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

01What clipping is

Clipping is cutting someone else's video into short pieces, posting them on your own account, and getting paid for the views they get. You create nothing from scratch, you never have to be on camera, and you do not need followers. A brand, an artist or a streamer puts money in a pot, hands over their footage, and pays whoever distributes it.

The material comes ready-made: a three-hour livestream, a podcast, a trailer, a song, a catalogue of product videos. Your job is to find the piece that works, cut it vertical, post it, and prove how many views it got.

What it is NOT

• It is not affiliate marketing. You are not paid per sale, you are paid per view.
• It is not brand UGC. With UGC you are paid to deliver a video; here you are paid for what that video achieves once it is up.
• It is not about having a big account. Most campaigns do not ask for followers. They ask for reach, which is not the same thing.
• It is not a salary. It is piecework with a floor below which you earn nothing. This guide spends two sections on that floor, because it is what separates getting paid from not getting paid.

02Who pays, and why

The payer is someone who needs attention and has worked out that buying it from a hundred strangers is cheaper than buying it from an agency. An artist who wants their song on TikTok. A studio launching a game. An app that wants installs. A casino that wants sign-ups.

Their arithmetic is simple: if paying $1 per thousand views is cheaper than buying those thousand views as advertising, clipping pays off. That is why the money is real, and why the system measures obsessively: they are buying a result, not a service.

This has a practical consequence worth understanding from minute one: whoever pays does not care about your effort. 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 is not fair; it is the deal.

Why the terms change so much between campaigns

Every set of rules is written by whoever puts up the money, not by the platform. That is why two campaigns from the same month contradict each other: one demands the advertising tag and another bans it, one accepts four networks and another only one. There is no industry standard and there will not be one, because every advertiser is protecting something different. It is the underlying reason you have to read each rules document in full even after reading twenty.

03How your pay is calculated

Every campaign is described by three numbers. Understanding them is 80 % of this guide.

1 · The rate (CPM)

CPM stands for cost per mille: how many dollars the campaign pays for every 1,000 views. If the CPM is $1.50 and your clip does 20,000 views, you have generated 20 × $1.50 = $30.

2 · The minimum payout

Almost all of them require a clip to reach a minimum amount before paying anything. It is expressed in dollars —"minimum $2 per clip"— and below that figure the clip pays zero, not less. It is the most important thing and the worst explained in the listings.

3 · The cap per video

The most a single clip can ever be paid, however viral it goes. A low cap turns a hit into an anecdote: if your clip does two million views on a campaign capped at $25, you get $25. Caps run from a few tens of dollars up to figures no clip ever reaches; what the median rate and the median cap are worth right now sits in The market in numbers.

What those three numbers leave out

There is a fourth figure that does not appear on the card and decides just as much: how much budget is left unspent. A campaign with unbeatable terms and an almost empty pot pays exactly what a bad one pays: nothing. And a fifth, even less visible: how many people are already in, because whatever is left is shared among all of them.

04The threshold: the number that decides

Put the minimum together with the rate and you get the only figure that really matters: how many 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 pays zero. One with 2,000 pays $2.

No platform publishes the threshold in its listing: it publishes the CPM, which is the pretty number, and hides the minimum inside the detail page. Working it out by hand campaign by campaign is tedious, and it is the reason the table this guide hangs off exists.

Why the threshold is calculated per network, not overall

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 one network and 5,000 on the other, but at different rates. Mixing one network's minimum with another's rate gives you a number that exists nowhere.

The threshold is compared against you, not against the market

A 5,000-view threshold is trivially low for an account that averages 30,000 and impossible for one that does 400. There is no such thing as a good threshold in the abstract: there is the threshold your account clears and the one it does not. Before looking at a single campaign, look at your last ten posts and take the middle figure. That is your bar.

05What you actually earn

It is the question everyone arrives with, and the only one that has no answer in the form of a figure. It does have an answer in the form of a formula, and with it you can work out before you start, using your own numbers, whether this is worth your time.

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

Read it slowly, because every term hides a trap:

• The clips that clear the threshold, not the ones you post. If your account barely distributes, that number can be zero however many you upload, and then nothing else matters.
• The views on each one are not shared out evenly. In this game almost all the money comes from one clip in ten or in twenty; most of them go nowhere. That is why volume matters: not because every clip pays, but because you have to roll the dice often for one to land.
• The CPM is the only thing you know for certain before starting, and the least decisive of the three.
• And all of it with the cap applied: the clip that breaks out of the curve is precisely the one the cap eats.

