595: How To Launch A 75k/month Tiktok Shop With 0 Followers

Summary

Episode Summary: Episode 595 – How To Launch A $75k/Month TikTok Shop With 0 Followers

Release Date: June 24, 2025
Host: Steve Chou
Guest: Ian Page, Founder of Bullseye Sellers
Podcast: The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast With Steve Chou
Episode Title: How To Launch A $75k/Month TikTok Shop With 0 Followers

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1. Introduction to TikTok Shop Success

In Episode 595, Steve Chou welcomes Ian Page, the founder of Bullseye Sellers, to discuss the burgeoning opportunities within the TikTok Shop platform. With TikTok Shop projected to achieve a Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) of over $50 billion in the current year and boasting a conversion rate four and a half times higher than traditional social media platforms, the conversation delves into how everyday individuals can establish lucrative businesses on TikTok without an existing follower base or substantial advertising budgets.

[00:00] Steve Chou: "We’re going to break down exactly how this is happening, why it's working right now, and what it takes to launch successfully without a big audience or ad budget."

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2. Ian Page’s Journey into E-commerce and TikTok Shop

Ian shares his entrepreneurial journey, which began in 2015 with selling a back brace on Amazon. Despite initial skepticism towards the course he invested in, Ian's product customization and timely market entry led to impressive sales, eventually resulting in a successful exit by selling his brand in 2017.

[02:02] Ian Page: "I did some custom designing on it because when it came from China, I was, like, kind of unhappy with it. It felt uncomfortable...and it took off, selling like 100, 200 units a day."

Transitioning from Amazon consulting to founding Bullseye Sellers around 2018-2019, Ian identified the potential in TikTok Shop during the 2020 Prosper event, leading his agency to become an official TikTok Shop Partner (TSP).

[04:46] Ian Page: "TikTok Shop is hot... and it's exploding with an expected GMV of over $50 billion this year."

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3. Building a TikTok Shop from Scratch

Ian discusses the initial challenges faced when launching on TikTok Shop, including multiple rejections and the arduous six-month learning curve. However, perseverance paid off when Bullseye Sellers secured their first sale in October, which snowballed into a $75,000 monthly revenue stream by April.

[08:46] Ian Page: "That's like the definition of a catch-22... it's the only way to get sales and build social proof."

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4. Strategic Positioning: When to Integrate TikTok Shop

Highlighting the importance of financial readiness, Ian advises brands with annual revenues below six figures on Amazon to avoid overextending resources by attempting to manage multiple platforms simultaneously.

[09:36] Ian Page: "If you're a quarter million dollar seller on Amazon, I wouldn't spend half your time trying to crack TikTok. I think you'll go broke."

He recommends integrating TikTok Shop into the sales strategy primarily for brands exceeding seven figures on Amazon, ensuring they have the capital to support additional investments in sampling and advertising.

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5. Maximizing TikTok Shop’s Halo Effect

Ian explains the concept of the "halo effect," where TikTok Shop drives substantial traffic and sales not only on its platform but also boosts the brand’s visibility and sales on Amazon and direct-to-consumer (D2C) websites.

[12:05] Ian Page: "The eczema skincare brand is seeing success that they've never seen before. Their listing on Amazon for the same product is 3x from when we started."

This synergy enhances overall e-commerce performance, making TikTok Shop a pivotal component of a comprehensive sales strategy.

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6. Product Selection Criteria for TikTok Shop

Success on TikTok Shop hinges on selecting brand-focused, high Lifetime Value (LTV) consumable products. Ian emphasizes the importance of cohesive branding and consistent product lines to ensure easy identification and customer loyalty.

[14:47] Ian Page: "I want brand focused products... it's very easy for the consumer that's watching the video to be like, oh yeah, brand, blah charger."

He further categorizes suitable products into consumables like supplements and skincare, which can better absorb the costs associated with affiliate commissions and advertising.

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7. Managing Affiliates and Scaling Efforts

Bullseye Sellers employs a strategic approach to affiliate management, leveraging automated software to reach out to thousands of potential creators weekly. By sending samples and incentivizing reviews with clear FTC-compliant disclosures, Ian ensures both scalability and compliance.

[23:40] Steve Chou: "I'm like, wow, you mean 80% of the people that receive a product actually do at least one video?"

[25:04] Ian Page: "All right, so we're just gonna see if the video can get a little bit of little action. One sale, you see?"

This method allows for consistent content generation and gradual scaling, with a focus on maintaining high engagement rates among affiliates.

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8. Overcoming Challenges and Ensuring Profitability

Ian candidly discusses the financial realities of TikTok Shop, noting that while direct sales may offer modest profits, the overarching halo effect significantly boosts overall revenue. Achieving profitability typically requires a six-month investment period, during which brands must be prepared to absorb initial losses to capitalize on long-term gains.

[21:09] Ian Page: "Six months. And the reason being... You can be profitable in six months if you have the right agency partner."

He also addresses potential pitfalls, such as the risk of affiliates making unfounded claims about products, and underscores the importance of strict guidelines and compliance to mitigate such risks.

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9. Services Offered by Bullseye Sellers

Bullseye Sellers provides comprehensive TikTok Shop launch and management services, encompassing shop setup, affiliate recruitment, sample distribution, and ongoing optimization. Clients are expected to maintain product inventory and collaborate on budget adjustments while Bullseye handles the intensive affiliate and advertising processes.

[52:09] Ian Page: "Stay in stock... and when we slack you a request for increased budgets, please respond."

Their transparent pricing structure includes a $4,000 retainer for services, with additional costs allocated to product sampling and advertising, ensuring clients are fully informed of their investment.

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10. Final Thoughts and Next Steps

Ian encourages interested brands to engage with Bullseye Sellers by first educating themselves through available webinars before initiating consultations. This thorough vetting ensures that only committed and suitable brands enter the TikTok Shop ecosystem, fostering long-term partnerships and sustained growth.

[53:17] Ian Page: "If you're ready for that TikTok investment... you can find [e-mail] and book a call."

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Notable Quotes:

• Steve Chou [00:00]: "If you've ever felt overwhelmed by all the noise online or unsure where to start, this episode is a step by step behind the scenes look at a strategy that's actually working right now."

• Ian Page [02:07]: "I bought the course... and it took off."

• Ian Page [08:46]: "TikTok is hot... and it's exploding with an expected GMV of over $50 billion this year."

• Ian Page [21:09]: "Six months. And the reason being... You can be profitable in six months if you have the right agency partner."

• Ian Page [53:17]: "If you're ready for that TikTok investment... you can find [e-mail] and book a call."

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Conclusion

Episode 595 offers a comprehensive exploration of launching and scaling a TikTok Shop from scratch. Ian Page's insights reveal the strategic nuances and operational tactics essential for e-commerce success on this dynamic platform. For brands poised to expand their digital footprint, this episode serves as an invaluable guide to navigating the TikTok Shop landscape effectively.

For more resources and to start your e-commerce journey, visit mwyquiterjob.com and explore additional content at bullseyesellers.com.

