#626 – Why YOU Should Be Selling on TikTok Shop

What if exploring the latest trends on TikTok Shop could redefine your business strategy? Join us as we unpack the secrets of thriving on one of the world’s fastest-growing marketplaces. We welcome a top-tier expert in TikTok Shop success, Michelle Barnum-Smith of TTshopsellers.com who lays out a complete roadmap for navigating this dynamic platform. From leveraging powerful tools like Helium 10 to hearing firsthand success stories—like a couple whose sales soared after adding TikTok Shop to their go-to online marketplaces—you’ll gain insights that could transform your approach to e-commerce. Plus, we tackle the buzz around a potential TikTok ban, sharing insider reassurances to keep your mind at ease.

Our discussion takes a strategic turn as we explore the mechanics of integrating TikTok Shop with platforms such as Shopify and Amazon. Discover how to tap into the “halo effect” where viral TikTok products can boost sales on Amazon. We also highlight the importance of abiding by TikTok’s community guidelines, especially when it comes to directing users to Amazon, to ensure your shop’s integrity. Listen closely as we share content strategies that don’t rely on going viral but instead focus on crafting engaging, quality content that resonates with your audience and amplifies your brand’s presence.

And if you’re wondering how to spark impulse buying, we’ve got you covered. Learn the art of balancing ads with organic content and the power of influencer partnerships, which can yield substantial returns. We offer practical advice on starting with small-scale affiliate efforts and building robust creator networks that align with your brand’s ethos. With tips on aligning your marketing efforts with trending events and using AI tools to supercharge your outreach, this episode is packed with actionable strategies designed to elevate your TikTok Shop success. Tune in and revolutionize your approach to this exciting marketplace!

In episode 626 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Michelle discuss:

• 00:00 – TikTok Shop Success Strategies
• 01:30 – TikTok Ban Not a Concern?
• 03:44 – Rapid Growth on E-Commerce Platforms
• 08:31 – Steps to Start TikTok Shop
• 11:43 – Navigating TikTok Shop Strategies
• 12:50 – Impact of TikTok Virality on Amazon
• 18:07 – GMB Max for Ads Optimization Strategy
• 24:32 – TikTok Shop Sales Strategies
• 29:57 – TikTok Shop Affiliate Strategy Tips
• 37:30 – Content Performance Metrics and Strategy

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

What is the hottest marketplace in the world right now? TikTok shop. Today we bring one of the world’s foremost experts on TikTok shop success to help you get started on the platform. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That’s a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And today we’ve got a special treat as we have a replay of a live workshop, we did on TikTok Shop the steps that you need to take to get started on the platform, how you can advertise on there, some success stories. And then we took live a lot of your questions over 10 to 20 questions that people who already are selling on TikTok shop had and people who hadn’t sold on TikTok shop yet. So I’m sure you fall into one of those two categories, right. So make sure to listen all the way to the end to learn about how you could potentially even two or three X the sales that you are doing on Amazon. So, Michelle and myself, take it away. It’s important that you guys get started on TikTok shop, and today we’re going to talk about why it’s important, what is the opportunity and what are some steps that you guys can take to get started on TikTok shop, as well as some tools that Helium 10 has for it. But before we get started, something that we don’t need the screen for here is I think the top question in the next few weeks that everybody seems to have about TikTok is. Wait a minute. I heard that TikTok is about to be banned. Are you or are you not worried about TikTok being banned?

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

I’m not worried and I will tell you why. I have direct relationships with like probably hundreds of people at this point inside of TikTok and TikTok shop, and TikTok’s not slowing down their growth. They’re building buildings like crazy, hiring like crazy, expanding services and features and functionality like crazy. And so if TikTok’s not slowing down, neither should you. So I think it’s. I think, like I say, I take my cues from TikTok directly.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. And then for me, like I just figure, hey, if it actually gets banned, it’s not going to be banned permanently, it’s just going to be like sold to another company or something like that that the government is okay with. So we are doing this webinar under the assumption that everything’s going to be totally fine. What is the date?

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

January 19^th

Bradley Sutton:

come January 19th, come February 19th, regardless of whenever you guys are going to be able to take advantage of selling on TikTok shop. Now to get people excited, I’m going to give one personal story not for myself, but a Helium 10 Elite member that I’d like you to think of, some success story you can talk about. But I knew of a couple, a husband and wife couple. They’ve been on the podcast before where they started like last year, I believe, or the year before, on Amazon. But in their first year on Amazon, if I’m not mistaken, they did very well. They actually did. I think it was about $1 million of gross sales on Amazon. What Amazon brand new seller wouldn’t want to do that, maybe for a first year. And then they started TikTok shop, like in December or something, and from like December to March of this year, I think, they did something like two to $3 million on TikTok shop. Now again, we’re not going to try and say, hey, every single person is going to do 3X their sales on Amazon and TikTok shop, and I’m saying this as a real-life example to show you what is possible. As far as TikTok shop goes and I just was talking to them yesterday. Yesterday alone they sold 1000 units on TikTok shop of their product in one day. All right, so that’s my example of somebody I know personally who’s doing well. Can you think of any examples too that you can talk about?

