How to Thrive on TikTok Shop: What You Need to Know

Curious about the ecommerce selling potential on TikTok Shop? This episode has the answer to all of your questions. Jonathan D’Ambrosio sits down with Mina Elias, a renowned e-commerce expert and founder of Trivium Co., to explore the opportunities of TikTok Shop for online sellers. Mina shares his expertise about how to navigate TikTok’s rapid evolution, offering actionable insights on everything from seasonal campaigns to creative content strategies that can elevate your sales. Check out the full transcript for the episode below.

Episode 18 of The Seller’s Edge, Mina and Jonathan talk about:

• 01:34 – The Threat TikTok Shop Posed to Amazon
• 04:18 – Why FBA Sellers Need to Start Selling on TikTok
• 06:05 – The Benefits of Selling on the Platform
• 07:33 – TikTok’s Impact on Amazon Search Trends
• 09:47 – Why the Platform Can Easily Elevate Brand Visibility 
• 12:16 – How to Get Started Selling on TikTok Shop
• 13:35 – Setting Up Mutli-Channel Fulfillment
• 14:46 – Recruiting Influencers as Affiliates
• 17:08 – How to Transform Content into TikTok Ads
• 19:42 – Leveraging Audience Insights to Boost Conversions
• 22:44 – The Product Category that Performs Best on TikTok
• 24:16 – Why Amazon Can’t Compete with TikTok
• 28:04 – When Should Sellers Launch on TikTok Shop?
• 30:16 – How to Utilize TikTok Trends and Seasonality
• 31:50 – The Costs Associated with Selling on TikTok Shop

Key Takeaways:

1. There is a lot of money to be made on TIkTok Shop. Younger consumers are more likely to make purchases on the platform and its presence in ecommerce is certain to keep accelerating.
2. Strategically Engage and Validate Influencers. There are plenty of affiliates that might match your criteria, but double-check to make sure that they are legitimate. It is important to see how large and engaged their following is.
3. Prioritize Reviews. Social proof is as essential on TikTok as it is on Amazon or any other ecommerce platform. Be sure to establish the credibility of your brand on TikTok Shop with customer reviews.
4. Test and Monitor Ad Performance. It will be necessary to test creatives to see what will appeal most to your audience and lend to conversions. Start small, test, analyze the data, and then iterate.
5. Take Advantage of Seasonality and Trends. Trends are a huge part of the TikTok culture.  Be sure to capitalize on the opportunities that they present. The same goes for seasonality.
6. Social Media is the Future. Whether we like it or not, the lives of consumers are going to be heavily invested in platforms like TikTok and a brand presence on them is essential. It will be important to recognize these cultural shifts and adapt to them.

Full Transcript of Episode:

JONATHAN:  This is the perfect time to admit that I am a novice when it comes to TikTok. I mean, I’m a fan of TikTok. As a viewer, I enjoy creating content for TikTok. But so much of TikTok as a platform is the Wild west as far as I’m concerned. It’s voodoo magic. 

MINA ELIAS: It is. It is. 

JONATHAN:  I’m particularly fascinated by the rise in popularity of live stream shopping, especially TikTok Shop. And I’ve heard you’re the man to talk to about it. So I’m curious, how do you see all this playing out? And do you think Amazon should consider TikTok Shop a threat? 

