A clipping guide for someone who has never cut a clip in their life

What clipping is

Clipping means cutting other people's videos into short pieces, posting them on your account and getting paid for the views they get. You don't have to create anything from scratch, appear on camera or have followers. A brand, an artist or a streamer puts money into a pool, hands over their footage and pays whoever gets it seen.

The footage comes ready-made. It might be a three-hour stream, a podcast, a trailer, a song or a catalogue of product videos. You find the bit that works, cut it vertically, post it and show how many views it got.

What it isn't

• It isn't affiliate marketing. You're paid for views, not for sales.
• It isn't brand UGC either. With UGC you're paid for delivering a video, and here you're paid for what that video does once it's live.
• You don't need a big account. Most campaigns don't ask for followers, they ask for reach, which is a different thing.
• And it isn't a salary. You're paid per result, and there's a minimum below which you get nothing. Two sections of this guide are about that minimum alone, because it's what loses people the most money.

Who pays, and why

The person paying needs attention and has worked out that it's cheaper to buy it from a hundred strangers than from an agency. An artist who wants their song on TikTok, a studio launching a game, an app that needs downloads or a casino that wants sign-ups.

The maths is simple. If paying $1 per thousand views costs less than getting those thousand views through advertising, it's worth it to them. That's why the money is real, and why everything gets measured so carefully. They're buying a result.

It helps to understand this from the start, because the people paying don't care how long the clip took you. They care about the number. A clip that took twenty minutes and got 900 views is worth less than one that took three minutes and got 40,000. It may feel unfair, but that's the deal.

Why the conditions vary so much between campaigns

Each campaign is written by whoever puts up the money, not by the platform, which is why two campaigns from the same month can contradict each other. One requires the ad tag and another bans it, one accepts four networks and another only one. There's no industry standard and there doesn't seem to be one coming, because every advertiser protects different things. That's the underlying reason to read every set of rules in full, even after you've read twenty.

How your pay is calculated

Every campaign comes down to three numbers, and understanding them is 80 % of this guide.

The rate (CPM)

CPM stands for cost per mille, the dollars a campaign pays for every 1,000 views. With a CPM of $1.50 and a clip that gets 20,000 views, you've earned 20 × $1.50 = $30.

The minimum payout

Almost every campaign requires a clip to reach a minimum amount before it pays anything. It's given in dollars ("$2 minimum per clip"), and a clip that falls short doesn't earn less, it earns zero. It's the most important thing on the card and the worst explained in the listings.

The cap per video

This is the most a single clip can earn however viral it goes, and a low cap takes most of the value out of a hit. If your clip gets two million views on a campaign with a $25 cap, you earn $25. Some caps are a few tens of dollars and others are higher than any clip ever reaches.

What those three numbers leave out

There's a fourth figure that isn't on the card and matters just as much, which is how much budget is still unspent. A campaign with unbeatable terms and an almost empty pool pays the same as a bad one, which is nothing. And there's a fifth, even less visible, which is how many people are already in, because whatever is left gets shared among all of them.

Threshold

Put the minimum and the rate together and you get the number that really matters, the views your clip needs to earn its first dollar.

threshold = minimum payout ÷ CPM × 1,000

With a $2 minimum and a $1.00 CPM, the threshold is 2,000 views. A clip with 1,999 earns zero and one with 2,000 earns $2.

No platform shows the threshold in its listing. They show the CPM, which looks better, and leave the minimum inside the campaign card. Working it out by hand for every campaign is tedious, and that's exactly why the table this guide belongs to exists.

Why the threshold is worked out per network

The same campaign can pay $0.80 per thousand with a $4 minimum on YouTube and $1.00 per thousand with a $5 minimum on TikTok. Those are different thresholds, 5,000 views on both but at different rates. Mix the minimum from one network with the rate from another and you get a number that doesn't exist anywhere.

Compare the threshold with your own account

A 5,000-view threshold is very low for an account averaging 30,000 and impossible for one averaging 400. There's no such thing as a good or bad threshold in general, only the ones your account clears and the ones it doesn't. Before you look at any campaign, go through your last ten posts and take the middle figure. That's your bar.