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Yeah, so many, so many. I have some sellers who are in, who they got started in April, kind of April this year, just kind of lightly dabbling, and then I started working with them, kind of consulting late May, kind of fix some product issues they were having their first month they were at 13K. Their next month they were at 75. And previous you know their previous years in selling. You know they were lucky if they hit like a $15,000 a month. So this was to be able to expand channels, have new channels to sell in. We were just reviewing their Q4 numbers and they’re like look any, we’re happy with anything at this point because we were doing nothing. Q4 of last year. So it’s really inspiring to see how quickly brands can grow and really take off on the platform. We had another seller who and this is not all just like viral growth, this is like slow and steady they have multiple bestsellers, which is really the way that you want to do it, and so that story has been repeated over and over and over again this year across multiple different channels, lots of different types of products, lots of different types of audiences and demographics being targeted. So it definitely is one of those platforms that you can’t ignore.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah absolutely, absolutely. So now I’m going to ask Michelle a couple more questions that I have about TikTok because I’m pretty new on this. I’m 100% full force going into it, but I’m pretty new Like I don’t have a lot of sales under my belt. So what I want you guys to do while I’m asking a couple more questions is right here in the comments what questions do you have about TikTok shop? I saw a couple of you already asked them, so that’s good. We’re going to get to as many questions if not all the questions that we can today and we’re keeping it all about TikTok shop today. Want to check estimated sales for products you see on Amazon? Or maybe you want to instantly see how many listings on page one of a search term result have the actual search keyword in the title? You can find all of these things out and more with the Helium 10 Chrome extension tool X-Ray. More than 1 million people have used this tool. Find out what it can do for you by downloading it for free at h10.me forward slash x-ray. H10.me forward slash x-ray. So my first question is who should be interested in selling in TikTok shop. Like is it primarily somebody who’s already has physical products that they can sell, be it on Amazon, Shopify, Walmart, or is TikTok shop a good place for brand new people to e-commerce who don’t have a product yet to get started? What would you say?

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

That’s a good question. So I think, low hanging fruit sellers who are already selling product, your inventory is already in the United States. You already have a marketplace that you’re selling in, whether that’s DTC, your own website or Amazon, Obviously, I you know I focus primarily on Amazon sellers because you know that’s where my heart is. I love, I love the Amazon sellers out there. Um, so to me it’s like a no brainer. You already have, you’re already selling in these other marketplaces, so just get started in selling in this, um, in this new, this new opportunity as well. I don’t call TikTok a marketplace, though.

Bradley Sutton:

Uh-huh. Okay, we’ll play up it. We’ll come to the social media platform. It’s called, like

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

I call it, Social Commerce.

Bradley Sutton:

Social commerce. Okay, can we have a TikTok shop if we are based in Canada, so can Magali Bourgeois have a TikTok? Is that they pronounce? I don’t speak French I’m sorry, I’m sorry can we have a TikTok shop if we are based in Canada?

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Excellent question so this is a good question for all of my international sellers if you’re wanting to sell in TikTok US, so there’s two ways that you go that are basically the. The main kind of requirements at this point is that the stricter route is that, um, there has to be what’s called a beneficial owner that owns like 25 percent, that is, and that person has to be US-based. Now, recently, the rules got loosened up um a lot more, and so now all you need is a US contact. What will be interesting to see, though, is and in a lot of this, people are like oh man, why is TikTok so strict? And it hasn’t been TikTok that’s being strict, it’s the um. The inform act in the United States was basically was all the sellers, it’s an IRS law, that’s let’s try to identify who the beneficial owners are, so that law just was declared unconstitutional.

Bradley Sutton:

All you guys know what she’s talking about. Like we all had to go through that last year as Amazon sellers and Walmart sellers and Etsy sellers, where we got all these emails we’re gonna shut your account down if you don’t prove.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Or $500 a day.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Fine, if you don’t like.

Bradley Sutton:

And now it’s been declared unconstitutional.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Right, so now it’s voluntary. It’s voluntary with the IRS.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting, interesting. Okay.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

So it’ll be interesting to see how things loosen up.

Bradley Sutton:

But right now, no, it was Magali. Unless, Magali has a US contact, somebody with a Social Security Number, correct? Okay, okay, yeah, all right, let’s see. I mean we could go a whole hour about this topic that Monica says here what are the steps to start? But just some basic. We actually just recorded a video that’s going to be like the top 10 things on how to get started on TikTok shop. Be looking for that on our YouTube channel. But, in a nutshell, just like what are some of the steps as far as what they need to prepare to get ready. What’s the process like?

