623: Why 90% of TikTok Shop Sellers Fail & How The Other 10% Make Millions With Ian Page

00:00
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. Now in this episode, I sit down with Ian Page of Bullseye Sellers to uncover the brutal truth about why most TikTok shop sellers never make it past their first couple months. Ian breaks down the exact strategies and mindset shifts that separate the struggling majority from the elite few who are building million dollar brands on the platform.

00:25
But before we begin, want to let you know that tickets for Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. And if you sell physical products online, this is the event that you should be at. Unlike most events that are filled with high level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit is all about tactical step-by-step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is in the trenches, people who are running their own e-commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers, and scaling real businesses. No corporate execs and no consultants.

00:54
Also, I hate large events, so I intentionally keep it small and intimate. We cap attendance at around 200 people, so you can actually have real conversations and connect with everyone in the room. We’ve sold out every single year for the past nine years, and I expect this year to be no different. It’s happening April 21st to 23rd in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and if you’re doing over 250K or $1 million in revenue, we also offer a private mastermind for high-level sellers. Right now, tickets are the cheapest they’re ever gonna be.

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So if you want in, go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now on to the show.

01:34
Welcome to the MyWifeQuarter.podcast. Today, I’m thrilled to have Ian Page back on the show for the second time. And if you do not remember Ian, he is the founder of Bullseye Sellers, where he helps e-commerce sellers launch and succeed on the TikTok Shop platform. Now, in the last episode, Ian gave us a step-by-step strategy on how to get launched and be successful on TikTok Shop. And a lot of people tried it, but obviously we could not.

02:01
cover every last detail about TikTok shop in just a 40 minute episode. So today, I invited him back on the show to talk about the two biggest reasons that TikTok shop sellers are currently failing. And what is interesting about these two reasons is that it is not documented publicly anywhere. And with that, welcome back to the show again. How you doing? Thank you. Try not to be a Debbie Downer on this on this episode. So I’ll try to brighten it up at the end.

02:29
You know, I think it’s better to be a Debbie Downer so that people know what they’re getting into. Right? Yeah. I mean, the worst thing that could happen is you go and you spend all this money and it fails. Right? So yeah, and you know, like, like I think I mentioned last time is part of my sales process is to tell the client everything wrong or all the warnings or all the investment costs or the worst case scenarios because when I do that, the clients always, okay,

02:57
That’s not that bad of a worst case scenario. And what if I, what if my case isn’t the worst case scenario? And at least I know I have a team working with me that is super honest from the gate, right? Yes. I want to do that more on this call too, is just be like super honest out the gate and save you guys a lot of time too. think if I teach some little tricks and tips on how to avoid these pitfalls, I could save you six months of time. Yeah. So I mean, your first episode was very well received. And so I want to actually dig deeper.

03:28
And I kind of want to start. So the last time we recorded was I believe June of last year. Has anything fundamentally changed with TikTok since then? you can’t change? Okay. Well, I don’t know where you want to start. So let’s talk about the changes first before we get into the guts. Okay, good. Okay, so I guess the changes with TikTok in the last six months have been, there’s been a lot more sellers signing up. Okay.

03:58
So that saturation has actually increased TikTok’s probation rules and probation period because their concern is they can’t have people selling products that aren’t actually real, genuine products, uh shipping from unknown origins and shipping times that are impossible. They just need consistent quality on the dashboard. And with this influx of all these sellers, people from

04:28
other countries creating proxy corporations and trying to basically have these workarounds to become a tick tock shop seller. It’s been a big concern for tick tock of how do we make sure the customer experience stays true and honest. So with that, yes, there’s been a lot of additional red tape. does that mean like, I remember when I was on tick tock before there were all these like knockoff purse sellers, you know, like the fancy brands like Gucci or all is all that stuff kind of gone now?

04:57
pretty much it’s cleaning up. It’s cleaning up. And that’s part of the problem, right? Is they open the floodgates and guess what you get when you open the floodgates, you get everything. um So it’s always the same thing happened with Amazon for so many years. It’s like the bad actors have only made it harder for the honest sellers and the Amazon like 10 years, right? I mean, this tick tock shop changes like six months. So yeah, they’re quick. Tick tock is quick. um They’re very fast. I think

05:27
I don’t know if it’s if it’s just how management operates. If it’s cultural being that they’re a Chinese company and that’s more the speed of how they operate over there. I don’t really know what it is. But yeah, they are fast. Okay. Yeah. What about the US purchase? Has that changed anything at all? No, I haven’t seen anything change on that except for more aggressive business development strategy. So I have noticed they launched something called Project Horizon, uh which I feel like I’m literally

05:57
Like when I say that, I feel like I’m talking about some sort of like alien program that no one knows about. Um, area 51 program, but project horizon is something that they’re heavily recruiting me for. And it’s basically a program. I don’t know if it’s public, but I guess it is now, but it’s a program where they highly incentivize, um, agencies to bring in 10 million plus sellers. So if, if, if the seller has to prove that they have sold 10 million plus on Shopify.