MINA ELIAS: Huge. It’s. Okay. So here’s why it’s a threat to Amazon, because they’re two completely different animals. So I don’t think TikTok Shop will ever become like a marketplace like Amazon. But that doesn’t mean, okay, remember how Nokia was the giant and then Apple displaced it completely? Two different things. Nokia was a phone, like a regular phone with buttons, whatever, all this shit. And, you know, the BlackBerry came about and it just completely disrupted the whole industry. And then the iPhone came out and, you know, at the time, our parents didn’t care that much about a smartphone, but then the younger generation was like, oh, that’s who was really kind of buying the iPhones. And I think that’s what’s gonna happen, and I’m really afraid of it. Right. Because a lot of my income is on Amazon, but I think that, like, younger shoppers and consumers are now, I mean, a marketplace is never going to go away, but they are preferring to buy through, like, anytime I talk about anything with my wife, she’s 25, 26, so anytime I talk to her about anything, she immediately goes and checks TikTok and then reviews. She’s like, what’s, you know, instead of, like, going on Yelp or Google, whatever, she’s like, she’s like, best restaurants in Catalina island. And, like, we’ll watch the videos. So I see that that’s how shopping is going to head into is like, they’re going to start typing in best electrolyte powder and then watch all the videos and, you know, they’re going to essentially like, look, and, you know, all these creators are creating videos with different. And they’re going to be like, oh, I like that one. So they’ll probably click on it, see more videos on that specific, specific product, and then buy it. And I think that’s obvious, you can’t fully displace Amazon because toilet paper, paper towels, all the stupid bullshit, like, no one’s going to do content about it, so. But I think, I mean, when you talk about the big players, baby, CPG, like, you know, supplements, health, pets, like, all of the big recurring stuff, outdoors, sports, all of that stuff is going to do very well on TikTok Shop. All like the industrial or, like, commodities, you know, vinegar. Like, even vinegar could probably do well on TikTok Shop because it’s like, we have this, like, special vinegar that is, like, free of chemicals. And it’s like, bro, vinegar is a chemical. It’s literally one chemical. But that’s what people sell on TikTok. So I think that’s how the world, that’s, that’s my biggest fear. I can’t predict the future. But if I were to guess, like, I would put my money there. 

JONATHAN:  Okay, so basically, you think that every Amazon seller should get onto TikTok Shop and start selling immediately, is what I’m. 

MINA ELIAS: Picking up 100% if your product in any way, shape or form makes sense. And you can, by the way, if you haven’t heard of this tool, it’s called fastmos. So fast moss is like the helium10 of Amazon. Essentially what you do is you go onto FastMos, get an account, and then you go and type in the product, and then it’ll show you the products that are selling and how many units they’re selling. And so if there is any competitor of yours that is selling even like 2300 units a week, you should be on there because your first mover advantage, you know what I mean? Like, if they’re able to sell to 300 units and it’s such a, like a beginning, you know, age, you should too. And, you know, here’s the difference between TikTok Shop and Walmart, right? Everyone compares Walmart and Amazon. I think Walmart has a chance because it’s a distribution network. Like, it has way more stores than Amazon has fulfillment centers. So there is a chance there where Walmart could succeed. And I can see an incredible chance where TikTok Shop on Walmart partner. And the fulfilled by TikTok becomes, you know, the Walmart fulfillment and all this kind of stuff, right? Because there’s a good synergy there. But when you compare Walmart with, with Amazon, they’re just direct competitors. It’s like UFC and Bellator. And, like, UFC is always going to be better. Cause it’s, you know, the better, the better, you know, uh, like promotion, right? But when you look at TikTok Shop, it’s completely different. And, and so a lot of people are, like, thinking. They’re like, oh, like, I, you know, I don’t want to go spend all of this effort on TikTok Shop and get, like, the same, like, kind of bump that I’m getting from Walmart, which is like 10%. But if you think about it, on TikTok Shop, not only are you making sales, even if you’re a break, even on sales, you’re getting so much exposure, so many impressions. You’re building brand equity, which at some point will be worth something, maybe not now, but eventually. As you build a system, right? It’s not a flash in the pan. It’s like, okay, if I can create, and I’ll talk through exactly my step by step procedure on how I do this, but if you can build a system of, like, every single day, I’m getting more affiliates, I’m getting them on board. They’re creating content for me. A lot of people on TikTok Shop, I’m noticing will go and type in my brand name on Amazon and then go buy the product. So now I’m getting an increase in branded search, which creates two things. One more, sales to my organic rank is going up naturally. And I don’t know, this is just a phenomenon, but what I’m seeing is, and I saw this well before TikTok Shop, when, you know, Neurogome, for example, whenever they would go and they would be on Joe Rogan, right? For example, they would be on Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan would mention, I’m eating this neurogum. It’s so good. It’s caffeinated and keeps me sharpen throughout the episode. Whatever. And he wasn’t paid or anything like, to say that. So then all these people would type in Neurogam. I would notice Neurogam’s branded search would go up and then all of a sudden their other organic ranking went up as well. Like, there’s no explanation why is there caffeinated gum ranking going up? Like, no one’s typing in caffeinated gum. They’re typing in Neurogum because that’s what they heard on Joe Rogan. So that’s the same thing I’m starting to see from TikTok Shop. Anyways, I’ll take a break because I know you probably have a bunch of questions. 

