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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to TikTok Shop Insiders podcast. Your source for actionable news, trends and strategies. If you want to build a thriving brand or Creator presence on TikTok shop, this is your essential listen.
- [00:15]
B
Let's get started. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the TikTok Shop Insiders podcast, your source for the latest news and strategies for TikTok shop. I am your host, Ivan, and this is my good buddy Pat. What's up, dude? How you doing, man?
- [00:31]
A
What up, man? It's been a while.
- [00:33]
B
Yep, yep. Our last one was recorded about a month ago. Extremely busy on our side. How's it been on your side?
- [00:40]
A
Same, man. It's just non stop. Everything's like kind of rolling in. Whatever you're doing with, you know, sales calls and I mean, the, the leads coming off hopefully from this podcast is bearing fruit. And so, yeah, it's. It's definitely been busy.
- [00:55]
B
Yeah, I think I emailed you or messaged you on Friday and I was like, hey, we have another potential client. This one's, you know, pretty awesome. And then you're like, what did you say? Like again?
- [01:07]
A
What was that for? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't believe it. It feels like there's new clients rolling in weekly at this point.
- [01:16]
B
Yeah, cool. But, yeah, I mean, just the status on the podcast we haven't been on in a while, but it is reaching 14,000 downloads and I owe you that dinner. I think it's on the calendar. So, you know, thanks everyone for downloading and supporting us.
- [01:33]
A
Yes, for sure. Yeah. I mean, you know, two. Two dads with three kids, it's hard. It's hard for dads in general, I think, just to schedule anything. I think our wives get together more than we do. They have a dinner, but we never get to do it. I don't know why. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [01:49]
B
I was going to say I don't know if we schedule something, but I think they did, so. Yeah, for sure. But yeah, two dads with three kids gets the schedule pretty busy, so I'm glad we could find a time. I'm going to say a couple weeks, but. Cool. All right, so up to news. Like, what are some latest things that we've seen online? Something I have here. It's a topic that I got to debate frequently about, but it's should you offer free shipping on your TikTok shop? Right. So let's say you have, you know, just setting the table here a little bit. You have a $20 product and it costs $5 to $5 to ship. Do you price it at $25 and then kind of market it as free shipping or do you, you know, have it at $20 and then charge $5 shipping afterwards? You know, I have my thoughts behind it and I know Pat's, so I'll describe mine a little bit, but I kind of lean on the sides and I've seen, I saw this LinkedIn post, I wish I had it. But she was basically saying that.
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A
All.
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B
The Asian TikTok shops, 99.9% of the top Asian TikTok shop have pricing after it's not included in the price. It's an add on price at the end at checkout. And the thought behind there, it's like, okay, well at first glance you're going to see a lower price, right. You're going to see that $20 price point and then you get charged shipping at that point. And so it's like an afterthought, if you will. Right. It's getting, you put it, it's getting you to click the link. Right? Oh, it's a relatively cheaper product at the competition. It's cheaper product in general. Let me add it to cart and then kind of figuring out the cost of shipping afterwards. And so that's my, my leading thought. There's a reason why, I mean maybe it's also cultural but in Asia why majority of the TikTok shop listings have a shipping cost as an addition at checkout. So that's my thought process. And then Pat, I'll let you share why you think shipping should be included.
- [03:43]
A
Yeah, I mean we've done it both ways. We had a client that tested with free shipping and saw their conversion rates take off.
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B
Right.
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A
I think the main variable is the price of your product.
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B
Right.
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A
If you have a product that's $10 and you're charging $5 for shipping, doesn't look as great. Like who wants to pay an extra 50% on their product price for shipping if the product is like $30. Right. If you're under, I would imagine it's probably in the 10 to 15% total cost of your product as you're shipping, then you might be okay. But we've definitely seen that free shipping elevates the conversion rate on products from brands that have tested on and off. I really think that's probably the main factor is what is the price point of your product and how much of shipping is just of that price.
- [04:33]
B
Yeah. I think also is testing. Right. This is maybe obvious but like testing it like let's go through some period of including free shipping and seeing where that Lies. And then let's change the shipping to be charged at checkout. You know, to Pat's point, there was a stark difference when we changed it to free shipping. We saw the, you know, the videos, getting better performance, we saw, you know, conversion rates get better, et cetera. So, you know, although I have my, you know, best guess, ultimately, you never really, really know until you test it. Right? And kind of going back and forth and making sure that, you know, it could be category wise, et cetera, but there's no way to know until you really test it.
- [05:17]
A
Yeah. Yeah, testing is really the only way to know.
