#719 – From Zero to TikTok Shop Hero

In this Serious Sellers Podcast episode, host Bradley Sutton dives deep into the world of TikTok Shop with three top experts and mentors of our TikTok Shop Scale Stories episode — Ryan Maya, Michelle Barnum-Smith, and “Hurricane” Liz Herrera. Together, they break down exactly how sellers can build and scale profitable TikTok Shop businesses, even if they’re starting from zero. From short, 30-second videos that have driven 10 million views and six-figure sales, to proven frameworks for content, affiliates, and advertising, this episode is packed with actionable insights for e-commerce entrepreneurs ready to tap into TikTok’s explosive growth.

Listeners will learn the three-bucket strategy for scaling on TikTok Shop, which involves consistent content creation, building an affiliate network, and running smart GMV Max ads. The guests reveal how to pick “TikTok-able” products that are visual, problem-solving, and impulse-friendly, priced between $30 and $50, to drive fast conversions. They also discuss why free shipping and clear discounts are essential, how to use faceless videos if you’re camera-shy, and the right posting cadence to feed the TikTok algorithm for consistent reach.

The episode wraps with a deep dive into live selling, creator recruitment, and real-world ad spend optimization. Whether you’re an established Amazon seller or launching your first product, this conversation will show you how to turn short-form videos into real revenue streams and leverage TikTok’s tools to expand your brand. For a full visual breakdown of these strategies, make sure to catch the Scale Stories case study on YouTube, where our TikTok Shop mentors guide a new seller from zero to hero on TikTok Shop.

In episode 719 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Liz, Michelle, and Ryan discuss:

• 00:00 – TikTok Shop Expert Strategies
• 07:56 – Strategies for TikTok Shop Success
• 13:53 – Creating Engaging TikTok Shop Videos
• 22:05 – TikTok Live Selling Strategies
• 25:55 – TikTok Shop Pricing and Strategies
• 33:21 – Optimizing TikTok Shop Posting Frequency

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we’re talking to three TikTok shop experts who have sold millions of dollars on the platform, and they’re gonna talk about all kinds of strategies, such as advertising and including a way to make a video in 30 seconds that, for one of these sellers, resulted in 10 million views and hundreds of thousands of dollars of TikTok sales. 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. I’m actually here at the Helium 10 headquarters here in Irvine, California, and we got a special episode lined up today, and so we’re going to be talking today about all things TikTok shop. This is something that’s very important for any e-commerce entrepreneurs existing brands out there that you have TikTok shop on your radar, especially if there’s a TikTok shop in your country which doesn’t have as much penetration as Amazon. But there’s a number of marketplaces or a number of countries where TikTok shop is available in US, UK, Spain, Germany, Japan, et cetera, et cetera and we’re going to be talking today about the best practices on how you can start or scale your TikTok shop business, and a lot of times when we talk about Amazon, you know me or my team will kind of come on as the so-called experts on it. But guess what, guys, I’m not that experienced on TikTok shop. Yes, I am selling on TikTok shop, but I’m just almost like a layman, as it were. I’m kind of a newbie when it comes to TikTok shop, and so we especially wanted to bring on some experts, some of the top people in the world who have been on TikTok shop, and so we are going to go ahead and invite them on. You might have seen them before.

Bradley Sutton:

Has anybody let me know in the comments? First of all, let me know in the comments. I forgot to do this. We usually do this where are you guys watching from? Let me give some uh shout outs here. What city are you coming from? Maori, from Los Angeles. I hope you’re a Dodger’s fan, yay, uh. And let me know where else you guys are watching from. But if you guys have access to YouTube, which almost everybody does, I hope you have seen our scale stories series we’ve been doing the last few weeks. Our latest episode that we dropped last week was all about TikTok shop and we are taking somebody from zero to, hopefully, hero, which is Gracey on TikTok shop. She’s been on the other side of TikTok where she’s been an influencer, but we’re showing step-by-step, with the help of the mentors we’re about to bring on how they can level up on TikTok shop, and so if you have not seen that episode, make sure, after you watch this, to go in there. Just type in Helium 10 Scale Stories on YouTube and look for a thumbnail that has like a TikTok shop logo and you’ll see this video where you can see a step-by-step live process of how somebody can start their TikTok shop business. And a lot of the things that we go over there are also applicable for those who are already on the platform and they just want to scale up. So let’s go ahead and introduce our guest. Ryan, how’s it going?

Ryan:

What’s up, Bradley? How are you?

Bradley Sutton:

Can you go ahead and introduce yourself?

Ryan:

Yes, my name is Ryan Maya. I am a TikTok shop brand owner. So I own one brand called Beyond Braid, which is my fishing brand, and then a pickleball brand. I’ve been on TikTok shop since inception, so literally like since month one. We’ve sold multi seven figures on TikTok shop alone and, yeah, we’re making sales on TikTok shop every single day and trying to see how we can blow this thing up even further. So, yeah, in TikTok shop every day, real time.