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Yeah. So business registration is the first step. It’s its own form of health, so prepare yourself for that. But it requires a bunch of different business documentation and personal identifying information. So business registration is the first step. Then setting up your product listings, then linking a TikTok social account. If you already have one, that exists, great, no worries, you can link that over. If you don’t have one, it’s very easy to create. You don’t need a certain number of followers, etc, etc. To be able to do that. And then you need to set up your shipping or your fulfillment. And this is where already being a seller and already having your inventory and how you fulfill that inventory makes this so easy because you could fulfill with your existing Amazon inventory, just with, like an app that you use to connect, to talk to Amazon or to between TikTok and Shopify if you have a 3PL that you use. So that’s the benefit to people who are already selling.

Bradley Sutton:

Another great question by Lucas says what’s the commission?

Michelle Barnum-Smith

Oh, interesting. So here’s. The thing is that you get to decide that question. So, Lucas, what’s the commission like what? What do you?

Bradley Sutton:

I might think that he’s. I mean, I can’t read mine, so I would think he might be talking about yeah, he’s not, he doesn’t really mean commission, but the referral fee, like on Amazon, it’s mainly 15. What can they expect on?

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

So when you are just getting started on TikTok shop, they have a what’s called a cold start period. The first 90 days it’s a two percent referral fee, after which it goes to two percent. Yes,

Bradley Sutton:

For how long?

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

First 90 days.

Bradley Sutton:

Good, great, why didn’t I start earlier?

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

I know, right.

Bradley Sutton:

then this, come on over, guys. You’re paying seven times as much on Amazon right now. Did you hear what she said? Two percent. All right, continue please

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Then it goes up to six percent and then I think that six percent it’s been locked out since July of this year.

Bradley Sutton:

So it goes up to six percent.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

They’ve already they’ve already like kind of hinted out raising fees going into this next year. So a lot of things have been coming

Bradley Sutton:

It raised it 40. It’s to be way under Amazon there. Oh, my guess that’s music to my ear. I didn’t say that’s music to my ears. Warm up a purchased TikTok account so it doesn’t get banned.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

So here’s the thing. You don’t need to warm up anything. Like I’ve taken over shop accounts even though we’re wearing our own clothes. I’ve taken over shop accounts that have been basically abandoned and they work just fine. So, as far as a social account goes I think maybe you’re referring to as well yeah, like I don’t. There’s every single video on TikTok has the same opportunity to go viral. It doesn’t matter if follower count, doesn’t matter, like social history, all of those things. Just pay attention to, kind of the community guidelines that TikTok has in place, to that they pay attention to and play by their rules and you should be fine I got one.

Bradley Sutton:

I kind of know might know the answer too, but how can I connect my Amazon store to TikTok shop? So I’m not sure. If you’re talking about the listings, let us know, like is that something you would like Helium 10 to do? Like, maybe we can you know? Obviously your listings are connected to Helium 10. Maybe you want something where we can go ahead and import your listings. Or are you talking about the ship? Because correct me if I’m wrong, but I know somebody who sells on TikTok shop and what they do is they actually connected their Shopify to Amazon, which goes directly to the multi-channel fulfillment, but then they use the app from TikTok to Shopify. So then TikTok, it makes an order, it’s going through Shopify, but then it goes to the Amazon, so really they don’t have anything to do. It pulls directly from their Amazon inventory. Is that the only current way to do that, or is there an easier way that you do it?

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

There’s multiple ways. There’s a direct route. You could use an app like Aftership or Webbe, and they have direct integrations between TikTok shop and Amazon. So Amazon MCF orders are being auto-generated there. But I do like the Shopify, the Amazon, to Shopify to or, excuse me, the TikTok shop to Shopify to.

Bradley Sutton:

If you’ve already got the Shopify, it’s just like a no brainer.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Yeah, you already have, because there’s other things that you can do with that Shopify account as well, such as if you’re using seller shipping and you’re doing the TikTok to Shopify, you get all your customer data.

Bradley Sutton:

Aha, I did not think of that. That’s another thing we don’t get on Amazon that we used to, but that’s absolutely right. With Shopify, you get all their data.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

That is a nugget. That is a nugget, you guys. You only heard it here.

Bradley Sutton:

Dropping some knowledge bombs, guys. That’s right, all right. Another question that I’m going to have an immediate response to is how can I force TikTok users to buy from Amazon shop, first of all, and 6% fees, however, that being said, you back me up on this if I’m right, but I know a lot of people who their products will go no 10 people where they’ve told me, hey, their products kind of went mini viral or full viral on TikTok shop and, without any connection to their Amazon store, their Amazon sales started taking off because there’s people out there who are like I don’t know if I trust this TikTok shop thing, but this product looks cool. Oh, is it on Amazon?

