- TikTok is offering a slew of cash bonuses and rewards to creators that use its new shopping feature.
- The company is holding influencers’ hands as it rolls out TikTok Shop to more users.
- TikTok may be course-correcting its e-commerce strategy after a rocky start in the UK.
Last month, beauty and lifestyle creator Sharon Jayy visited TikTok’s office in Culver City, California, to discuss future plans for its e-commerce platform, TikTok Shop. The conversation centered around how to formalize the role of “TikTok Shop creator” as a new category of influencer, akin to a sports or food personality, Jayy said.
“I’m thinking about marketing myself as a TikTok Shop creator,” she said. “Every creator should jump on this early because it’s going to be saturated.”
The personal office invite was one of many high-touch efforts by TikTok in recent months to try to entice influencers to use its social-shopping tool, which rolled out in the US in November after launching in the UK and other markets in 2021.
The company is paying cash rewards to some influencers for hitting sales, posting, or livestream goals. It’s also helping influencers grab coupons for freebies from brands for TikTok Shop, either through promotional campaigns like a “Summer Sale” or connecting them to popular Shop sellers.
In one example shared with Insider, a creator was offered $200 in cash for posting one or more videos that drove at least 10 Shop orders. In another instance, they were offered $1,000 in cash for generating at least $3,000 in Shop sales via a video. In a third, a separate creator was offered $20 for linking a product in a livestream that lasted at least 30 minutes and received 300 or more views.
“These incentives have allowed our creators to amass high volumes of sales, and get a first-hand experience on how to make the most out of TikTok Shop,” said Ross Hawthorne, director of operations at UK talent-management company Real Quick Media, a TikTok Shop partner.
Launching rewards programs and offering cash payments to entice creators to try new features is a common tactic at large social platforms. Meta has run time-limited rewards programs to push creators to make short-form videos on Instagram and Facebook. Pinterest and YouTube also have tested similar bonus payments for short-form videos.
Many of these rewards programs, including TikTok’s, are limited to certain users.
“Right now it’s still kind of like an invite-only sort of thing,” said Nadia Lynn Garcia, a social-commerce manager who works on TikTok Shop campaigns for the creator-agency Grail Talent. “Creators will be whitelisted for a campaign and then those tasks will populate into their account.”
Even without reward incentives, early users of TikTok Shop can still earn thousands of dollars from affiliate payments as long as they meet certain follower and age requirements. Influencers who tag TikTok Shop products in videos or livestreams earn commissions based on the sales they drive.
They can also earn payments by highlighting items from various sellers on a separate page within their profiles, similar to Amazon influencer storefronts. Typical commission rates thus far have landed in the 10% to 20% range, which is relatively high compared to more developed e-commerce platforms.
TikTok is coddling creators as it looks to smooth out Shop’s operations
As TikTok rolls out Shop to more users, the company is offering some influencers coaching and around-the-clock support, including first looks at products, beta-test features, and announcements of special promotions via its messaging platform Lark, creators and other industry professionals told Insider.
“I think my experience has been so great because I’m working with TikTok themselves,” said Shayna Farnan, a TikToker who posts videos about coupons and bargain-hunting to around 300,000 fans. “If I have some kind of issue with a seller or getting a product or whatever, I could reach out to the TikTok team and they’ll take care of it.”
The company’s hand-holding may be a response to its earlier troubles with Shop in the UK. TikTok faced backlash from influencers and its own employees over its Shop operations in the country, including complaints about low creator pay, the Financial Times reported in June 2022.
Despite early hiccups, TikTok and its parent ByteDance appear determined to find a way to make Shop successful. Social commerce has been a money-maker for TikTok’s sister app Douyin in China, and TikTok is banking that it can replicate that success in other markets. Features that are successful on Douyin often end up on TikTok next
Some creators now have a direct point of contact at TikTok that advises them on how to succeed on Shop.
Maryam Malik, a UK-based creator with around one million followers, said during a recent TikTok event in London that she’s had a TikTok Shop manager for about a year. The manager helps her liaise with brands for long-term partnerships, shares best-selling products for Malik to promote on Shop, coordinates free product samples, and invites her to events.
But these direct lines of communication with brands and with TikTok employees are a privilege for the few. Most creators operate on a self-service basis, by grabbing products from a marketplace of TikTok Shop goods that are eligible for commissions to any creator that meets the platform’s eligibility requirements.
Lauren Mabra, one of the creators behind the account @theofficialitgirls, said she got accepted as a Shop affiliate this month. She said she’s still figuring out the platform without direct help from TikTok.
Like other creators, Mabra also has access to a tab on Shop that invites her to “complete tasks to earn rewards.” That page is currently empty for her, and she expects it will start populating once she posts her first affiliate video.
As more creators and merchants get onboarded onto Shop, it’s unclear whether TikTok will be able to keep up its white-glove service or lucrative bonuses. Other platforms like Meta and Pinterest retired rewards programs over time. Similar rewards from TikTok for Shop livestreams were phased out in the UK in early 2022, per the FT.
Creators who are reaping the benefits of direct support from TikTok acknowledged how hard it would be to not have a point of contact.
“They have nobody to explain what they should be doing and the ins-and-outs of the program,” Farnan said. “Most of the people don’t have the support or the knowledge to even be these TikTok Shop creators that TikTok wants them to be.”
TikTok declined to comment for this story.
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