Bradley Sutton:

I love it. I love it, and our other mentor, slash expert, is going to be Michelle. Welcome, Michelle. Can you go ahead and introduce yourself?

Michelle:

Hey guys, I’m Michelle Barnum-Smith. I’m a TikTok shop expert strategist. Like Ryan, I’ve been on TikTok shop since day one here in the US, as well as TikTok shop UK, which launched before TikTok US. So since basically late 2022, have I been using TikTok shop in some way, shape or form and have literally launched like I don’t know thousands of products on the platform, trained thousands of sellers on how to use TikTok shop. I’m very familiar with the nooks and crannies of the platform and I’m excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Bradley Sutton:

So for most people, Ryan, let’s start with you who say hey, I’m yes on Amazon, no to TikTok. Was that how you started? Did you launch simultaneously on both, or were you one of these like we have in the audience, where they started on Amazon and then added TikTok later?

Ryan:

So my main brand, Beyond Braids, started in 2020. So that was previous to TikTok Shop. So we actually started on Shopify first, then Amazon and then as soon as TikTok Shop rolled out is right when I started my Pickleball brand. So, I’m the kind of person that whenever I see like a new hot opportunity or like a beta of some sort, I always want to try it out, even if it will completely flop, like you never know what it could turn into. And in this case, TikTok shop for us turned into a multi seven figure sales channel on just saying, hey, like, let’s try this, try this opportunity. So I went from two established businesses on Amazon and Shopify to then adding TikTok as a third channel and now it makes up a significant portion of revenue.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. Michelle, what would be your advice to those who are in that boat of they’re selling on Amazon or Shopify you? know, like Ryan is and they’re not on TikTok shop? Like, how do you determine, hey, should I be on TikTok shop? Because, like, for example, maybe I am selling a million dollars on Amazon or Shopify of Phillips head screwdrivers. Could be that maybe TikTok might not be that lucrative. I don’t know, you know there might be an angle there or some other product. How can they determine, hey, should I be looking into a TikTok shop?

Michelle:

Yeah, absolutely. And we do get into this in the scale stories in our episode where I share, kind of, my five keys to TikTok ability. Because it is true, Bradley, there’s some, there’s some people that think like, hey, any product, you can bring any product to TikTok and I’m like, sure, but that doesn’t necessarily make it right for the platform. Yes, you can bring over your entire catalog, but success on the platform requires focus, focus of energy, focus of funds, focus of momentum, building activities like creating content, and so you really have to have the right products to start with to put that energy behind, otherwise you’re gonna waste a lot of time. So what I like to do when I, you know, anytime I speak at an event or speak to people, if they come up to me and they say I’m not on TikTok shop yet, I’m like, cool, what do you sell? And when they tell me what they sell, I’m going on TikTok shop. I’m going through these kinds of filters and if it’s okay, I will just take a second and, and you know, take you guys through these filters. So if you’re not on TikTok shop yet, I just want you to like think about it as they go through this.

Michelle:

So kind of the five keys to TikTok ability. The first is demonstrability. Primarily, TikTok is a social media platform and a visual one. You know, video is really critical to success on the platform. So, does your product demonstrate well and fairly quickly? Right, we have seconds to capture somebody’s attention while they’re doing their scroll. Right, and so can you very quickly demonstrate your product. The second key is unique features. Is there something unique and interesting? Are those Phillips head screwdrivers in a cheetah print, you know like? Are they appealing, you know? Are they gold-plated? Are they rose gold? Yeah, are we targeting a very specific audience with that, which is kind of the third key. Do you have a passionate audience or a passionate niche that you’re serving? The fourth key to tick tock ability is does it solve a problem? Right, and this kind of gets into the demonstrability side and is that problem both obvious and your product an obvious solution to that problem as well?

Michelle:

And then the five key to TikTok ability is pricing. Because this is a social media platform primarily, people are not on the platform. They do not necessarily go on the platform with the intent to purchase, so that means that they’re there for entertainment, they’re there for discovery and we’re interrupting that experience to sell to them. And you know, if you think about your own experience with entertainment, whether that’s, you know watching a show on Netflix or Prime Video or even just you know on regular TV cable, how often are you just loving the fact that your entertainment is interrupted by advertising? Right, probably not. So we really want to you know, have product and from a price point where we are capturing people from an impulse buying perspective, and that’s usually between the 30 and $50 mark and less than that. Can it be higher? Yes, can it be lower? Yes, but that ideal range where you can still make some money on the platform is $30 to $50. So those are kind of like the five filters that I talk people through and I feel like is kind of critical to success on the platform.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, excellent, excellent. That applies to everybody, whether you want to start on TikTok shop, like you have some unique idea, or whether you already have an Amazon product and you want to know hey, should I be thinking about TikTok shop? Now there are some people, Ryan, that said they’re already selling on TikTok shop. What’s some advice as far as how they can scale up? Let’s just assume hey, I’ve been selling on Amazon, I threw my products on TikTok. Maybe I’ve reached out to a couple of influencers, but I don’t really see traction yet. What are some of the easy, low-hanging fruit ways to start scaling? For those who have not been able to scale, or maybe they’re just starting on TikTok shop. They don’t even know how to do sales, or used to Amazon advertising, which is completely different on TikTok. What’s some of your best words of wisdom for people in that bucket?

