TikTok Shop is a way for app users to purchase directly from the platform. You can sell your products via in-feed videos, live streams, or having your own store.

And it’s huge: 50 percent of active TikTok users have already purchased from TikTok Shop, according to the latest Consumer Trends Survey.

The same research also found that TikTok Shop is already bigger than Shein, Sephora, and home shopping TV – with people spending $363 million on it in November 2023 (just a few months after its launch in the United States).

But, on the flip side, the average order value on TikTok Shop is a sparse $35. You also have to pay:

• Marketplace commission fees
• Creator commissions
• Transaction fee
  

This doesn’t even include the miscellaneous costs of running paid shopping ads (if you choose to), the cost of returns & packaging, and other business expenses that come with selling your products on a third-party platform. The sour cherry on top? TikTok is reportedly increasing its commission from 2% to 8% in 2025 😣

So, should you list your products on TikTok Shop? And more importantly, should you hire TikTok influencers as affiliates to sell your products? This article will help you clear all your doubts once and for all.

The TL;DR

👉 Products with low AOV perform the best on TikTok Shop. This is why certain product categories like beauty or clothing excel a lot more than other industries – like electronics – that sell higher-priced (or items requiring more consideration) products.

👉 Use apps like LTK or ShopMy if you want to sell more expensive products. These apps work best with a wide range of price points; TikTok Shop is better for prioritizing 1-2 hero products at a time.

👉 It’s best to use TikTok Shop as an addition to your influencer marketing strategy and/or affiliate program. It can propel the success you’re already seeing from your organic and paid TikTok efforts. Not to mention: TikTok Shop doesn’t let you own the customer relationship, which can be harmful from a long-term brand perspective. However, adding it is still beneficial because it can fuel brand awareness, even if it isn’t immediately profitable.

👉 TikTok is still building trust amongst consumers as a legitimate marketplace. A good website and social media presence (along with reviews & ratings) ensures you don’t appear sketchy to potential customers.

👉 Relying on TikTok’s recommended affiliates alone can limit the amount of influencer partners you have. Find TikTok influencers on your own too, using a tool like Modash.

Lower AOV product categories are best for TikTok Shop

Before I get into the in-depth pros and cons of TikTok Shop, here’s an important caveat: certain product categories experience outsized benefits via selling on TikTok Shop. These are usually products with a lower AOV; just look at the most popular products on the channel:

• NcmRyu sold 2M+ units of their shapewear
• More than 1.1 million sales of Unbrush hair brush
• 500K+ sales of the Shadow Work Journal
• 400K+ sales of MySmile whitening kit
  

Data agrees with this – industries like beauty & personal care and womenswear experience the highest GMV on TikTok Shop.

Julianne Kiider had similar opinions:

Lower AOV products (~$50 or less) perform best on TikTok Shop. From industry insights – gadgets, supplements, and beauty products tend to do well on TikTok Shop, while higher-consideration items perform better on DTC sites or Amazon.

Julianne Kiider Influencer Marketing Consultant

This can be because of multiple reasons, but here are the two most reasonable guesses:

1. TikTok encourages impulse buying behavior which is easier when the financial commitment isn’t huge or requires long-term consideration. People can trust or take a bet on influencers when they’re selling items like beauty or clothing versus when they’re selling high-ticket items like electronics or television.
   
2. TikTok Shop is still a relatively new marketplace so it doesn’t have the trust Amazon would have. It’s also in the marketing: Shein and Temu share the highest percentage of its customers with TikTok Shop – an underhanded suggestion that TikTok Shop is also the marketplace for fast fashion, apparel, and lower ticket items.

The pros of being on TikTok Shop

1: Virality can massively improve your sales

Virality is baked into the TikTok algorithm. And that can lead to a burst of sales at best and loads of brand awareness at worst. Impulse buying is common among TikTok users, and the ability to purchase directly via the app makes the process even more frictionless.

You can increase your chances of going viral by practicing influencer gifting at scale with affiliates on TikTok Shop. Julianne Kiider agrees:

TikTok Shop can be effective for discovery at scale by creating a ‘false virality’ through mass creator seeding and exposing your products to broader audiences.