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Oh, there it is, let me go ahead and order it. So is that? Absolutely, absolutely. I had a seller who went a viral right before Black Friday and he saw the halo effect on Amazon as well. So and those Amazon sales? So as far as forcing people, number one, just so you guys know, TikTok community guidelines, um, are against like what we call CTA’s calls to action off platform. So get it on amazon now, like that type of call to action, creators can’t even say that. So if you’re working with creators or you’re creating your own social content and you say that, either your content will get what’s called shadow banned, ie not get much traction at all, or you could lose your account, or that creator could lose their account. So people are not willing to do that anymore. So any kind of and the main ways that people actually like, shop and buy is from scrolling and discovering, discovering the product via videos. So people are probably not going to like. Take you up on that if you’re working with creators.

Bradley Sutton:

Guys, this is great questions. We’ve had over 350 people watching live, so uh well, there’s tons of great questions here. Daniela says better to use FBT fulfilled by TikTok or Fulfilled by Seller. In the beginning I know you had to use Fulfilled by Seller. Is that still the case, where you have to have X number of just Fulfilled by yourself and then you qualify for Fulfilled by TikTok, or how does that work?

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

So a couple of different things. For one, we’re recording this. What’s the day today, December 12th? So right now FBT is closed to new inventory shipments. Like, you can’t even get into FBT until later this year. So just in general. Also, you have to qualify with a certain amount of GMB, so you have to have a certain level, hit a certain level of sales, certain levels you know. Getting started, you as a brand, I highly recommend that you start with your Amazon inventory and test the platform to start with and see is this a good fit for what? For my products, what we’re doing? And that way you’re not shipping your products willy-nilly to a bunch of you know, different warehouses if it’s not a good fit, right. So, like, what I tell people is the first 90 days, like, do all the steps that we recommend from building a momentum standpoint, test if this is opportunity. Then once you hit what we call graduation, that’s at least hitting over $12,500, depending on the category that you sell in, some it’s $20,000. But you graduate in the eyes of TikTok. That’s when all sorts of things open up to you, including FBT, and that’s when I recommend you start sending into FBT your best sellers.

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent. Denise and Marta kind of have a similar question here, so I’m just going to combine it. Denise says do you have to record videos to sell, or they’re ready videos you can use? And Marta’s like is it necessary to make a video viral to have success?

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Okay, so, as far as content creation goes, I know you guys would rather chew off your arm than create content. I get it, and that’s the beauty of TikTok is that they have 170 million US users who actually love to create content crazy people. So TikTok shop basically has a matchmaking platform for you to introduce you to these creators, who you can then send samples of your product, and they will be the ones to create the content for your brand. As far as do I have to be viral to succeed on the platform? Absolutely not. In fact, virality is actually a really painful thing sometimes because you can forecast all day long, but you can never forecast for going viral. It’s kind of crazy. So it’s definitely one of those things where you want to have converting content, but not necessarily viral content. And converting content you can scale up and you know you can plan on it and those types of things, but viral is actually a little scary.

Bradley Sutton:

Claudia has a good question. Does it need to be a physical product or can it be digital?

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

So, yes, it has to be physical. Digital products just in and of themselves like selling PDFs or something like that is not an option. However, TikTok Shop integrates with several print on demand platforms. So let’s say it is a PDF or it could be an eBook or something like that. Then you could essentially create a digital product that then turns into a physical product, and I love the idea of the print on demand products because it’s a great way for you to test something out before you go deep in inventory. So if you are a product designer or maybe a graphic designer or something like that, you’d have some cool graphics that you’re developing. Print on, like Printify and other print on the mail platforms have like huge catalogs of products that you could essentially sell the products on.

Bradley Sutton:

Monica says how much does it cost to open an account on TikTok? So I’m assuming maybe she’s talking about the. Is there a monthly fee at all? No, zero.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Free 99. And this is my point. Like to the point about the ban, where people are like, oh, is it worth it? I’m like it literally costs you nothing.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah right.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

It literally costs you nothing to try. There’s like no cost, no reason not to.

Bradley Sutton:

Now we have an existing TikTok shop seller who is asking a question. Joseph says why are my TikTok at spending very little? I’m using GMB. I’ve also had trouble getting the influencers to work with us and he happens to be very successful on Amazon and Instagram.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Congratulations on your success. So here’s the thing with GMB Max. I don’t recommend that you start using GMB Max until you have over 50 pieces of content and have at least 10 of those being converting content.

Bradley Sutton:

A lot of people don’t understand what this terminology is using. I know you just explained to me a little bit ago and that was the first time I heard it. Can you explain what this GMB Max is?

