Faceless AI theme pages on Instagram and TikTok

The claim

“Theme pages like this make $30K/month

They sell products on IG and they get paid based on views on TikTok”

@davidfigeira, 21 March 2025, 33,960 views¹

“If you start today, hitting $3,000–$5,000/month by March 2026 is realistic.”

@FynCas, 13 January 2026, 25,485 views¹

A “theme page” is an account built around one subject, with nobody on camera. The videos are now made with AI tools or copied from clips that did well. This page judges the scheme, not the people who tweeted.

The sums

TikTok pays for views only through its Creator Rewards Program. To join, an account needs at least 10,000 followers, at least 100,000 video views in the last 30 days, and videos at least one minute long that the owner made². TikTok publishes no rate, so the rates below are creators’ and sellers’ own reports²⁴³⁰. Instagram’s pay for views is “invite-only”⁵.

Views needed each month (our sums):

A “qualified view” must, among other tests, last at least five seconds and come from a viewer in one of eight countries, so in the second row the total views needed are higher³⁴.

At these rates, 1 million views pays roughly $340 to $3,000 (our sum)⁴³⁰. Anything more must come from sales. TikTok Shop is the shopping feature inside TikTok: a video carries a product link and the poster earns commission on sales¹³. Each seller sets its own rate, “ranging from 1%-80%”, and no average is published¹³. For illustration (our estimate), a $30 product at 15% pays $4.50 an order, so $1,000 a month needs about 7 delivered, unrefunded orders a day. We found no measured figure for how many orders 1,000 views produce.

What happens to most people who try

We found no data on how many theme pages earn or survive. We expect the common outcome to be no income (our estimate), because pay starts only above set follower and view counts. View pay needs the counts above². TikTok Shop in the US needs 1,000 followers, unless a seller links the account to its own shop¹⁵.

The upside

The method itself, unverified. About four operators say they make $2,000 to $5,000 a month after a viral hit²⁶²⁷⁷⁰. A man in Idaho with over 180,000 TikTok followers said his AI videos earn about $5,000 a month²⁶. An anonymous creator said he made $15,000 in commissions in three months after one AI video went viral²⁷. A clipper, paid by brands to repost their footage, told NPR he makes “around $4,000 a month”⁷⁰. None was checked against payment records, and the first two come from summaries of a Washington Post article we could not read in full²⁶²⁷. We found no data on how long it takes to reach a first payment.

Verified, but a different business. Pubity Group, with more than 20 social brands built over 12 years, filed unaudited accounts showing net assets of £7,317,698 and 40 employees, with no turnover shown⁶⁵⁷⁸. Our reading of the accounts is that it earns from paid posts for brands, not from AI clips with sales links⁶⁵. Fortune reviewed one operator’s payout records, “equating to annual gross revenue of roughly $700,000”, on YouTube long videos, with staff and his own software⁶⁸. Five figures a month is documented only for cases like these⁶⁵⁶⁸.

What it takes to compete

Those who succeed have:

• Videos they made. The platforms pay and recommend original work and withhold both from copies²⁸³⁷.
• Something to sell. The guide seller in the table calls view pay the “smallest stream”³⁰.
• The right country. TikTok’s view pay runs in eight countries, and TikTok Shop in the US needs a US base³¹⁵.

In money it costs little at low volume: under $7 to about $150 a month in tools, the upper figure our estimate²⁰²⁵. At 100 eight-second clips a day, Google’s listed prices for its Veo 3.1 video model come to about $1,200 to $9,600 a month (our sums)¹⁹. The larger cost is hours. A researcher who studied such operators said the typical small creator spent two to three hours a night on it beside a day job²⁶. A permanently banned TikTok account loses its unpaid rewards².

To tell early (our judgement): see whether the page has passed the follower counts above after some months of daily posting, then measure your own orders per 1,000 views.

Who else makes money from it

• The tweets collect followers. Of the 49 tweets we collected on this scheme, 36 ask the reader to repost or like, comment a keyword and follow to be sent a guide by direct message¹⁷⁴. We did not follow these chains.
• An AI video tool. Two of the most-viewed accounts name the tool MakeUGC in their bios, read through a third-party copy of X’s data⁷⁴. MakeUGC pays referrers “30% of every eligible subscription payment”²¹. We saw no affiliate link in any tweet and no evidence that any account is paid by the tool.
• Teachers. One account’s bio links to a $247 course⁴⁹⁷⁴. In one academic study of AI video operators, mainly in China, a creator said income from tutorials and membership fees “has become a more reliable revenue source than traditional platform-based earnings”²⁵.