- [05:19]
B
Right. Up next, this is kind of like a. A story that I want to share. So someone on LinkedIn reached out to me, actually, I think I saw their post and they're like, selling us TikTok shop seller accounts for $1,000. And I was like, okay, this is very interesting and intriguing. It's like, okay, well, I know, like in. I think what the. What I'm saying here is like, international people who want to sell on us TikTok shop, they cannot. Right. Buy tos. Right? You have to be a us you have to show your driver's license. And I'm sure everyone listened to, listening to this podcast, has gone through hoops and hurdles to get on TikTok shop. Anyway, there's, you know, a growing community of international sellers that want to sell on US TikTok shop, and they can't because it's international or the TikTok tos. But there's this guy that reached out to or that I reached out to. I was like, hey, I'm interested in an account. So he's like, a thousand dollars. You can have a US TikTok shop seller account. So that was pretty weird. Not weird, but, like, it's kind of. I wanted to share it to kind of set the landscape of maybe how fortunate we are on the US Side of being able to sell. Like, if you're able to, why not? But also, like, there's all kinds of nefarious, weird things going on in TikTok, right? If there's money to be made, people will find a way. So.
- [06:35]
A
Right. Yeah, I mean, that's. That's the main signal, right, is people willing to sell it at that price. Somebody's buying it at that price. So people are clamoring at the opportunity to get it a US TikTok shop seller account. So for the brands that are here, you should definitely be on it.
- [06:51]
B
It's.
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A
It's definitely a signal that you should be on TikTok shop.
- [06:53]
B
Yeah, I thought it was pretty great. There's a ton of other stuff, but that was, that was kind of cool. I was like, yeah, just part of this podcast is really just exposing people to what's going on. Right. The, the atmosphere on TikTok.
- [07:05]
A
Yep.
- [07:06]
B
So onto the main part of the, the podcast and where I really wanted to dive deep into the bulk of this whole TikTok shop strategy, which is the affiliates. And how do you reach affiliate outreach at scale? How do you get the product to. Or how do you first kind of get on the radar of the affiliates and then how do you choose them and how do you get them to make, you know, high quality videos? Right. And another thing is TikTok Shop, their landscape is changing weekly. Right. You get, you know, I think beginning of the year, any seller could reach out to unlimited affiliates. Right. You can send thousands and thousands of messages a day and then it becomes a numbers game. Like just send out tens of thousands of messages and then inevitably you're going to get feedback from a certain percentage of that and then you can kind of math your way into getting videos created. And that's little as six months ago. Right. I think, correct me if I'm wrong, like three months ago or two months ago, they had a first round of limitations to your restrictions. Right. Do you remember what that figure was, Pat of.
- [08:16]
A
I forget. I think it was 1500 in GMV and it allowed you to send 5000 messages. I forget. I mean, it's changed so much that.
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B
Yeah, so it's like kind of like a first level of limitation. And that's what we were working with. And it was still good, Right. You just kind of had to, you know, less numbers and kind of operate.
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A
We had a, we had a workaround, right. We, we couldn't send DMs directly anymore, but we could still have unlimited targeted collaborations at the time.
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B
Exactly.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So the thing is, like, okay, If I'm limiting DMs, let me just send unlimited targets and then kind of get around that numbers game and go from there. As of two weeks ago, maybe a week. Maybe two weeks ago, two weeks plus they have a. TikTok has a new restriction, right. And so it goes a little like, if you have between 0 to $2,000 in monthly GMV, you are able to sell or you're able to send out 2000 messages per week. If you have 2000 GMV in the last 30 days, you're able to send 7000 messages per week. Right? So for me, the magic number is 2000 GMV in the last 30 days, you can send 7,000 messages. And then once you get to 5 or 50,000 GMV in the last thirty days, you can have unlimited messages, sent messages and target collaborations. Right. And so this is all to say TikTok is getting strict and probably will continue to get more strict in their affiliate outreach. Right. And I'll pause there. But like, looking at the other side of it, the affiliates are getting basically like an infinite amount of messages per day. Their inbox is probably like ever forever filled, especially that high quality, you know, creatives. I know your wife, like, what are you, what is, what is sue seeing in this?
- [10:02]
A
Yeah, it's, it's basically that, like, it's. She has such a hard time even finding any new messages. So you just to get a message through to her, you just happen to, you just have to happen to send a message right before she looks at her inbox. Otherwise she's never going to see it.