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

So GMB Max is an ads optimization platform. So the name of the game on TikTok is content. The more content the better, and if anybody’s ever tried to run ads in the past, it can be a lot to manually be like, constantly testing new creatives and these types of things. So GMD max what it does is it takes all the all the shoppable posts that your products are tagged in and it will take your what’s called your ROI target Like what is what you’re willing to your budget and your ROI target and say, okay, well, we’re going to test all of these creatives and anything new that comes in to see what converts we’re going to test it against. Like, you don’t have to even create audiences, it’s so easy to use. However, it doesn’t work unless you already have contents working.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

So I would dial it back, joseph, and start with what I call PSAs product shopping ads, which is basically PPC Lite and use the new keyword expansion tool We’ll talk about that in the training that we’re releasing shortly and video shopping ads. So take those creatives that you have in GMV Max, take the best performing one, probably like your top five and create video shopping ads, because then you’re actually going to A spend your budget and be able to actually put that, put those dollars to work for your ads and be able to test at a lower amount and then, as you start to build up that, those affiliates who are willing to work with you, then once you have at least 50 pieces of content, with probably at least 10% of those actually being converting content, then I would switch over to GMB Max. You need kind of a snowball of content effect going on, otherwise GMB Max is a waste of time and money.

Bradley Sutton:

Another, keeping it with people who are already on TikTok shop. We’re on TikTok shop. I have not had much look, Laura. Oh, I know this Laura. She’s a lead member. I think my theory is our product and I know her products too. They’re actually very, in my opinion, TikTokable. My theory is our product might be too niche. We sell yep, it is what I thought it was. We sell collegiate jewelry for about 30 colleges. It’s like they have like Penn State, like earrings and Ohio State necklaces.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Very giftable this time of year.

Bradley Sutton:

We’ve got UGC for each university. I’ve done local university area spark ads. There’s another term that I think you’ll have to explain to everybody else On UGC and state ads. Nothing seems to convert perform any suggestions.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Okay. So once again, this is. It’s all about content and content play, and also sometimes ugc can come across as a little high production or force. I I wouldn’t know unless I, like, saw your, saw your content, Laura, um, but I would try to recruit affiliates specific to each college or university, find those cute girls and put them to work and guaranteed, I mean, uh, like his daughter she’s cute girls so, um, but like, like those college and universities, those, those people are like prime. They’re not only are they using TikTok, they’re probably already content creators, plus, they’re selling to their friends and neighbors. You know there as well. So I would focus more on affiliate recruitment, as opposed to stage to UGC for each brand, and focus less on ads and more on that affiliate recruitment. And here’s the thing I would focus on, like, because if there’s over 30 colleges like, pick your top five, pick your top five and focus there and then grow from here.

Bradley Sutton:

It’s not the Steve Black. He says I’m not the Steve Black. He says I’m not the Steve Black. I purchased an account that was advertised as US-based, but all the comments are in another language, so I’m wondering if I should. Okay, yeah, well, you’re going to have to. However, you bought an account. You’re going to have to deal with that, but hopefully nobody from outside the US is going to have to. 

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Okay, Okay it bring it back. Bring that question back. Okay, here’s the thing, guys. It’s really important for you to know that follower account on TikTok does not matter, okay. What matters is that TikTok is geo locked for where the account was created and where content is created from in the account. So when you said that all the comments are in another language, that tells me that this account was created not in the us, by a us user. And that is one of the hardest things, because, guess what? Any social content that you post is not going to go to us TikTok users. They’re going to go to the country.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

So if you want to see what country your account is in, you go on the profile the upper right, upper right hand corner there’s like three little lines. Click, click on that settings and privacy, user information, account or account information, user information and then you’ll see your geo. So, Steve, do that and I want you to comment what the geo location is for your TikTok account, if it says anything besides the United States. You’re going to have a heck of a time changing your region. I just went through this. It took us four months to change a region and at the end of the day, we would have been better served just to start with a fresh new account and, like I was saying, every single TikTok video has the same opportunity to go viral, so follower count does not matter and it doesn’t matter anyways, because those followers are all garbage. Yeah, they’re like TikTok thinks that your account literally is in another country, and so it’s going to keep showing that content not to US citizens.

Bradley Sutton:

Diego says do you think that TikTok shop is a good platform, with the right audience, to sell niche products with a high price point?

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

So here’s the thing let’s understand kind of the nature of buying on this platform, and to do that I need you to think about pizza. Okay, so you’re watching the big game, right, you’re watching the big game on the show, all your friends are there, all these things. And then all of a sudden on the screen comes a pizza commercial and the cheese is bubbly and the pepperoni looks crispy and the crust is like you know all the things, the buttery crust, everything. All of a sudden you feel what?

Bradley Sutton:

Starving.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Right, so you have an impulse to do. Go make yourself a peanut butter sandwich.

Bradley Sutton:

No, unless it tastes like pizza right.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

You have an impulse that can only be satisfied by doing what.

Bradley Sutton:

Going out and buying a pizza.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Right, right, and probably that pizza that you see right there on that screen. So from the brand that you’re seeing. So that’s exactly what we’re doing on TikTok shop is we’re creating impulse. Now, what hurts impulse buying is if that pizza was suddenly $70.