Transcript

[Steve Chou]

Welcome to the podcast, the show where I cover all the latest strategies and current events related to E commerce and online business. Now, in this episode, Ian from Bullseye Sellers and I dived deep into how Regular people with zero followers are building $75,000 a month businesses on Tiktop Shop. We'll break down exactly how this is happening, why it's working right now, and what it takes to launch successfully without a big audience or ad budget. So if you've ever felt overwhelmed by all the noise online or unsure where to start, this episode is a step by step behind the scenes look at a strategy that's actually working right now. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that session recordings for Seller Summit 2025 are now available [e-mail] if you missed the event, you can now get instant access to every keynote, workshop and panel. Now onto the show. Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Today I am thrilled to have Ian Page on the show. And Ian is the founder of Bullseye Sellers, where he helps e commerce sellers launch on the TikTok shop platform. And right now, TikTok Shop is hot. It ex. It's exploding with an expected GMV of over $50 billion this year and it does convert four and a half times higher than traditional social media. So in this episode we are going to break down Ian strategies on how to successfully launch your brand on TikTok. What it takes, what products work well on the platform. And with that, welcome to show Ian. How are you doing today, man?

[Ian Page]

Thank you for having me, Steve. I'm doing well. I'm in beautiful Pennsylvania. Where are you?

[Steve Chou]

I am in California where the weather is perfect. I think I'm going to go for a run right after this.

[Ian Page]

I have the same thing. It's like 75 degrees and sunny outside. So maybe I'll go for a run with you.

[Steve Chou]

So, Ian, many of the listeners, I know you were at Seller Summit, but many of my listeners probably do not know who you are. So I want to know how you got started in E commerce and how did you end specializing in TikTok shop in particular?

[Ian Page]

It all started with a back brace in 2015. A back brace.

[Steve Chou]

A back brace. Okay.

[Ian Page]

Yeah, yeah. So I did ASM5. For those who don't know. It's amazing selling machine. I know. You know, Steve. Yep. And it was one of those. It felt like a multi level marketing scam because all my friends were trying to get a commission off me and sell me the course and it was like overpriced and I was like, I don't know about this, but, you know, I had that entrepreneurial itch. And I had a day job and pretty much in a cubicle and kind of that nine to five lifestyle. And I just wanted to get out of that. Wow. That was 10 years ago. And I bought the course. I just gave in. I was like, all right, screw it. I'm just gonna give it a try. I'm gonna learn Amazon. And the course, after completing it, led me to a clavicle support brace. You know how you pick your first product?

[Steve Chou]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ian Page]

And I did some custom designing on it because when it. When it came from China, I was, like, kind of unhappy with it. It felt uncomfortable. So I actually, like, did a bunch of custom designing on it with the manufacturer, and it took off. The clavicle support launched selling like 100, 200 units a day. And I was like, man, this is easy later to find out. It's not that easy for everybody. But I got lucky. I had the right product at the right time. And I actually had a really early exit, because what happened was I had a competitor that reached out to me that was a little annoyed at my presence and made me an offer, and I actually sold the brand, which at that point had a few SKUs in 2017. So I wasn't actually in the E commerce space personally for too long. I had immediate success and a quick exit. And then what happened in 2017, 2018? A lot of my friends were asking me for advice. So, you know, that's just so common in the E commerce space of, like, you know, you know, a guy who knows a guy and he's in. They stumble over each other to get your phone number and ask Ian, because Ian is an E commerce expert or whatever they think I am, which I really wasn't. I just knew a couple things. So I started doing a lot of, like, free consulting to friends. And then one thing led to another, and I was like, maybe I could charge for this. You know, maybe I should just sell my time. So I started selling hourly packages of consulting. And then one thing led to another, and I was like, I can't scale this. Like, I can't scale my own hours in the day. That's not possible. So I think maybe I should, like, start an agency and see what happens. That was 2018, 2019. Bullseye sellers was born. So that's where Bullseye came from, really, Is all. Came from a back brace.

[Steve Chou]

How did that lead to TikTok?

[Ian Page]

Yeah. So the way that led to TikTok was in 2020. God, it was only last year. I was looking for an old number and it was only last year. Last year we went to Prosper. My agency staff and I, I think there, I think eight of us went from Bullseye and TikTok shop had a big booth there at Prosper. And it was the coolest booth at Prosper. I mean, it was like line out the door, people trying to talk to TikTok. And I already knew there was a TikTok shop. I already knew viral on TikTok was always a thing and everyone wanted to go viral, but I didn't really know like the weeds of it, like, what does it take? So I met with TikTok shop and the first thing they said is, you have to become a TSP. I was like, what is a TSP? They're like, it's TikTok shop partner. You have to become a TSP and before you can really do anything, once you're a tsp, you can, you're in. And I was like, okay. So I applied and supposedly it was really hard to become tsp. I didn't know because I had a lot of peers that were like, still waiting for their approval. And I got approved within a month.

[Steve Chou]

Nice.

[Ian Page]

And then I was like, what do we do now? You know what I mean? Like, you know, I'm a TSP. I'm an official TikTok shop partner, but I don't know TikTok at all. And what do I do with this new found, you know, license as a partner? And so here's what we did. We basically called all of our existing Amazon clients, I had all my, all my account managers literally reach out to every single one and say, hey, we will manage your TikTok shop for free commission only because we need to learn how to do this. And we already manage your Amazon. We have asset, we have all your assets. We already have this communication and this connection. Can I, for 8% of your sales on TikTok, represent your account? And of course everyone was like, sure. Because they were like, sales, it's free sales. Like if you guys can get it and we give you 8% and there's no retainer, we'll take it. So we did that from right when I got back from Prosper last year and I got that TSP official whatever, which ended up not really helping me in the first year. It's helping me now. And we, we got about 12 of our clients on TikTok and it was a nightmare. It was an absolute nightmare. Okay, We. We got rejected like, 15 times and documents never worked. And it was like driver's licenses were rejected. We just couldn't get a break. It took six months from March to October to actually learn how to get someone on TikTok shop in a reasonable amount of time. So I'm so glad I didn't charge a retainer. It would have been such a nightmare. My churn would have been terrible. So I was, like, so happy. I was like, there's no pressure. It's commission only. Just figure it out, you know? And then in October, we made our first sale. Literally, it was like, middle of October. We had a skincare client, and they're now my number one client on TikTok, actually, and they sell an eczema product. And we got our first sale on TikTok through an affiliate video. And we were like, oh, my God, we are TikTok shop experts. Like, literally right at that point, I was like, yeah, man, I'm an expert. And then October led into the holiday season, and that same brand did like 10 GS in December, and it was like, wow, like, this is something we can scale. That Same brand did 25 GS in January. This year they did 35 or maybe 38 in February. They broke 50 GS in March. They broke 75 GS in April. And right now they're hovering at that 75 mark. So they're my biggest brand that we.

[Steve Chou]

Started from $0 without a TikTok presence, I would imagine.