What you earn

It's the first thing everyone asks, and it has no answer in the form of a number. It does have one in the form of a formula, and with it you can work out before you start, using your own numbers, whether this is worth it for you.

what you earn = clips that clear the threshold × views on each ÷ 1,000 × CPM

It's worth reading slowly, because each part has its catch.

• What counts is the clips that clear the threshold, not the ones you post. If your account doesn't get shown much, that number can be zero however many you upload, and then nothing else matters.
• Views aren't shared out evenly. Nearly all the money comes from one clip in ten or one in twenty, and the rest earn nothing. That's why volume matters, because you need a lot of attempts to land a good one.
• The CPM is the only thing you know for sure before you start, and it's the one that decides the least.
• And on top of all that comes the cap, which tends to hit exactly the clip that did best.

A worked example

These numbers are assumptions, not a measurement, so swap in your own. An account that gets shown properly posts 20 clips in a month on a campaign with a $1.00 CPM and a $2 minimum, so a 2,000-view threshold.

Change one thing, so the account reaches half as many people, and the whole month drops to $0, because no clip clears the threshold. And with a $25 cap, the clip that took off would earn $25 instead of $80. The same work gives three results that look nothing alike.

How to succeed

When it isn't worth it

If your account doesn't reach the threshold of almost any campaign, clipping isn't going to bring in money yet. What you have ahead of you is building an account, which is a different job. Mixing the two up is what leads so many people to burn out editing fifty videos nobody sees.

Where the campaigns are

Campaigns don't live on TikTok or Instagram. They live on reward platforms that sit between whoever puts up the money and whoever makes the videos. The platform hosts the list of campaigns, checks views by connecting to the networks and pays out the money.

Platforms change faster than this guide, so what follows is how they stood when it was reviewed, in September 2026. What each one publishes, item by item and up to date, is in Platforms.

• Whop / Content Rewards had the largest open catalogue, and most of what this site analyses came from there.
• promote.fun was an open board with few campaigns, which paid from the first verified view, with no threshold to clear.
• clipping.net worked with big brands, with a public page for each campaign and the work organised on its Discord. It published the threshold and the rules, but nothing about the money, not the pool, not what had been paid, not how many people were in.
• Ssemble, an AI video editor, had its own board with few, small campaigns that paid from the first view and published the pool, the views and how many people were in. Some only accepted clippers from certain countries.
• Vyro, MrBeast's platform, gathered campaigns from him and from big studios and brands. It published the pool, the amount spent, the rate and the threshold per clip, and closed entry when the pool or the end date got close.
• Clipster had around ninety open campaigns and published the pool, the threshold, the cap per video and the amount spent, but not how many people were in.
• Then there are private communities and agencies, such as an agency's Discord that hands out campaigns to its clippers. They usually pay better, but you have to get in.
• And direct deals with an artist or streamer who pays out of their own pocket. There's no automatic verification and no guarantees, and that's where unpaid work turns up.

Anatomy of a campaign

Every campaign card has the same parts. Here they are, and here's what to look at in each one.

Signs a campaign is winding down

• There's little budget left and people are still joining.
• There are lots of participants and the amount paid out barely changes from one day to the next. Either hardly anyone is clearing the threshold, or review is rejecting a lot.
• The rules changed recently and raised the minimums.
• The footage hasn't been refreshed in weeks and everyone has already squeezed it dry.

The types of campaign

They aren't all worked the same way. These are the families that come up again and again, with the good and bad of each.

Music and artists

Promoting a song. Often the footage is just the audio and you supply the video, with whatever fits.

Streamers and podcasts

Cutting streams or long episodes. Clipping as it has always been.

Video games and launches

Trailers, reveals and releases. They usually come with a folder of official footage and strict rules against spoilers.

Apps, software and AI

Showing a product in action. They often want the app shown on screen and the download linked.

Casino, betting and crypto

The most visible money, and the most expensive to accept.

