What are Tiktok houses and who makes millions from them?
In just six months, dozens of Tiktok houses have appeared in Russia. These are mansions in which several bloggers live at once and shoot videos for TikTok. "The Secret of the Firm" found out to whom and how much money such projects bring, how their economies are developing and why some inhabitants of such houses practically fall into slavery to their producers.
What are tiktok houses (houses)
The concept is simple - a group of popular TikTokers live in the same house and shoot videos. Some are in the houses all the time, others - on short visits. For young people, these projects are a new "Dom-2", but with actual heroes and on a modern platform, in TikTok.
Typically, the house has several popular bloggers with a large and loyal audience. The rest of the bloggers, being close to the leaders, also become popular. In fact, this is a machine for mutual promotion and media promotion.
The wave of Tiktok houses in Russia rose when several factors converged at one point: hype around the platform itself, quarantine due to coronavirus and the rapid success of the first such project. Bloggers got bored of sitting within four walls, and they decided to make content together. So, thanks to a coincidence, a circumstance was born, perhaps the main trend in social media in 2020.
But such houses are not new. For example, in 2017, blogger German Chernykh launched the reality show XO Life on the Russian YouTube, where the participants also lived and filmed videos in the same space, as well as recorded songs and gave concerts to an audience of thousands.
In the same year, the Hype Camp show was launched on YouTube, the essence of which was that 15 budding video bloggers lived in the castle and, under the mentorship of three popular YouTubers, made content. At the end of each issue, one of the participants left the project, and the season winner received a million rubles. It is noteworthy that the victors of both seasons did not become popular bloggers.
Now the creators of both YouTube projects are Tiktok houses.
The world's first Tiktok house appeared in December 2019. Then an account appeared in the United States called The Hype House, to which more than 18 million people were subscribed. From 14 to 27 people lived in the same house at different times with an audience of 1 to 80 million tiktok followers. For a long time, a member of Hype House was the most popular blogger on TikTok - Charlie D'Amelio.
House was originally conceived as a space where bloggers can live and create collaborative content. Over time, it turned into a forge of popularity - participants come, gain an army of fans and leave, and other promising bloggers take their place.
Despite its popularity around the world, Hype House has been criticized for its monotonous and uncreative videos. Almost all the content of its participants is based on dancing and narcissism - there is no creative streak in this. So, bloggers collect millions of views on backstages or videos, where someone is jumping into the pool.
In this sense, Russian tiktok houses differ for the better: their residents are trying to diversify their videos with humorous scenes, creative advertising and the launch of their own challenges. Members of Russian houses are known for recording their own tracks (not without the participation of producers and labels), participating in TV shows (for example, "Evening Urgant"), acting in clips of stars and, in principle, pumping their media in every possible way. Foreign tiktokers also appear in the media space outside of TikTok, but the trend of promoting a blogger as a multimedia character can only be traced here.
Who makes the most successful Tiktok houses in Russia
The first tiktok house in Russia appeared at the beginning of March 2020 - it was Dream Team House, created by the blogging agency WildJam. Among the "inhabitants" of Tiktok House are some of the most popular bloggers in the Russian-speaking segment:
The guys are known for releasing music tracks, doing shows on YouTube and filming reality shows on television almost every week. More than 6.3 million people have subscribed to the Dream Team House account.
WildJam also owns two more successful tiktok houses - Swag Team (2.1 million) and Sweet House (1.1 million), in which only girls participate. In total, more than 100 bloggers are now in the WildJam tiktok pool.
All other successful tiktok houses also belong to production centers and advertising agencies.
For example, at the end of April 2020, another house appeared on TikTok - the XO Team (3.1 million), created by the XO Agency under the leadership of Herman Chernykh. He took bloggers from his YouTube show and added a few newbies. They raise acute social topics in commercials: bullying, depressive states, violation of women's rights and other topics of bullying, depressive states, feminism and other acute social problems. Also, XO Team was the first of all Russian houses to launch a web series.
Another popular house - Hype House Rus (2.5 million) - belongs to the Liveliness production center of blogger Zair Yusupov. He calls himself "a successful producer." Zaire started out as a short Instagram video creator and moved his bloggers experience in the production field. There are several other very popular Tiktok bloggers in his house:
Unlike the houses listed above, Hype House Rus positions itself more as a production center: the forces of its creators are thrown not to promote the image of the house itself, but to individual participants.
Residents of the Zaire house often find themselves in the center of scandals - for example, his signatory Valya Karnaval was accused of plagiarizing the track "Psycho", and Katya Golysheva - of misogyny, sexism and disrespect for people because of the track "Chupacabra".
Top 10 blogging houses in Russia (million subscribers)
Almost all of them are very similar. However, some houses are trying to stand out from the rest - for example, Lemo House evaluates the "kidnapping" of bloggers, XO House focuses on production, and someone, in principle, goes from the opposite and opens a "not house" - blogging house where former antagonists live influencers of the world who turned their nose up from the house format. But the project is still a producer's too.
