Snapchat is launching a new rewards program for AR Lens creators

Snapchat is introducing a new Lens Creator Rewards program to give AR creators and developers the chance to earn money for top-performing Lenses, the company announced on Tuesday. Creators could be rewarded up to $7,200 per month if their creation is a top performing Lens with high engagement in the United States, India and Mexico.

Although Snapchat is going to initially focus top-performing metrics in these three countries, any Lens creator from 40 eligible countries can receive rewards if their Lens performed well in United States, India and Mexico.

Snap’s Director of AR Platform Partnerships and Ecosystem, Sophia Dominguez, told TechCrunch in an interview that the company wants to start small and receive feedback from its community before expanding the rewards program to additional markets.

“We wanted to start with these three markets, but then also make sure that it was global by default, because our Snapchatter and lens creator ecosystem is pretty global,” Dominguez said. “So we wanted to start small and measure the feedback we get from our community on both sides, like what do Snapchatters think, are they seeing more interesting types of Lenses? Is this encouraging for Lens creators to create new sorts of Lenses? Is this inspiring? And, if it’s successful, then we’ll definitely roll it out further.”

Although Snapchat didn’t specify what the requirements are for the program, Dominguez says the company will look at various metrics, including views and specific Lens-specific metrics. Snap will also measure how long users are playing around with Lenses. Dominguez notes that more information regarding eligibility and requirements will be made public as the program rolls out.

Once creators receive a reward, they will get an email informing them that their Lens is qualified to receive a reward, along with notifications within their creator hub.

Paige Piskin, one of Snapchat’s top creators, told TechCrunch in email that she believes the new rewards program will open a door to new revenue for Lens creators, and that it will inspire more people to start creating Lenses.

“I’ve been a Lens creator for close to four years now, I started out designing for a hobby/passion and it transitioned into a full time career,” Piskin said. “In the past few years my effects have generated billions of impressions and close to a billion shares across platforms, but I have never been able to monetize that traffic (the way a content creator can with ad revenue). I absolutely love creating, especially fun character and makeup looks, and now with the new rewards program I feel very excited and encouraged to create more lenses, and explore new capabilities and techniques.”

Snapchat revealed that it has an AR community of more than 300,000 AR creators, developers and teams. Creators have built more than 3 million Lenses that users have viewed more than 5 trillion times.