06:26
or so not blended together Amazon in the last 12 months. And they’re highly incentivizing agencies like me to bring those sellers in with kickbacks. So this is a new thing. um And the reason being is that they’re they’re actually kind of they don’t really want these tiny little startups anymore. Yeah, they want the established brands that

06:53
they know that they can trust and they don’t have to put through probation. They can basically just whitelist them because they’re like, oh yeah, we know you guys are good. So that’s been a big change. Okay. Are the incentives still out there? Cause I remember back in the day, like they were handing out money left and right to get sellers to come on and subsidizing stuff. Yeah. But have to be, you have to be a much bigger seller to even see an incentive. Okay. You see where back then it was like anybody now it’s like, okay, let’s, let’s make sure you are.

07:24
like really worth our time and then we will give you incentives and some of the stuff that they’re doing for news for 10 million plus sellers kind of unlevels the playing field, Steve, I gotta tell you. yeah, like they’re basically no probation, full whitelist, which means your account is good to go viral right away. ah You’re not limited on affiliate outreach. um You have immediate access to FPT, which is the fulfilled

07:53
by TikTok program. Yeah, which without it, you’re screwed, which we might want to talk about. Yeah. So yeah, so with those things, if you’re 10 million plus seller, and you go through that kind of project horizon program, and you’re white listed, you’re basically ready to start going viral within 30 days, where if you’re an average seller, let’s say 1.5 million a year or something, a Shopify seller, you’re basically going through barbed wire for about 90 to

08:24
120 days. Okay. Well, let’s talk about that barbed wire actually, because uh we discussed a whole bunch of different ways in the last episode on how to get past that cold start problem. And I remember in order to message affiliates, you need sales in order to get sales, you kind of need to have affiliates. And I’ve actually since that episode, I actually know a bunch of people who got past that initial $2,000 sales barrier that we talked about got their affiliates unlocked.

08:50
But then they ran into a slew of problems. So one friend of mine specifically got banned after one late shipment over the holidays. I don’t even think it was his fault. And then he was just shocked that there was like no grace period for any of that stuff. And I know a bunch of other colleagues of mine, just from going to an event, they’ve gotten banned for what appears to be a slew of very minor things. So what exactly is going on here? So

09:17
But you know, the old analogy, don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Yeah. So they’re basically throwing babies out left and right right now, because the bathwater was so dirty. So let’s go into the legit businesses, right? mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, they’re, they would never screw anybody order over. uh Hey, I, I have a client that refused to do FPT. This just happened last week. And every single order that came in,

09:46
They literally shipped it in under 24 hours. I’m talking if the order came in at 9am, it was out by noon. They were on it. Right. And they still had seven orders that FedEx failed to scan at the right point. And their shop score went from 4.4 to 3.7. And it’s not even their fault. It’s just FedEx. here’s the deal. TikTok set up way too much, in my opinion.

10:13
The automation and the bots and the, and the sensitivity level of their shop performance score is prohibitive of most sellers. This is the bad news. This is why I’m kind of being Debbie downer here. Okay. Um, they did that because they figured we really want guys who are in FBT. We really want large sellers. We don’t really care if we screw over 3000 mom and pops when let’s just focus on Adidas. Let’s focus on.

10:43
You know, big brands, let’s focus on Reebok. So the probation period, let’s talk about that a little bit. So basically right now in the probation period, you have hard requirements. You, in order to get through it, and even the probation period has four subsets. It has like starter and then it has like pro and all these subsets. So they’re basically judging you across four subsets. And within those four,

11:12
There’s all these like, have to have this, have to have that, and then you graduate to the next one. Okay. And a lot of that stuff is solved by being an FBT. And what FBT really is, it’s basically fulfillment by TikTok. So you’re sending them the inventory, they’re verifying the inventory and now they’re fully responsible for fulfillment. So it removes about 50 % of the BS that you deal with with.

11:40
them trusting or not trusting your fulfillment process. Okay. And it gets rid of all the potential violations. It gets rid of even refund potential violations because they automate it and handle it for you. most people get in trouble with on time tracking, customer messaging, and refunds. Okay. So the last time we spoke getting into FBT was very difficult. Is that still the case? Unless you have an agency? Really?