Ryan:

I mean you could break it down and get super deep into that and saying like, hey, your listings have to be super optimized, um, your, your bullet points, your title, your images, etc. But I would say I would just break it down into like three buckets. Number one, TikTok, is a content platform. So you need to have uh, you need to be making content from a brand page or a brand owner perspective or a brand page, sorry. Number two is affiliates. And then three is advertising. So you have your own content, you have affiliate content and then GMB Max advertising to scale. That’s the only way. Like you have to get your product in front of people and you have to get your videos with views, like you have to be able to have this mass outreach for your products. So, we create a lot of content through our own branded page. So our Beyond Braid page has 150,000 followers. So, we’re posting one to three times a day all shoppable posts. On top of that, I’m making content myself on my own affiliate pages one to three a day, and then through the sampling process that TikTok shop so easily sets up for you, and being able to reach out to creators through their affiliate center or different bots that you can set up. You can send out hundreds of samples a day if you wanted to or have the budget, or you can send out one to five samples a day and get these in the hands of creators who will make content for you. And then, once you have a little bit of a library of content built up of affiliates, your own brand page, you can then turn on GMB Max ads, which will then put some ad spend behind those posts. So that’s like a very simple layout. You can get super deep into it, but that’s like the overall high-level strategy of how to start getting some momentum on the platform is making videos from yourself, from affiliates and then running ads to them through GMB Max, which GMB Max is the advertising tool for TikTok shop, the one and only tool.

Bradley Sutton:

Yep, it’s very simple compared to Amazon, which has its pros and cons, but we might get into that later. Now, staying with Ryan, and then we’ll ask the same question back to Michelle, is, Ryan, something that you’re known for being really good at and you’ve actually talked on Helium 10 webinars before is making content, making videos for your own brand, because it’s not just about oh, let me go ahead and get influencers to post about my product. Obviously, that’s important, but you need to have your own brand, TikTok, and you need to be putting out content Again. It’s also so that you can promote it through GMV Max. It’s also for the chance that you can get a lot of exposure from people who aren’t following you. So in the past, you’ve actually done live, I remember, on the show and also in our scale stories where you literally have recorded an ad. So instead of doing that this time, look for something. I’m putting you on the spot here. You didn’t know what I was going to do. Look for something around your desk. It could be your product or it could be just the Shure microphone you have. People need to understand how easy it is to make videos, and so do an example of something like a 15 to 30 second video that you’re promoting. That you literally could record with your own phone and then put it up on your own brand, TikTok. If you could do that here on the spot.

Ryan:

So I don’t have any of my products in hands reach, but I’ll use this like Yeti water bottle as an example. And, guys, what Bradley is alluding to is how simple these videos really are. Like it’s, you don’t need fancy lighting, you don’t need fancy microphones, you don’t need fancy cameras. It’s literally an iPhone selfie video and then just talking to the camera. An iPhone selfie video and then just talking to the camera pitching your product right. There’s definitely different ways to go super deep and learn the psychology of a customer and click-through rates and all that BS. But my most simple videos that I don’t even think about doing, I’m just saying like, hey, here’s my product. It looks super cool, it’s on a really big sale right now, in the most monotone voice. That video has 10 million views and has generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales. So you don’t overthink it. It’s literally as simple as just getting on camera and doing this over and over until you get comfortable with it.

Ryan:

But as a live example, like, I’ll sell this water bottle. It’s a Yeti tumbler water bottle, so what’s something cool that I could say? So pretend this is live. I’m pressing record Ready. Three, two, one. This Yeti water bottle keeps ice cold for 72 hours. That’s like absolutely incredible. I love drinking cold water. That’s why I spend the extra money to buy a Yeti tumbler. It’s by far the best on the market and they’re actually running a huge sale.

Ryan:

Click the link below. Something similar to that. Right, I told them a feature of why I love this water bottle. It keeps my water cold for 72 hours and it’s on a really big sale right now. So a little bit of a feature, a little bit of a feature, a little bit of a call to action, and it’s really not that difficult. What I want to preach to the audience is say hey guys, just get in front of the camera and just start practicing, and one you never know which video could go viral. You can make 10 videos and one of them just happens to go viral, even if it’s a really bad video, not high quality. And then, on the flip side, you could take your time and make videos a little bit more quality, do a little bit more editing, a little bit more B-roll and stuff like that. So we, on both of our channels, do both. And while the very fancy videos are important, the very nonchalant, native style selfie videos, those convert the best by far for TikTok shop, so don’t overcomplicate it, just start making more videos.