[Ian Page]

Literally from the first sale, they actually. They were banned on TikTok. They handed us over the account. They're like. We actually banned ourselves because we didn't know what we were doing, just getting it approved. So they were like, negative, you know.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Ian Page]

So, yeah, that's the journey of TikTok. It's not this, like. It's not this, like, beautiful, romantic story. It's like us just, like, knocking our heads against the wall for six months and figuring it out. And I think that's what a lot of people are still doing. And that's why I. There's a. There's a. A big industry here now in the agency space, managing Tik Tok shops.

[Steve Chou]

There aren't too many of you guys out there just yet. Maybe it's because it's the wild, wild west so far, but it's the wild west. Yeah. I am interested in seeing what you had to say about it. Now, I know Amazon's been squeezing sellers and buyers more than ever before, and a lot of sellers are looking for alternative platforms and marketplaces to sell. So in your mind, if you're already selling on Amazon in your own store, where does TikTok shop fall in the overall strategy and the priorities of selling to you?

[Ian Page]

To me, it's about timing and what that means is where you're at financially. Because I don't believe that a brand should stretch themselves too thin when they're in the startup phase. And I would call that in the six figure a year phase. Okay, so if you're a quarter million dollar seller on Amazon, I wouldn't spend half your time trying to crack TikTok. I think you'll go broke, I really do, because you're not getting enough profit from your quarter million to also seed samples to also pay for maybe expensive early ads on TikTok. And I think you're going to stretch yourself too thin with your inventory and you're not going to succeed on either platform.

[Steve Chou]

Okay, so what is the range that you recommend then?

[Ian Page]

7 figures on Amazon and it's very rare that we don't take a client that's not seven figures. The only times I won't take a client that's under seven figures on Amazon is if they already have other brands or they, I just know that they're capital infused and they can support the TikTok journey. If they're not and they're bootstrapping the hell out of it, I wouldn't recommend anybody hire an agency to do TikTok. And I say the same thing with meta, Steve. Like I, I don't, I don't believe that a new seller should be like dabbling in meta, dabbling in Google Ads, Dab. You know, I just feel like people get overly excited about all these different places that they can sell their products and they're masters of none. Really at that early, at that early stage.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. Just pick one medium, master it and then move on to the next one.

[Ian Page]

Make your money, pull your money, put it into other places once you're ready.

[Steve Chou]

So, so what I would like to do first is to get people excited about TikTok. Tell me about some of the big wins. You already mentioned that Eczema skincare company. What are the expectations here on the growth that you should see?

[Ian Page]

Well, let me go back to that because that, that eczema skincare company, when I say 75,000amonth on TikTok, it might sound like it's not a lot, but what it really is is 5 to 8 million impressions a month that's what they're averaging. Wow. Okay. So 5 to 8 million impressions a month going to your Amazon store. And the reason I say going to your Amazon store is we found that 50 to 70% of people with intent to buy on TikTok will actually prefer buying on Amazon. So they'll get Inspired by a TikTok video, they'll search the product on Amazon and they'd rather prime it and get it the same day. Okay. And I'm sure most of our listeners here, you're going to agree, if you find something on TikTok, what's more convenient than buying that same product on Amazon?

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Ian Page]

So that eczema skincare brand is seeing success that they've never seen before. Their. Their listing on Amazon for the Same product is 3x from when we started.

[Steve Chou]

Wow.

[Ian Page]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Ian Page]

And it was actually kind of a dying brand. This was a brand friend of mine that for the last two years was just losing market share every single year slowly to more competitors. Their cost per clicks were basically. They were like being bid out cause they couldn't afford those costs per clicks. So they were in that situation where just slowly losing market share on Amazon. And then we reversed that with this TikTok strategy.

[Steve Chou]

So there's a halo effect on Amazon. What about their store? Did it have a halo effect as well?

[Ian Page]

Yeah, yeah. Their D2C saw a 25% increase. What we surveyed is 11%, which I think is probably more accurate. So let's say a hundred people see your video on TikTok and they all want to buy what we've surveyed. To our audience. We have a huge shopper network that we surveyed regular people and we said, where would you go? 11% said, I'll go to the website, 62% said, I'll go to Amazon. And the other, what, 30%, 28% or whatever that number is said, I'll just buy it on TikTok. So we are seeing that spillover on their website and on Amazon and their overall lift on E commerce is way up because of that 75 grand off TikTok. So that's the bigger reason why you do TikTok.

[Steve Chou]

So of those sales on TikTok, because I know you had to give away a commission and then there's fees and whatnot. Is the TikTok sales itself profitable or are you mainly relying on the halo effect for this whole operation to be.

[Ian Page]

Profitable overall, barely profitable. They're, I think, I think their, their profit now is about 10,000amonth.

[Steve Chou]

Okay, so 10,000 on 75,000 in sales.

[Ian Page]

Yeah. So that would not be a great, you know, contribution margin on with Amazon.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Ian Page]

If someone's doing that.

[Steve Chou]

And so when you're measuring the halo effect here, you would just kind of extrapolate out the sales that you would normally get and everything else. You would. I assume this brand isn't doing anything else. Right. Except for Tick tock shop. Okay.

[Ian Page]

That's it. It's all we're doing.

[Steve Chou]

Nice.

[Ian Page]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Ian Page]

They even, they even chilled out on their Google Ads and they actually like have, you know, taken some of their Amazon PPC budget, Google budget and they've given it to us.

[Steve Chou]

So I do know since I'm on TikTok, there are certain things that work better than others. And I just want to, I want you to just tell the audience here what products work. Well, I know you have a screening process involved with the products. Can you kind of describe what that is?

[Ian Page]

I want brand focused products. So what that means is like, let's just take, you know, any old product like this, you know, this charger here, this is not a brand, this is a charger.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Ian Page]

Okay. So if someone, even if it's a cool charger, if someone watched a video and this was like a unique charger, but it wasn't really brand focused, like didn't have like the branding all over it. The box wasn't heavily branded. What's gonna happen is people are gonna watch the video and 60, 70% are gonna go off TikTok's platform and they're gonna have a difficult time finding you and identifying you versus the other competitors on Amazon. That's gonna be like a Swiss cheese situation where you're basically just paying to get sales for everyone else and maybe you get a little bit. I don't want that. So what I would rather have is brand focused products where it's very easy for the consumer that's watching the video to be like, oh yeah, brand, blah charger. And they only go to your listing. So that's the first thing that we filter out when we're talking to people because we talk to a lot of Amazon sellers who just sell stuff.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Ian Page]

I don't really want people that just sell stuff. I want people who are building a brand.

[Steve Chou]

So what is your definition of brand here? I mean, you mentioned having a box and you know, with your, I mean, that's like par for the course today. Right. So what, what, what else are you looking at?

[Ian Page]

Yeah, I'm looking at a shop with consistent products, not just a bunch of products that you sell because they have.

[Steve Chou]

So much volume that all fall under like the same niche and they're okay. It's trying to build a portfolio. Okay, got it. Okay.

