Picsart Rolls Out Open Monetization Program Letting Creators Earn From Engagement

Picsart is opening a new revenue channel for users: a program that pays creators based on how their posts perform, with no invite list and no follower minimum.

The company told TechCrunch the initiative gives any user access to a roster of creative briefs and challenges that they can opt into. After enrolling, creators see available campaigns in a central dashboard, produce original material with Picsart’s suite — including its conversational AI assistant Aura, which can generate and animate visuals from text or voice — and then share the finished work to their social feeds. Participants submit the live URL for each entry, add campaign tags and a short note explaining their editing process, and earnings are computed from views, comments, shares and reach. Funds are tracked in the dashboard and paid out through Stripe.

Campaigns vary. One recent brief asked for playful character art and short motion snippets suited to short-form platforms; another focused on tutorial-style content. Picsart stresses that simply pushing out auto-generated imagery without additional creative work is unlikely to attract significant engagement or rewards, and the program is designed to favor pieces that demonstrate craftsmanship and audience appeal.

Picsart’s chief executive framed the effort as a move to make creative rewards more widely available rather than a perk for established stars. A researcher who studies digital labor said the plan could boost earnings for everyday creators and increase time spent on the app, but warned it might also encourage formulaic posts aimed at gameable engagement metrics. “This is a step toward compensating more people, but success will depend on how they police low-effort content and balance quantity with quality,” the expert said.

Founded in 2011, the company now serves more than 130 million users globally and reached billion-dollar valuation in 2021 after a funding round led by SoftBank. The monetization rollout follows a recent launch of an AI agent marketplace that lets creators “hire” automated assistants for tasks like resizing creative assets, remixing clips for social channels or editing product photos for online stores.

By letting creators earn directly for performance, Picsart is shifting from a utility for editors into a platform that pays contributors — a change that could help attract and keep creators but also reshape what users make. Observers say the key questions will be how transparent the reward calculations are, how the company curbs abuse, and whether the payouts are meaningful enough to sustain creators over time.