Michelle:

Yeah, absolutely. Let me show you guys an example as well. So here’s my product. It’s like a little Hemp, so everything. A lot of times it’s about that visual hook. So once again you’re scrolling right. It’s like take a look at all. Like if your skin is looking like this, you need this Hemp’s all-in-one hand moisturizing cream. Goes on smooth, smells delicious and just look how smooth and shiny that makes my skin. It’s on sale right now. Grab yours today. Like it really is about. Like what is that visual hook? What are those kinds of calls to action that you can, you know, get very quick into the point?

Michelle:

I think a lot of people, especially sellers, get in their heads over this and Ryan’s a really great example of being a brand that creates his own content but there are plenty of brands that I work with that they do not, that they’re their primary. You know content strategy is affiliate recruitment or UGC creators that they hire through. You know a solution or service like join brands or something else, and Helium 10 makes it really easy as well, with our new solutions, to be able to find affiliates and matchmaking that way as well. But what’s really critical as a seller that you need to understand is that you need to research what is actually working for your category, for similar products. You know what’s kind of what’s kind of popping off and build creative briefs to. If you’re going to recruit creators, if you’re going to, you know, have UGC content creators. We don’t want to just rely on creators to be creative right, and a lot of brands have that kind of attitude, but these creators have so much I don’t know other products that they have to create content for that. We want to make it really easy for them to be able to know how to pitch your products.

Michelle:

So that’s on you as the seller and it’s an iterative process. People forget this is marketing. Marketing is art and science. We do our best effort in researching and you know, kind of trying different. You know putting out there a good best effort and then you got to iterate. You got a test, you know Ryan, at scale. You got to test, you know Ryan, at scale. This is the benefit of being, you know, a brand owner who’s creating content, cause he can. He can try all kinds of different angles and come at it from all different kinds of ways and some work and some don’t, you know, and it allows him to test very quickly, and that’s the benefit of it. So listen

Ryan:

I would even say most say most don’t work and some do work. So probably 90% of your hooks and videos will flop, but at the end of the day you’re only relying on those 10% to continue converting over the long term. So we test a whole bunch of stuff, me and my social media manager. We have an Excel sheet with 100 different hooks and of those 100 different hooks, maybe five or 10 will actually work and actually convert for the long term. So most won’t work and some will, and you’re just aiming for that top 5% to 10%.

Michelle:

Yeah, absolutely yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

So guys, a couple takeaways here. I hope you guys understood the main points. First of all, when Ryan was giving some of those numbers where he said a video like that that just took 20 seconds to film, or 30 seconds, got him like 10 million views and hundreds of thousands of dollars of sales, that was not an exaggeration. I’ve seen his account before and I’ve seen the video that did it. You can actually go to his TikTok channel you could see some of those pinned and see the numbers there of the views it has. But again, that doesn’t mean that, hey, everybody out there, you just film a 30-second video right now and you’re guaranteed to have that kind of success. Odds are probably not. But you’re not going to have the chance, or there’s no chance, for a home run if you don’t even have an at-bat. And so you’ve got to start doing the content, like Michelle and Ryan were saying, or especially leveraging uh influencers. And again, same thing, not just like, all right, set it and forget it. Let me just message everybody and say here’s my product. Please make a video. You got to put some effort in there too. You might need some coaching and it does, just because a 30 second simple video works. That doesn’t mean that’s the only kind of video you can do. Maybe you’ve got some kind of like really creative idea that actually takes a few hours to film and it’s very unique and has some like really catchy visual aspect of it. Nothing wrong with trying that. You know too, if that’s what you have.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, we have one more mentor who joined us. We’re going to go ahead and introduce her, or she’ll introduce herself. Let’s bring on Hurricane Liz to the stage. Liz, how’s it going?

Liz:

Great, Bradley, you mean Banana Liz?

Bradley Sutton:

Banana Liz, yes that’s right. If you guys watch the Scale Stories you’ll understand that reference there. Liz, can you go ahead and introduce yourself to the audience?

Liz:

My name is Liz. I go by the name of Hurricane Liz and, as I told everybody on scale stories, which is, if you haven’t seen, you should take a look at it. It’s actually quite entertaining. The most important thing that people remember about me is I sold plastic bananas on Amazon. So if you could sell plastic bananas and you’d like to monkey around like that, you can still do very well on Amazon and TikTok especially, and they both are interconnected. That’s one of the most important things. There’s a trend spillover. So if you are not on TikTok, you are certainly missing out on a lot of traffic that you could capitalize on your Amazon listing. So it’s a big thing.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Now we’ve talked a little bit, right before you came on, about some of the ways. Michelle talked about TikTok ability to understand hey, if I’m not selling on TikTok, is it something I should look at with my products? Ryan also talked a little bit about if you’re just getting started or you haven’t had much traction, how you can scale up. What about you? What’s some of your best tips? Liz, as far as hey, somebody’s got their product set up, how can they get some? Actually, maybe, since we haven’t talked about this at all and I know you have experience with this, can you talk about live selling and what aspect that has to do on TikTok. Because I would say 99% of our Amazon sellers out there probably have never used Amazon Live and even if they have, it’s a different beast than TikTok Live. So can you talk about the importance of live selling to TikTok and some of your best tips for getting started?