JONATHAN:  Well, it’s interesting because I worked for an aggregator for a few years and I was focused on the SEO and content side of the business. And one of the things that my team found was that anytime there was a trend on TikTok, I remember slime kits had a moment on TikTok a few years ago, and that was one of the examples we were looking at where slime kits and these little science kits would get 1000 2000 searches usually. And then there was this trend on TikTok, and overnight they would shoot up to 1 million, 2 million searches. And it just blew my mind to know that TikTok could push that much traffic and influence buying behavior in that way. And that’s just one example that’s just mind blowing. That’s crazy to me. 

MINA ELIAS: It’s crazy because, I mean, it just, TikTok has, like, the virality component, right, where you, and that’s one of the things that I absolutely love about TikTok Shop is that, first of all, you have on TikTok billions of users, right, that are there to consume. So they’re visiting the app no matter what. Not even the shop, right? They’re just visiting the app, which kind of, like, starts blending in with the shop, because when someone makes a video about a product, it just shows up, and you’re just like, oh, there’s a link there, right? So they have billions of people already using it, and then they created the ultimate win-win. So first of all, you know, the users are already there, so they didn’t have to do anything for the users. Second of all, they created a win for the affiliates. They’re like, you want to make a lot of money? First of all, they made them, like, easily go viral. So they’re like, oh, you have a thousand followers. 2000 followers, no problem. If you do a bunch of videos, one of them will get, like, a hundred thousand views. One of them will get a half a million views. And I don’t think any other platform has that, right. There’s no other platform where, like, it’s like, oh, you’re clawing your way to the top. Tick tock, dude. All these random ass people, like, doing dances and stuff like that. Their stuff is popping off. My friend, he does short form content for, like, Grant Cardone, Alex Hermosi, Ryan Pineda, like, Brendan Carter, a lot of these big guys. His name is Ryan, and he’s a great guy. Very, very, very talented at what he does. And he’s telling me that, like, you put all this stuff on Instagram, like, it is nothing compared to, you put it on TikTok, and you get, like, ten times the reach. So they’re, they’re rewarding people in a way that is like, okay, now the small guy isn’t defeated. The small guy actually thinks there’s a chance. And then you have, like, all the consumers are there. You have, the affiliates are now like, okay, I have a chance of winning. And I’m getting paid for posting content, right? Because if you attach any product and, you know, you get a commission, it’s like, okay, I was a nobody, and now I’m just putting out content of my honest opinion on products. Takes me, you know, what, 60 seconds a day, let’s say with the editing, 1520 minutes a day, right? And that’s 30 posts a month. And you could easily make, you know, one or $2,000 just from commissions. So they created that, and then they put brands in there and they’re like, okay, this is the ultimate win win win. Because brands are like, hell, yeah, please promote my product. We’ll give you a cut. And they facilitated that so easily. They eliminated any tracking issues. Because before it’s like, okay, I’m giving you an Amazon attribution link. Perfect. Hey, man, I just posted 20 videos about you. How much commission did I make? Oh, $13.12. What? What do you mean? It’s like, well, look, this is my Amazon. Why? Attribution has crashed. They probably made them way more money, but. So then the affiliates were defeated. Now we don’t have that anymore. You know, the affiliate puts up the content, and then there’s direct, you know, correlation. Your content resulted in a sale because they clicked on the product, on your content. And I’m assuming it’s last touch. So I’m not fully sure, but I’m assuming whoever, you know, like if the shopper purchased whoever they touched the last, gets that credit, which is nice, right? It just probably incentivizes the person, put out more content then, you know what I mean? Like, it can’t be that many people. But also, here’s another reason it’s nice because then affiliates will be more bullish on other, like, smaller brands, right? Because smaller brands, it’s like they’re more virgins. They only have like 20, 30, 40 affiliates promoting them versus the big brands. Like, let’s say, for example, liquid IV Bloom. Everyone wants to promote them because everyone is using them. And so it’s like, well, if everyone is already promoting them, what are the chances? Like, that I’m going to get a cut out of that pie. It’s been so spread out thin. You know what I mean? They did it in a very, very good way because I think the ultimate way to win at life is to create a win-win scenario. And I think TikTok created it on all fronts, but let’s get into it. 

JONATHAN:  Talk to me about it from a flywheel perspective. I’m an Amazon seller. I have not touched TikTok. I don’t want to abandon my Amazon. I know that you have a specific strategy that you encourage people to follow. What would you recommend that I do? 