- [10:16]
B
Right, right, right. And so it's like, you know, that's one part. TikTok is ever changing their outreach guidelines and what's allowed. And so it's making it harder and harder and it will continue to get harder and harder. Right. Because I still see these affiliates complaining about getting, you know, outreach.
- [10:33]
A
Yeah. I mean, their, their overall goal is just to clean up the marketplace.
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B
Right.
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A
You have like these small sellers who, you know, sell garbage. They don't want it to turn into Temu Part 2, essentially.
- [10:42]
B
Right, right.
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A
So they're trying to clean up all these small sellers who are spamming all these creators, and this is their method of doing that.
- [10:49]
B
Right. But in that kind of policing, it makes it hard for these cold start brands to start up. Right. Their limitations are maxed out. Right. And so if you have zero sales, you can only send so many messages out, you can only send so many Target collabs. And so it makes it very difficult. Right. And you know, you don't have a lot of sales. So these affiliates are looking at your product listing and seeing, you know, low units sold, low number of reviews, you know, you know, they're less likely to kind of respond like that. They're interested. Right. And so coupling that with the limited number of messages that you could send, that number kind of dwindles and dwindles fast for these cold start brands. Right. And these are legitimate brands that we work with. You know, lots of Amazon sales, millions of dollars in Amazon sales, millions of dollars in retail and dot com sales. But TikTok's a different beast. Right? And so, yeah, all this say, like, it's just making it harder and harder. And so kind of like my brain has been working nonstop on how to kind of get around this or fix this. Right. Can you dive into. We're in this difficult situation of limited, you know, sends messages that we can send out and limited conversations we can have. Like, what do we do to kind of go around that?
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A
Yeah, I mean, we had this debate a long time ago when we were talking about whether we blast everybody up front or kind of take a curated approach. Now it's forcing us to take a more curated approach. Like we have to be, what's it called? Like, you have the budget. Those messages are just messages that we send out each week.
- [12:32]
B
Right.
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A
Target like, you know, the best people. Main thing is, you know, we can, the one thing you can do is reach out to affiliates that you have existing relationships with and get them to create more content or find a flat fee.
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B
Right.
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A
To create more content. And I think that's, that's kind of an approach that makes sense because you know, you know that the creator has created content, good content before that has sold units in the past. And so you have to maximize all of those relationships as much as you can.
- [13:05]
B
One thing I have here also is the ab testing of your DM scripts. Right. And so since you have limited number of messages to send out, you want to make sure that the messages you do send out have the maximum impact. Right? And so what we've been doing is including in our kickoff call to the brands of like, what are some accolades that you guys have? Right? Are there any celebrity endorsements that we can include in our DM scripts? Right, right. You know, what are some sales history items that you have? Right. Sold out on Amazon three times. Like, that's going to be better than someone, you know, saying, you know, if a brand reaches out to them, be like, hey, try out our new, you know, multivitamin, you'll get 30% commissions. Well, what if you say, you know, Oprah's favorite multivitamin, you get 30 commissions. So like it's going to hold more weight with the affiliates. Right? So making your message even that much more impactful. Right. Or, you know, 5,000 five star reviews on Amazon, like the affiliate's going to want to promote that product versus, like, right?
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A
So yeah, when you don't have those units sold to lean on, those are the accolades that you kind of have to bring up to the creators, right?
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B
Especially like the cold start brands. And that's what we've been living in recently. Right. Like these brands that come to us, they want to start on TikTok shop or improve their, you know, TikTok shop. So having those accolades is super important.
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A
Yeah, the emscript testing is probably definitely a big piece of it because you have so little to work with. So you have to maximize every touch point with the creator now.
- [14:35]
B
Right. Well, another thing that we fortunately have is a lot of affiliates that have done great work for us and we've kind of funneled them into a discord group where we say, hey, we have other brands that we work with, high quality brands join our discord group to get higher commissions, kind of cultivating them, also giving them tips and tricks on how to be better affiliates and just kind of developing that network. Right. So we have that at our disposal as well as email outreach to affiliates. Right. So we have a database of 20,000 affiliate email addresses. We'll reach out to them, you know, with a simple message of, hey, we kind of like a DM script. Right? Hey, we have this brand, this accolade, the 5,000Amazon reviews, Oprah's favorite things. Are you interested? Most likely, you know, it's kind of like a numbers game as well. Most likely they will ghost you or not answer, but there's some that will reach out and we can kind of get them, add them to the arsenal of affiliates. Right.
- [15:36]
A
I mean, so the overall trend you're seeing is you have to figure out a way to reach out to these creators off of TikTok, whether it's Instagram, Discord, email, some even mentioned like phone numbers and text, like SMS campaigns to creators. If you can get them to opt into something like that, that's been effective in getting communications to these creators as well.