12:09
Okay. Honestly, it’s been good business for me. Right. It’s it’s been good business for me because I have a guy literally have a guy I call him I say here’s the shop code. They’re they’re approved. It’s it’s not fair. But I have a guy if you don’t have a guy you’re on a waitlist and you’re fulfilling orders yourself and getting and getting bad. Have fun. Have a good time. Does the seller score mean nothing then?

12:36
The seller score that will the shop performance score. Yeah, that’s what I meant. The shop performance score. Yeah. No, no, no. It’s still important. Even if you’re an FPT, but a lot of the metrics that create your shop performance score, a lot of those things that they watch go away with FPT. So now you’re only basically judged on other few points. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. I interrupted you. So you were talking about tiers, right? So you said there’s four of them. Yeah. Let me see if I can find them too. I have it written down somewhere.

13:06
Okay, while you’re looking for that, when you start, I’m assuming you’re still in the lowest tier as soon as you hit $2,000, right? Yeah, so the $2,000 part, again, this is kind of a spiderweb. And I don’t expect everybody to totally understand the connecting dots. But the $2,000 part solves a different problem, which is affiliate tiers, right? So there’s probation period, and then there’s affiliate, okay, tiers, okay.

13:36
But it helps with both because in order to get $2,000 of sales, you need to receive orders, deliver the product on time. And that will automatically push you through the line on some of the probation periods because they’re seeing that the product is being delivered on time and they’re like, okay, that’s good. You’ve checked off these boxes, right? Right. Yeah. So we still do a lot of giveaways. We still do

14:02
We still recommend every one of our clients give away $2,000 with a product. We still help our clients get a compliant product reviews because good reviews improve your shop score. That’s another thing. It’s kind of a lot, but the simplicity is as long as you are basically in FBT early on, like pretty much within the first 30 days and from FBT, you have fulfilled some giveaways.

14:32
which are very easy to do. There’s plenty of giveaway services. Selloco is one of them. You’re basically good to go. So I don’t really want to give every nuances to the probation period just because I know that like, it’s actually pretty easy to solve between being an FPT and running successful deliveries and giveaways through your shop. All right. So you’re making it sound like FTP is a is a hundred percent required now today. Yes. Yeah, I wouldn’t do it.

15:02
Really? Okay, so you would not go on TikTok shop at all unless you can get fulfilled by TikTok. I wouldn’t do it. No. It’s too hard. Okay. Well, that’s drastically changed since the last time we spoke. Yep. Right. That has that’s why I said everything right. It’s okay. Like what? It’s like everything’s changed. Right. So here are the four tiers. Okay. Okay. We got beginner. Yep. We got standard, premium and pro and as you can see in and

15:30
this client is now in standard. There’s these four subsets of how to get out of standard and look, they have 4.4 shop score, which is a well done. It’s out of five, right? Yeah. Their shop scores 4.4 out of five. That’s right. And then enforce counterfeit listings. They don’t have any. em They don’t have any counterfeit listings. So they’re under four. um They’ve passed the probation quiz, whatever that means, right? It’s probably a

15:58
a few questions. I wouldn’t know because my team does that stuff. And then they have nine out of 10 active listings. So guess what? They’re not graduated because they need another listing. How they’re not graduated from what tier from the standard. from standard. Okay. All right. Why wild? Yeah, exactly. Okay. Because because tick tock arbitrarily said you have to have 10 live product listings. Interesting.

16:23
Okay. what if you like what the business of like one or two hero products, that’s just not going to fly anymore. You literally have to have 10 products. We can still get you through. Okay. But if you were on your own and you weren’t with an agency, what would you look at? You’d see this and be like, what do I do now? You see what I’m saying? It’s like, it’s not clear. But yes, the answer is yes, we can, we can push you through. Um, because we know that if we force enough of other things,

16:52
these will fall off. But they don’t say that they just say you need these four things to move on to the next tier. Okay. So tick tock benefits do you get for the next year though? I don’t have that tier there. But basically, the benefits are you’re allowed to receive more orders. Your videos get more views. Your GMB max spend performance better. Okay, okay. And I want to be clear about something.

17:21
This isn’t different from Amazon. Amazon just doesn’t tell you about it. If someone launches on Amazon today and they run PPC, they will probably be nodding when I say this. Their first couple of weeks of PPC, they’re not even able to spend. They’re just trying to get it to spend because they’re in their own probation period as well. Amazon has probation periods, but they don’t give you the path. At least TikTok says we’re ghosting you bro. And here’s why.

