Introduction
Did you know that TikTok is a shopping marketplace platform as well as a video content platform? There’s a whole shop section where major brands(and smaller brands) set up e-commerce and sell physical goods. Almost every category is represented here like make-up, skin care, books, home furnishings, etc. Sellers can also set up their products to allow affiliate commission if a content creator makes a video promoting and linking the product that ultimately generates a sale. Well, when I saw that some of my favorite content creators were sharing their journey with TikTok Shop content, I decided to check it out for myself and see if I could make a decent income from it.
Starting in September 2024 through August 2025, I’ve made over $19k in commissions, which I’d like to think is pretty darn good. Like, we’re not talking quit-my-job-money, but that’s a pretty nice bit of money, plus a house full of free products. Let’s look at how I got started, my full process, how I get free samples of products, and how much effort I’m putting in these days.
Joining the Program
The rules are constantly changing on how to get approved to be a TikTok Shop Affiliate, so make sure to check the official webpages. (link to join; link to Creator Eligibility Policy) In general, you need over 1,000 followers to get into the Creator Pilot Program, or over 5,000 followers for full access to all TikTok Shop features.
I was able to join early on, but never did anything about it. When I started to pay attention in September 2024, I slowly added a few things to my product showcase. At first, I thought that this platform was similar to the old days of blogging where I just link to products that happen to be in the background of my videos, even when the main content of the video was to promote my own Etsy shop. Well, I very quickly received a notice of content violation for redirecting traffic. It turns out that TikTok Shop has a whole other set of rules that I needed to study. (link to current content policy)
The content guidelines are constantly being updated, so it’s helpful to check them periodically to make sure you don’t get notices of violations (which put your account at risk of being shut down). Generally, content creators need to be careful of any health claims, unoriginal content, licensed content, and a whole bunch more. A really big one, especially for stay-at-home mom creators? No kids. Those kiddos cannot be part of your shop videos.
For the majority of the time I’ve been creating, another major rule was that I had to have the physical product in hand in the video. So that means one of my first tasks to get started is to find and retrieve products that have affiliate commissions within the product marketplace.
Initial Product Selection
The easiest products to start with are the ones you already own. So many brands are selling on TikTok Shop, it’s really easy to find common household items there. I’m pretty sure that I started with a pack of pens, some nail polish, and then I spent an initial $30 on a popular eyeshadow palette. I also borrowed a lot of makeup and books from friends to make videos. As you get going and have more sales data behind you, you’re eligible to receive free samples of products from the sellers. I’ll come back to the topic of samples after I go over initial video stuff.
Video-Making Process
As someone who has been making video content for many years, my home office/craft room was already set up for making shop videos. I record using whatever iPhone model I have at the time, which is my everyday smartphone (iPhone 13 Pro Max until October 2025 when I upgraded to iPhone 17 Pro Max). I mostly film at what I call my Lightbox desk.
I’ve got two softbox studio lights that I purchased 2015 angled towards the desktop and a piece of white posterboard as a clean background. For overhead shots, I’ll record using the phone’s back camera on the iPhone camera app or within TikTok, mounted on a rigged tripod set-up that consists of a microphone stand, piece of PVC pipe fitting, and a magnetic phone holder.
For face-to-camera, I sit in front of the same desk with an additional ring light and using a desktop standing phone holder. I use the iPhone camera app here on front-facing mode so I can see what I’m doing, and then when I upload the video to TikTok, everything is right side around without being mirrored on video. The white posterboard stays on top of the desk and serves as a soft light reflector.
Affiliate links to supplies:
TikTok Shop coaches and gurus and experts will tell you about things like hooks and calls to action, but I honestly haven’t implemented much of that strategy. Could I be more successful if I did? Maybe. But I’m trying to create in a limited amount of time and sticking to a style I’m most comfortable with. Which is basically my natural tone of voice, talking to the camera, as if I’m telling a friend about the product I’m featuring. Videos are 20 to 60 seconds long, sometimes I use the pause button, and definitely no editing on the back end. All-in, each video takes me less than five minutes to record and upload with the appropriate caption and links.