- [15:56]
B
Right, right. And so when this initial cutback of Scripts or DMS came from TikTok, I thought our whole business strategy was upside down and didn't work anymore. And like crap, like what are we going to do? And it kind of forced me to really think about like, what's a strategy? What's a long term strategy? I don't want to have to be relying on TikTok allowing us to send to affiliates. I don't want to have my future in someone else's hands. Right. So I was like, I just, I, I don't know, probably the least sleep, I. Least amount of sleep I've had. But it was like constructive. Like I was just always thinking. So one thing, I was like, okay, well let's put it in our shoes, what I want. What? What? How can I Put, you know, the results into my hands. Right. And so with the success of this podcast, TikTok Shop Insiders, I was like, well, what if we make another podcast but this time focus it on the affiliates. Strictly affiliates. Right. And so my idea was let's make a podcast where I interview top affiliates, get their story and get their successes and also, most importantly, get their strategy, like what works for them. Interview them, understand what makes them tick, and also how they make their videos. Right. Get that, compile that. Over time, I'll have a library of hundreds of different strategies that the community can go through and see what works for them. And then I'll have after time, this database of the hungry affiliates that are know, kind of looking for products to promote. Couple that with our clients. And now we have like a whole ecosystem where, you know, TSI clients can now access what I will call affiliate Academy affiliates and it'll harmoniously talk to each other. Right. So that's the, that's the idea. I'll share one thing or. Pat, do you have any questions? Like, I, I'm.
- [17:59]
A
Yeah, I mean, how, how, how has the affiliate interviews gone? I know the goal is to provide value, right? So how, how have they been going with.
- [18:07]
B
They've been amazing. I thought of it as kind of just kind of interview and getting their story and kind of like a quick thing. But like, I have to stop and say, like, this is a real life success story. And what I mean by that is I, I interviewed everyone that I've interviewed has been super successful. And what I mean by that is a college student has made $500,000 in affiliate commissions in a couple months. So that's amazing. Gwen. She's amazing. She's been kind of, if she's listening to this, awesome. But just that story multiplied by hundreds and thousands, right? She goes into kind of like how it's changed her life, but most importantly, what strategies work for her. And you know, one thing I learned is like these different courses out there and groups. More than likely it's just an affiliate that is sharing a strategy that worked for them, but it might not work for, you know, person next door. Right. And so what I wanted to do in the community is interview so many different affiliates to get all their different strategies so that like, we can create a library that people can pull from and see, hey, does this strategy work for me? It. Right. And so yeah, that interview with her was great because she dives into what makes it work for her.
- [19:27]
A
Yeah, yeah, I think, I mean, I think if we, you know, you Keep that focus as far as being, you know, what, what's going to give the most value to any affiliate watching this? Right. I think that's going to lead to success because you're able to pull out those strategies that, you know, not only want, provide you content, but it provides.
- [19:45]
B
These strategies for all their affiliates that.
- [19:46]
A
Want to be a part of this group.
- [19:49]
B
Right.
- [19:49]
A
And that's where, where your affiliate academy is going to be probably maybe a bit different. I mean, what are, what do you think are the main differences with, with what you're trying to build versus what's already out there?
- [19:58]
B
I know you're part of like, I mean, yeah, I'm a part of, I'm a part of probably all the different affiliate groups and mostly they're paid. That's the biggest thing. Ours is going to be free, right. I'm interviewing, I'm getting these strategies, funneling them into a community, a free community. So that's the biggest thing. There's other groups out there that are like a hundred dollars, two hundred a month or like five thousand one time costs or thirty dollars a month. It's like, I'm in, I'm in all of them. Not all of them, but I guess majority of them. And I see what, you know, the content, it's like, well, I can make that same exact content and environment and education, but in a free environment. Right. And then obviously you're going to ask, well, how are you making money? Well, my money is not going to come from the affiliates paying me. It's going to come from the brands who want to participate in this ecosystem. Affiliates, right. And likewise, brands will gladly pay an affiliate for their commissions for high quality affiliates. Right. They'll gladly give that up. Right. And so we had the problem of brands not being able to reach out to affiliates or their outreach is limited. Well, let's generate a community of affiliates that these brands can reach out to. So that was the impetus behind it. You know, some examples also it's like, okay, so in the, the people I've interviewed, some of the examples of the strategies that they use, right? So one of them goes to Shop plus in Calidata and they search for the latest viral videos. Will they recreate that viral video? Like they do their best to recreate it and you know, if it worked for someone else, it's probably going to work for them. Another strategy that I've learned is like, there's this dude, he puts a contentious item in the background and it causes a lot of conversation and it's not made and he's just talking about the product, but a different thing is in the background. So it causes conversation in the comments, engagement, all that good stuff. More eyeballs, more views. Right? So that's one part. Another example, a strategy that someone has is, well, if one video gets viral in the same, you know, hook story, call to action, he makes that same exact video verbatim and he posts that out 10, 20 times. So it's like, if it worked once, it's gonna work again. It's just TikTok is gonna limit that first one. But you can do more. Right? So these are like crazy things. I would never think it's so simple, so easy you can implement. I would never think of. And then that's my part of the podcast is trying to pry these out.