17:51
Amazon doesn’t tell you that. Okay. Yeah. I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in ecommerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free.

18:20
and can be attained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show. So it’s just like this hidden switch that instantly gives you more visibility is what it sounds like. It gives you more visibility. Okay. It allows you to receive more orders. ah It allows you to get payouts.

18:48
So you can receive more orders that implies that they’re purposely limiting your sales. Yeah. When you’re in that tier. Yeah. 500 a month. Is that new or is that all was that there the last time we talked? It’s pretty new. Yeah. Okay. Last few months. This is kind of ridiculous. Okay. So this is what I’m saying. Like, and this is kind of why, and I got to admit, this is why money has been good. Steve is because people come to me and they’re

19:13
really smart and they’re 15, 20, $30 million sellers and they come to me and they’re like, Ian, I don’t know how to do this because I’m like, yeah, cause it’s rigged. You can’t. So if you do everything right, you’re still maxed out on 500 sales. And it’s just like, it’s, it’s, it’s a very long, tedious process that could easily deter you many, many points along the way, but they come to me and I get them right into FPT. push some giveaways in there.

19:43
I know a hack of how to get a few, I send customers to the store to do some customer messaging. We respond to the customer messaging really quickly. The point I’m trying to make is my team has all these stupid little hacks and then we’re through it. Right. But if you don’t know the hacks. Right. It’s really hard. I imagine they’re there. They did that. They limited sales because there’s a bunch of junk on there before. Right. And you’re limiting the junk factor. I think I, I guess I get it.

20:12
Yeah, they don’t they don’t want a product to go viral. That is actually counterfeit. uh Shipping from an unknown origin that is not within the shipping timeframe that they promise, or all the other reasons why that people can get screwed over. So they’re really, they’re so scared about counterfeit and, and bad actors that they, uh they’re making it very, very difficult for the rest of us. Okay.

20:40
So before we get into the fulfillment part, uh so what are the requirements? You said 10 listings. What about order volume? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And on this one, order volume is not an issue. You just need four orders delivered or something like that. It’s like really small. ah And uh let me go back to my, I won’t share, but I just want to look at my screenshot again. Sure. Yeah.

21:08
This one doesn’t even have any order things. This one’s just you have a good shop score. You don’t have any counterfeit listings. I don’t even know how they verify that you pass a probation period, period. And then you graduate to premium. uh And then from premium, we graduate to pro and pro. That’s when you’re basically fully there’s you’re you’re at no limits, you can go viral, you can sell 15,000 units a day when you’re a pro.

21:35
How long does it take, assuming you’re doing everything correct, to get past that standard tier into premium and pro? I would say for us, we get it done in about 60 days. Okay, so no matter what, you’re still on probation for two months. Unless you’re a 10 million plus seller that I can get you white-listed? Absolutely. Okay. And then, do you know any of people not using Filled by TikTok that are in those highest tiers? There obviously are, right? There has to be, right? No, there aren’t.

22:04
I don’t know anybody. I mean, you asked if I knew him. Yeah. I don’t know anybody. ah But I’m sure there are I’m sure there’s guys who figured it out. And you know, they have a good three PL. Okay. But the point is, is why would you not just go into FPT if you can get there because their fees are really good. um Have I ever showed anyone in your audience the FPTP? No, actually, what I give me an idea, compare those to FBA for me.

22:33
Yeah, well, I’ll just show you the fees right here. And then I guess you can kind of make a comparison if you have a mental idea of FBA, but here it is. All right, I’ll put this up on the screen. And for the people who are just listening to this, guess I’ll try to narrate. Okay, so it looks like anything that’s four ounces or less, one unit order is about 428.

23:02
And anything over four pounds is $7.66. And if they order four or more units, it’s basically half of that, which is way better than at first glance, because I only know certain tiers, it seems to be substantially cheaper than than FBA. And I assume are there like, inbound fees and like fees to ship everything out to the warehouses? This is like just the flat fee, including everything? It’s all included. Okay, way cheaper than

23:31
way cheaper. There are storage fees, but their storage fees are actually pretty reasonable. And you can you can avoid them because they’re, you know, their check in process is pretty fast. So we haven’t had a huge amount of storage fees. But yeah, like, come on to ship a one and a half pound item for $5.71 is ridiculous is ridiculous. You can’t even get that as a seller. So this this reminds me of like old school Amazon back in the day. Yep. Right.