Bradley Sutton:

It was Giuliana’s pizza in Brooklyn Bridge in New York, maybe, but other than that, no.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Well, and that’s going to cost you a flight, yes, and you got to really want that pizza, right? So what if the deal was two for $12.99?

Bradley Sutton:

Little Caesar’s pizza pizza.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

You’re like hold me back, I’m already in the car, I’m already on my way, or, better yet, they’re in the car coming to me and delivering it to me, right? So it’s not that, Diogo, it’s not that higher priced items can’t work on TikTok, it’s that the way that people are discovering product is that they want to see that video and they want to buy it right then. And typically price is one of those areas that slows people down from taking action and satisfying an impulse. Higher price points will lend itself to shopping right, and that’s why it’s good. That’s when they go and search on Google, that’s when they go search on Amazon and maybe do some like window shopping or price comparison, all these things, and we want to avoid that on TikTok. We want to take advantage of that impulse and get them back to scrolling Like just give us your money and be on your way.

Bradley Sutton:

Naomi, another TikTok shop sale. Why aren’t our VSAs doing well? So please first of all explain what that acronym. We have spent over $3,000 with only a few orders. Only been on TikTok shop for less than three months, but still yes.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

So, Naomi, my question is are you using content that is converting organically? So I don’t believe in running ads until I have organically converting content, because then I’m not just like throwing money at a wall and seeing what sticks. Obviously it’s a way that you can you know if you’re posting your own content or you’re working with affiliates and you’re just getting started. Um, like number one, I would. I would want to know how many pieces of content you’re testing, if any of it was organically producing prior to testing. You know that kind of a thing, but that’s where I would start is sounds like. Sounds like you need more content, testing more content and making sure that it’s converting organically before you start running ads to it.

Bradley Sutton:

Another existing TikTok shop. I’m surprised at how many existing TikTok shop sellers there are on this call here. Elba says I sent 30 requests to affiliates for TikTok shop and none accepted. What could be the reason? Well, I think you’re laughing at the number.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

I mean, I’m sorry, Elba, but um, yes, you’re, unless that is 30 per second, uh, you really need to be spending sending upwards of a thousand per day, um, which I mean might be startling, but I’ve seen the inboxes of creator, my creator friends, and they are inundated with offers constantly, so you need to be. The standard is at least sending out 100 requests per day. I would up that to at least a thousand. Get some bots to work. I have some relationships with Euka, with the Reshare app, all these things. It really is a numbers game. So this is what I tell people I’m like date before you get married. Ok, so have, like, have a lot of requests going out, a lot of people that you’re messaging about your products, and then, once you start getting sample requests in, that’s when you get picky about who you want a relationship with. Okay, don’t get picky on the front end, get picky in the filtering.

Bradley Sutton:

On the same lines Laura, who is the collegiate hearing stuff. She followed up here and says we do have local college students as affiliates, so maybe it’s just a matter of it’s a numbers game Like yes.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

So at least 50 pieces of video content per product per month is the name of the game on TikTok. Do you guys hear that? 50 pieces of video content, not 50 samples, not 50 creators. It is 50 pieces of video content, not 50 samples, not 50 creators. It is 50 pieces of video content, either brand produced or affiliate produced, per product per month.

Bradley Sutton:

Wow, so those were all the profit, or all those extra fees? Because imagine if a TikTok shop had Amazon fees and you needed to be able to do that. Well, don’t get too scared about that, especially in your first 90 days. What did she say? The commission was 2% guys. So you’ve got some money to play with, and that’s also why focus is so critical and important.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

If you’re sending out like a million samples across 30 different products you’re going to, that’s just it’s too much. It’s too much. So focus just on, like, maybe the most popular. So I’m not like, I’m not a football or basketball, or collegiate person at all. But aren’t the bowl games coming up? Yes, they are okay. So focus on the, the um, the universities that are going to the. You know how many is? How many would that be?

Bradley Sutton:

like it’s like 100. Uh, there’s 100, there’s 50, there’s 50 bowl games and there’s like 100 teams. It’s like insane. Everybody qualifies for bowls.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

With the National.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, the BCS championship. There’s 12 teams in the BCS. Okay, I think it’s called BCS.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