- [22:32]
A
Of these affiliates and revers, reverse engineering the TikTok algorithm to like build content around that. And then we've mentioned that before, TikTok tells you what goes viral. Like from creator search insights, there's a creative trend tool. You can find out what TikTok, like, TikTok wants your video to go viral and they'll tell you exactly the structure. So I think that that strategy of going to find a viral video around the product is brilliant because TikTok already knows that formula works. And if you create a piece of content following that same formula, TikTok's gonna be like, oh, this thing has similar attributes. Let's put views behind it because it's probably gonna pick up sales.
- [23:07]
B
Exactly, exactly. Right. So anyway, just to recap, you know, we have this need as a seller, as a new, you know, new start seller of being able to reach out to affiliates at scale. Well, the answer is let's create a community that has a whole bunch of affiliates. Right. And though, you know, this podcast did so is doing so well, let's make another podcast interviewing affiliates. Get the affiliates what they really need, which is strategies on how to, you know, how they can sell better. Compile that, you know, into a group where we can kind of cultivate, give, continue to give tips and, you know, help them with their affiliate journey. And then the thought there is, you know, take one part of the tree and combine it with the other and then you have kind of like a really big environment here that could kind of feed off each other. So I guess in summary, it's called, it's, it's affiliate academy HQ.com and yeah, just, I think it's under construction, maybe first, first draft online right now. But, but that's the idea. It's Creating an Affiliate Academy community, a free one that kind of rivals all the other ones that are out there.
- [24:14]
A
Yeah, it's essential. That's definitely the direction that TikTok is taking. Like, you have limited messages now. You have to maximize every piece of outreach. You don't know what quality of videos are coming back when you reach out to those 2,000 people. So in this academy and this affiliate group, we help. What's it called, Curate that creator pool a little bit more.
- [24:37]
B
Yeah. And it's kind of, you know, for me or, you know, you guys are all business owners out there, probably business owners. It's like now we're creating some kind of moat that, you know, everyone, you know from our podcast, listening to the podcast and LinkedIn content, we're kind of giving all of our tips and tricks away. And it's. That's fine because people are benefiting from it, but, like, at the end of the day, it's. There's not really a lot of difference. Right. We have, you know, our affiliate connections that we have already and, you know, email structure, emails that we do maybe better than others, but this is like a huge moment. If we have affiliates in our network that we can call ours, like, well, what do you have now? Right. So, you know, combining what we have existing with Affiliate Academy, I think it's like the key differentiator for us in the future. So that's what we're looking to build.
- [25:21]
A
Yeah, man. It's ever changing and you're. You're good at adapting, so, you know, you don't sleep very much, but, yeah, it's a good.
- [25:30]
B
It's a good. Not good. Not. Not sleeping. Right. Because it's just. I'm just. My brain's activated, so I love that type of stuff, you know that.
- [25:40]
A
Yeah.
- [25:40]
B
Amazon back in the day, trying to figure out how to, you know, crack the code or hack. Hack SEO algorithm or product launch. That's where I was at. And doing the same exact thing for TikTok shop.
- [25:50]
A
So.
- [25:50]
B
Yeah, exactly. I love this stuff. So. Yeah, man. So, yeah. That concludes today's episode. I guess we haven't done this well, but, like, reminder, leave a review. Not that many out there. I know there's a ton of listens, so please leave a review. What you guys think, you know, you can find us the agency side of things@tiktokshopinsiders.com there's a button there to reach out to brands, for brands to reach out to us again, Affiliate Academy, if you have someone interested in being affiliates, we'll kind of start populating that soon. Affiliateacademyhq.com and yeah, thanks for joining us today. Thanks, Pat.
- [26:27]
A
Yeah, man, it's always a pleasure.
- [26:29]
B
All right, catch everyone later. See you. Bye.