I was wondering: is TikTok worth it in 2025 at this point? The question came up because I was just talking to a fellow content creator, Blockchain Pill, and he was telling me, "Man, you have to get on TikTok. My brother's on TikTok. He makes all this money." And here's the thing: I was on TikTok. I first saw it back in 2019. I was on it in 2020, before everybody else piled on. I had several videos hit a million views, and I had around 30,000 followers. And after all of that, I've come to believe TikTok is the absolute most garbage platform out there.
To put it in context, I've uploaded ten thousand-plus videos online. That's not a handful. That's a lot. And I've had more videos removed off of TikTok than every other platform combined. I'm not making crazy content either. Maybe I pushed the line a little, but the censorship on there is outrageous. The monetization was horrible too.
The "views" trick that fools creators
Here's what I think a lot of people miss. TikTok fakes you into thinking you're getting all these views, because they use the word "views" for something that YouTube calls impressions. I'm a full-time YouTuber. When I put out a video and it gets, say, 100 views, what that really represents is anywhere from a thousand to ten thousand-plus impressions. That means one to ten thousand people saw the video, and then a hundred views is the click-through — that's somebody who actually clicked and wanted to watch, not somebody who saw it for a second and scrolled past.
So in my view, TikTok has tricked a bunch of people into using their platform by changing the word "impressions" to "views." People think, "Oh my God, every video I do gets a thousand views on TikTok." But almost the same thing happens for me on YouTube. I put out six videos a day, and almost all of them get at least a thousand impressions each. Some get 10,000, 100,000-plus impressions. And I actually make ad revenue. I get thousands of dollars a month from making YouTube videos.
So I asked myself, okay, should I put some shorts on TikTok? Should I try to get more on there? But I only have so much time in the day. I know doing six YouTube videos a day is a guaranteed full-time income. That's thousands a month from ad revenue, that's YouTube search, that's Google search. When I left TikTok before, I was protesting the disgusting state of the platform. This is horrible, I thought. Nobody should create on here.
Researching whether anything changed
But after a couple of years of having deleted my TikTok account, Blockchain Pill said, "Oh, you should get back on there." So I thought about it. What I did is I Googled "is TikTok worth it in 2025," and I read through a bunch of posts on Reddit. What I observed is that 2020, 2021, and 2022 were great years on TikTok. You could really pop off. And I did. I saw other people pop off even harder than I did, especially the ones putting in a lot more time on the platform than me.
What I've observed since then is that over the next year or two, the algorithm started to absolutely go to crap on TikTok. Once you had that initial growth, when there were not that many creators but a bunch of viewers, it was a real sweet spot. In 2020 it was pretty easy to make a garbage video on TikTok and get 100,000 views on it. I'd know, because I did that. And if you made an actual banger, you were looking at a million "views," which really would be the YouTube equivalent of 10,000 to 100,000 views — which I've done on a lot of YouTube videos, although most of them have been deleted since then.
What I saw is that the algorithm was going downhill, especially as all these celebrities and big names got on the platform. The short-form impressions are pretty much useless. Almost nobody came across. I had around 30,000 followers on TikTok when I deleted it, and millions of views. Hardly anybody came over to Twitch, to YouTube, to Facebook. Very, very low conversion percentage. I got about $50 out of the creator fund.
So I'm thinking: if the trend I saw continued, TikTok's probably even worse today, right? If what I observed years ago has kept going in that same direction, it's probably much worse now. So I looked on Reddit, and yes, there are definitely people making some money on TikTok. There are definitely people posting that they made thousands of dollars in the last year or the last few months. So obviously some people are doing well. But at this point, it seems like on TikTok, if you don't have an audience already, you're useless. If I had just kept posting on that same TikTok account the entire time, sure, I'd probably have gotten plenty more views. But right now it looks like if you haven't been on TikTok already, there is almost no point in starting.
Do work you actually want to repeat
There's also this: if you do something, you should want to do it again and again. Don't do something you don't want to repeat. I love making longer-form videos, because with longer-form you have time to flesh out an idea. You have time to go into the details. You have time to make more of a connection with somebody.
What I noticed is that the millions and millions of views on TikTok were mostly worthless, because back then you could only post a minute long. A minute was not enough time to make a real connection with somebody. I've met people in person who saw my TikTok videos — "Oh man, I saw you on TikTok, you're awesome, I love you" — but it wasn't enough time to actually convert them into anything. It was the lowest conversion percentage I've ever seen. And if the video doesn't go off, usually after about 12 hours, it's just finished.
I want content that lasts
What I care about as a content creator is that I want my content to live on somewhere. Right now it seems like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook especially are platforms where your content is dead almost immediately. If you don't go off right away, most of the time it's finished. Meanwhile, X has a little more longevity. I've had a post on X go over 100,000 impressions and keep rolling over a month or two. X lasts a bit longer, but YouTube is the longest. On YouTube you can have a video you made 10 years ago go off. I had live streams go off months after I did them. I had YouTube videos I made a decade ago still getting views before I deleted them. I want to create content somewhere that's going to last. I don't want to create content somewhere where, if somebody didn't watch it immediately, I might as well have done nothing.
So from what I've seen personally on TikTok, and from what people are saying on Reddit — which, sure, you can't fully fact-check anyone on there, you don't really know who's genuinely sharing — the overall sentiment I saw was extremely negative for TikTok. And that matches my experience. My experience was very negative: meaningless views, a bunch of effort.
Now, yes, I know you can cross-post. I know you can post to Instagram. But I also deleted my Instagram and my Facebook, even though I had millions of followers on those, because those platforms are not fair. YouTube is fair. You put up videos on YouTube and you get a share of the revenue. Instagram and TikTok don't hardly give you anything, at least when I was on there. Same thing with Facebook. I don't want to support exploitative platforms that take your time and don't give you back a fair share.
Where I'm putting my time in 2025
So from all that I've seen personally — and I'm making this point as much to myself as to anybody else — there's no reason for me to use TikTok at this point in 2025. For me, it would be pointless. I thought about it for a little bit today, and honestly it would be horrible to create a new TikTok account, try to start filming shorts, and try to upload several videos a day. For me, it would take away from what I'm doing on YouTube. You only have so much time in life, and you have to be really careful where you put your time and energy.
To me, YouTube is the most worthwhile platform to put my time and energy into. Not everybody is going to have the same experience, but on average, overall, that's where I land — though not for shorts necessarily. I think shorts suck. I don't hardly watch shorts. I don't use TikTok.
The last thing I'll close with is this: it's insane to try to create on a platform that you don't even use. When I used to use TikTok, sure, I created on it. But I don't want to use TikTok now. I don't want to watch the videos on there — stupid, pointless videos, people saying things like how bad kale is for you. That's crap. I had kale chips today. They're so good. I feel fantastic. I use YouTube. YouTube is the main platform I use as a regular user, so it makes sense for me to focus there. If you want to hear more about how I think through this, you can dig into my YouTube Coaching playlist.
So the only exception I'd give is this: if you use TikTok every day as a user, maybe you think about it. But it seems absolutely insane to me to try to create content on TikTok if you haven't already started or you don't already have a huge audience. And I think it's a great time to quit. That's exactly why I deleted my account a couple of years ago.