A creator earned $2 million during one single Black Friday livestream on TikTok

While some people still spend their Black Friday mornings at storefront entrances, waiting to fistfight over flatscreen TVs, millions are choosing to stay cozied up at home, spending their money on TikTok.

eMarketer predicts that nearly 44% of U.S. TikTok users will make a purchase on the platform this year, and a lot of those purchases happened during Black Friday. According to TikTok’s official numbers, its ecommerce hub Shop drove over $100 million in sales in the U.S. alone.

And creators benefited from the Black Friday boom, too. TikTok didn’t give exact sales figures for many individual creators, but did say they collectively hosted over 30,000 live shopping streams. Since TikTok Shop hands out affiliate cuts as high as 20%, it’s possible creators made decent chunks of change from promoting the various steep Shop deals TikTok lined up from brands like Xbox, PlayStation, Fenty Beauty, Ole Henriksen, Liquid I.V., and Staub.

TikTok did release exact figures for one creator who’s also a small business owner: Stormi Steele, founder/CEO of hair/skincare brand Canvas Beauty, spotlighted her own brand in a TikTok livestream on Black Friday, and made more than $2 million from viewers buying products off the broadcast. Canvas Beauty ended up selling 100,000+ products and making $3 million in sales over the course of the day, it told Business Insider

Unfortunately, we don’t have a direct comparison for last year’s TikTok Shop Black Friday sales. The hub had just launched when Black Friday 2023 rolled around, and TikTok chose not to share official sales numbers.

However, like with Canvas Beauty, a couple small brands chatted with Business Insider and shared what they saw on the big sales day. Los Angeles-based trading card company Dappz Sports said it had brought in $12 million in sales through TikTok Shop in September/October 2023; on Black Friday, its live shopping streams bumped average traffic and income by 20%.

As BI points out, TikTok’s $100 million for Black Friday 2024 is still a small figure compared to overall sales in the U.S. (Those reached $10.8 billion, a 10% jump from 2023.)

But that number is also proof that TikTok is managing to drive significant social shopping traffic in the west, something platforms have been trying to do for years. Social apps like TikTok’s sister Douyin already drive billions of dollars in sales in China, but platforms for U.S. users have consistently struggled to turn viewers and posters into buyers. Until now?