How we calculate earnings estimates

Where the data comes from and how often it updates

The rates, caps and minimum views come from live campaigns. To be fully transparent: campaign data comes from the Clipster creator app's public campaign list. A scheduled job refreshes that list every 3 hours, and every page on ClippingCalc that quotes a number is rebuilt from it at the same pace.

The current data was generated on Oct 23, 2026 and covers 104 live campaigns. The "Updated" date you see on guides and calculators is that date.

Your own numbers, the posts and their views, are read when you press the button. They come from public profile data through a third-party social data provider (TikHub) and are not part of the campaign list.

Which campaigns are included

The campaign list only contains campaigns that are active, public and not Discord-exclusive. On top of that, ClippingCalc drops any campaign whose end date has passed, so an ended campaign never moves an average. Private and invite-only campaigns are not visible to us and are not counted.

A campaign only counts for a platform it actually pays on. If a campaign pays for TikTok but not YouTube Shorts, it is left out of the YouTube Shorts estimate. As of October 2026 the live list splits like this (TikTok rates shown per 1M views):

The formula

Every campaign pays by views, and each post is valued on its own. For one post and one campaign:

• Below the minimum views: the post earns $0.
• Otherwise: payout = views ÷ 1,000 × rate per 1,000 views.
• Cap: the payout can never exceed the campaign's maximum per post.

In short: payout = 0 if views < minimum views, else min(views ÷ 1,000 × rate, cap). Creator apps usually quote the rate per 1M views. We convert it, so $1,300 per 1M views is $1.30 per 1,000 views.

A worked example with live numbers

Take the average live music campaign on TikTok as of October 2026: $1,253 per 1M views ($1.25 per 1,000 views), a typical cap of $450 per post and a typical minimum of 2,000 views. Three posts with different view counts come out like this:

How campaigns are averaged

No creator earns the same on every campaign, and we do not know which one you would choose. So the estimate asks: what would this post pay on each live campaign of the chosen type that allows the platform, and what is the plain average of those payouts? Every campaign counts once, regardless of its size. The calculator pages choose the type: music on the homepage and the edits page, clipping, logo and UGC on their own pages.

Here is a 10,000-view TikTok post on 3 of the 55 live music campaigns (the highest-rate one, one in the middle, the lowest-rate one):

Averaged over all 55 live music campaigns on TikTok, the same post is worth $12.53. An account's estimate is that average for each of its posts, added up or averaged over the posts counted. For ranges of live rates by platform, see clipping rates.

Cap and minimum views

The cap stops one viral post from earning without limit, and the minimum views is a bar a post must clear before it earns anything. Both are set per campaign, and both can change the result a lot: a post just under the minimum earns exactly as much as one with no views. Across the live music campaigns the typical cap is $450 and the typical minimum is 2,000 views (medians, not promises). We show the typical minimum next to each estimate so you can see how many of your posts clear it.

Which posts are counted

• Default: the last 30 days. Every public post with a date inside the last 30 days counts, newest first (TikTok and Instagram Reels).
• Fallback 1: the last 10 posts. If an account has nothing in the last 30 days, we use its 10 latest posts and say so on the result.
• Fallback 2: YouTube Shorts. The Shorts listing has no post dates, so we use the latest 10 Shorts and label the result that way.
• Lower bound. If an account posts so much that we cannot page back through all 30 days, the result is flagged as a lower bound.

What is not included

• Bonuses. Some campaigns add bonuses or tiers on top of the base rate. We only model the base rate, cap and minimum.
• Rejected posts. A post can break a brief and be rejected. We cannot see that, so every post is treated as accepted. The guide on why clips get rejected explains the usual causes.
• View verification. Platforms and campaigns may count views differently from the number shown on a public profile, or re-check them later.
• Fees and taxes. Payout fees, currency conversion and income tax are not deducted.
• Real earnings. We estimate what posts would have earned on average campaigns, not what they did earn.

How songs and campaigns are suggested

Suggestions are matched on content. We read the captions and hashtags of the posts we analysed (and the profile text, where the platform gives it) and score them against a keyword list per niche, for example gaming, movies and TV, anime, sports or music. Campaigns carry niche tags too, so a campaign that shares a niche with the account ranks first. Among those, songs come before other campaign types, and the higher expected payout wins ties.

If no niche can be detected, the list falls back to the campaigns that would have paid this account the most. Each suggestion shows what that account would have made on that single campaign, using the same formula as above.

Privacy: what we use and what we keep

• Public data only. We read what anyone can see on a public profile: handle, public posts, captions, hashtags and view counts. We never ask for a password or log in to your account.
• What we keep. When you run a lookup we save the public account you checked (platform, handle, name, follower count), the result we calculated, the page you used it on and your country as reported by our web host. We use it to improve the service and to count how many people click I want to earn; a click is saved with that lookup. We do not store IP addresses, and we do not keep your posts or captions.
• Short cache. The data fetched for a lookup is also kept in memory for 30 minutes, so pressing the button twice does not fetch twice, and then it is gone.
• No account needed. There is no sign-up on this site.

Who is behind this site

ClippingCalc is made by the team behind Clipster. We say it here because it matters for how you read the numbers: campaign data comes from the Clipster creator app's public campaign list, and the buttons that lead to earning go to that app. We aim to show campaign terms as they are, including the low ones, and the formula above is the same for every campaign.

Limitations

• An estimate is a model of the past, not a forecast. Future posts can get far fewer or far more views.
• Averaging across campaigns smooths out differences that matter in practice. The campaign you choose can pay several times more or less than the average.
• Campaign terms change, and a campaign can end or fill up between two refreshes.
• Views on a public profile can differ from the views a campaign counts.
• Niche matching is keyword-based and can miss context, or posts with no caption.

Changelog

• 2026-10-23: Privacy: lookups are now saved (public account, result, page and country, no IP address) so we can improve the service and measure clicks on the earn buttons.
• 2026-10-23: Published this page. Campaign rates come from the live campaign list and refresh every 3 hours. Estimates use the formula below: views divided by 1,000 times the rate, capped per post, zero under the minimum views, averaged across live campaigns.