Physical products, ecom and trading cards

Clothing, supplements, collectibles or card packs. There are more of them every month.

Courses, mentoring and "get rich"

What the rates say

The families don't pay the same, and the order between them is one of the few things that changes slowly. Where there's an advertiser with margin, such as software, games or apps, rates are better than when the client is an artist paying out of their own pocket. The table groups campaigns by keywords in the name and leaves a good part of the catalogue out, so use it to get your bearings, not as a census.

Market snapshot taken on 1 November 2026 from 201 classifiable campaigns out of 852 live. The up-to-date figure is in the table.

Reading the rules

The rules are the document where a campaign explains what it accepts and what it rejects. It's the only text you have to read in full before you start making clips, because every campaign has its own and they sometimes contradict each other. Some require the #ad tag and the price on screen, and others ban them.

Part of the catalogue also doesn't publish its rules in a form you can read before joining. It might be a broken link, a locked document or a line that sends you to a Discord. Joining like that means accepting a job without knowing the terms.

The 19 questions you need to be able to answer

It doesn't matter how the document is written. If you can't answer these, you don't know what you're getting into. Next to each one you'll see how many readable rule documents answer it.

Market snapshot taken on 1 November 2026 from 108 readable, summarised rule documents.

How to read a rules document in five minutes

1. Start with the prohibitions. They're usually in a list and they're what gets a clip rejected.
2. Then the requirements on screen and in the caption, such as tags, mentions, text or the ad disclosure.
3. After that, the limits on minimum length, videos per person and how long the clip has to stay up.
4. Check who decides whether a clip counts and whether that decision can be appealed.
5. Save a dated copy of the document. Rules change, and it's rarely announced.

Worth knowing

Some clauses don't change what a campaign pays but do change what it costs you. These are the ones worth looking for before you accept.

Dedicated account

You have to give over an entire account to the brand, without mixing in your own content. When the campaign ends, that account is no use for anything else. It's the most expensive condition, because you lose something that took you months to build. How many campaigns asked for it when it was measured is in the chart above.

Audience in a specific country

This is the one most people overlook. They require part of the people watching to be in a particular country, often the United States or Canada, sometimes at least 50 % of the audience. On 1 November 2026, 15 % of the active campaigns whose text could be read required it. What many people don't realise is that you can't choose which country your video reaches. It depends on the account (the phone's language, who you interact with, where it was created), not on a setting. An account with a Spanish-speaking audience is shut out of a large part of the market, however good the clips are.

Application first

Some campaigns make you apply and wait to be accepted. That isn't bad, they're sometimes among the best-paying, but you can't start right away.

AI-generated content

Many rule documents ban it outright and others require it to be labelled. If you were planning to make clips with a synthetic voice and generated footage, this line decides whether the campaign works for you.

Engagement requirements

Some ask for a minimum level of engagement, for example two likes per thousand views, and automatically reject clips that fall short. Others reject any account with likes hidden. It takes a second to check and can wipe out a month of work.

Minimum time live

It's common to require the clip to stay up for 30 days, sometimes 8 weeks. Delete it early and you lose the payment, even if it had already been approved.

Video limits

There may be a maximum per person, or a ban on posting the same video on several accounts. It's what stops this from turning into a copy-and-paste factory.

Exclusivity and competitors

Some ban taking part in competitors' campaigns at the same time, or posting content for another client in the same sector on the same account. With three campaigns on the go it's easy to miss, and you can be removed from all three.

The account

This is where almost everyone gets stuck, and it has nothing to do with editing. Making clips isn't the hard part. Getting anyone to see them is.

The account decides the country, not the video

Who the network shows your video to depends on the phone's language, the accounts you interact with, where the account was created and who you follow. If you want campaigns that require the United States, the account has to be aimed at the United States from day one. An account that already has an audience in another country can't be redirected.

Warming up

• Make your first posts from your phone. Posting from a browser or with a scheduler on a brand-new account tends to end in throttled reach.
• No automation, no likes, no follows and no batch posting.
• Watch content in your niche before you post in it. The network learns who you are from what you watch, not only from what you upload.
• Post regularly and without bursts.