[Ian Page]

That's right.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Ian Page]

Yeah. So that's number one and then number two. And this doesn't disqualify you, but this just highlights the, the type of client that does better. Is a high LTV consumable for sure. So if, if, you know, if you have a supplement brand, a skincare brand, a hair care brand, something like that, you can absorb those costs. You know, for the affiliate commission, the TikTok commission, the ads, all that are much easier for you to absorb because you get the repeat customer and you know that your LTV is, let's say it's 15% of sales is going to result in two more orders or whatever that metric is. So that's, that's number two. It doesn't disqualify you, but I would definitely say if you are in that category, you're already on, you're already like on my radar. Is a great prospect for TikTok.

[Steve Chou]

Do you have an example of a product that is not a consumable. That's one of your clients that has found success?

[Ian Page]

Yeah, we have a toy brand that sells bath toys for kids. Light up bath toys, little squeaky bath toys. They have this great product that's like a mold free because it doesn't have that little hole in it.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Ian Page]

So it's like a mold free light up little squeaky bath toys. We had a viral video back in April that just went nuclear and they completely sold out on Amazon and the ROAS was awesome. I think their cost per order was like a buck fifty for like a dollar twelve product. So they were like thrilled and they didn't care that it wasn't a repeat customer because it was a profitable sale every single time for that product. So. And they were very well branded. Again, that's one of those things where a squeaky bath toy could easily just be a product but they definitely have a good brand and they really made it branded so people could, could find them on Amazon and do they have.

[Steve Chou]

Cross sells for other stuff related to bath products or whatever that they're taking advantage of or is it just that.

[Ian Page]

Main product mainly because, you know, I'm sure they do because they have other fun bath products. But we definitely on TikTok shop saw that two of their products were really just getting 90% of the sales.

[Steve Chou]

Got it.

[Ian Page]

Because on TikTok people are pretty impulse buy, right? Like they're, they're not, they're not hunting, they're sitting on the couch and they're being hunted for. You know, it's the reverse. Right, Right. So they're just going, oh, that's fun. I think my little toddler is gonna love that. I'm gonna buy it. And maybe three months down the line if you're lucky, they might think, what was that brand I bought the bath toys from? Cause I want to get something else. So it's a little bit. A little bit. I personally think that their memory on TikTok is going to be not quite as loyal to a brand as it would on Amazon because they're being hunted in the initial sale.

[Steve Chou]

Okay, I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of if you are interested in starting your own online store. I, I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in E commerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be [e-mail] free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I'll send you the course right away. Once again, that's mywifequitterjob.com free. Now back to the show.

[Ian Page]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Okay, so consumables is a plus. What else do you look for?

[Ian Page]

So obviously I look for someone who can afford TikTok. I like to say 8 to 10k a month.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Ian Page]

And that, and that would include my retainer. And so if you're doing it yourself, I would say 6 to 7k a month. Because if you can't afford 6 to 7k a month for 6 months, knowing that like I literally mean like that money is going away. So you are investing 6 to 7k for six months. So that'd be like what, $42,000, $45,000 if you can handle that. And you're, it's almost like don't invest money in the stock market that you're not willing to lose that same concept.

[Steve Chou]

Sure.

[Ian Page]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Ian Page]

We're going to be much more successful because you're not going to squirm or the moment we get a 1.2 ROAS or the moment something doesn't go right. So I would say if you're doing yourself 6 to 7k, that would include the cost for you to sample your products out. That would include the Commissions to the affiliates. And if you are including an agency, I would go up to 10 to 12k because I would also pay for the agency as well.

[Steve Chou]

What is the time frame that you would expect to get a better roas? I can understand burning cash in like the first X number of months.

[Ian Page]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

What is the expectation?

[Ian Page]

Six months.

[Steve Chou]

Six months. Okay.

[Ian Page]

And the reason being, and I say that more of like you can expect to be at a profit in six months if you have the right agency partner.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Ian Page]

I see guys doing it themselves that are eight months in and they're still losing money. So I'd say if you have someone that knows their stuff, you can be profitable in six months.

[Steve Chou]

Okay. So the expectation here is be willing to lose, let's say 10k a month for six months, $60,000 investment. This is no different than meta ads, for example. In the beginning, you're just panning for gold, right? You're gonna lose money in the beginning.

[Ian Page]

Yep.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Ian Page]

And a big part of it's the sampling. Okay. So we just did a webinar with Mary Ruth the CRO. His name is Jay Hunter. I recommend checking that on my, on my YouTube. I'll shout out to my YouTube, just Twitch, type in Bullseye Sellers. You'll find it. It's a great webinar because they're doing. They're projected to do 70 million this year on TikTok. So they're in the top 10. They're like, in that. They're, they're hanging out with TikTok corporate at the office. They're at that level. So. But they started at zero. January 2024, they were at zero dollars. So within only 16 months, from zero to 70 million on a year is insane.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Ian Page]

They told me that the reason why people fail. This is what Jay said. The reason why most people fail on TikTok is they just don't continue long enough. They, they squirm, they send out a hundred samples, some videos come back, the videos suck. This is what happens. Right. And they, they put a little ad dollars behind the videos. They spend 500 bucks, they get no sales and they're like, Screw TikTok. I'm just going to go back to Amazon.

[Steve Chou]

I think that can be said about any content platform, Right. If you, you start a YouTube channel, you got to keep with it for at least a year. Same with anything, right?

[Ian Page]

That's true. So that's true. And it's no different on TikTok. So what, what Jay said is their sampling. They really ratcheted up their sampling and they just got less picky about who they, you know, sent them out to. I asked Jay point blank on the call. I was like, you guys are the big dogs. Who are you sampling? Just, you know, are you looking for those Kylie Jenner influencers? Are you sampling plain old mom and pop affiliates? And he's like, if they have an 80% post rate, meaning for each sample they receive, they post 80% of the time a video or higher, I will send them a sample. I don't care about their GMV history. I don't care anything else.

[Steve Chou]

I'm like, wow, you mean 80% of the people that receive a product actually do at least one video? Is that what you mean?

[Ian Page]

The, the post rate is a metric on TikTok for the affiliate. Okay, so that'd be. I received 100 products and samples this month and I did videos on at least 80 of them.

[Steve Chou]

Ah, okay. Basically you're measuring whether they're going to take action at all.

[Ian Page]

That's exactly right.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Ian Page]

So he said, if they have an 80% or higher, I don't care about their GMV, which is their sales metrics, I will send them a sample.

[Steve Chou]

Interesting. Okay.

[Ian Page]

And they're huge. So the point is, is they're not getting pickier, they're getting less picky as time goes on.

[Steve Chou]

I mean, I've noticed tick tockers make a ton of money when they have, like, hardly any subs. There's been a lot of case studies on that. So maybe that's why the theory, like, it's panning for gold. Right. It's like playing the lottery in a way.