Julianne Kiider Influencer Marketing Consultant

She also adds that TikTok prioritizes content with the TikTok Shop tag – which is especially beneficial for smaller creators:

TikTok Shop is highly advantageous for smaller creators since TikTok prioritizes TTS-tagged videos, making follower count less critical. Creators can earn significant commissions if their videos go viral.

Julianne Kiider Influencer Marketing Consultant

2: TikTok increases spillover to other marketplaces and your website

Being on TikTok Shop as another marketplace can increase your brand value. Customers might verify whether you’re a legitimate business by checking:

• Your brand’s website
• Your Amazon listings
• Discover other products you haven’t listed on TikTok Shop
  

In conclusion: TikTok Shop can serve as a great vehicle for brand awareness. Note this is especially true for high-ticket items – like electronics – where consumers might trust Amazon or your website more (for returns, shipping, replacement, and repairs).

Zain Ali, co-founder of Zainith Agency, says this massive brand awareness is often why many brands continue running TikTok Shops – even if it’s at breakeven prices or a slight loss. He explains with an example:

“Brands like Goli and Physician's Choice are running it at breakeven or even a small loss because the sales rank increase on Amazon and increased retail velocity makes it a no-brainer for them.”

Brock Mammoser, Chief Executive Buddy at Frost Buddy, did $5M on TikTok Shop in 2024 and said the same thing. He also added that in this spillover traffic, he doesn’t have to pay the affiliate commission.

⚠️ Note: TikTok Shop is great for brand awareness, but you can’t control the perception of your brand on it. Since the Shop is its own universe, you can’t curate the experience of your potential buyers in a way that fits your brand (more on that in the cons section).

The cons of being on TikTok Shop

1: Tight shipping timelines

TikTok wants to deliver the products purchased via its Shop yesterday. You’re required to ship your products within one working day (!!) from the order placement date. This can be too much to handle – especially if your product goes viral and you have an influx of orders coming in. The only solution here is the Scout motto to always be prepared 😬

You can only choose to have your own logistics service if you sell something that requires installation (like air conditioners) or special handling (like flowers) or is dangerous (like batteries or lighters).

2: Distance between the customer and the brand

TikTok Shop keeps the customer confined within TikTok's ecosystem. You can’t take them to your website or encourage them to sign up for your email list – unless they willingly choose it. As Julianne rightly puts it:

Conversions through TikTok Shop distance the brand from the customer, making it harder to bring them into your CRM with a full customer profile and own the customer relationship.

Julianne Kiider Influencer Marketing Consultant

Another small business seller on TikTok Shop also highlighted that you can’t be your customers’ first touchpoint if they face an issue with your products. TikTok first makes your customers suffer via an AI-powered customer support chat (groan). This can additionally hamper the customer experience.

TikTok Shop vs. every other affiliate platform

How does TikTok Shop compare with LTK or ShopMy? Or even your own native affiliate program?

⚡Before we begin, it’s important to note that TikTok is integrating with LTK. It’s rolled out for select creators as of writing this article but will extend to everyone soon enough. The result? The LTK and TikTok Shop experience will soon fuse, spilling the trust people have in LTK on TikTok Shop.

For starters, a creator can use their LTK link across their social media accounts, newsletters, and websites. TikTok Shop doesn’t provide a trackable link or means to measure influencer performance outside of its own platform.

Secondly, transactions on LTK and ShopMy still redirect consumers to your brand’s website. This means you have a large degree of control over the customer experience and buyer relationship compared to TikTok Shop.

Julianne also highlights that these TikTok Shop alternatives can drive a higher AOV since it’s friendlier for expensive products:

LTK and ShopMy can drive higher AOV and CVR when trusted creators promote higher-tier products. These platforms attract users who are actively seeking product recommendations from trusted influencers they follow. This, coupled with the ability to visit the brand’s website from their product tags for further validation, makes them more suited for high-ticket purchases.

Julianne Kiider Influencer Marketing Consultant

LTK is also easier to set up. You need just your logo, store image & description, and social handles to launch. In comparison, setting up your TikTok Shop can be a time-consuming learning curve – especially if you have a large portfolio and complex shipping operations. (Setting up a TikTok Shop is easier for brands with a singular product SKU and distribution location.)