Liz:

Right, absolutely. I know I heard Michelle and Ryan talk. Most importantly I’ll jump into live stream in a second but there was some things that they said that are very important. One being that creating your own content. That’s absolutely something that most brand owners should just do just to get a creative idea of what they should be implementing to sell their brand, because they know their brand the best right. But here’s the thing and I know a lot of you out there don’t want to do this A lot of people don’t like showing themselves on camera. Bradley, like, for some weird reason, people just don’t like to be on camera.

Liz:

But some of the most popular types of videos on all of TikTok are POV videos, where you are literally faceless and you’re just showing your hands and people might wonder why the heck would a faceless video convert? Real? Well, Let me tell you why. Because people are always wondering what are they going to do next? So, by being able to put yourself in that situation, never showing your face at all, but being able to tell a story through your hands and your movements, it gives you another element of frame redirect. You’re constantly moving around. People love to watch that and they just get so magnetized by that and they can’t take their eyes off of what’s going to happen next. So if you don’t like to, if you’re shy, I get it. Don’t worry about showing your face. You can literally show your hands and make a lot of sales. In fact, some of the biggest creators just show their hands. We’ve never seen their face, which takes me into the live stream, because the same thing can be said. There are so many live streamers that have made millions of dollars by never showing their face, and you might think that is against the whole idea of being live, but you can do it either way, either faceless or with your face. And let me tell you there are big brands right now that are going live 24-7, brands like Mary Ruth and a bunch of other brands and they’re also breaking records. And the biggest thing that I always like to allude to here is that in China right now, there is a man by the name of the Lipstick King who has the $1.9 billion. Billion with a B in a span of 12 hours, and while that can be somewhat impossible for a USA brand to hit because I mean, let’s face it, China has 2 billion people there’s still hundreds of millions of people in the USA, and we haven’t even come close to that, Bradley. So, if a man can sell lipstick in China, there’s no telling what some of you all can do that are listening to this right now.

Bradley Sutton:

The first question that came through is a great question that might be on a lot of beginners’ minds. And then you mentors tell me who wants to answer this. But Alicia says can new accounts with practically zero followers quickly build sales on TikTok? Who wants to take this one?

Liz:

I mean, I think, Ryan. I can answer that too. He did something similar.

Michelle:

We’ve definitely I mean, we’ve definitely launched like I’ve worked with, you know hundreds of brands who have no, you know, brand presence and no desire to do so like building up their own social presence. And it’s a fallacy to think that you have to have followers to be successful on the platform. You absolutely do not. You can roll in with a brand new TikTok account and be able to start driving sales pretty quickly with your own content or with creator content. It’s all about advertising and getting your content boosted to audiences. Every video on the platform. TikTok is very different from Meta and other platforms in the sense that you don’t have to have followers to get reach. Every video on the platform has the same starting line and any kind of engagement you get. TikTok kind of tests your content with a little bit of traffic and if it starts to pick up, it will organically give it some more traffic and more and more and more, and so you really can grow it. And that’s one of the beauties of TikTok as well is that you have, you know, everybody’s on the same starting line.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, excellent, we’re going to keep it going here. Vinita had a question. I actually see many TikTok products that are within the 10 to 15 range and I purchased them. Uh, where did these 30 to 50 dollars come from? Is it because of the commission? So why? I think it was Michelle who had said that, but, but anybody can answer this like, is there room for selling TikTok shop products in that lower price range? Or why do we recommend that $30 price range? Trey Lockerbie.

Ryan:

I talked about this in the Scale Stories video is you need enough profit dollars for your product to have a sustainable business. Could you get away with selling a $10 to $15 product? Sure, but your margins are going to be very, very, very tight because you have TikTok shop commission or platform fees, you have commissions to affiliates, you have shipping costs, you have advertising costs, you have product costs. So figuring all of that out in a $10 to $15 budget is very, very, very tight. I’m not saying it’s impossible, because there’s people who do it and have success with it, but ideally you want to sell things above $20 or at least $19.99. I would say that’s the bottom you should be selling a product for, especially if it’s your main product or your first product, our hero product. The average order value AOV is $54, right, that has allowed us to launch other products that don’t have to necessarily meet that $20 price point.