[Ian Page]

And he knows that. He knows his cogs, so he knows that he's sending out a sample to get 300 impressions. Like, he knows that and that's what he's factoring in. I'm getting 300 impressions.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Ian Page]

Okay. If I get more than that, that's a bonus. And if I can get a spark ad and turn that 300 impressions into a monetized sponsored ad, and it does, well, great. That's a bonus too. But he just factors in. Cog sample out equals 300 impressions.

[Steve Chou]

Let me ask you this, and I'm sure you don't know his numbers, but of those 300 impressions, what would the expected conversion rate be? Or just a ballpark, what would you expect to be a good conversion rate on that?

[Ian Page]

Yeah, I don't know those numbers, but.

[Steve Chou]

I mean, is it higher than Amazon or is it much lower? I would imagine it's lower, right?

[Ian Page]

Yeah, it's. It's Definitely lower. Because it's not. It's not.

[Steve Chou]

It's not purchase.

[Ian Page]

It's not bottom of funnel. Exactly. Yeah, no, it's not. But what happens is, and what Jay was saying on the call is if you do that enough times, you appear to be everywhere and the average person starts to see your videos that. That eight to 10 times, which is what they need to see in order to be like, okay, I'm going to buy the product. And you have that apparency of just being everywhere.

[Steve Chou]

Got it. Okay. That's like alex hamose strategy.

[Ian Page]

100%.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Ian Page]

And you can't be everywhere on Amazon. You can't.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Ian Page]

The platform doesn't allow you to be everywhere. You're only with intent. That's it. And the other downfall of the Amazon strategy is you are as good as your competitor to your left and to your right. If you're a little bit more expensive and you don't have enough differentiation, you're losing. If you're a little bit cheaper but your reviews aren't as good, you might still be losing. So you're only as good as the guy to your left and to your right, or. And if it's mobile above you or below you. So with TikTok, you don't have to worry about your competitors. There are no competitors. It's just between you and the. And the person watching your video at that moment in time.

[Steve Chou]

Okay, got it. All right, so now, now that at least I have a better idea of how this all works, what is the process that you guys take to take a brand with zero TikTok presence and then grow it to, I guess, break even within six months?

[Ian Page]

Yeah, I like to say 50k within six months. That's what we always do.

[Steve Chou]

Okay, sure.

[Ian Page]

50K a month in six months. So the first thing is we have to cut out the shop setup time. We've gotten that down to under a week.

[Steve Chou]

Wow. Okay.

[Ian Page]

Yeah. Because if we spin our wheels on that, time is money. That's an upset client. We don't want that. So we got it down to under a week, unless you're in a really tough category like weight loss or something. And if there's FDA approvals, it might go to 10 days, but for most products it's under a week. And then right after that, we're using our sister company, Sellico, to basically do giveaways. So we're actually in the giveaway business Too now, because TikTok is aware that there's this cold start period where they don't allow you to do much. So it's kind of a catch 22. Cause as soon as your shop is live, they're like, good. You can only outreach to 2,000 people a week on the affiliate network and you have no sales. So those 2,000 people are probably going to ghost you.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Ian Page]

You have no reviews. So the consumer is not going to buy any of your products. And we're going to limit the amount of people that you're allowed to talk to because you haven't made any sales and you haven't proven yourself. So it's kind of an impossible situation. So the way we get out of that is we have our own shopper network that we created with the seller Sellico and we basically just pay for our own gmv. So we say we tell our clients up front, you're gonna give away a couple hundred units and you're gonna. Basically we're gonna pay up front for those units, full retail price. And then we're gonna send shoppers to your shop and they're gonna really make a purchase, check out, the product's gonna be shipped. That's gonna increase your shop score. It's gonna show TikTok that you're making sales and then we're gonna ask them to write reviews. Okay. So that's the first 30 days. Usually.

[Steve Chou]

This is like old school Amazon, dude.

[Ian Page]

It's right back to where it was. And I was so nervous about doing this because Amazon's been so hard on this. And then I talked to guys at TikTok corporate and they love it. They love it so much that we're in the TikTok Lark channel, which is like TikTok Slack. So we can actually talk to people at TikTok. We love it so much that they're like tagging my name and tagging other people's names and saying, hey, can you show this seller your. Your cold start solution? Because they constantly getting that type of messaging from seller from, from other agencies. So like I'm actually like getting leads from TikTok for this other service.

[Steve Chou]

Hilarious. Okay, so you have this database of shoppers who want free stuff, Right? Just like the old days of Snag shout.

[Ian Page]

Yeah. Or like rebate key. It's kind of like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Ian Page]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And so you're basically just jump starting the reviews on your shop.

[Ian Page]

That's right.

[Steve Chou]

Okay. And that creates the necessary social proof for the other people want to jump on board.

[Ian Page]

That's right.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Ian Page]

And we're getting through the $2,000, what's called the $2,000 GMV threshold. That's what it's called.

[Steve Chou]

So you have to sell $2,000 worth of stuff for TikTok to, to allow you to expand.

[Ian Page]

Yep, I have it right here.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Ian Page]

If I can share my screen, I'll show you.

[Steve Chou]

But I. Yeah, go for it.

[Ian Page]

Yeah, I have a good old chat GPT for everybody here. So here are the thresholds. I'm going to have to do entire screen because it's not finding my chat GPT. So if you haven't made a single sale, you can't outreach to anybody.

[Steve Chou]

Wow.

[Ian Page]

It's kind of weird, right? You can't do anything.

[Steve Chou]

Can you buy your own stuff though, to jumpstart that?

[Ian Page]

Yeah, but it has to be through an affiliate.

[Steve Chou]

Ah, okay.

[Ian Page]

So TikTok's gonna have to do something about this. But because it's a little bit of a. It's really the definition of a catch 22.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Ian Page]

Once you get $2,000 in sales then. Or once you have a single sale up to 2,000, then you're allowed to reach out to 2,000 a week.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Ian Page]

Okay. 2,000 creators is nothing.

[Steve Chou]

It sounds like a lot though, but it's nothing. Okay.

[Ian Page]

The reason why it's nothing is because you're gonna get ghosted because you're a brand new product. Okay. Then if you have 2,000 to 50,000 sales, it over 3x is your outreach per week. So that's why, that's why we're always like focused on that 2k to get right here.

[Steve Chou]

Got it.

[Ian Page]

Okay. And then obviously once we get to 50k, which we're not going to see products for $50,000, no one's going to pay for that. That's when it's just complete unlimited outreach at that point.

[Steve Chou]

Give me an idea of how many creators you guys typically reach out to in a given week. Because even 7,000 sounds like a ton.

[Ian Page]

Yeah, we usually max out.

[Steve Chou]

Okay. Yeah, we get about automated process or is that a manual process?

[Ian Page]

It is a little bit of both. A little bit of both. We use some really good software partners that help us automate it because we're managing 38 shops right now. So obviously with 38 shops we're not going to be doing it all manual. But there are some components that have to be manual. Especially when we have a video that performs well, we manually reach out to that person and invite them into a discord channel where we can have much better dialogue with that individual and do more long term strategy with that affiliate. But I'd say it's like 90% automated at this point for us.