24:01
Which means it’s going to worse. So my point is, Steve, why in the hell wouldn’t you go into FPT? That’s my point. And if they lose stuff, is it the same thing? They refund you the selling price? oh Just like school. There’s a bunch of refund services popping up. We have a whole other ecosystem of get it as popping up for TikTok right now. Okay. And in terms of limits, do they limit you what you can send in? Yeah. You get a square footage. They give you a square footage.

24:30
amount when you’re on, right, I’ll try to find a screenshot because I actually have clients, obviously a lot of clients on but they basically show you they show you like a little bar of like you get up to 50 square feet, and you’re using 15. So you have 35 square feet available. Got it. Okay. So the current strategy today is you get someone on fulfillment and you have a guy

24:59
that you call. And so you start that from day one, basically. Yeah, so literally, we bind them to our agency portal. Okay. And we’re actually finding the moment we bind them. It’s like, greases wheels, that kind of thing. Right. And then we give that shop code to our guy. He clicks a button. I don’t think it’s much more than a button. And then FPT shows up on the dash. And it says, Welcome to FPT.

25:29
It’s like, literally, right. And then all of a sudden, all those fulfillment issues totally go away. Like all the penalties, like my friend wouldn’t have gotten banned, right? Yep. Okay. And then refunds, how do they work? if someone automated, automated, so does that get sent back to you? Or does that go back into inventory? Do you get to decide that? Yeah, yeah, you can definitely decide that. But the automated approval process when you’re in FPT, tick tock doesn’t mess around with you having options. It’s like Amazon, they’re kind of like,

25:58
you’re not going to decide whether we are going to refund or not. We’re just going to you just let us know where you want to send it. That’s it. uh And the refunds haven’t been bad. We have a lot of clients that are under 2%. A lot of clients between one and one and a half. And they’ve actually said that their refunds have been lower on TikTok than on Amazon. And I think that’s because Amazon has made it so easy with UPS pickup and that kind of thing that we’re kind of in a nice honeymoon period. Take talk on that. Who covers the return shipping? It comes out of your fees.

26:28
comes out your fees. Okay. Yep. Okay. And then you pay the film fee no matter what, just like the old school Amazon. Yep. Okay. Yep. There’s a lot of old school Amazon esque factors here. Okay. Let’s see here if I can find through my I’m looking through my agency portal to see if I can find my FPT button, but it’s not showing when I log into my account. So I can’t show you but yeah, I was gonna say the whole square feet thing. Okay.

26:55
That’s okay. It probably works similar to Amazon, right? get, except Amazon does it by units based on your size. Same thing. That’s right.

27:07
All right, so assuming all of those hurdles are gone, uh has the strategy for communicating with affiliates and getting them to make videos and all that stuff, has that changed at all? No, not really. mean, the good thing is the actual human to human relationship is still a very primitive thing, actually. Okay. And that’s probably the one thing that’s never going to change is how is…

27:36
If you have a really good offer and you have a really good product, then you’re going to get a higher response from, better affiliates. like to say the brand does basically earns the affiliates that it deserves. And cause they can look at your metrics. You can look at their metrics. So if you can see that an affiliate is making $50,000 in sales a month, they’re going to look at you and see that your entire shop makes two G’s a month. You think they’re going to want to work with you? Yeah, no chance. uh

28:06
It’s no different than a, you know, me trying to call Dwayne Johnson to do my TV commercial. Same thing. So what we have to do with every new brand that comes in at Bullseye is we have to build an affiliate army. That’s the same size as the brand coming in. So if the brand is, let’s call them a level one brand, we’re really going to look for level one, two affiliates, and we’re going to basically pair up equal levels.

28:33
And then we’re going to have to coach the hell out of those affiliates because they’re pretty raw. They’re pretty green. But what’s fun, and I can show you some viral examples is we’ve had many, many examples now where we have been the big break for these brand new low tier affiliates. And that’s fun. One thing you told me a while back was that those initial sales that you get, those have to be from affiliate videos.

29:03
Yes, they have to be affiliate GMV. That’s right. Okay. So that makes it a lot harder, right? Yes. Because you have your classic chicken and egg problem. So does that imply that? Well, do you guys get around that because you have this network of affiliates that can make the okay, make the videos? No, we get around it from sell a co sell a co is basically a shopper buyback program. That’s all it is. And we recruited some of those affiliates to work for sell a co

29:29
I see. when someone’s setting up a campaign in Celico, you can say, Do you need an affiliate video to even run these giveaways to right? And if they say yes, they just pay us I think I think they’re cheap. I think we’re selling them for 50 bucks a pop usually only need one. And that that affiliate video, there’s a way for us to basically connect your shop with the affiliate manually. Send them a sample, they do the video.