How to spot a throttled account

• Every post lands on the same low number, almost identical. When an account is shown properly, results are uneven.
• The video stops moving after a few hours and never picks up again.
• Hardly anyone reaches you from the recommendations tab.
• You search for your own username from another phone and don't show up.

None of these signs proves anything on its own, but all four together over two weeks do. And there's no appeal or form that fixes it. The way out is a new account, built slowly and without shortcuts.

Several accounts

Having several accounts multiplies your reach and is common, but almost every rule document bans posting the same video on more than one. Each account needs its own clips.

What counts as a view

Since you're paid for views, it helps to know that a view doesn't mean the same thing on every network, and that each one changes its definition when it likes. Some count from the first frame, others need a few seconds, and some count replays while others don't. Don't assume a figure on one site is measured the same way as on another.

The figure that pays is the one the platform reads

Your stats dashboard isn't what counts. The reward platform reads the number itself, when its turn comes, and pays on that. It can be lower than yours simply because it read it earlier. That isn't theft, it's the process, and it's usually written in the rules.

What almost never counts

• Stories. They don't add up, and in several rule documents they get you removed.
• Bought views or views from farms. They get detected and cost you the account and everything you'd built up.
• Traffic driven by paid ads, yours or the brand's.
• Videos posted outside the campaign period, however perfect.

The measurement window

Each campaign decides up to when it counts views. It might be when you submit the clip, after seven days or when the campaign closes, and a clip that takes off late can end up outside its own window. Post early in the period, not on the last day.

Making the clip

Where the footage comes from

Almost always from a Drive folder linked by the campaign. In many rule documents, using footage from outside that folder gets the clip rejected, even if the result is better.

What's almost always required

• Vertical 9:16 format and decent quality, nothing blurry or upscaled.
• A minimum length, usually between 10 and 30 seconds. It's the second most common rule.
• Mentioning the official account in the caption, on every network where you post.
• On-screen text with the product name, sometimes in a set position and at a minimum size.
• The ad tag (#ad, #sponsored) when the campaign asks for it, often with rules about where it goes.
• Royalty-free music if you add your own.

The first three seconds

Nothing else matters if the first second doesn't hook people. The cut has to start inside the action, not in the intro. It's the creative part that affects your pay the most.

How to find the moment

With long footage, the work is more about listening than editing. What tends to work is a change of tone, a claim nobody expects, a reaction, a specific number or the end of a story that fits in thirty seconds. Note down the timestamps while you watch and edit afterwards. If you keep jumping between watching and editing, an hour of work turns into four.

How many clips a campaign gives you

It depends on the footage, and it's the worst-reported thing on the market. Before you commit, open the folder and count the files. That tells you whether you have two afternoons of work or two months.

The same clip on several networks

If the campaign accepts several, it's almost always worth it, because you get paid two or three times for the same edit, each with its own threshold. What you can't do is repeat the video on several of your accounts on the same network.

What you edit with

Whatever you have. No campaign pays more for a clip made with expensive software, and tools are the least important part of this work. Still, it's worth having four things sorted.

• A vertical editor with automatic captions. There are free ones for phone and desktop, and any of them will do. Captions aren't decoration, because a lot of people watch with the sound off.
• A way to move the footage from the official folder to the phone you'll post from without it being recompressed along the way.
• Somewhere to keep your evidence, with the view screenshots, the posted links and a copy of the rules from the day you joined.
• A spreadsheet, which is the tool that will save you the most money.

The spreadsheet

One row per posted clip, with the campaign, network, date, link, views when submitted and when frozen, whether it cleared the threshold, what it paid and its status. Within two weeks it will tell you things you wouldn't know otherwise, like which campaigns you clear the threshold on, which network shows your clips best and what an hour of your work is really paying.

Captions and synthetic voices

Automatic captions get names and numbers wrong, which is exactly what tends to matter in a product clip, so check them. And before you use a synthetic voice, see whether the rules accept AI-generated content, because in many it's an automatic rejection.