A worked example

The numbers below are assumptions, not a measurement: replace them with your own. An account that genuinely distributes, 20 clips in a month, a campaign at $1.00 CPM with a $2 minimum (a 2,000-view threshold):

Change one single thing —the account distributes half as well— and the whole month comes to $0, because nothing clears the threshold. Change another —the cap is $25— and the clip that took off pays $25 instead of $80. The same amount of work, three results that look nothing alike.

What actually moves your income

When this does not pay off

If your account does not clear the threshold of almost any campaign, clipping is not an income yet: it is a project to build an account. Those are two different jobs, and confusing them is what burns people out editing fifty videos nobody sees.

06Where the campaigns are

Campaigns do not live on TikTok or Instagram. They live on rewards platforms, the middleman between whoever puts up the money and whoever puts up the videos. The platform does three things: it hosts the campaign listings, it verifies views by connecting to the networks, and it pays out.

• Whop / Content Rewards — the largest open catalogue, and where the catalogue this site analyses comes from.
• Private communities and agencies — an agency's Discord handing campaigns to its own clippers. Usually pays better and requires getting in.
• Direct deals — an artist or streamer paying out of their own pocket. No automatic verification and no guarantees: this is where non-payment shows up.

07What Whop is

Whop is a marketplace where anyone sells access to something digital: paid communities, courses, tools, trading signals, software. Each product is called a whop, and whoever sells it charges by subscription or as a one-off.

It touches clipping in two different ways, and it is worth not confusing them:

The distinction matters because the vocabulary is identical on both sides: you will see the word clipping on a site that pays you and on one where you pay. Before you type a card number, check which side you are on.

08Anatomy of a campaign

A campaign card always carries the same parts. Here they are, and what to look at in each one:

The signs that a campaign is on its way out

• A small fraction of the budget is left and people keep joining.
• There are many participants and the money paid out barely moves from one day to the next: either almost nobody clears the threshold, or review is rejecting a lot.
• The rules changed recently and tightened the minimums.
• The material has not been updated in weeks and everyone has already squeezed it dry.

09The types of campaign

Not all of them are worked the same way. These are the families that come up again and again, with the good and the bad of each.

Music and artists

Promoting a song. The material is usually audio only: you supply the video, with whatever you think fits.

Streamers and podcasts

Cutting up livestreams or long episodes. The classic form of clipping.

Video games and launches

Trailers, reveals, releases. They usually come with a folder of official material and strict bans on spoiling the story.

Apps, software and AI

Showing a product working. They often want the app on screen and the download linked.

Casino, betting and crypto

The easiest money to see and the most expensive to accept.

Physical products, ecommerce and trading cards

Clothing, supplements, collectibles, card packs. Increasingly common.

Courses, mentorships and "get rich"

What the rates say

The families do not pay alike, and the pecking order between them is one of the few things that moves slowly: where the advertiser has margins —software, gaming, apps— rates are better than where the client is an artist paying out of pocket. This table classifies by keyword in the campaign name, so most of the catalogue falls outside it: treat it as a rough guide, not a census.

Market snapshot taken on 4 September 2026 across 131 classifiable campaigns out of 461 live ones. The live figure is in the table.

10Reading the rules

The rules document is where the campaign says what it accepts and what it rejects. It is the only text you have to read in full before producing anything, because every campaign has its own and they contradict each other: some demand the #ad tag and the price on screen; others forbid them.

Part of the catalogue, on top of that, does not publish its rules in a format anyone can read before joining: a dead link, a locked document, a line pointing you at a Discord. That is not red tape, it is accepting a job without knowing the terms. How many are in that state right now is in The market in numbers.

The 19 questions that need answering

It does not matter how the document is written; if you cannot answer these, you do not know what you are getting into. Next to each one, how many readable rule documents actually answer it:

Market snapshot taken on 4 September 2026 across 218 readable and summarised rule documents.

How to read a rules document in five minutes

1. Look for the bans first: they usually come as a list and they are what invalidates a clip.
2. Then what is compulsory on screen and in the caption: tags, mentions, text, advertising disclosure.
3. Next the limits: minimum duration, videos per person, how long it must stay up.
4. Check who decides whether a clip counts, and whether that decision can be appealed.
5. And save a copy of the document with the date. Rules change, and the normal thing is for the change to go unannounced.

11The conditions that cost you money

Some clauses do not change what you are paid but do change what it costs you. These are the ones to look for before accepting.

Dedicated account

Requires devoting a whole account to the brand: no mixing with your own content. When the campaign ends, that account is good for nothing else. Few campaigns ask for it, but it is the most expensive condition on the market: you lose the asset that took you months to build.