Ryan:

But if this is like your first time selling on TikTok shop, I highly suggest you start at least in the 20s to give yourself enough profit dollars not profit margin, profit dollars of about $15 plus so you can have money left over at the end of the day once you’ve paid your ads, your shipping, your product costs your commissions, so you can actually make money in this business because so many business owners sell products and sell thousands of products and at the end of the day you look at your P&L and you see you made no money or you’ve made like 1% profit margin where it’s not worth it. So, if you can and have the luxury too and you see you made no money or you’ve made like 1% profit margin where it’s not worth it, so if you can and have the luxury to, and you’re starting from scratch, start with a product that costs more or that you can sell for more at least $19.99, $24.99, $29.99 at least.

Michelle:

And I would just add in there as well if you’re relying on affiliates to create content for you, you’re going to be setting commission rates for those. Usually, usually like best practice, is between 15 and 20%, and so if your price point is so low, then that commission amount is just not interesting enough to attract them to work on your brand. You’re not going to have like real, like the quality creators interested in promoting your products.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, here’s a question that I’ll take because it ties into Helium 10 a little bit. Colin says we fulfill orders on Shopify and currently have TikTok synced to Shopify store. Would it be better to have it linked to Amazon? So there’s a few things to keep in mind. First of all, if you have it linked to Shopify, then you might be able to get some of the address information and, you know, be able to build audiences and some of the contact information. There’s a link between Shopify and TikTok. One of the drawbacks, though, if you’re just starting, sometimes it doesn’t work, just for whatever reason. You know the integration just is kind of a little bit wonky to do it. And then that’s usually if you have your own 3PL, but for some people have the shop, you know TikTok linked to Shopify and the Shopify is still linked to Amazon for your what’s called multi-channel fulfillment. So what we at Helium 10 have if you don’t have Shopify, you can just actually connect your TikTok listings or your TikTok account directly to Amazon, even without listings on TikTok yet if you are just starting today on TikTok shop and, by the way, if you’re watching this on YouTube, check the description below we actually have a special link to sign up for TikTok where you get some extra benefits on onboarding, just because if you’re signing up from Helium 10. Helium 10 doesn’t get money from it or anything. But we negotiated something. We’re like hey, if we send a seller to you, can you please take some extra special care of them? So hit that link below. You guys will see that in the uh, in the description below.

Bradley Sutton:

But anyways, if you’re only have Amazon products and you only have Amazon fulfillment let’s say you don’t even have your own third-party warehouse then the absolute easiest way if you have Helium 10, is you link your TikTok account to your Helium 10 and just click a button. All your Amazon listings will then go to TikTok shop the images we recreate the listing with AI for what’s best optimized for TikTok. And then the second step is you link your TikTok orders to your Amazon account again through Helium 10, where it goes to MCF, which stands for multi-channel fulfillment. So if you have FBA inventory, an order comes on TikTok, you’re not like copying and pasting addresses and then later on copying and pasting tracking numbers et cetera, et cetera. You are able to have that automatically get fulfilled by Amazon. And until last week I think you had to have like a diamond account in Helium 10 to be able to use that. But now even our Platinum members, which is probably most of you guys out there, are able to use a lot of these features, so that’s the absolute easiest to get started.

Bradley Sutton:

Now back to some questions here in the chat. Matt says for people who are just getting started, is it better to research products that do affiliate commission than buy the product and do your short video selling the product. So he might be thinking more from the affiliate side perhaps, like maybe he’s trying to build up some capital to launch his own product. Do any of you have advice for somebody looking to start on the affiliate side of things about, like, finding products that could get them commissioned?

Liz:

Yeah, I would certainly just do that, Bradley. I mean I’ve done just about $800,000 myself in creator commissions just doing random products and I think it’s important. If you can get good at that skill, you can literally sell anything like Ryan did that exact model and obviously now he uses creators too and GMB Max and he’s learned everything along the way. But he started as a one-man gang and if you can really get good at the skill, that takes you beyond even just TikTok shop, it’s the future, it’s live selling and creator economies and all that good stuff is the future. So if you get good at that social aspect of things you’re going to, you’re in for a very long career.

Bradley Sutton:

Uh, there was a question. Matt had some questions that were already answered here, but his number three question from Matt says do you have a rule of thumb for how many videos you post per day or week to drive TikTok shop?

Ryan:

Um, so I mean, there’s no magic number here, but what’s a good target to have. I mean, our TikTok account managers are going to tell us to post 10 times a day. I think you have to do what’s realistic for yourself as a brand owner. I would set a goal for one a day, right, and you can batch create them, like last, I think it was today’s Monday. On Saturday I had two hours by myself where I didn’t know what to like. I was bored at home and I said you know what? I’m going to batch create some content for Black Friday. So, I went in my garage where I have all of our products and I think I made 20 videos in the span of like an hour, just recording them, and then I’ll edit them later. I uploaded them to TikTok shop. So, yeah, batch record them one day a week and then you can post them one day. So if you want to get really aggressive, you can post three times a day if you have the bandwidth. My social media manager is telling me hey, I want to post 10 times a day and I’m like dude, we got to make sure we have enough content over these next couple of months to make that last. So I think it’s just, it’s as much as you can do. Um, the more the merrier, the TikTok shop team tells us. But from a realistic standpoint, if you could do one a day, make one shoppable post a day, I think that’s, that’s a, that’s a really good start.