Rights over the footage, and music

When you start, it's natural to wonder whether this is legal when the video belongs to someone else. It is, because whoever opens the campaign gives you permission to use their footage for that purpose. The rules and the official folder are that permission, and outside them you don't have it.

• The folder sets the limit. Footage from elsewhere isn't covered, even if it's from the same artist or posted online.
• The permission is for that campaign. Once it ends, you can't keep posting with that footage or use it for another client.
• The client's logos are fine, other people's aren't. A brand, team, league or channel that appears in the background can file its own claim.
• The people in the footage agreed to that use. Don't cut anyone out to put them in another context.

Music

It causes the most trouble and is the easiest to avoid. If the campaign gives you the audio, use it. If not, use the network's own sound library or royalty-free music. With a protected track, the network can mute the clip or cut its reach, and a muted clip doesn't get views or earn anything.

If you get a claim

Don't ignore it. First check whether it's about the audio, the footage or a brand, see whether what you used was in the official folder and let whoever runs the campaign know, since they hold the permission and can sort it out. If you kept a dated link to the rules and the folder, the argument becomes a formality.

Posting

• Post from your phone, especially at first.
• One post per account per video. Repeating the same clip across accounts is the most common reason people get removed.
• Don't use stories to inflate numbers. Those views don't count and in several rule documents they get you removed straight away.
• No paid promotion. Almost every campaign bans using the network's promotion tools to push a clip.
• Don't delete the clip early, even if it's doing badly.
• Keep screenshots of the views and the audience panel, which is what you'll be asked for if there's a dispute.

The caption

This is where the most payments get lost through carelessness. Before posting, check that the mention of the official account is there, along with the ad tag if they ask for it and the link or code if there is one, and that nothing from another campaign has been left in. Keep the text written somewhere else and paste it in, because improvising it on your phone at two in the morning is how a clip goes out without the mention.

When to post

Regularity matters more than the exact time, because the network learns to show your posts once you have a rhythm. Within a campaign, the sooner the better, since the budget runs out and measurement windows close. But not so fast that you miss a rule in the document.

Getting paid

1. You post the clip and link it on the platform, or submit it through whatever form the campaign uses.
2. The platform measures the views by connecting to the network. Your screenshot doesn't count, its reading does.
3. The clip is checked against the rules. This is where a lot of clips fall over small things, like a missing tag, an eight-second length or footage that wasn't from the folder.
4. Whatever the clip earns above the minimum builds up.
5. It's paid on the platform's schedule, with the cap per video applied.

There are three things hardly anyone warns you about.

• Views keep rising after you submit the clip, but the count freezes when the campaign says so, not when you look.
• If the budget runs out, that's it, even if your clip is still climbing.
• Between what your clip earns and what reaches your bank there are platform and payment-method fees, and a currency conversion if you aren't paid in dollars.

If a clip gets rejected

Ask why and keep the answer. If the reason is specific, such as a missing tag or a short length, fix it in the next ones instead of arguing over the rejected one. If they give no reason, or the criteria change from one week to the next, that campaign is costing you even if it pays well, because your time goes on review instead of editing.

Tax and paperwork

First of all, this isn't tax advice and every country has its own rules. What is true everywhere is that what you earn from clipping is income, and that you're the one who has to declare it, not the platform.

• Keep a record of every payment, with the date, the amount in the original currency and what actually reached you after fees.
• If you're paid in dollars, note the exchange rate on the day. Rebuilding it a year later is miserable work.
• Remember that fees and exchange count too, and that what you declare won't match the number the campaign shows.
• If it grows, talk to an adviser before the volume catches up with you. It's cheaper than a nasty surprise.

Scams and warning signs

Wherever there are people who want to make money fast, someone turns up ready to sell it to them. These are the signs that come up most often.

How to check a campaign in two minutes

1. See whether the platform measures views on its own or whether you depend on someone believing you.
2. Find out how much it has already paid and to how many people. A payment history is the hardest thing to fake.
3. Check that the client exists outside that page, with a website, a shop or established profiles.
4. Read the rules in full. If there aren't any, you have your answer.