Audience in a specific country

The most common one, and the one most people ignore: they require a share of whoever watches the clip to be in a given country —almost always the United States or Canada— sometimes with a minimum of 50 % of the audience. And here is the important part: you cannot choose which country your video reaches. It is a property of the account —device language, who you interact with, where it was created— and not a setting. An account with a Spanish-speaking audience is locked out of a large slice of the market, however good the clips are.

Applying first

Some require you to apply for a place and wait for approval. That is not a bad thing —they tend to be the best-paying— but it means you cannot start today.

AI-generated content

Many rule documents ban it outright. Others require it to be labelled. If your plan was to assemble clips with a synthetic voice and generated footage, this line decides whether the campaign is viable at all.

Engagement requirements

Some ask for a minimum level of engagement —say two likes per thousand views— and automatically reject any clip that falls short. Others reject any account with its likes hidden. It is checked in a second and it wipes out a month of work.

How long it must stay up

It is common to require the clip to stay published for 30 days, sometimes 8 weeks. Deleting it earlier voids the payment, even if it had already been approved.

Video limits

A maximum per person, or a ban on repeating the same video across several accounts. That is what stops this becoming a copy-and-paste factory.

Exclusivity and competitors

Some forbid taking part in a competitor's campaign at the same time, or posting another client from the same sector on the same account. It is easy to miss when you have three campaigns open, and it is grounds for removal from all three.

12The account: the real bottleneck

This is where almost everyone fails, and it has nothing to do with editing. The problem is not producing clips: it is getting anyone to see them.

The country is decided by the account, not the video

Who the network shows your video to depends on the device language, which accounts you interact with, where the account was created and who you follow. If you want campaigns that require the United States, you have to build the account aimed at the United States from day one. An established account with an audience elsewhere cannot be re-aimed.

Warming up

• Your first posts, from the phone. Posting from a browser or with schedulers on a brand-new account triggers reach throttling.
• No automation. No likes, no follows, no batch posting.
• Consume content from the niche before posting into it: the network learns what you are from what you watch, not only from what you upload.
• Post regularly and without bursts.

How to recognise a throttled account

• Every post lands on the same low figure, almost identical to the last. Healthy distribution is irregular.
• The video stops moving within hours and never picks up again.
• Almost nobody who sees you arrives from the recommendations feed.
• You search for your own handle from another device and do not show up.

None of those signs proves anything on its own; all four together, sustained over a fortnight, do. And there is no appeal or form that fixes it: what there is, is a new account, built slowly and without shortcuts.

Multiple accounts

Having several accounts multiplies your reach and is common practice, but almost every rule document forbids posting the same video on more than one. Different accounts, different clips.

13What counts as a view

You are paid per view, so it is worth knowing that "view" does not mean the same thing on every network, and that each platform changes the definition when it feels like it. Some count from the first frame, others require a few seconds, some count replays and some do not. Never assume the number you see in one place is measured the way it is measured in another.

The figure that pays is the one the platform reads

Your own analytics panel is not the source. The rewards platform reads the number itself, whenever its schedule says, and that is the one that gets paid. It can be lower than yours simply because it was read earlier. That is not theft: it is the procedure, and it is written in the rules.

What almost never counts

• Stories. They do not add up and in several rule documents they are grounds for removal.
• Bought views or view farms. They get detected and they cost you the account and everything accrued.
• Traffic you bring in with paid advertising, yours or the brand's.
• Videos posted outside the campaign period, however good they are.

The measurement window

Every campaign decides how long it counts views for: on submission, after seven days, at the close of the campaign. A clip that takes off late can fall outside its own window. Post early within the period, not on the last day.

14Making the clip

Where the material comes from

Almost always a Drive folder linked by the campaign. Using material from outside that folder is grounds for rejection in many rule documents, even if the result is better.

What is almost always required

• Vertical 9:16 and decent quality. Nothing blurry or upscaled.
• A minimum duration, usually between 10 and 30 seconds. It is the second most common rule of all.
• Tagging the official account in the caption, on every network you post to.
• On-screen text with the product name, sometimes in a specific position and at a minimum size.
• An advertising tag (#ad, #sponsored) where the campaign requires it, often with rules about where to put it.
• Royalty-free music if you add your own.

The first three seconds

Everything else is irrelevant if the first second does not hold. The cut has to start inside the action, not on the intro. It is the one creative decision that genuinely moves the money.

How to hunt for the moment

In long material the work is listening, not editing. What tends to land: a change of tone, a claim that contradicts what you expected, a reaction, a specific number, the end of a story told in thirty seconds. Mark the timecodes while you watch and edit afterwards; jumping between watching and editing is what turns one hour of work into four.