If you run your affiliate program on your own website (or use a third-party app), the biggest benefit you get is control over the buyer’s experience. You can decide which affiliates to onboard, how to set up tracking influencer impact, and exactly how much to invest in the program.

By using TikTok Shop, you get the benefits of their vast user base and algorithm but let go of monitoring influencer performance on your own terms and owning the customer relationship. It’s also worth noting that you can’t sell various prohibited products on TikTok Shop, such as alcohol-related items or adult products.

Do consumers trust TikTok Shop?

90% of customers who have purchased something from TikTok said they’d make another purchase from the platform. But don’t be mistaken: they still spend way more on competitor marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, and Target.

Those who don’t buy from TikTok Shop cite the following reasons, among many others, almost all conveying a lack of trust:

• They don’t see the products they want
• They don’t trust the quality of the products
• They don’t trust TikTok with their financial information
  

Most TikTok users on Reddit said they check the legitimacy of a TikTok Shop by verifying if the seller is a real company (via the brand website), checking the ratings, and reading the reviews. This ensures they don’t get scammed into buying cheaply made products or hand their hard-earned money to shady dropshipping businesses.

Have a TikTok profile with some organic marketing, a social media presence on other platforms, and a website to avoid appearing sketchy when you sell your products via TikTok Shop. It also helps if you choose trustworthy affiliates to borrow their seal of approval for your brand.

Matchmaking vs. other methods of influencer discovery

TikTok Shop lets you discover new affiliates on their platform by turning on your “Open Collaboration” settings. This will allow influencers to see your products and request a sample so they can promote it as an affiliate.

You can customize a lot here – like which product listings you want to display under open collaboration and whether or not you want product samples to be refundable.

TikTok also provides a Creator Card to show past influencer performance, audience demographics, etc.

Image Source

Now, there are obvious benefits to this matchmaking service: you discover new, relevant affiliates for your product on TikTok + they can reach out to you (or you can invite them). Not to mention: TikTok handles the payouts so you never have to worry about paying creators on time.

But there are downsides, too:

1. You don’t get access to all the creators on TikTok Shop. Your access is limited to your store’s tier – the highest tier gets the best creators. TikTok categorizes its Shops into tiers based on GMV, quality store, etc. You might not find your best creator matches if your TikTok Shop is on the mid or low tier.

2. You can’t form authentic influencer relationships with your affiliates since most communication is done via the TikTok Shop – which can feel transactional. Like with your customers, it’s hard to own these creator relationships and extend them for the long-term.

3. You can manually approve whether or not an influencer should become your affiliate. But you need to vet creators beyond the TikTok creator card to determine whether or not an affiliate is a brand fit.

Julianne says it can be more work to vet influencers discovered via matchmaking:

Creator quality [on TikTok Shop] can be inconsistent and may not align with high-brand standards, leading to more vetting work.

Julianne Kiider Influencer Marketing Consultant

It’s best to pair your influencer discovery with other platforms like Modash. You can filter for exactly the kind of affiliates you need, own your relationship with them, and ask them to become your TikTok affiliates.

Get a free trial today. No credit card required.

Use TikTok Shop as an add-on to your influencer marketing strategy

TikTok Shop is a great addition to your influencer marketing strategy because of its unique marketplace and affiliate model paired with a social media app. It’s one of a kind! The brand awareness benefits alone can make the process worthwhile.

That said, TikTok Shop has its faults, too. It isn’t in the Amazon league yet in terms of money spent or trustworthiness (although it’s slowly climbing). It also puts a wall between you and the consumer since it wants to keep users inside TikTok. This is also why lower AOV items perform better on TikTok Shop: consumers don’t see your website or get a brand experience > their trust is shaky > they buy only low-risk, low-value items.

The best way to use TikTok Shop is to pair it with a wholesome influencer marketing strategy that includes other types of creator collaborations (and maybe even other social media channels). Modash can help you find relevant influencers, track your outreach efforts, and maintain your strategy in a single window. Get a 14-day free trial and play around with the tool for yourself.