TikTok wants to turn millions of Americans into paid shopping influencers

Social media platforms are making it easier and easier for creators to earn money from their content. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitch, and X all have dedicated programs that get creators onboarded to monetization. Some of those programs are new, and others—like YouTube’s—are long-established, but over the past couple of years have seen their eligibility requirements lowered, giving more creators a shorter gap from first post to first paycheck.

• On YouTube, creators can earn AdSense revenue when they hit 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time on long-form videos, or 10 million views on Shorts.
• On Twitch, streamers can apply to be Partners when they’ve streamed 25 hours over 12 different days, with an average of at least 75 viewers during those streams.
• On TikTok and Instagram, creators can start monetizing when they hit 10,000 followers.
• And on X, creators must have accounts at least three months old, with at least 5 million “organic impressions” within the last 90 days.

TikTok Shop may have recently released the lowest barrier to entry of all. It now offers affiliate marketing payouts to users with as few as 1,000 followers–and, as a result, everyday people across the U.S. are earning tens of thousands of dollars in commissions by posting videos that advertise products sold on TikTok’s burgeoning ecommerce hub.

A fundamental shift in the incentives of content creation

Could this be the beginning of a new era in the $250 billion creator economy? Industry veteran Max Benator, founder and CEO of creator ecommerce startup Orca and organizer of SoCom, the first dedicated social commerce conference in the West, thinks so.

“When the vlog was created and some of those folks became really successful and famous, when Instagram emerged and some of those folks went on to become superstars, the moment Charlie D’Amelio and Addison Rae rose to fame with the emergence of TikTok, this moment is just as big as all of those moments,” Benator tells Tubefilter. “There’s no question in my mind.”

Social ecommerce is already a $425 billion business in China, and within the last five years, we’ve seen U.S.-based social media platforms, ad agencies, talent management firms, and more try to make it happen here, too. Affiliate marketing, which is social shopping-adjacent, has become a regular component of creator/brand partnerships, with creators often getting referral links and special discounts for their audiences, and kickbacks for themselves if their viewers buy.

Affiliate marketing, though, tends to be paired with short ad spots or quick product placement worked into the creator’s usual content. The sort of social shopping content that’s worked in the East, where products are the main focus of creators’ videos and streams, wasn’t getting a foothold in the U.S.–until TikTok Shop.

When the hub launched in 2023, it saw immediate adoption by a number of creators, despite prevalent concerns about low-quality items. (TikTok later said it closed over one million seller accounts between July and December 2023 due to policy violations.) With TikTok Shop, creators didn’t have to connect with individual brands. They didn’t have to apply to companies’ individual affiliate marketing programs. They didn’t have to wait until sponsorship deals were agreed to and paperwork was signed. All they had to do was be over 18, live in the U.S., and have at least 1,000 followers.

From there, they simply had to find a product being sold on TikTok Shop, make a video about the product, link to its listing on the shop, and wait to see if their followers would buy.

Some established creators embraced TikTok Shop, but new video-makers tried it, too: people like Brandy Leigh, a 50-year-old mother of six from Indiana, who told Rest of World that between May and October 2024, she made $95,000 in commissions.

@brandybuys11 This is so beautiful! This jellyfish lamp with moving tentacles is fascinating to watch. Such a unique gift idea! #jellyfish #jellyfishlamp #uniquechristmasgifts #tiktokshopholidayhaul #tiktokshopcreatorpicks #tiktokmademebuy ♬ Underwater sound 01(163855) – imataku

Leigh was drawn to TikTok Shop because she was looking for work she could do from home. With 1,000 followers, she started posting videos of herself testing TikTok Shop products—things in popular niches like fashion & beauty and children’s toys. Every time someone swiped to one of her videos, followed her link to TikTok Shop, and bought a product she tested, she got a cut of the sale. (The amount a creator can earn varies by product, brand, and a variety of incentives, and–as Benator told us–can be as much as 20% of the sale price of the item.)

“I have never made [that much] in a year in my entire life. This is life-changing,” Leigh told Rest of World. She added that she thinks she’s successful because she’s relatable. “People like me, just doing it from their home, we are relatable. [Companies] don’t have to pay as much as they do for big celebrities. But they’re getting that relatability.”

Benator agrees that’s a point of interest for consumers willing to scroll and buy. “We all want a voice that we trust, that we can connect with, to help us make our purchases, no matter what category or area of interest we have,” he says.

His company Orca processes affiliate earnings from various companies for around 20,000 creators every single month. He says right now, some of those creators are seeing six figures, “primarily through TikTok Shop.”

An opportunity for career creators

While Benator thinks this is a pivotal moment in the creator economy, however, he also thinks everyday people who get into making commissions need to be thinking about this from a long-term content-making and business-building perspective to be successful for more than a few months.

“As social commerce grows, I still think there’s going to be a separation between the professionals who go live five days a week or who post product reviews every day,” he says. “The accessibility [with TikTok Shop’s affiliate program] is similar to that of an early viral YouTube video, where somebody did something like Charlie bit my finger. A viral video, but not a professional creator.”

He adds, “If I make a video because I love these hiking boots, and I tag them, and maybe I trip and fall on the hiking trail and capture it on video, that might go viral and I might make $10,000 [in commissions] off that video. But that doesn’t make me a professional creator, because I have to go do it again. I have to build a business to be in that category.”

He mainly sees TikTok Shop’s affiliate payments as a new doorway for revenue that will allow a select few dedicated creators who “nail it” to “not only become superstars, but they’re going to monetize many, many, many multiples greater than I think anyone but the top two or three biggest YouTubers in the world have,” he says. “If you drive millions of dollars of product, and you can get 10%, 15%, 20% of that as an affiliate commission, folks can make significant money.”

Benator sees potential for those superstars to utilize their TikTok Shop earnings the same way MrBeast, Dude Perfect, EYstreem, and Alan Chikin Chow have used their YouTube cash–by building out content production studios.

“The same way we’ve seen [MrBeast] build an entire studio operation in North Carolina, and Dude Perfect build their studio in Texas, I think very quickly we’ll see that happen in the shopping space,” he says.

More ads than ever?

But TikTok Shop is working for people who are newer to content creation and who might not be considered “professionals”–at least not yet. Leigh isn’t the sole example; Rest of World spoke to several other people who started making TikTok Shop videos with just a couple thousand followers and have since made thousands of dollars in commissions by recommending trending products like the viral Momofuku noodles.

More money flowing toward creators is a good thing, but it is worth noting that with a seemingly unlimited amount of affiliate money up for grabs at TikTok Shop, people have more incentive than ever to include as many products as possible in their videos. There has been an increase in user-generated marketing content on TikTok, and some disgruntlement from viewers in response. Viewers already see brand-made ads and traditional sponsored content when they swipe between videos, and we could be heading toward a future where they’re also served dozens, hundreds, or thousands of videos from professional creators and everyday individuals hawking products in hopes of earning affiliate cash.

Whatever happens, this does seem like an inflection point in the calculus of content creation. If millions of individuals have the opportunity to create short-form videos with the potential to reach millions of viewers, the question becomes: will they A) forgo including a product that could earn them affiliate revenue, or B) include a product and try to get a (potentially big) bag?

If hundreds of years of capitalism is any indicator, the choice seems pretty clear.