Commissions from the First Year
In the first year of doing TikTok Shop videos (September 2024 through August 2025), I generated $19,069 in commissions. My bank deposits ended up being slightly lower than that due to the occasional cancelled transaction or refunded purchases. The first few months were pretty low, due to the learning curve and low-ticket items I was featuring. At the beginning, I had a lot to learn about which products were worth my time and how to keep up with whether those products were in stock. As I got more comfortable with making shop content, my sales became steadier, and I was able to make videos on a larger variety of products with a range of commissions.
The First Viral Video
The first turning point for me was when I noticed that a specific tote bag from one of my favorite artists was back in stock. I hopped onto TikTok to make a quick video before I went to my day job and very enthusiastically shared that it was back in stock after having been out of stock for months, and that you needed to grab it now.
This video blew up, by my standards at least. I had tons of organic traffic the same day, plus the shop owner reposted the video. From a content perspective, I was face-to-camera, very visibly an Asian woman promoting an Asian artist’s very Asian themed tote bag. I was relatable and genuinely enthusiastic, demonstrating both nostalgia and scarcity. The commission rate at the time was 15% on a $27.99 retail price, earning me $4.20 per item sold. Over the next month, I think I sold almost 200 of these bags. This was my first big break that showed that I could make a video, put it online, and make real money.
Link to shop this bag on TikTok
I also learned from this product that all my videos about this product led to sales of other items in that particular shop. As long as the other products were in my showcase, I would make a commission when someone went from my video to the shop to purchase something else. This was super helpful to learn because I was able to make commission from items that I never made a video on.
Free Samples
One of the most fun experiences of being a TikTok Shop Affiliate is getting free samples. Who doesn’t love free stuff? It feels like getting presents in the mail! Evidence of your ability to sell goes hand-in-hand with the opportunity and likelihood of getting free samples. Sellers have the ability to see 30-day metrics on any creator and look at their sales track record and popular videos. Sellers can make decisions on whether or not to approve samples based on whether they think you’re a good fit for their brand.
There are multiple avenues for requesting free samples.
- Creator-initiated from Product Marketplace
- Seller-initiated Collaboration Invites
- Partner-initiated via email
Within the Product Marketplace, products that have samples available are tagged with “Free Sample”. When you click on the product, there’s an option to request a sample. Best case scenario: If approved by the seller, they’ll send it to your address on file, and then you have 14 days to create a video linking that product. It’s important to wait until the product shows as delivered on the back-end of the app, so that the video counts as having fulfilled the post criteria. It takes another 3 days of the video being up for the sample to be labeled as “post criteria met”. If the sample is denied, you get a notification stating such. Sometimes, the seller will ignore the request altogether and the sample request will stay in a “pending approval” status until the request expires in 7 days. Each creator has a limit to the number of outstanding samples they have, and that includes pending requests, samples in transit, samples that need content, and samples with posts in review. This limit varies depending on your status, and the app will let you know when you hit that limit when you try to request something. Knowing that sample requests are limited, I try to make videos for the samples I have delivered within a day or two of receipt. This way, it gets the timeline rolling on when the post criteria is met and I can request more samples.
There’s also a spot in the toolkit labeled “Collab Invites”. This is the section where sellers will reach out to creators to offer them samples or higher commission rates on their products. Sellers can mark the products as either samples to request or auto-approved samples. When you’re first starting out, the offers here might not be that exciting, but as you make more sales, there’s a higher likelihood of getting a collab invite from a brand you’ve actually heard of. In my experience, samples requested within a collab invite do not count towards the sample request limit.
Affiliate partners may also reach out to you via email. At first, I totally ignored these emails because I didn’t recognize who they were from. And then I realized, wait a minute, there are links to even more samples! So read those unfamiliar emails carefully and check to see if the links lead you directly back to the TikTok app. These will be special affiliate partner product showcases with more opportunities to request samples. And these don’t count towards your sample limit.
With a steady stream of free products delivered to you, it’s easy to start experimenting with the type of product you like to make videos about. Personally, I mostly make videos on beauty and art supplies because they’re smaller products that fit over my desk to do faceless white background videos. I’ve seen other creators do primarily fashion, or outdoor pools, or kitchen equipment. Find the type of product that works best for your workflow. And sometimes those free samples turn into big sellers that you can promote again and again.