[Steve Chou]

But for the individual, not. Not you guys per se. Like are. Do you typically have to go through each creator and hit like the invite button?

[Ian Page]

Yep.

[Steve Chou]

Or is there.

[Ian Page]

Unless. Unless you sign up for. Unless you sign up for a software. I'll do, I'll do some call outs uptick IO uptk is great. There's another one called reacher. Reacherapp.com these are softwares where you can basically set thresholds and parameters. Like I want people, I want females. I want, you know, people that have dog channels or whatever. Right. For dogs. Or you know, whatever threshold you want. Or you can say I want people with 80% or higher post rate or I want people that have their GMV levels here. So we will usually max out that 7k and we usually get about a 5% response rate out of 7k. So that's 350 people responding saying, yeah, I'm interested to work with you. And out of those 350, we're gonna, we're gonna probably distill that down to about 200 affiliates that we work with that week. Every single week.

[Steve Chou]

So of those 350 who respond, you. You distill it down to 200 before you send out samples or are you sending out samples?

[Ian Page]

Usually, usually because we let them respond and then sometimes it fizzles. Sometimes just, you know, they, they never take the sample. Other times we, we, we, we. We only have a limit or a budget with our client of 200 samples. So if we have more people than we need, we're going to pick our favorites out of those 350 for the week and then maybe bench the other 150 for next week. Right, right. Because none of our clients tell us, hey, you can send out unlimited samples. That does not happen. Everyone has limits. Okay, Right, of course. Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

But it seems like in the beginning you're pretty much constrained to 350 at most. Right. Based on the percentage. It's just a numbers game, Right?

[Ian Page]

So it's a numbers game. Yeah. You are, you are pretty much constrained.

[Steve Chou]

So at most 350, it sounds like.

[Ian Page]

Samples every week at most. And in the early stages. Yeah, right.

[Steve Chou]

In early stages. Okay.

[Ian Page]

Like Mary Ruth, for example, is doing about 7 to 10,000 samples a month. You know, they're at that level where they can manage that, right? Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Okay. Yeah.

[Ian Page]

It's crazy.

[Steve Chou]

So when you're talking about profitability overall, you're factoring the cost of those samples, right?

[Ian Page]

100%.

[Steve Chou]

Okay. All right.

[Ian Page]

We're tracking sample cost. MCF fulfillment if you're using MCF, if you're doing a 3PL, will factor that in. If you're invited by TikTok for FBT, which is another subject we can talk about, and it's really exciting. We factor that in. And now, another thing you should know, and I want. I want people to know this. You don't have to pay the same rate to the affiliate if you're running an ad on their video versus if it's an organic video.

[Steve Chou]

Okay. What is. How does the rate. You can set your own rates for ads or.

[Ian Page]

That's right. You can. You can negotiate with them and say, good. So I know you were at 20%. Your video is doing okay organically, but I really want to try it with ads.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Ian Page]

In order for me to spend my money on ads, I need you to go down to 5%, and then they'll send you what's called a spark code, which gives you authority to run ads on their content, and then they get that automatic 5% commission. So that's how we can afford to fit in an advertising budget and a video.

[Steve Chou]

What is the typical affiliate rate?

[Ian Page]

Typical is 15 to 20.

[Steve Chou]

That's the expectation from the creator. Okay. That's pretty high for physical product.

[Ian Page]

I know.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, I know. All right, so walk. Let's continue on the process. You're sending out, let's say 200. Based on the 7,000. You're sending out 200 samples. What is your expected hit rate on that? 80% will make a video, right?

[Ian Page]

Yeah, 80% will make a video. So then we're at, what, 160 videos a week? Right. And then we don't expect any of those videos to go viral. We don't. We don't have that expectation whatsoever.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Ian Page]

We expect the videos to potentially perform in an advertising campaign. And then what we do is we put. We. We get the spark codes for all those videos. We negotiate the 5%. If a video is trash, we're not going to offer anything. That video is just going to sit on the page and just die. Okay? But if the video has any glimmer of hope. And we are. And our thresholds are low, Steve, because we know we've been wrong. Okay? We have had times where the videos did not look great, and we were wrong. We did not think that video was gonna perform, and it ended up being a $10,000 video in sales. Right? You just don't know. So unless the video is absolute garbage. The captions backwards, I didn't even mention the brand. They're in a cave. Can't even see their face. We will offer them. We will negotiate a Spark code. 5% commission, and we will put it into what's called GMV Max ads. So what are your thresholds?

[Steve Chou]

You said they're low. What are your thresholds?

[Ian Page]

It mentions the brand name. It at least goes over the features and benefits of the product. Maybe it identifies the problem and solution. Right.

[Steve Chou]

Okay. That's a pretty low bar.

[Ian Page]

It is like my baby had eczema. I rubbed this on the baby. The baby no longer has eczema. Okay, cool. Maybe the video quality isn't great, but it looks super raw, and it might work. You know what I mean?

[Steve Chou]

You don't even care about the view count.

[Ian Page]

No.

[Steve Chou]

Okay, interesting.

[Ian Page]

All right, so here's why we're only gonna put 5, 10 bucks on that video, Steve. Okay, you see, we're just gonna see if the video can get a little bit of little action. One sale, you see?

[Steve Chou]

Okay. I would think that if it didn't do well organically, that it wouldn't do on the video in the ad, but I guess that's not the case.

[Ian Page]

Not the case at all.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Ian Page]

Yeah. And that. I thought the same thing. I had the exact same assumption as you. I was like, let's. This is how we did at the beginning. Let's see which videos perform well and only run ads on those. Okay? And guess what happened? We had nothing to run ads on. And then, you know, it's like. And then what do we do? Like, you know, and then, you know, we wasted all those samples. Like, why would you do that? That's a lot of money the client paid to get samples in their hands. We gotta do something. So we just went, screw it. Let's put a little money on everything. And it worked. And GMV Max is a genius program. So here's why. Just because it doesn't go viral doesn't mean that the ad platform can't turn it into a performing video. And here's why. The ad platform actually is good at identifying the avatar. It's actually really good at finding the right people for the video. It matches up the shopper to the video. So if the person has a thousand followers and the video doesn't have a crazy hook or something like that. Just because it only gets 300 videos doesn't mean that the advertising console can't find the right shopper for that video and get it into the right impressions. Okay? You only pay per click. That's it. So you're just. You're just trying to get enough of the right impressions to the right avatar. And then once you start getting a few clicks and those clicks are, you know, buck 50, buck 25.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Ian Page]

Way cheaper than Amazon $0.75 a lot of times. So, yeah, you'd be surprised how well those perform on ads.

[Steve Chou]

I can see TikTok knows who shops a lot on TikTok shop, so they can easily just. Okay, I. I get it. All right.

[Ian Page]

Yeah, it's smart. Their AI is extremely intelligent. I think their advertising console is probably a couple years ahead of Amazon, because.

