Struggling to find TikTok Shop creators? We break down four places to search, including tools and tips to uncover the right Shop affiliates to promote your products.
Chances are you need to find more TikTok Shop affiliates, right?
Because so much of selling on TikTok Shop is a numbers game right now. The sooner you scale your affiliates, the faster you can rank in TikTok search and get picked up in the For You feed.
But making all of that happen means partnering with more than a handful of Shop creators.
This post explains how to find affiliates on TikTok Shop, plus tips and tools to uncover more of the right creators to promote your products.
Brands have made finding TikTok influencers a top priority for a reason. Especially now that TikTok Shop provides a win-win way for brands and affiliate creators to boost sales.
Below are four ways to find TikTok Shop affiliates for your brand and tips for conducting your search.
The “Find Creators” tool is most brands’ starting point for collabs on TikTok Shop.
This tool can be found directly in TikTok’s Affiliate Center in your brand's Shop account. Here’s a screenshot we recently grabbed to highlight what it looks like:
This tool allows brands to browse potential Shop creators and sort them by basic filters. This includes:
You can also see how many individual Shop products they’ve sold and their GMV (“Gross Merchandise Value”) to highlight the monetary value of those sales. When you find someone who ticks all the right boxes, can invite them to promote your products via Target Collaborations.
You’ve probably already tried your hand at finding TikTok affiliates here. It’s a natural starting point, giving brands a way place to search for creators without leaving the app.
However, many brands we’ve spoken to have expressed frustration with the Find Creators tool.
The main issue is a lack of scalability since you still have to comb through profiles one by one and invite creators manually.
Beyond that, there’s no guarantee that your creator invites go anywhere or result in collaborations. Getting ghosted seems to be par for the course based on our own conversations with brands and discussions among marketers on TikTok Shop (see below).
The “Find Creators” tool is a viable option if you don’t mind scrolling through profiles one by one. Keep in mind that you’ll still need to vet each creator and handle outreach yourself. For brands wanting a faster approach, this can be a bit of a slog.
Note: If you find yourself getting ghosted, the issue may be related to poor influencer targeting or that your affiliate payout isn't attractive enough to creators.
The Creator Marketplace is another place to find Shop affiliates in the app. This is TikTok’s “official” hub for brand and creator collaborations.
TikTok is actively promoting Creator Marketplace as the go-to spot for Shop partnerships, encouraging brands to use the platform to connect with creators who can drive sales directly.
Here's a snapshot from a promotional video TikTok used to hype up the Creator Marketplace around the time of TikTok Shop's launch in the US.
Brands we’ve spoken to about TikTok's in-app tools to find creators have also been critical of the Creator Marketplace, mainly citing limited search features as the biggest issue. This is a problem for brands selling niche products or targeting very specific types of creators.
As of this post, filters to find TikTok affiliates via the Marketplace are limited to:
Also, consider that using the Creator Marketplace to find TikTok Shop affiliates means restricting the types of creators you can find. While the Marketplace requires a minimum of 10,000 followers for creators to join, Shop only requires 5,000. That means access to fewer small creators.
As of writing this post, TikTok is opening up Shop access to select creators with 1,000+ followers This minimum signals that follower count isn't the deciding factor in what makes a "good" affiliate.
Quite the opposite!
For brands trying to figure out how to find TikTok Shop creators, consider that influencers with smaller follower counts are actually among the best Shop affiliates. Especially since the algorithm favors TikTok micro-influencers and nano-influencers who promote products authentically.
If you’re looking to find TikTok Shop affiliates on your own, manual searching can do the trick.
Brainstorm social media keywords and hashtags relevant to your target audience. Likewise, think about keywords and phrases that signal somebody is already promoting products on TikTok Shop.
For example, a home goods brand might browse #CleanTok coupled with tags like #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt or #ShopWithMe to uncover potential TikTok Shop affiliates.
While doing this one-by-one is time-consuming, this approach can help you discover creators with niche audiences who promote products similar to yours. Once you find a creator with the right vibe, check their profile to verify that they’re TikTok Shop-enabled and looking for affiliate opportunities.
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While the manual method of searching for TikTok Shop affiliate creators can help you find niche creators, it's not scalable and still involves tedious tasks like reaching out to influencers one by one.
While brands are spoiled for choice when it comes to TikTok influencers to work with, scaling collabs on Shop is tricky.
Brands are on the hook for a lot of the legwork for negotiating and coordinating collabs with no guarantees that they'll result in any posts.
That's why one of the best ways to find TikTok Shop creators is by looking beyond the app.
For example, TikTok influencer platforms like Statusphere can help brands scale collabs specifically with creators with Shop enabled. Our platform automatically matches brands with vetted creators based on 250+ data points, meaning you can collaborate even with the most "niche" products.
By solely targeting creators with TikTok Shop, brands can eliminate the guesswork of manually combing through profiles. Not to mention conducting outreach with individual creators.
Through Statusphere's TikTok Shop toggle, brands can require creators to use links to products in Shop. Brands can get guaranteed posts featuring TikTok Shop products with an added option to promote those posts Spark Ads directly within our platform, too.
With pre-approved collabs and the option to couple influencer posts with TikTok Shop tagging, Statusphere's platform helps brands scale Shop collabs with no manual searching required.
That translates to no wasted time, plus no more wasted products or getting ghosts by trying to wrangle Shop creators yourself.
No matter what you're selling, TikTok Shop is booming.
That's why having a defined influencer marketing strategy on TikTok is more important than ever, as promoting products on Shop requires a strong affiliate presence from creators.
And if you need an ongoing army of TikTok influencers posting on behalf of your brand and its TikTok Shop, our software can help.
Our micro-influencer platform connects brands with creators from our vetted network to get guaranteed UGC at scale. That includes content for TikTok Shop campaigns, too. Coupled with tools like Instant Spark Ads, our software offers brands an actionable way to drive more sales on TikTok and grow word-of-mouth faster.
Want to learn more about how our platform works? Connect with one of our experts to see how Statusphere can boost your TikTok presence with guaranteed content at scale.
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