Liz:

And you know, to add to that, Bradley. it’s all what Ryan said, but I’ll tell you what the tick to algorithm has shown us. There’s a guy by the name of Christo JJ, and you guys can look this guy up. He posts up to 150 times per day and he’s one of the highest earning creators on the entire planet, and that’s because he relentlessly posts 150 videos per day. Am I telling you to go out tomorrow and start filming 150 videos a day? Absolutely not. What I’m telling you is you can build to that over time, as the algorithm has proven it with his account alone, that this can be done. So say, your magic number is 20, as you can hammer out 20 videos like Ryan did in two hours. And if you can do that, don’t just all of a sudden start blasting 20 videos at the algorithm. It’s going to possibly shadow ban you for temporarily until you prove to them that you’re going to be consistent. Start with a couple day, move up to five the following week, then go to 10, then go to 15 and make it to 20 slowly and gradually. And show TikTok that you mean serious business and that you want to make money with them, and they’ll let you post 150 a day, but you got to gradually work your way up to that. You can’t just start blasting it.

Ryan:

I also forget that Liz is a complete wizard and knows, like some sorcery stuff on, how to do that stuff. Like I’m just, I’m just an ordinary person. Liz is like go. Her brain goes into like crazy wormholes of craziness.

Bradley Sutton:

They don’t call her hurricane Liz for nothing.

Liz:

Right.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, Ryan, you’re still at the strong wind. Ryan, maybe stage we’ll get you up to the hurricane Ryan,

Liz:

Ryan can hold his own. He does content for himself. You know how difficult that is for most people to do. Most people don’t even want to jump on. You’ve done it for two brands, so you’re no novice, Ryan, you’re not a rookie. Come on.

Ryan:

I know.

Bradley Sutton:

On content-wise Ryan’s on tornado level for sure.

Ryan:

Some of the best brands I say realistic, if you want to be realistic post one a day. If you look at what some of the best and biggest brands are doing, they’re posting 10, 15 times a day. So if you want to be great, by all means go and rip it. But I know as business owners it’s hard to fit all these things in. But yeah, the more you can post on a sustainable basis, like Liz said, said that the algorithm can actually take it like go for it, you know

Michelle:

But I would just I would also add the caveat that the algorithm is looking for buzz and so, once again, this is Ryan’s coming from his own perspective of posting content. But if you build that strong creator network who’s creating content for you, um, hitting that 10 posts a day is not difficult, you know. Getting that content posts a day is not difficult, getting that content engine. As long as you’re willing to have a sampling and a strong commission program, getting to those numbers is not difficult to do. But it is one of those things that has to be consistent and especially having a lot of different affiliates talking about your product creates that buzz that the algorithm is looking for in the first place.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, this next question was answered in the chat by Ryan, but I just want everybody to be able to hear this on the podcast as well. Brenda says if products are below that $20 price point, do you recommend that we don’t sell on TikTok shop with that price and instead push bundles that are above 20? And context our products are actually $9.99. So, what did you tell her in the chat there?

Ryan:

Yeah, I said, for sure, bundle it to get it to that price point that you want it to. So, for example, not my brand. My friend owns this bagel brand called Royal Bagels. One pack of bagels is like 12 bucks, so they can’t make it work. So they sell a four pack for $39 to $45 and they sold thousands and thousands of units that way, sustainably. So, for sure, create all kinds of bundles to get your price points up.

Bradley Sutton:

Allison has a question about setting up your listing price. Do you do free shipping or shipping paid by buyers?

Michelle:

Free shipping, 100% all the time and there was another question in the post talking about how they never run sales because this is impulse buying. Sellers or, excuse me, customers need those visual cues that they are getting the absolute best deal. So I highly recommend that you know on your product detail page you price so that you can offer free champ, free shipping. Always have a, have a flash deal or some other product discount running, have a coupon, that’s live. All these visual cues that you’re giving the customer that there is no reason that they need to slow down, that they need to shop this somewhere else. We want that conversion happening on the platform and plus, thanks to Amazon customers. 80% of customers will not buy if you are charging for shipping. They will go off platform, they’ll research your competitors, go to Amazon and you’ll lose the sale. So just build it into your pricing.