How many clips a campaign yields

It depends on the material, and it is the worst-published figure on the market. Before committing, open the folder and count the files: that is what tells you whether this is two afternoons or two months.

Posting the same clip on several networks

If the campaign accepts more than one, it almost always pays: the same edit earning two or three times over, with a different threshold on each. What you cannot do is repeat the same video across several of your own accounts on one network.

15What you edit with

With whatever you have. No campaign pays more for an edit made in expensive software, and the tool list is the least important part of this job. Even so, four things are worth having sorted:

• A vertical editor with automatic captions. There are free ones for phone and for desktop, and any of them will do. Captions are not decoration: plenty of people watch with the sound off.
• A way to get the material from the official folder onto the device you post from, without recompressing it on the way.
• Somewhere to keep the evidence: view screenshots, the links you posted, and a copy of the rules as they stood the day you joined.
• A spreadsheet. It is the tool that earns the most money of them all.

The spreadsheet

One row per posted clip and these columns: campaign, network, date, link, views at submission, views at freeze, whether it cleared the threshold, what it paid and what state it is in. Within a fortnight it tells you things you could not know otherwise: which campaigns you clear the threshold on and which you do not, which network distributes best for you, and what an hour of your work is really being paid.

On captions and synthetic voices

Automatic captions get proper nouns and figures wrong, which is precisely what matters in a product clip. Check them. And before using a synthetic voice, see whether the rules allow AI-generated content: in many it is an automatic rejection.

16Rights over the footage, and music

A fair question at the start: if the video belongs to someone else, is this legal? It is, for one specific reason: whoever opens the campaign is giving you permission to use their material for that purpose. The rules and the official folder are that permission. Outside them, you do not have it.

• The folder is the boundary. Material from outside it —even from the same artist, even if it is on the internet— is no longer covered.
• The permission is for that campaign. When it ends, you cannot keep posting that material, nor reuse it for another client.
• The client's logos yes, third-party logos no. Brands, teams, leagues or channels caught in the background can bring their own claim.
• The people who appear in the material did so for that use. Do not crop someone out to drop them into another context.

Music

It is the most common cause of grief and the easiest to avoid. If the campaign gives you the audio, use that. If not, take it from the network's own sound library or from royalty-free music. A protected track can get the clip muted or its reach cut, and a muted clip earns no views: it turns into work that never gets paid.

If a claim arrives

Do not ignore it. First see what it is about —audio, footage or trademark—, check whether what you used came from the official folder, and tell whoever runs the campaign: if the permission is theirs, they are the ones who can resolve it. Keeping the link to the rules and to the folder, with the date, turns an argument into paperwork.

17Posting

• From the phone, especially at the start.
• One post per account per video. Repeating the same clip across several accounts is the most common cause of removal.
• No stories to pad the numbers. Story views do not count, and in several rule documents they are grounds for immediate removal.
• No paid promotion. Using the network's own boost tools to push a clip is banned in practically all of them.
• Do not delete. Respect the minimum time online even if the clip is doing badly.
• Keep the evidence. Screenshots of the view count and of the audience panel: that is what you will be asked for in a dispute.

The caption

This is where payments get lost through carelessness. Before posting, check that the official account mention is there, the advertising tag if they ask for one, the link or code if there is one, and that nothing from another campaign has been left behind. Write the caption somewhere else and paste it: improvising it on your phone at two in the morning is exactly how a clip goes out without the mention.

When to post

Regularity matters more than the exact hour: the network learns to distribute you when you keep a rhythm. And within the campaign, the sooner the better —budgets run out and measurement windows close— but never so fast that a line of the document slips past you.

18Getting paid

1. You post and link the clip on the platform, or submit it through whatever form the campaign specifies.
2. The platform measures the views by connecting to the network. Your screenshot does not count: their reading does.
3. It is reviewed against the rules. This is where clips fall over details: the tag is missing, it runs eight seconds, the footage was not from the folder.
4. What you generate above the minimum accrues.
5. You are paid on the platform's schedule, with the per-video cap applied.

Bear in mind three things nobody warns you about:

• Views keep climbing after you submit; the count freezes when the campaign says so, not when you happen to look.
• If the budget runs out, that is that. It makes no difference that your clip is still running.
• Between what your clip generates and what reaches your bank there are platform and payout fees, plus a currency conversion if you are not paid in dollars.

If a clip gets rejected

Ask why, and keep the answer. If the reason is specific —missing tag, too short— fix it on the next ones instead of arguing about the rejected one. If no reason is given, or the same criterion changes from one week to the next, that campaign is costing you a lot even if it pays well: the time goes into review, not into editing.