[Steve Chou]

I would think that this is one of my questions for you, actually. I would think going viral would be bad because then you run out of stock and everything. But I think this way it seems like you're getting consistent sales as opposed to waves of sales. Is that accurate?

[Ian Page]

Yeah, and I wouldn't say. And it's never bad to go viral. It's awesome because at the end of the day, you know, all the expenses are covered now. Right. They're like, great. That first four months was painful and now it's all kind of paid back because I got a shit ton of organic sales and Amazon and I paid nothing almost for those sales.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Ian Page]

But you're right, it's not controllable. It's not something that I can scale. It's not something I can promise or something I can predict. And I don't like that, you know. Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Well, what percentage of your videos have you seen go viral? Just in your experience?

[Ian Page]

I don't even know at this point because we have 38 accounts with more videos being added every single day. But I can. I can count on one hand the amount of videos I've gone viral.

[Steve Chou]

Wow. Okay. And most of your people are probably having 200 new videos added every single week. Right?

[Ian Page]

So very, very rare. Now, here's another reason why you're less likely to go viral talking about a product than you will just making a funny video of, you know, your dog farting in the background or something like that.

[Steve Chou]

Right?

[Ian Page]

That's. That's different. You know, people are going to share that, but people aren't necessarily going to share a video that talks about how to cure your eczema to, like, all their friends. They might share it to one person that they know has eczema. You see the difference? So it's situational.

[Steve Chou]

So of those five that went viral, was there some crazy hook involved?

[Ian Page]

One of them was a doctor that was talking about the dangers of parasites, and it was terrifying. Okay, okay. So his hook was scaring the living crap out of you. That your body is full of parasites. Okay. It worked. I mean, people were buying that product left and right thinking they were going to drop dead with parasites. And he was a doctor, so he had some clout and we were lucky to get him. Okay. Another video that went viral was the bathtub video. And it went viral because it was really pretty. The lady turned off the light, she turned on all the little toys and the kid was in the bathtub and it was the whole bathroom lit up. It was awesome. So it just, it was kind of a spectacle. Okay.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Ian Page]

With the eczema product, which is our top selling product we have in our portfolio right now, they've never gone viral. It's been $1 out, $2 in, $1 out, $3 in the whole time. It's been painful. Videos have performed well, meaning the roas has been 4 and a half, 5. Cost per order has been reasonably good. But it's been one of these brands where like, we've had to work for every single, every single impression.

[Steve Chou]

The reason why I'm asking you this is because can you provide guidelines for.

[Ian Page]

Your people to go viral?

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Ian Page]

No, you can't. And J, I'm glad you brought this up, Jay. Jay talks about this. He's like, don't try to chase virality. It'll actually happen less often. If you try to rinse and repeat and repeat, repeat and like, find that formula, you're actually going to end up having worse performing videos. You have to let people do what they're going to do. And that magic quality is only in the idea that that person had at that moment in time. Now you can give them basic parameters like, this is what my product does. And you know, they have to make the proper claims and they have to not say things that they shouldn't say. But outside of the basic. Here's what it does and you know, just the basic description of the product. It's up to that creator, and you want it to be up to that creator to find a exciting, fresh, inventive and personalized way to communicate it. And then you have better chances. Because I was asking Jay the same thing. I was like, man, my percentages are really low. He's like, your percentages are on par. I was like, okay, wow, that almost makes me depressed and also makes me happy at the same time.

[Steve Chou]

It's like, yeah, so give the creator total. Free them. You tell them basically about your product and just let, let it run.

[Ian Page]

Let it run.

[Steve Chou]

Okay. Yeah, amazing.

[Ian Page]

Because it. There are some, there are certain things that do matter. Like the watch time. There's a six second watch time that TikTok looks for. So if your video never gets past that six second watch time, the odds of it going viral are zero. But if your video can hook people and keep them on the video for over, over six seconds, your odds are actually higher. So we do know that. We do know that that first six seconds really matters. So you don't want to start your video of a. Hi, my name is Joe. And you know, let me tell you about my. You know, that's too slow. Okay. There has to be a hook. You know the, the famous concept of the hook. Yeah, yeah, but we don't want the hook to be the hook. We want it to be the hook that the person comes up with on their own. We want it to be organic.

[Steve Chou]

Got it.

[Ian Page]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

I know a lot of people have gotten banned from TikTok shop. Like, can you just provide some, like, things not to do.

[Ian Page]

At this point? It's getting better. It's actually getting a lot better. That was a lot of. That was a problem with Tick Tock last year. Everyone was getting banned left and right and they were getting banned for no good reason. They were getting banned for just trying to submit this, the. The same document multiple times. It's like, come on, man. Like, that's the only document the guy has. Like, don't ban him because he tried three times. He only has that document. That's the invoice or that's his LLC document, for crying out loud. So it's gotten a lot better. But I would say if you do have that problem, reach out to me and we have people on the inside and most of the time it's stupid and we can get it fixed.

[Steve Chou]

There was people getting banned for false claims and whatnot too. Are there any guidelines?

[Ian Page]

Yes. Yeah, yeah. So that's. In the supplement world more than anything. You know, there, at the end of the day, there is something called the. The Federal Trade Commission.

[Steve Chou]

Well, I thought incentivize reviews was part of that too, but apparently not. Right?

[Ian Page]

Well, it is. And we figured out how to make it compliant. So there's some very nuanced rules to reviews. Okay. Reviews are actually totally legal if they're incentivized. They're totally legal as long as you claim that it was incentivized in the review. That's how Amazon's allowed to sell millions and millions, billions of dollars worth of vine reviews.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Ian Page]

Because it says free product.

[Steve Chou]

Got it. Okay.

[Ian Page]

Okay. So I actually, I have a lawyer, an Amazon lawyer. That I've been working with for years. And I said, how do I sell reviews and not get in trouble? And he said, here's what the FTC laws say. You have to say this. So we actually distilled it down to a very simple sentence. Every single review at the end of the review says, I received this product for free and we're cleared. Now every marketplace has its own rules. Maybe Walmart doesn't like it, I don't know, I can't speak for Walmart, but just know that you are 100% in the clear with the FTC and you're not committing any federal law, breaking any federal laws by incentive, by using reviews as long as you have that disclaimer.

[Steve Chou]

I guess what I was trying to get at is what if your affiliate just starts making wild claims about your product? What happens?

[Ian Page]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the affiliate's going to get banned or they're going to get a strike. So there's like a three strike system and your account's going to get the same strike.

[Steve Chou]

Even if it's not your fault. Like you have no control over the affiliates. Right.

[Ian Page]

The only control you have is to make sure you send them the proper information in advance. So what Mary Ruth says is don't say. And they have a list of census, don't say these things.

[Steve Chou]

But if they do, you still get in trouble.

[Ian Page]

Yeah, if it gets, if they get them, if they get the strike, you get the strike.

[Steve Chou]

Okay, see that does not seem fair because you have no control over your affiliates.

[Ian Page]

Right, I know.