So the top team is in the BCS then.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, CeCe, with the comment of the day. Bradley, just to say you have good hair. Thank you, CeCe. Thank you, CeCe. With that being said, we’re going to give everybody a discount on Helium 10 right now. Throw out the discount, please. Thanks to Cece. Let’s go ahead and reward everybody for such a great comment. All right, go to Helium10.com, guys, and use the coupon 24HOLIDAY15 to get 15% off. What is this May? Is this for a year or for up to one year? Wow, 15%. So it’s not just like a one-month thing. 15% off for a year of Helium 10. Guys, go to helium10.com 24holiday15. Thanks, CeCe, for liking my hair, for allowing us to put this discount. Let’s go ahead and get that off the screen there. Francis, thank you. Mike says I already know the answer. He’s like I’m a Helium 10 Elite member. Throw me a bone. Is it possible to have a successful TikTok shop with just running ads and little to no organic content? Can we throw a Helium 10 member a bone? I don’t think we can, but go ahead.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Well, like I said, content is king on TikTok. Here’s the good news is that once you get performing content, you can run ads to that and it will live on and it will perform on. So, for example, I have a seller who is like he went viral last Black Friday, summer so 2023, he had a performing video that just crushed it. He ran ads to it all year long. It continued to crush it for him all year long. So that’s the beauty of creating content on TikTok. Once you get something that actually performs either branded content or affiliate content that performs, it can live on and continue to develop to drive traffic.

Bradley Sutton:

That’s what I was going to ask, because it’s not a matter of I, the brand owner, have to create this content and that’s what I can run ad. One of my affiliates or influencers they might have made a video. I can send ad traffic to their video.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Yeah, via what was previously brought up, spark ads or ad authorizations. For the record, spark ads are kind of going away, if you know what I’m talking about, and ad authorizations are the new sexy thing. So you don’t even have to necessarily ask creators for Spark codes, you can just add them to authorize ads for all shoppable content that they create.

Bradley Sutton:

Naomi says we’ve got a dedicated VA for TikTok affiliate outreach. They send personalized message, they use bots. She says she reaches out to like thousands of affiliates. So, like you know, when it is a numbers game and it’s trying to scale, is this kind of like the way to go? Like, hey, you need to have a dedicated VA to be handling this number.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Yeah, absolutely so. I mean VAs can only reach out to so many people per day, like just the human element of it just can’t keep up with bots. So use bots for the initial outreach and then use VAs for basically the relationship management. So from sample to like sample filtering to the post-sample follow-up, like that creator education on um, on like your creative briefs and making sure that the content is being produced. You know all of the follow-up and having the VA do that.

Bradley Sutton:

Good question from Imran. Do we have to pay content creators per video or do they get a percentage from a sale?

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Yeah, good question. So this is where the original, like commission question kind of came in. So this is the beauty of TikTok shop. So prior to TikTok shop, working with creators was like kind of this pedestal style relationship where it was like, oh, can I have the honor of working with you and I will pay you for that? Like, pay you for that post or that honor, right? The beauty of TikTok shop now is that you can set a commission and that creator can see the actual, you know, money that they’re making the opportunity to make money, you know, with your product. So, based on your category, it could be, you know, anywhere from 10 to 20 commission um that you’re that you offer to affiliates, um, so it’s really percentage of sale. And then it’s more of like a joint venture relationship because they know once, if they, if, if sales start taking off for them, then they know like, hey, I’m gonna go create a bunch of content for them because I know it converts. So, for example, I had a seller um that went, that went viral for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, on a piece of content that the creator created like November 2, like, and it hit on November like 21, or something like that, and all of a sudden. And all of a sudden that creator was like whoa, what’s going on? And then his whole feed. He was just posting video after video just featuring that product because he could see the benefit in doing so.

Bradley Sutton:

There you have it. Some people might be kind of overwhelmed with some of these numbers talking about hiring VAs and contacting thousands of affiliates. So Guillaume has a very relevant question how can I start out reaching out to affiliates? So I’m brand new, loaded my first product. What’s the first step? It’s probably not hiring a VA and contacting 10,000 affiliates. How can you get started?

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Yeah, so the first step is to define your creator strategy. So, just like your product has a target audience, you need to think about your ideal creators that you want to work with. What type of content are they producing? What is their demographic profile? What kind of content, keywords or style or different things like that. Are they that ideal kind of person look like? Now you might have that ideal in mind and then you’re going to create what’s called an open, open plan and inside of TikTok shops affiliate center, you set up the plans that are basically are what are called open collaborations. That’s where you define your commission by your product and where you can offer free samples and then, um, and then if affiliates you know want to work with you, then they’ll request samples and can create content or shoppable posts those types of things. However, being found organically is not typically how that works when you’re just getting started. So the creator that went viral what? As soon as he started going viral? Um, he had a ton of sample requests for that product because other affiliates who see, oh, this is a hot product right now and so now I want to sell. It’s called the affiliate snowball. I call the affiliate snowball, um, but when you’re first getting started, you really have to do that outreach and that’s where bots help you do that. The Euka AI is really good, euka.ai um is a good one and, as well as the Reshare app, they’re both. They have some ai functionality in them that really helps with the outreach there and they handle that. You know reaching out to thousands of people a day, so you don’t have to.

