TikTok is no longer the social platform for learning the newest dance moves or listening to long-winded storytimes. If you are active on the fast-growing social platform, then you’re familiar with the #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt hashtag. Users have been influenced to buy certain products since TikTok’s debut, but now they are ecstatic knowing that they can make purchases without ever leaving the app.
In 2022, TikTok launched TikTok Shop — a one-stop e-commerce solution for buying and selling products on TikTok. This blog post will go into great detail about how TikTok shop works and how you can make money using it.
What is TikTok Shop?
Using TikTok’s unique discovery engine, TikTok Shop enables brands and sellers to showcase and sell products directly on TikTok, through a suite of in-app shopping touchpoints:
- Live Shopping: This feature allows creators to go live to promote, sell, and engage with their audience, all in real time.
- Shoppable videos: This feature allows creators to create entertaining videos with products just a tap away.
- Shop page: This feature allows brands to display their product catalog within their own in-app shop.
- Shop tab: This feature allows brands to display their products all in one place within TikTok.
How Can You Make Money With TikTok Shop?
Users can make money with TikTok Shop by becoming a Seller (merchant) or a creator (affiliate). Sellers are brands or business owners who have a product to showcase. Creators can leverage the Affiliate Program to collaborate with brands to promote their products for a commission.
Both sellers and creators get paid through the bank account they have on file once a product is sold and payments are processed.
How to Become a Seller on TikTok Shop?
Brands can start making money as sellers (merchants) by first signing up for TikTok Shop. Once approved, you can showcase your products on your TikTok profile and pay creators a commission to promote your products through affiliate marketing. As a seller, you’re able to set your own commission rates, and you can choose between two affiliate plans:
- Open collaboration: Allows all qualified creators to promote your products.
- Targeted collaboration: Allows merchants to select the creators they want to partner with.
How to Sell Products as an Affiliate
To get started selling on TikTok Shop as a creator (affiliate), you must meet the following criteria: Be at least 18 years old and have at least 5,000 followers. If that’s you, you can apply and once accepted, you have three ways of selling on TikTok Shop:
- Live-streaming: Creators can go live on the platform to promote products to their viewers.
- Shoppable videos: Creators can make videos and link to products they are promoting.
- Product showcasing: Creators can showcase their favorite products right at the top of their profile.
On TikTok Shop, creators earn strictly through affiliate commissions by promoting other people’s products. Each time a sale is made, the creator takes a cut.
Types of Products You Can Sell
There is an abundance of products that you are allowed to sell on TikTok Shop, however, there are several items that are prohibited from being sold on the platform.
Products that sell well on TikTok Shop:
- Clothing
- Shoes
- Cosmetics
- Home Decor
- Kitchen Gadgets
- Cleaning products
- Hair styling products
- Stationery
Products that are ‘unsupported’ or prohibited:
- Medicines and medical devices
- Veterinary Products
- Alcohol, Tobacco and E-Cigarettes
- Vehicles and Automotive Parts
- Media Products e.g. scripts, music, and digital downloads
- Virtual products e.g. memberships, warranties, or subscriptions
- Services e.g. plumbing services, construction services, travel services, etc.
- Political products
- Weight Loss Products and Supplements
- Home Improvement Products
- Secondhand Products
- Animal and Animal-related Products e.g. live animals, real fur, exotic skins, prong collars, traps
- Age-restricted products
- Adult products
- Discriminatory products
- Illegal products
- Religious products
- Live plants
Pros and Cons of TikTok Shop
There are many pros and cons associated with selling on TikTok Shop. It’s important to know what they are when deciding if you want to get started on the platform.
Pros for Sellers
Reach a wider audience: Selling on TikTok Shop allows you to reach a wider audience than if you were just selling through your own website or another platform.
Boost sales: Because TikTok is such a popular, visual platform, it’s the perfect place to showcase your products. Users can easily purchase your products without having to leave the app.
Low commission fees: TikTok’s commission fees are much lower compared to other selling platforms.
Have influencers promote your products more easily: TikTok Shop makes it super easy for you to collaborate with influencers. Because any affiliate can post videos linking to your products, this increases your chances of making more money.
Pros for Creators
Easily earn commissions: As a creator, you can easily earn commissions for any products sold through your content. The best part about it is you don’t need products of your own since you’re promoting others’ products.
Increase views: Because TikTok pushes out TikTok Shop videos more than any others, you can get more eyeballs on your content and increase your views and possibly followers.
Gain audience trust: You can gain audience credibility through posting honest reviews of products and services.
Cons for Sellers and Creators
Limited payment options: Currently, the only two payment options available on TikTok Shop are debit/credit card and Apple Pay. Most users prefer checking out with PayPal.
Not available in all countries: TikTok shop was originally only available in a few countries including the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The platform has slowly rolled out in more countries now, but there are still several countries that don’t have access to the platform.
Restrictions on what you can sell: As mentioned above, some products, such as digital products like eBooks, are restricted or unsupported on TikTok Shop.
Examples of Best-selling Products
In this example, you can see that the product being sold is Body Glaze by the seller, Canvas Beauty Brand. You can see that over 451,000 units have been sold at $25.00 each. If you do the math, that’s over $11 million sold.
The creator on the right, Wiz Kalia, is getting paid a commission for promoting this product in her video. The commission was set by the seller so there’s no way to determine how much she’s made from the video. However, you can see that she has a lot of interaction on her video, which most likely resulted in a nice amount of sales.
This Meoky tumbler in the above photo has been trending all over TikTok because it’s a competitor of the infamous Stanley Tumbler at a fraction of the cost. As you can see from the photo, the brand, Meoky, is charging $22.79 for a 40oz tumbler. They’ve sold over 239,000 of these tumblers and have made over $5 million with just this one product.
The creator on the right is being paid a commission for promoting the product in her video. As you can see, she’s got a nice amount of engagement and if users are interested, TikTok makes it super easy for them to buy right from her video. That’s the power of TikTok Shop!
Final Thoughts
As you can see, there’s plenty of money to be made on TikTok Shop. When thinking about whether you should start selling on TikTok Shop, you should first decide if you have a product to offer as a seller or if you want to create content to promote others’ products as an affiliate. Whatever you decide, you’ve got all the deets on how to successfully get started making money with TikTok Shop.
