Following the announcement that Pinterest is stopping its creator roll out program, several influencers have come out to reveal how much the program was in fact paying them in the first place. 

The Creator Rewards program launched in a closed beta test in October 2021, with an initial investment of $20 million. While the program announced its ending this week, Pinterest will still continue to develop other paid features for its creators.

As part of the program, Pinterest rewarded creators monthly for completing specific posting goals related to the platform’s short-video feature called Idea Pins which saw some creators earning a couple thousand a month. 

One creator, an anonymous example given to Business Insider, stated that since the program’s launch last October, they had made around $14,000 from the program, according to documentation viewed by Insider, and they would often cross-post the short videos to other platforms like Instagram, where they have over 200,000 followers.

Other creators earned a few thousand dollars from the program by posting one Idea Pin every week. Some examples of rewards offered to influencers were a $1,300 payout for completing 1 Idea Pin every week for a month, and a $300 payout for every Idea Pin with at least 3 saves. 

For other creators such as Seyi Famuyiwa, a fashion and beauty influencer with 17,000 Instagram followers, earnings were few and far between seeing $58 earned from the program in May and $70 in June. 

Despite the range in earnings, it is clear to see that the Pinterest program wasn’t making enough for creators to depend on as a full time salary. Nevertheless, many creators have stated that they wish the benefits and development to continue in the app. 

Pinterest isn’t the first platform to end a paid creator program this year. In August, Instagram shut down its native affiliate-marketing program after a year of testing, and in October, Snapchat once again reduced payouts for its short-video feature Spotlight.

Pinterest will be paying a one-time cash bonus for no additional work to creators who participated in at least one reward goal in August, September, or October, the company said. November reward goals will be paid out as usual by the end of the year.

Even though the program is over, creators can still earn money on Pinterest from tools such as product tagging, affiliate links, paid partnerships and a creator fund focused on rewarding people of colour, people with disabilities, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.