Once you get started on requesting samples, it becomes a little addictive. For me, when I have a “bad” sales day, I think that I’m making it up to myself by requesting free samples. If I’m not getting paid in money, might as well get paid in product, right? Except, it’s totally possible to get overwhelmed with low quality and low paying products that you’re stuck making videos for. And then you spend all your limited time just making videos for new products every single day, with no guarantee that any of them will make money. It’s kind of a gamble. I’m definitely guilty of requesting too many samples, and some of them are hits, and others just end up in the donation pile. This is what the TikTok Shop gurus call Sample Hell. Because you’re just in this endless cycle of opening packages, making videos on those items one time, and then doing it over again tomorrow. This is why it’s better to be discerning about the samples you request in the first place; check that the product is something you would genuinely use or enjoy (or have a friend who would use/enjoy), check the commission rate, and check to see if it’s from a reputable seller.
Now, I’m actually a frugal person with very minimal needs in the way of household items. I don’t truly use a lot of the samples I receive because they just don’t fit into my life. But I know that I have friends and family members who could use those items, so I’ll request it, make a video, and then pass it on. (For my really good friends, I even recruit them to film more videos for me to post on TikTok) I also continue to request samples because I can make content for Amazon on-site commissions, which is a totally different program that I will write about another day. This helps me maximize my potential for income with one free sample.
If you’re drowning in free products, and you’ve run out of friends to gift things to, you can also sell your samples. I’ve heard of people selling their samples on Facebook Marketplace or holding garage sales. I like to sell books on the PangoBooks app because it’s quick and easy to use. (I’ll write more about selling books in a separate post)
Learning and Growing
For me, growing in sales really came from getting more samples. This allowed me to make more videos without any upfront cost to acquire those products. And, it helped me figure out which type of videos to keep making. Honestly, it’s a bit of a toss-up because sometimes a super-simple unboxing video ended up getting tons of views and sales. I was able to figure out my favorite brands and then continue to make videos of those products week after week. With how quickly people’s feeds move, you can make videos of the same product multiple times and keep making money from it. And you can use a similar format over and over again. For awhile, I was making face-to-camera videos every single day of the makeup I was wearing: 1. Here’s my foundation and why I love it, 2. Here’s my blush today and why I love it, 3. This is my eyeshadow palette today and what shades I used, 4. Here’s my setting powder today and look, my forehead isn’t shiny, and 5. Look at my new fave lipstick, isn’t it great? These five videos took me less than ten minutes to record and upload. (I also was NOT demonstrating the makeup or doing a tutorial, I sat down with my fully done face and held up a product and talked about it for about 30 seconds). And all of this new favorite makeup? From free samples.
Another thing to consider is that there might be a lag time on when a video picks up steam. I have had this crochet stitch dictionary in my posession for years. (I used to design crochet patterns; more on that in a separate post). I noticed it was for sale on TikTok shop and it was easy enough to make a one-minute video talking about it. And then, nothing. No likes, no sales. I moved on to other categories of products. And then one day, months later, I saw a lot of sales on this one book. I have no idea what happened, but I knew I should make more videos. When something is working, it’s best to reward the algorithm by making more content on it. And since this is a very visual product, I know I can just open the book up to a random page and just start talking.
Current Process (March 2025)
The algorithm has its ups and downs, so my income here is inconsistent. It feels like it’s at the mercy of the platform, but I also know that I’m spending a lot less time here than I had before. I probably spend on average one hour per day working on TikTok Shop, and that includes requesting samples, unboxing samples, recording, and uploading. For the little amount of time I’m spending, I’d say the income is pretty decent. What’s great about this income stream is that I feel like I can work as little or as much as I want (or am able, depending on what else is going on in my life). I try to stay updated on the content policy guidelines (remember, they’re always changing) so I can make sure to avoid content violations. I spend more time doing faceless videos than face-to-camera videos and I don’t notice much difference in sales between these two video types. I can go into more detail on how I make videos for various product types in a separate post down the line.
Conclusion
I hope that my experiences have inspired you to give the TikTok Shop affiliate program a try. Despite the inconsistencies in revenue, I really do have a lot of fun doing this. Samples feel like getting presents all the time, and I’ve found a whole bunch of new favorite products that way. I think this income stream is a good fit for someone who is already comfortable talking to the camera and has experience making short-form content. Having experience in speaking quickly and pointedly without a lot of filler words will save you time on the back-end because you don’t need to edit those things out. If you’re already a big TikTok user or a TikTok shopper, it’s even easier to learn to navigate the platform. If you decide to try it out, let me know so I can see your shop videos!
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