Bradley Sutton:

Kyle says how can Helium 10 help me with my TikTok shop? I know you guys are killer for amazon, but how can uh signing up help my TikTok shop? Well, first of all, we’re going to have a lot of educational content with somebody here with me that’s going to help you with that. But also we already have tools for TikTok shop. I can’t do it on this computer here but, guys, everybody in here probably has access to our Helium 10 Chrome extension. If you have a product on Amazon, go to your product. I want everybody to do that right now, unless you’re driving or something like that but go on your product, your own product, on Amazon right now. Once you’re there, hit X-ray, run X-ray like you would, and then hit the profit. I said hit X-ray, hit the Chrome extension and then hit profitability calculator. Don’t hit X-ray, I don’t know what I’m talking about. Hit the profitability calculator and you’ll see there’s three tabs. Hit the tab that says TikTok shop. From there you can instantly see a rough estimate based on TikTok shop fees, based on the dimensions of your product and the weight and things like that, what your profit margin could be on TikTok. You put in how much commission even you want to give affiliates and how much you’re going to spend on affiliate marketing et cetera. It’s going to go ahead and calculate all that out for you so that you can see what your profitability would be on your own product on TikTok shop or do it on your competitor product. So you can do that right now. That’s not like coming soon. That’s now For the rest of you.

Bradley Sutton:

I am shocked at how many people are already selling on TikTok shop in this chat. Send us a message, please, support at Helium10.com or go into the Helium 10 dashboard. There’s like a little AI symbol on the top. Hit that AI symbol and then there’s a button that says submit ideas. Put it to attention, Bradley, because I’m checking every single message that comes in from Helium 10 users about what you want Helium 10 to do to make your life easier to sell on TikTok shop. We talked already about perhaps something that can redesign your listings, take it from Amazon directly to TikTok shop. Maybe you want us to be able to tie your inventory to MCF so that you can instantly start fulfilling. Maybe you want us to create something that helps connect you to influencers. Whatever it might be, let us know and just like we have been doing for years for Amazon sellers. Whatever you guys the most what most of you asked for. That’s what we’re going to prioritize. What do you consider to be a good benchmark of content that performs well? Based on views or based on views? Question.

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Based on views or based on conversions. I mean, like, a good benchmark of content is less about views and it’s more about engagement and it’s more about conversions, right? So if I’m going to spend money to accelerate the performance of content, I want to know that it’s going to actually be an ATM that pays me back, right? So I would keep producing organic content until you get organic content that actually converts and then I would turn on ads for that. Okay. But I would then say, as well, this is kind of one of the crazy things about TikTok is that it automatically retargets you. So if you have all of this content that’s built up even non-converting content, like even crap content we’ll say that people turn in. It actually benefits you. So if you have content that does hit and you start driving ads to that as well, as if you’re running like a GMB Max campaign, so all of a sudden it will feel like, sound like, look like everybody on your feed is talking about that product. I urge you guys to try this. Go on the platform, interact with a product detail page. You know shoppable content and then don’t buy and then see what happens to your feed because, guaranteed, you’re going to get inundated with content about that product.

Bradley Sutton:

Asmesa’s creator commission. Is the percentage fixed for a certain period or could it be variable?

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

So you set the commission and you set the time period. But I will tell you, if you start off with like hey, hey, we want to really be attractive to creators and we’re going to have a high percentage, like 20, like 18 to 20 percent, and then once you get going you drop that to like 15 to 10 percent, all of those creators who, um, who basically are, have content that got produced, uh, with that, with that commission plan, are going to get notified and you’re gonna get a whole lot of pissed off people. That commission plan are going to get notified and you’re going to get a whole lot of pissed off people who are probably going to pull their content that featured your product. So tread lightly, my friend.

Bradley Sutton:

In the meantime, how can people find you on the interwebs if they want to reach out or demand from what you do?

Michelle Barnum-Smith:

Yeah, so my website is ttshopsellers.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn under Michelle Burnham Smith, and I do have a TikTok course as well as do consulting, and we do have an agency, too. We’re just full for Q4. So feel free to reach out, and I’d love to chat more with you guys.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Well, Michelle, thank you so much for joining. We’re doing lots of content on TikTok shop. As a matter of fact, in a few minutes, somebody is coming here. We’re going to try and get him, like literally started on TikTok shop. He has never sold and he was like saying, hey, go ahead and record the whole process of the business registration. A lot of you guys were asking that in the chat today. What’s that registration? Like? Well, we’re literally, in a few minutes, going to be recording the video not live, we’ll show it to you afterwards about how you can get started, because we want everybody in. Don’t wait till 2025. We want everybody in 2025 to be selling on TikTok shop, but start now. Get started, started now. I hope you guys are super excited about this opportunity thanks to, uh, what Michelle was talking about here. So, get started right now and let us know how can Helium 10 help you? Um and we’ll go ahead and get it done. So, thank you, Michelle once again. We’ll see everybody later. Bye now.

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