29:56
and then the a Celico video and then the Celico campaign automatically happens when that video posts to your account. It’s all automated for the seller. It’s pretty easy. Yeah, but I’m just saying like without a service like that. mean, it sounds like the classic chicken and egg problem, right? I mean, you need to get sales from an affiliate video, but you can’t even get any affiliates in the beginning or it’s hard to write you get some limited messaging, right? Yeah, you get a sample pack. It’s like, hey, welcome to tick tock. Here’s 1000 messages and you’re like, okay. ah

30:24
But the typical shop gets on average, a new shop gets on average two to 4 % response rate. So if you’re a thousand, you’re getting 20 to 40 responses. And you’re probably gonna say yes to all those people regardless of who they are. Right. Right. And then that video has to generate a sale. guess you that then you can artificially do it, I guess, right from there, you can get someone to buy it. Yeah, like you could just literally, you know, have your have your sister.

30:54
buy from that video. So it’s not that big of a deal. sell a code just speeds it up instead of like going through 1000 people and messing around and sending them samples and all that. mean, you could in theory, I guess be your own affiliate, right? No. Yeah, if you have an affiliate account. Yeah, if you have an affiliate account, okay. Yeah, because your affiliate accounts not tied to your brand account. Right? Yeah, it’s two separate things. um So yeah, back to the affiliate thing. And what we’re getting better at is we’re getting better at cross pollination.

31:24
And I think that’s the thing that agencies do have a leg up is that we take all of our successful affiliates. put them into a VIP group, which is an internal WhatsApp group that we manage. So now we have our, now we have our best guys. Now we have everybody who’s sold at least a thousand. Some of them have sold 10,000. Some of them have even sold 25 K. So when we’re launching a new shop and we got something to immediately tap into, and that’s another advantage of working with.

31:54
an aggregate agency model versus you’re just completely on your own out there in the cold with no leverage. remember you said something to me a while back regarding the number of affiliates that generate X dollars. I can’t remember what the amount was. Something like 2000 affiliates that sell over $10,000 a month. Right. And then there was there was some $5,000, 5,000 affiliates make over 1000 or so.

32:21
There’s not, my point is it doesn’t seem like there’s that many affiliates out there. No, there’s very little. There’s actually over a million, but out of a million, how many, how many people have basically enrolled in the program? I’ve never posted. Okay. Yeah. And then, you know, um, you have probably about 150,000 that are active. I mean, it’s just, it just gets to slim pickings, right? So I actually have some numbers here, um, about the affiliates.

32:51
And it’s pretty fascinating and uh about how little they are and why it’s really important. This is the key here is why it’s really important to build your own level one affiliates and not come in cocky. have to come in humble and those level ones, you have to take a chance on them just like they’re taking a chance on you. And that’s what Tik Tok essentially needs. It needs more sellers that are like,

33:20
Everyone gets a car, you get a car, you get a car, you get a car. So that that way we have, can build up these, this affiliate audience. It’s too small. has that, I remember you quoted that statistic to me several months ago. So that hasn’t changed. So TikTok has like an affiliate problem. Essentially it look, I can’t verify my number today. Sure. Okay. I just can’t, but that, that number always stuck with me and so, so check this out.

33:50
85 to 90 % of all affiliates have little to no GMB at all. Okay. Most level one affiliates will never even generate a sale statistically. Okay. Level two affiliates make up roughly eight to 12 % of the ecosystem. Okay, level two is 5000 bucks. Right at eight to 12%. Then

34:15
I think it goes into level three here. Hold on. Let me see level three and above represent only one to 3 % of affiliates. And that’s where you get into the 10 G’s. Right? I’m one to 3%. I mean, even 10 G’s doesn’t sound like that much. It’s not because I’m looking like I’m an affiliate, but I’m not an affiliate for physical products, more for services. And like, those numbers are minuscule, right? Yep. Compared to

34:44
the affiliates. So okay, can we just take a step back then and just kind of talk about like the TikTok shop opportunity. uh So you worked with a bunch of level ones, I kind of cut you off when you’re about to tell that story. But can we can we delve deeper in that one story you’re about to tell? Yeah, so basically, and this doesn’t look good on video, but I’m going to try ah because my web guy has been messing with my website. But let’s share share.

35:14
tab. So here’s some examples of videos that have gone viral in the last three months. We like to update our carousel here. um Every one of these and this is what’s cool to me is every one of these sellers was level one and level two. Okay. So people listening in the pod, I’m looking at three videos, one got 4.1 million, one got 1.31 million, and the other one got 7.8 million views. Yeah, this guy fully this guy in the right.

