How to Make Money on TikTok Shop

There are two main ways to make money on TikTok Shop. You can sell your own products or services through TikTok Shop, or you can get paid to create promotional content for products.

Whether you’re a content creator or a seller, making money on TikTok involves using TikTok Shop and the TikTok Affiliate program to market and sell products. Businesses (sellers), get money from sales, and creators receive a commission when their viewers buy a product on TikTok using one of their links.

But, businesses looking to sell on TikTok don’t need to solely rely on influencer marketing to get eyes on their products. They can also create paid ads with TikTok Ads and boost their campaigns so they appear on more people’s feeds.

In this article, we’ll how to get set up with TikTok Shop as both a creator and a seller, and go over strategies for successfully making money on TikTok. We’ve also got guides on social media management pricing, for businesses wondering how much running social accounts will cost them.

Skip ahead to your guide:

1. Making money on TikTok as a business
2. Making money on TikTok as a creator

1. How To Make Money As a Business on TikTok Shop

The first step to making money on TikTok Shop is opening up a TikTok Shop seller account and listing products.

However, just doing that isn’t enough if you actually want customers to buy your products, you need to invest time and money into marketing them so they don’t get lost in TikTok Shop’s endless catalog of products.

There are two main ways to market products on TikTok: using TikTok’s affiliate program (marketing through creator content) and using TikTok Ads (paid marketing placements).

How Businesses Can Make Money Using TikTok’s Affiliate Program

TikTok’s Affiliate refers to the social media platform’s affiliate marketing program, where businesses can list production TikTok Shop for creators to market in video content, for a small commission.

Why use it? Posting your products on TikTok Shop isn’t a sure way to make money through sales, since there are thousands of products listed there. You need to get customers to first find your products in order to have a chance of any of them buying, and affiliate marketing is an easy way and risk-free way to do that.

It’s typically cheaper than using paid advertising since you decide what your commission rates will be, and creators only get paid if customers buy your product using their link. This makes it a good option for small businesses and independent sellers.

How to start using TikTok Affiliate as a business

To use TikTok Affiliate as a seller, you need to first have signed up for a TikTok Shoper seller account. To do this, you need to:

1. Go to MY TikTok Shop Seller Center (seller-my.tiktok.com)
2. Sign up using an existing TikTok account using a QR code, or sign up with your email or phone number
3. Verify your identity: if you’re a sole trader, you’ll need a passport or state-issued ID, and if you’re a corporation you’ll need a Company Registration Document
4. Add at least one product to your TikTok Shop: the first time you do this you need to provide a warehouse pickup address, a phone number, and a return address (it can be the same as the pickup address)
5. Link your TikTok Shop to your official TikTok account by selecting the “Link now” button

Once you’ve set up your TikTok Shop, you can start using TikTok Affiliate. Here’s how to find creators to promote your products:

1. Go to TikTok Shop Affiliate using the Affiliate Marketing link on your TikTok Shop homepage
2. Choose a type of affiliation: target collaboration (you reach out to specific creators who you want to promote your product) or open collaboration (your product is available to be promoted by any affiliate creator)
3. Assign products to TikTok Affiliate

You can find TikTok’s full guide to using the affiliate program on the  seller-my.tiktok.com page.

Target collaboration vs open collaboration

Understanding the difference between TikTok’s target collaboration and open collaboration programs is important because it can affect the success of your marketing campaigns.

Here’s what you need to know about the pros and cons of each strategy:

For the best results, we suggest starting with a hybrid approach, listing certain products on open collaboration and others on target collaboration. This gives you a chance to see what works best for your business and products.

Does affiliate marketing work well on TikTok?

Affiliate marketing works better on TikTok than on any other social media platform.

According to data from Emarketer, in 2023, creators on TikTok had an affiliate link engagement rate of 5.2%, compared to 2% on Instagram and 0.2% on YouTube.

This means that businesses have a better chance of successfully selling products through affiliate marketing on TikTok than they do on any other social media platform.

But that’s not all. Emarketer’s data also found that small creators were far more successful on TikTok than they were on other platforms. Creators with under 50,000 followers had an affiliate link engagement rate of 14.5% on TikTok, compared to 2.5% on Instagram. However, the gap in engagement between TikTok and other social media platforms shrank the larger a creator’s following became.

To sum it, small creators are much better at getting their followers to buy the products they promote than large creators, especially on TikTok. But why is this a good thing for businesses?

Well, small creators are generally easier to work with than large creators. They don’t get as many brands wanting to work with them, so are less likely to decline an opportunity to earn money through affiliate marketing. They’re also more likely to accept low commission rates than large influencers, for the same reason. That means less money spent on marketing for your business, paired with a higher success rate.

How Businesses Can Make Money Using TikTok Ads

While affiliate marketing is a cheap, low-risk strategy for making money on TikTok, paid marketing with TikTok Ads is a useful way to supplement sales from affiliate marketing.

There are several ways to run paid ads on TikTok:

• Video in-feed ads: Video ads (usually between 5 and 60 seconds) that appear in between organic content in TikTok user’s feeds
• TopView ads: Video ads that appear to users when they open the TikTok app
• LIVE Shopping ads: Live streams where users can view and buy products

In-feed video ads and LIVE shopping ads are better options for small and medium businesses since they are more affordable. TopView ads can be expensive and are generally only used by large enterprises (think Nike or Burger King).

How much do paid ads on TikTok cost?

As with other social media platforms, the cost of running paid ads on TikTok can vary, since businesses and marketers need to bid for ad placements.