Bradley Sutton:

I’ll answer the first part of this next question and then somebody can answer or can add to it really quick. Reed says how about the other end of the table, finding affiliates who strategize selling our products? How can I find quality affiliates? Essentially, the answer is again if you’ve got the Platinum or Diamond plan on Helium 10, we have a tool called Influencer Finder. You can enter certain metrics and then find influencers that are relevant to you and even add them to lists that you can message them right from within Helium 10. Now, and the product finder too, you can actually find people who have done videos too, for your competitors or similar products and then reach out to them. But other than looking for affiliates who maybe have done videos for similar products, what are some of those filters you know, Michelle, Liz or Ryan, that you use to kind of like narrow down affiliates that you want to reach out to offer product to?

Michelle:

I would like to just remind you guys that TikTok is a marketing platform and you are looking for creators who are channels to your ICP, who are channels to your target audience. So once again, as a business owner, you need to have a really clear marketing strategy understanding who your target audience is, who your product serves, and then looking for creators that help you access that ICP. So I have a client who sells phonics flashcards. His ICP are moms who are trying to help toddlers learn how to read. So when he is looking for creators, kind of, some core requirements are that they’re a mother of a small child, right, and not that we’re going to have the child demonstrate the product or sell the product, but that is a requirement so that moms can see themselves in that. Another ICP might be like a primary education teacher, like a kindergarten or preschool teacher. You know those types of things. So once again, you need to be looking at creators. Not just can this person sell and just be making blanket statements along those lines, but have that clear vision of who your target audience is and your product, that it serves.

Bradley Sutton:

All right before we get into the next question. Really quick, they might want to reach out to you guys on the interwebs or see some of your other content. So, Liz, how can people find you out there?

Liz:

They can just DM me on Instagram. It’s hurricaneliz. I know that’s everybody’s preferred method, so I’m on IG.

Bradley Sutton:

And Ryan, how can people find you? And also maybe check out some of your TikTok channels to see all this content that you’ve been talking about. That you do for your own brand.

Ryan:

Yeah, so just search my name Ryan r-y-a-n, Maya m-a-y-a. Most channels I have an extra a because Ryan Maya was taken but Instagram. You can go look at my TikTok and just copy my videos and then I have a YouTube channel where I dive in deep about like TikTok shop strategy as well. Just search my first and last name and you’ll find it

Bradley Sutton:

And Michelle, how can people find your content and reach out to you as well?

Michelle:

Yeah, I post a lot on LinkedIn, so feel free to reach out to me and connect there.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay excellent. So, and I say it’s pronounced Michelle, but it’s spelled the regular like, like Michelle is how to find

Michelle:

it named after the Beatles song, so you tell me which is the correct spelling.

Bradley Sutton:

There we go, go hey. I didn’t say one was right or wrong the expected way that some people would say them

Michelle:

That’s right.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome, all right. Last question, real, real easy one here. I’ll answer this one. Unless I’m answering it wrong, please correct me. Amazon penalizes people for having lower prices on Walmart.com or others. Is that not the case for TikTok? So in in my experience, that is not one of the websites that they are matching. You know they’ll. They’ll go and find some random price on Shopify or Walmart, like this person said, and then say hey, you know, you can’t have it lower on these other places, uh, as opposed to Amazon. But as of now I see Michelle nodding her head too that is not the case for TikTok, so you don’t have to worry about having your price higher on there.

Michelle:

Well, I would argue your price should be higher on TikTok than on Amazon, personally speaking, and then you can layer in all of your discounts and all of the visual cues, like I talked about earlier, so at any given time, and then it’s a benefit to your brand overall if they find it on Amazon cheaper. Win-win.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Thank you very much, Michelle, Liz and Ryan for coming on here and sharing all of your expertise. We appreciate your knowledge. And again, if you guys want to see a little bit more in depth and multiple modules and a real live case study about how we’re going to level somebody up from zero on TikTok shop, make sure to go to YouTube, look up Scale Stories by Helium 10, and look for the TikTok episode.

Bradley Sutton:

We also have other episodes about somebody starting brand new from Amazon and we have a couple of Amazon brands who are trying to expand to TikTok shop. So we have different tracks there for you. And then, if you’re new to TikTok and you want to start using some of the tools we talked about the product finder, the influencer finder, migrating your listings from TikTok to or from Amazon to TikTok and your inventory and all that make sure to go to helium10.com. You can sign up for an account. Use the code SSP10 if you want to save 10% off for new users SSP10. But again, thank you to everybody who came on here. Thank you to Liz, thank you to Michelle, thank you to Ryan and we’ll see you guys later. Bye

Michelle:

Bye now

Ryan:

Bye

Shivali:

Thinking about selling on TikTok shop, or maybe you are already in it and you’re ready to scale. Unlock all of Helium 10’s brand new TikTok shop tools with our Diamond plan Everything from bulk Amazon to TikTok, listing conversions to instant Amazon MCF fulfillment. Best of all, you use the code TT10 to get 10% off Diamond for six months, even if you’ve used a coupon before. So go ahead and upgrade and let Helium 10 do all the heavy lifting for you so you can focus on what really matters. For more info on our new TikTok shop offerings, visit h10.me/tiktok, I’ll see you there.

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