Mistakes to avoid

How to pick a campaign

With all of the above, the decision comes down to six checks, in this order.

1. Can you read the rules? If not, skip it and move on.
2. How many views do you need for the first dollar? Compare that with what your account does today, not with what you'd like it to do.
3. Does it require a country your account doesn't have? If so, that's the end of it.
4. How much budget is left, and shared between how many people? Divide the unspent money by the participants and you'll see the real margin.
5. What does it commit you to? A dedicated account, an application, a long time live.
6. How much footage is there? That decides whether it's an afternoon's work or a month's.

Doing this by hand for one campaign takes about ten minutes, between opening the card, finding the minimum, doing the division and reading the rules document. With a catalogue of hundreds of campaigns it eats your weekend, and by the time you finish half of them have a different budget.

Your first month, step by step

A simple plan, designed so that at the end of the month you have data rather than impressions. It doesn't promise money, but it does tell you whether this is for you.

Week 1 · The account before the clips

• Create or pick the account and decide who it's aimed at, knowing that this shapes which campaigns you'll be able to join.
• Watch content in your niche from that account. Post little, and from your phone.
• Meanwhile, look through the catalogue and note two or three campaigns that suit you, but don't join yet.

Week 2 · The reach test

• Post three simple videos, two days apart.
• Note the views on each after 48 hours and take the middle one. That's your starting reach.
• If none gets past 200, stop there. Next month is for fixing the account, not for making clips.

Week 3 · A single campaign

• Pick just one campaign, with a threshold below your starting reach, plenty of budget and rules you can read.
• Read them in full and save a copy. Make ten clips from the same footage.
• Post them at a steady pace and log each one in the spreadsheet.

Week 4 · Reading the results

• Count how many clips cleared the threshold. That number, more than the money, is the month's result.
• If none did, the problem is the account's reach.
• If one or two did, the account works and what you can improve is the campaign you pick or the moments you choose from the footage.
• If half did, repeat it, raise the volume and start looking at campaigns with higher caps.

Glossary

Clip

A short vertical video taken from longer footage.

Clipper

Someone who cuts and posts those videos for money.

Campaign

A pool of money with rules about who pays, how much, for what and until when.

CPM

The rate, in dollars per thousand views.

Minimum payout

What a clip has to earn before it pays anything. Below it, zero.

Threshold

That minimum turned into views, which is the number that decides.

Cap per video

The most a single clip can earn.

Unspent budget

What's left to pay out in the pool.

Reach

How many people the network shows your posts to, which isn't the same as your followers.

Throttled reach

When the network stops showing an account's posts. There's no warning and no form that undoes it.

Hook

The first second of the clip, which decides whether people watch the rest.

Retention

How much of the video people watch before moving on. The network rewards it by showing the video to more people.

Measurement window

The period during which the campaign counts a clip's views.

Footage folder

The official files the campaign provides, and the limit of what you can use.

Dedicated account

An account used for a single brand only.

Rules

The document with the campaign's terms.

Copyright claim

A notice from the network for using someone else's footage or music. It can mute or remove the clip.

Whop

A marketplace for digital products where many of these campaigns are hosted.

UGC

Content made by users for a brand. Paid per delivery, not per view.

Tier 1

The countries with the highest advertising value, such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom or Australia. They're what campaigns ask for most.

Bait posting

Posting viral content unrelated to the campaign just to rack up views. Almost always banned.

Story boosting

Pushing the clip through stories to inflate the account. It doesn't count and usually gets you removed.

What Whop is

Whop is a marketplace where anyone can sell access to something digital, from paid communities and courses to tools, trading signals or software. Each product is called a whop, and sellers charge a subscription or a one-off fee.

Clipping shows up on Whop in two very different ways, and it's worth keeping them apart.

The difference matters because both use the same words. You'll see clipping on sites where you get paid and on sites where you pay, so before you enter your card details, check which one you're on.

Frequently asked questions