon affiliate links, which means I may earn a commission if you make a purchase using these links.

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Frankie Calkins (M. Ed) is a Digital Marketing Director by day. On nights and weekends, he’s an author, YouTuber, and course creator. He lives in the Seattle, Washington area. Contact: [email protected]