[Steve Chou]

So like if I wanted to take any of your brands down, Ian, I would just sign up as an affiliate and just start spouting nonsense.

[Ian Page]

Oh hell yeah. Right. Just right, you know, be like this cures every form of cancer I've ever seen and it's just, it's a cure all for all diseases. And yeah, for sure. It would be a terrible thing to do for a, for a shop.

[Steve Chou]

They got to fix that. Right.

[Ian Page]

I mean, you know the reason why they do it is they do it so that the shop is very mindful and if the shop didn't get that mark or whatever you call a flag or whatever on their, you know, on their point system, they have a 24 point system. Every shop. If they didn't get it, the shop wouldn't be constantly reminded to do a better job at getting the right product briefs out.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Ian Page]

Because at the end of the day it's up to the shop to properly educate the affiliate and go, hey, yes, this is a Weight loss product. But you are not allowed to say that it's going to guarantee weight loss or you're not allowed to say even the word weight loss. So what you can say is pant sizes, I now fit in this dress, those kind of things. People get the idea.

[Steve Chou]

I mean, this just makes negative. Like you thought negative review bombing was bad on Amazon. This could, this could take down entire accounts. Right. This is much more severe.

[Ian Page]

Yeah, but you'd have to have a ton of like, you know, if you wanted to be one of those guys, you'd have to take. You'd have to have like a ton of TikTok accounts and ask for a ton of samples. You know what I mean?

[Steve Chou]

Probably.

[Ian Page]

But yeah, it, it's not as bad as you think. Like, we, we have a lot of supplement brands and we also try to focus on products that are less risky in the portfolio. So like, like the, the parasite cleanse I was telling you about. Yeah, you know, it's less risky because, you know, but it, but we don't say guaranteed to kill parasites. We don't say stuff like that extreme. We just say parasites are really bad for you. Here's some signs that you have parasites and here's a great product that if you feel you do have them, could help you with that. And that's fine. But. Okay, there are certain areas, like weight loss, just catch all medical claims that, yeah, you gotta watch out for.

[Steve Chou]

So I want to switch gears and talk about your services here. Do your clients typically use you for the launch phase and then feel like they can handle it themselves in steady state, or do they tend to stay with you in the long run because you're constantly, you know, getting new affiliates, new leads, like, what's, what's the life cycle like?

[Ian Page]

They all stay. They all stay with me. Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Ian Page]

And I think it's just because a lot of our sellers are a lot more mature. They've been on Amazon for a long time. They have a D2C presence. A lot of them are working on getting in a lot of stores. So they're already stretched pretty thin between like Meta, Amazon, Chewy or whatever other marketplaces, Walmart now. So they're usually just like, screw it. Like, if you can just do your job and talk to me every two weeks, give me reports, I know where things are at, and in six months it looks realistic that I can make a profit. Great.

[Steve Chou]

That's true, I guess, if it includes your fees, your retainer fees and everything. And you're making a profit. Yeah. And you don't do anymore.

[Ian Page]

Yeah, yeah, maybe at some point. Maybe it's early, right? Maybe in six months or a year, some of my clients will be like, you know what? We've learned a lot. You guys got us to this place. Now we're doing 150, 50,000amonth. We. We want to take it in house. And that's going to happen. But right now, TikTok is such an anomaly. And another thing, TikTok is. Is so much more work than Amazon that, like, think about. On Amazon, you just list your product, send it into fba, and then you run ads.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Ian Page]

I might be oversimplifying it, but it's really.

[Steve Chou]

I mean, there's more to it. But yeah, at a basic level.

[Ian Page]

Yeah, at a basic level, right? On TikTok, there's. That does nothing for you. Like, you. You have nothing with those things. You. Without affiliates, you have nothing. And without affiliates, that's where all the work is, is all those negotiations, all those conversations, the sampling, pulling those affiliates over to Discord, getting them on, you know, running games with them, getting them, keeping them engaged with the brand, building up that Discord community. Come on, how many people want to spend time doing that?

[Steve Chou]

So what is expected from the client? I just want to get an idea of the workload for the client.

[Ian Page]

Stay in stock.

[Steve Chou]

Okay. All right, so it's just like selling on Amazon.

[Ian Page]

Stay in stock, don't run out.

[Steve Chou]

You handle the rest. Stay in stock. Okay.

[Ian Page]

Yeah, stay in stock. And when and when we slack you a request for increased budgets, please respond. Right. Just simple stuff like that. Like, let us know, let us know that, you know, we just need that cooperation on ad spend, sampling, and if there's any documentations we need, just be available.

[Steve Chou]

Okay. What percentage of that 10k we were talking about earlier is towards product versus services?

[Ian Page]

Mostly. Mostly product and ads. So our. Our retainer is 4K. We're very. We're very open about that. On our website, we literally have like a deck with our pricing. So I. I'm very open about my pricing structure. We charge 4K, so you're looking at that additional 6K is in sampling and ads.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Ian Page]

Yeah. Unless your product is like an $800 air filter, then we have a different conversation to talk about.

[Steve Chou]

Of course. Of course.

[Ian Page]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Hey, so, Ian, where can people find you and get an idea of whether this will work for them?

[Ian Page]

So I actually recommend that people go to the YouTube channel. Watch, watch, watch the Jay Hunter webinar first. Because he breaks it down, I break it down. It's the Best place to get a basically a long format pitch of if TikTok is for you.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Ian Page]

Because we have a, we have a 25 minute live Q and A on there with a lot of sellers asking those tough questions. So watch that. It's great. And if you still are interested after that, you feel like you're, you kind of, you're ready for that TikTok investment, financially speaking and you want to outsource instead of doing it yourself, you can find [e-mail] and if you book a call right on bullseyesellers.com I will actually be invited to the call and I will meet you on that call. So then we can just talk about it and see if it's a fit for you. And I will turn you away if I don't think you're ready or I don't think your product's a fit. We'll be super honest with you. Yeah, I don't want to fail. I hate failing.

[Steve Chou]

Plus, you don't want to deal with someone who has the wrong expectations. Right. That's even.

[Ian Page]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Ian Page]

How is it going to benefit me? And if month three, we're doing exactly what we said we're going to do in month three but you're like tapping out because of the finances. It's like I don't really want to play that game. I don't want you as a client for three months. I want you as a client for years. So I'm in it, I'm in it for the long haul.

[Steve Chou]

Sounds good. Ian. Hey, thanks a lot for coming on the show. I learned a lot and I'm sure the audience did too. So thank you so much.

[Ian Page]

You're very welcome. Thanks for having me.

[Steve Chou]

Hope you enjoyed this episode. If your brand falls under the guidelines discussed in this episode, you then you should definitely give TikTok Shop a try. For more information and resources go to my wife quitherjob.com Episode 595 Once again, the recordings for Seller Summit 2025 are now on sale over at sellers summit.com and if you're interested in starting your own e commerce store, head on over to my wife quit her job.com and sign up for my free 6 day mini course. Just type in your email and I'll send the course right away via email.