35:43
selling this pop up greeting card, fully cleared out my client on Amazon and on tik tok. Wow. And his manufacturer is scrambling. You know, it’s always a shock when it happens to you. Right? Yeah. This girl has got 9 million views. She’s a rock star. She was nothing. When we started. I mean, she was like 500 bucks. When we started, right now, we’ve paid her over $30,000 in commissions in the last 60 days.

36:13
She’s kicking butt. So this is why, uh, basically what tick tock really needs is more of these relationships to, because everyone has to have a big break, right? You know, all these high affiliates, this one here, 2 million views. She’s killing it. She created a bunch of copycats for herself that are coming in and copying her videos, which is always fun. Um, this guy, all this guy did was a point of view video, meaning his hands.

36:42
30 seconds of his time, he got four and a half million views and sold over 150 grand worth of poop bags. That’s so easy. Yeah. Okay. So I just wanted to comment for the people listening. It seems like most of the products I’m looking at here are creams or some sort of a consumable or skin or something like that, right? Beauty product, maybe there was one that was a really cool pop-up greeting card. And then the last one that you just mentioned is literally poop bags. Yeah.

37:12
Yeah, yeah. And this toy here crushed it over the Christmas season. Right. This is this is a fun toy. It’s really hard hand eye coordination toy. It does really well on video. Yeah, poop bags. Yeah, I know. I know. And I actually tell people if I can sell poop bags on TikTok, I can sell anything. Well, I the outlier here is poop bags because the last time we spoke, you said beauty products, maybe unique toys, but there’s nothing unique about poop bags. You know what?

37:38
There was a third component. I don’t know if I told you that but a really good offer. I don’t care how good the offer is on a poop bag. mean, what was why did the poop bag work? It was a good offer. It was a really good offer. It was basically like a huge like one year supply of poop bags with this awesome poop bag holder that you see right here in the corner of the video. Yeah, it’s also a name brand that everyone knows. Right. So you know, these guys are in every pet smart target in United States.

38:07
So you get a little bit of extra. And when you have a little bit of a brand name, and it’s a great offer, people just kind of go for it. Okay, and those two kind of have to happen together. Okay. mean, what’s most interesting is that outlier actually, because if someone went up to me and said, Hey, I sell poop bags, should I go on to shop? I probably would have said no, right? And you do. Okay. I’ve learned a lot in the last six months. Any other outliers like that? Because

38:35
I know a lot of people listening out there, they’re not selling beauty or, you know, lotions or anything like that. Right? Yeah. So at the end of the day, TikTok surprises me all the time. Like I say stuff and I’m pretty excited when I say it and I’m pretty definitive. And then a month later, I’m like, wait, you know I’m saying? I miss something. Or I maybe I didn’t think of that. Um, but when I say it, I’m a hundred percent sincere and honest at the time. But what happens is I’m evolving and I’m learning.

39:04
Because we manage almost 100 brands. So I’m shocked on a daily basis. Did I ever think that a year ago I’d be selling greeting cards on TikTok? Hell no. I would never would have thought that. These guys are going to do a million dollars this month. It’s crazy. know, and they were at $4,000 in December. Crazy. $4,000 in December to a million dollars in January. That’s the power of TikTok. Yeah. So I’m learning a lot.

39:34
So yeah, a good offer is probably my third pillar. know, my, my, and my first two are still true. You gotta have a really good demonstrable video, like, like something that shows well, and then you have to have a unique selling proposition, right? Which is what I said earlier, something that like shows before and after shows that it solves a problem. Um, a good example is this, this girl here selling the serum. Um, this might be a little X rated, so I’m going to keep it. I’m going to keep it PG 13, but, um,

40:03
She found a use for this product that really helped make downstairs look a lot better in a bikini line. Okay. Okay. And this isn’t what this isn’t what it’s for. It’s actually for back acne. It’s for body acne. But she is an affiliate. She does what the hell she wants. Okay. She takes our script and throws it out the window and says, No, here’s what this does. And I’m going to prove it to you. She does a video that shows before and after she kind of like blurs things out. And it’s actually

40:33
amazingly compelling. It’s like, wow, your bikini line before and after actually looks 1000 times better. And that video goes viral. Yeah. So I get it. You know, you get it, right? That’s why it works. And then on the poop bag one, we were shocked. We didn’t think it would work. But this guy was like, bro, I buy poop bags every day. These are like half the price you’re gonna get in the store. It’s an amazing deal. You know, you’re gonna buy poop bags anyway. Everyone needs poop bags. So you might as well just get him at a deal. People went, you’re right.