How the Tiktok House Economy Works
Initial attachments
The first priority for anyone looking to make a tiktok house is finding and renting a house. But to do this is not as easy as it seems, Aleksandr Kucherenko, the producer and marketer of the Tiktok House Lemo House and the former business partner of the Vibe Family House, told The Secret. According to him, not all landlords want to accommodate bloggers in their premises. The owner of the house where his signers live was okay with the fact that her house would be included in the frame, but she regularly monitors social networks and settled in the mansion of the caretaker, who monitors the safety of the property.
The second task is to find bloggers. “It is necessary to recruit a core of popular bloggers who will be ready to leave the rest of their lives for the project, as they need to devote all their free time to it. It is not so difficult to persuade them to do this, it is more difficult to understand whether a person will be comfortable working with you and the team, ”says Kucherenko.
The third is to find money. “We have invested our savings and have not recouped them yet. The amount was several million rubles. We spent this money on renting a house, purchasing equipment, and salaries for the team. Now we are looking for an investor who can return the investment faster. According to our calculations, investments will pay off by November-December, that is, six months after the launch of the project, ”he says.
The head of WildJam, Yaroslav Andreev, said in an interview that at the initial stage the agency invested about 1.5 million rubles in the Dream Team House project. In just a year, Andreev planned to invest about 20 million rubles and hoped to return them only in a year. However, according to him, the investment paid off in less than six months.
Expenses and income
The creator of the tiktok house XO Team Herman Chernykh said that he pays 600,000 rubles a month for renting a house.
Alexander Kucherenko spends more on rent - 750,000 rubles. The same amount, according to him, is spent on promotion, purchase of equipment and the salary of the team (it includes two founders, an SMM manager, a copywriter, a targetologist, a designer, salespeople, content, PR and project managers, a "hunter" of bloggers , producers, development director and "a large number of assistants"). The expenditure side of the budget in some months reaches 2 million rubles, said Kucherenko.
One of the founders of the blogging house XHouse Timofey Faldin noted in an interview that renting his house costs 1.2 million a month. Evgeny Gutsal, general producer of the blogging production Divico, claimed that some houses spend from 5 to 7 million rubles a month to maintain the entire ecosystem of the project.
Kucherenko notes that the advertising market on TikTok is still very unstable and there is not a lot of money in it, like on YouTube or Instagram. This is a new show business, the rules of which are not understood by everyone.
Earnings for houses are generated by advertising integrations, sales of music tracks, production services for third-party customers, and ticket sales for offline events with the participation of their bloggers.
For example, Timofey Faldin says that the average most popular blogger from his house XHouse makes about three or four commercials for brands and six advertisements for music tracks a month. At the same time, according to him, they work mainly with large clients, for example, with Tantum Verde or Storytel.
The creators of tiktok houses do not disclose the exact amount of earnings. Kucherenko, in response to a question from "Secret", said only that "at least the agency always goes to zero."
Konstantin Afanasyev, PR director of the communication agency DoDook, suggests that the earnings of an average house only on integrations in TikTok can reach 1.5 million rubles.
How much do Tiktokers themselves get?
Agencies and tiktokers tend to sign contracts. Managers and producers often need this document so that they can control blogging content.
“People get off even the toughest contracts. Of course, a contract is needed to give both the blogger and us commercial guarantees, but it often happens that a piece of paper does not solve anything. The guarantee is the loyalty of the blogger. It is in our interests to create such conditions that
The blogger himself did not want to leave us, ”notes Kucherenko.
True, in the Russian tiktok world there has already been a scandal related to contracts. In June 2020, almost all members of David Manukyan's Super House left the house, arguing that the project managers “prevent them from earning money”. Bloggers talked about the situation in stories: according to them, the producers forced them to do free advertising, but at the same time they were forbidden to take high-paying advertising contracts. Due to the fact that the bloggers signed an agreement with the production center that owns the house, the tiktokers could not contradict them.
Blogger Sergei Kurbatov shared with subscribers that he had an open scandal with Manukyan. Kurbatov wanted to go outside the house to chat with friends, but did it at the wrong time - a relative of Dava arrived. “He started yelling that we have no right to leave the territory of the site, that we can ruin Dava's reputation by our behavior. And he yelled obscenely, using very offensive words. I then replied that he was already an adult and should not sit in a building like a slave, not even being able to talk to friends, ”said Kurbatov.
Blogger Vladislav Ilyushenkov, one of the first to leave Super House, told Secret that during his stay in the house he did not receive a dime, although the producers promised him a solid salary.
As a rule, homeowners themselves are engaged in advertising, promoting and producing their residents. The producers give the blogger advertising contracts that he would not find for himself, and the agency earns on the resale of their services and commissions. It can be from 20 to 100% of the contract amount. Moreover, this amount can differ markedly for different brands and their advertising campaigns.
“There is only one rule in this market: there are no rules. Everything is in its infancy, so there is no definite form of pricing for all bloggers on the platform, explains Kucherenko. - Bloggers who do not work with agencies often do not know how much to ask for. The market will stabilize over time and prices will be more understandable. "
The average price for a commercial for an ordinary millionaire Tiktoker is about 80,000 rubles, already with an agency commission (that is, the blogger himself gets less). For top bloggers, the cost of advertising may be higher (for example, in Dani Milokhin's account - 200,000 rubles), and on the Dream Team House page - 300,000 rubles.