Here are some ballpark figures for using TikTok ads:

• $1 for CPC (cost-per-click)
• $10 per 1,000 views (CPM)
• $50 per day per campaign
• $20 per day per ad group

Overall, paid advertising on TikTok is more expensive than on other social media platforms, with the average CPC rate on Facebook at around $0.25 to $1, and the average CPM rate on Instagram at $0.50 to $8. You can find out more about paid advertising costs in our guide to social media management pricing.

Does paid advertising work well on TikTok?

Paid advertising doesn’t work quite as well on TikTok as it does on other social media platforms.

The average conversion rate (the percentage of customers that buy a product after clicking on an ad link) on paid TikTok ads is 1.1%, compared to between 5% and 7% on Facebook, and 1% and 3% on Instagram.

There are many reasons why this is the case. One is that each social media platform has a different algorithm for targeting ad content, and TikTok’s ad targeting algorithm isn’t as sophisticated as Meta’s (which runs Instagram and Facebook), a large company that’s amassed large amounts of data on its users over the years.

Another reason might be the nature of the TikTok platform, which favors authenticity and small creators over large creators and corporations. This means that TikTok users might be less amenable to overt advertisements since they don’t expect them on TikTok the same way they do on legacy social media platforms like Facebook.

Facebook has been running ads on its platform since the late naughties, and they’ve become part of the platform’s woodwork for most users. TikTok only began running ads in 2019. This means that seeing paid ads in between creator content is still a fairly new experience for the average TikTok user.

This could change in time, so we don’t recommend writing off paid TikTok advertising for good, just know that for now, affiliate marketing has a better success rate since it fits into what users want and expect to see on the platform.

2. How to Make Money on TikTok as a Content Creator

Content creators on TikTok can make money through TikTok’s commission-based influencer marketing program, TikTok Affiliate.

However, simply having a TikTok account and publishing videos isn’t enough to become a TikTok affiliate creator, you need to meet the following eligibility criteria:

• Be over 18 years old
• Have over 5,000 followers

What to do if you don’t meet the criteria to become an affiliate creator

If you’re over 18 but don’t yet have 5,000 or more followers, you’ll need to build up your following before you can start making money on TikTok.

While there’s no fool-proof way to become a successful content creator, there are a few good practice tips you can follow to boost your chances:

1. Know your niche and target audience: Although some creators can amass a large following on personality alone, most creators do so by producing content centered around a specific niche interest and audience. Finding your niche and sticking to it can help attract followers who are interested in the same thing as you, whether that be fashion, cleaning, books, or educational content.
2. Post regularly: According to TikTok, creators who post one to four times a day have a better chance of landing on the FYP (For You Page, what TikTok calls its video feed). That might seem like a lot, but remember that TikTok is a forgiving platform when it comes to the length and formatting of content. Videos don’t need to be very long or highly edited to do well, since TikTok users value brevity and authenticity.
3. Post at the right times: The best time to post on social media is different depending on the platform. For TikTok, it’s usually in the late afternoon, between 4 and 6 pm. Posting when your followers are active gets eyes on your videos early, increasing chances of engagement. You can also check when your niche followers are most active by going to the “Followers” tab on TikTok and scrolling down to “Follower Activity.”
4. Lean into trends: Don’t be afraid to participate in TikTok trends, whether it’s trending music, audio clips, or sketches. TikTok users like trends, so participating in one can increase the chances of your video being shared with more users. Just make sure you don’t start participating too late, when the trend is fading and users are over it.
5. Use the right hashtags: Hashtags in video captions serve an important function on TikTok. They file your content under a certain topic and help it appear on TikTok’s search results page when users look up the term. With TikTok becoming a popular search engine (à la Google), getting discovered on the TikTok search page by using the right hashtags can boost views and attract new followers.

Getting Sarted as an Affiliate Creator on TikTok Shop

If you meet the criteria to participate in TikTok’a affiliate creator program, here’s how to sign up:

1. Switch your account from a personal account to a business account (you can do this in “Settings”)
2. Choose a category that describes your account’s niche (e.g. electronics, clothing, makeup)
3. Add your email address and write a profile biography
4. Choose products to market by going to “Creator tools”, then “TikTok Shop for Creator”, then “Product Marketplace”, and from there add products to your TikTok Shop (they’ll appear in the TikTok Shop tag of your profile)
5. Make content promoting the products on your TikTok (create videos using the products you market, and mention to users that they can by them by going to the links in you TikTok Shop)

How Much Money Can Creators Make from Affiliate Marketing on TikTok Shop?

How much money a creator makes from affiliate marketing on TikTok Shop can vary massively. It depends on several factors, including:

• Viewer count: More views equals more opportunities for viewers to buy an item using the creator’s TikTok Shop link
• Commission rate and product price: Businesses set a commission rate for products sold by creator marketing, which can range from 1% to 50% of the product’s price. So, the more expensive the product, the more money a creator will earn by successfully getting viewers to buy it
• Creator notoriety: Popular creators with a large following can get higher commission rates from businesses since they’re deemed more likely to be successful marketers. And, higher commission rates equal higher payouts for creators
• Campaign success: How successful you are at getting viewers to buy the products you market will affect your earnings. Marketing videos with a high view count but no purchases made from them won’t earn you any money

You’ll find a plethora of videos on TikTok from creators claiming to have earned over $1,000 in a month from TikTok’s affiliate program, but even if that’s true for them, it’s not a guarantee that you’ll earn the same amount, especially when you first start out.

Our advice is to focus on building a relationship of trust with your viewers, rather than pumping out salesy content. TikTok users come to the platform for authentic experiences and reviews, not ads.