19Tax and paperwork

First, so it is on the record: this is not tax advice, and every country has its own rules. What is true everywhere is that the money you get paid for clipping is income, and that the person answerable for declaring it is you, not the platform.

• Keep the trail. Every payment, with its date, its amount in the original currency and what actually landed after fees.
• Note the exchange rate on the day you are paid if the money comes in dollars. Reconstructing it a year later is horrible work.
• Fees and conversion are part of the sum: what you declare is not the same as the number the campaign shows.
• If this grows, talk to an accountant before the volume catches you out. It costs less than a fright.

20Scams and warning signs

Wherever people want to make money fast, someone shows up willing to sell it to them. These are the signs that repeat:

How to check a campaign in two minutes

1. See whether the platform measures views itself or whether it depends on someone believing you.
2. Look up how much it has already paid and among how many people. A payout history is the hardest thing to fake.
3. Check that the client exists outside that page: a website, a shop, profiles with some history.
4. Read the rules in full. If there are none, that is your answer.

21Mistakes that ruin a beginner

22How to pick a campaign

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

1. Can the rules be read? If not, drop it and move on.
2. How many views do I need for the first dollar? Compare that with what your account does today, not with what you wish it did.
3. Does it require a country my account does not have? If it does, there is nothing to discuss.
4. How much budget is left, and split between how many people? The free money divided by the participants tells you the real headroom.
5. What does it oblige me to do? Dedicated account, application, long minimum time online.
6. How much material is there? That decides whether it is an afternoon or a month.

Doing this by hand for one campaign takes ten minutes: open the card, find the minimum, divide, open the rules document and read it in full. Doing it across a catalogue of hundreds is a lost weekend, and by the time you finish, half of them have changed their budget.

23Your first month, step by step

A sober plan, built so that by the end of the month you have data instead of impressions. It promises no money: it promises to tell you whether this is for you.

Week 1 · The account, not the clips

• Create or choose the account and decide which audience it aims at, knowing that this settles which campaigns you can enter at all.
• Consume the niche from that account. Post little, and from the phone.
• Meanwhile, browse the catalogue and note two or three candidate campaigns. Do not join yet.

Week 2 · The reach test

• Post three simple videos two days apart.
• Write down the views on each one at 48 hours and keep the middle figure: that is your starting reach.
• If none of them gets past 200, stop here. Next month is for fixing the account, not for clipping.

Week 3 · One campaign only

• Pick one campaign whose threshold sits below your starting reach, with budget to spare and readable rules.
• Read them in full and save them. Produce ten clips from the same material.
• Post them at a steady rhythm, logging each one in the spreadsheet.

Week 4 · Reading the results

• Count how many clips cleared the threshold. That number, and not the money, is the month's result.
• If none cleared it: the problem is the account's reach.
• If one or two did: the account works, and the upside is in picking a better campaign or a better moment in the material.
• If half did: repeat, raise the volume and start looking at campaigns with higher caps.

24The market in numbers

This is the only section of the guide that expires, which is why it sits apart and carries a date. It is measured across the 567 campaigns read on 4 September 2026 from the platform's public pages, and it rebuilds itself every six hours:

Medians are used deliberately instead of averages: in this market, a single enormous campaign drags any average out of shape. The last three rows are counted over the rule documents that could be read and summarised, not over the whole catalogue.

25Glossary

Clip

A short vertical video cut from longer material.

Clipper

Whoever cuts and posts those videos for money.

Campaign

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

CPM

Dollars per thousand views. The rate.

Minimum payout

What a clip must generate to earn anything. Below it, zero.

Threshold

That minimum translated into views. The number that decides.

Cap per video

The most a single clip can be paid.

Free budget

What is left to hand out in the pot.

Reach

How many people the network shows your posts to. Not the same as your follower count.

Reach throttling

When the network stops distributing what an account posts. It is never announced and no form undoes it.

Hook

The first second of the clip, the one that decides whether the rest gets watched.

Retention

How much of the video is watched before people scroll on. It is what the network rewards with more distribution.

Measurement window

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

Material folder

The official files the campaign hands over. It is the boundary of what you may use.

Dedicated account

An account used for one brand only.

Rules

The document with the campaign's conditions.

Copyright claim

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

Whop

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

UGC

User-generated content made for a brand. Paid on delivery, not per view.

Tier 1

The countries worth most to advertisers: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia. What campaigns ask for most.

Bait posting

Posting viral content unrelated to the campaign purely to rack up views. Banned almost everywhere.

Story boosting

Pushing the clip from stories to inflate the count. It does not add up and it usually gets you removed.

26Frequently asked questions