41:04
Yeah. All right. So let’s, let’s sum up what we’ve, what’s different actually. So number one, seems like fulfilled by Tik TOK in your opinion is required to not deal with any of the BS that’s happening with like my friends, for example. Right. Yep. And then in order to get into that, to grease the wheels, an agency partner is the fastest way to do that. Yep.

41:32
And I know you would say that sincerely, you wouldn’t just say that just because you run an agency. No, and honestly, I’m gonna say no to probably some people that call me and, and be, you know, and tell them other agencies to work with if, if, if we’re a little bit busy, like, I’m not just doing it so that I get I get the clothes, you need an agency. And I need one that has connections at TikTok. And then TikTok is going through this phase right now where they’re just trying to take away fraud.

42:01
because it did go crazy nuts and there was all these negative press. And so maybe that’s why they’re reacting the way they are. So right now, at least it’s hard to get anywhere without an agency partner to help vet you. Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. And for someone who wants to do it themselves, go to sell a code.com S E L L I C O.com do a giveaway campaign. It’ll take you three minutes to set it up. I’m telling you.

42:29
takes three minutes and just run giveaways to your shop. And that’s going to handle 50 % of your problems just because you’re going to be able to say, look, I fulfilled the orders myself. They’re successful. Improve your shop. And tick tock looks at those orders like the real orders. And then get on the FBT waiting list the moment you can. And then if you’re going to fulfill it, have Amazon fulfill it. Amazon and tick tock are somewhat jiving right now.

42:59
So just do MCF and you you’ll have a, have a better cadence than some three PL who doesn’t know tick tock. So just have Amazon fulfill it for the first few months until you’re approved. The second year approved FPT cut that Amazon thing off as fast as you can and run over to FPT and you’ll pay about half the price. Is there a harm in, sticking with FBA? Yeah. So expensive.

43:29
MCI aside from that. I mean, there’s also logistical issues, right? You’re splitting your inventory and there’s no fulfilled. There’s no MCF for tick tock shop, right? Yeah, so there is a harm. tick tock now has a badge. If you’re an FPT on the product page that says three days shipping, fulfilled by tick tock. It’s prime versus non prime now. Exactly. Exactly. And you don’t get that badge with Amazon, right? MCF. Yep. So, you know,

43:58
I think a lot of this is going to chill out. think the pendulum swings that are going so crazy on both ends are going to eventually chill out. um but just it, Tik Tok’s such an opportunity. I’ve never seen anything that’s changed lives. Like Tik Tok has, I got off a call with the owner of that serum with the, with that black girl that did that video. Yep. And the owner was just like almost in tears, just thanking me. And it was like, so moving to me.

44:27
that to see someone that was like, so her life was changed. She was like, my Amazon’s up 30%. My tacos are down. I can’t keep my stock in. I have access to capital where I didn’t. It’s just like, that’s what gets me on a bed in the morning is when I have those conversations. So yes, TikTok is a nightmare, but it’s also where your wildest dreams come true. Ian, where can people reach you?

44:56
bullseye sellers.com. uh Yeah, and you can you can book a call there and uh and uh I might not be able to join every call but if I like your product and and uh I see that it has potential and I don’t care about your revenue. don’t give a shit. If you’re doing 50k a month. I don’t care. If I like your product. I think it’s fun and it’ll be good for tick tock. I will book a call with you after you call it after you book a call and I will have a one on one with you.

45:25
Cause I love the journey. Awesome. Yeah. Well, I will link that up in the show notes, but, Ian, uh, thanks for coming on again and being so honest about TikTok shop. Like I’ll never get a rah rah TikTok shop interview out of you, you know, Hey, did I end on a high note though? You brought me down and he brought us all back up at the end. So, and, and on the next episode, conspiracy corner.

45:55
We’ll go into those aliens and big foot and we’ll go down that rabbit hole in the next episode, Steve. Well, cool Ian. Thanks a lot, man. And I will see you at seller summit in April. I will be there. I’m going to do a, I’m going to give you my 45 minutes. Hopefully you won’t depress the audience. You’ll, you’ll bring them back up at the end, but yeah, I’ll bring them all back up. And I’m sure by then things will change again. So if you want the latest, make sure you guys stop by the event as well. All right. Thanks a lot, Hope you enjoyed this episode.

46:24
If you plan on selling on TikTok Shop this year, I highly advise that you at least send in an email, even if you plan to go about it yourself. For more information and resources, go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 623. And once again, tickets to Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. If you want to hang out in person, in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event.