MINA ELIAS: Okay, now the fun, the fun conversation is over. Let’s get into the series step by step. So first of all, set up an account, right? It’s super. It took me 15 minutes. I was sitting on my couch. My friend, I was hanging out with my friend at night. He’s like, oh, dude, I just got on TikTok Shop. I’m like, yo, like, tell me more. Like, I was super interested, so it took me 15 minutes. You know, I got it set up. You need to have like, a us entity. You need a Social Security number. You can’t use an Ein. But anyways, you fill out the information, make sure that you have that done. Make sure you have a company TikTok account. So my brand is hard work. So I created a hard work, took a bunch of content posted on there. I took a bunch of content from Instagram posted on TikTok. Now I have a page with content. So now I have my seller center account. Now I have my TikTok account that is linked now to my seller center. Then from there, I add a product. So adding a product is very easy. It’s way less intensive than Amazon. You already have a listing up on Amazon. All you need is the title, the bullets, the images from there. And then you’re going to go in, put that information, put, like, the category of the product and the price and the SKu and probably the UPC also. And then you’re good to go. Then from there, get a software called WebBee, W E B and then B E E. WebBee will connect your TikTok Shop to your Amazon so you can do multi channel fulfillment. So for me, I will give a disclaimer, though, uh, in a second. But for me, it was very nice because I’m like, I set up my TikTok Shop connected to Amazon. Now, anyone who buys a product on TikTok Shop, Amazon fulfills it. No, no problem. We don’t have any issues with fulfillment. The problem with Webbe disclaimer is I just got a warning from TikTok because some, um, some, like, products weren’t processed fast enough. So, uh, you should probably have like, a virtual assistant that is kind of monitoring things every single day. And the second that, like, it’s like, hey, this shipping is, the shipment is due. You haven’t shipped it yet. Force it down the pipeline so that, you know, Web either does it or you go and do it manually and you mark it as complete. It’s going to be a little bit of extra manual work. But again, that whole ecosystem is still so new, so it’s not working perfectly. So now you have everything logistically set up. You have a product, you have your accounts, your products connected to fulfillment, so you can ship it to the product, ship it to the clients. Now what you need to do is start promoting the product. So I would start with affiliates. You have open collaboration. Open collaboration basically is like, hey, anyone who wants to claim a 15% commission or whatever to, you know, you can apply for it, get it, request the product. If I like you, I’ll give you the sample, and then from there, you have to make a video. So you could do an open collaboration where people come to you, just set it up, but most people will not come to you. Next, you have a targeted collaboration. So target collaboration is where you’re basically choosing the criteria of who you want to go after, after, and then sending them a message and saying, hey, I would love for, you know, for you to be an affiliate with me. So what I would do is I would create a target collaboration. Anyone with, like, you know, $500 to $1,000 in GMV, which is like gross marginal value or something like that. Anyone with 500 or more, doesn’t matter how many followers they have, just send them an invite in your category, and then from there, a certain number of them will be interested. They’ll request a sample, go check out their page, make sure that they’re legit. They didn’t just, you know, do you know, like, get the 500 from their friends just so they show up, like, oh, this is like a good person, and then they get a bunch of free stuff because all they’re obligated to do is just create a video for you so they could get it, they could create a trash video for you and like, that’s it, you know what I mean? And they got the product for free. So just take a look at the account and the kind of content they like. Approve their sample if you like it. And then from there, you know, you obviously have your hit list. Make sure that you’re tracking that on a sheet of follow up every single day with those people. Hey, how’s it going? How do you like the product? Do you need any help? Whatever. Can you please make a video for us? And then they’re now going to be making videos. With every video, you want to make sure that you ask the affiliate for a spark code. Spark code is the unique code attached to their video. This allows you to then take that spark code and put money behind it in terms of the form of ads, right? So now, you know, we’re in the system, right? We have an account, we have products. You know, we’re getting all these affiliates to create videos for us, which hopefully is making us some level of sales, but it will probably not make you that many sales yet, right? Because all these affiliates, a lot of the times, the ones that are just willing to work free product for review, the reach is not that great. It’s fine. Now we’re getting 5100, let’s say 50 videos a month. Hundred videos a month. You’re getting spark codes. The next step is, you know, you go then and create an ad account. So you go in, create an ad account. You’re probably going to ask you to create like a business account. So you create a business account, then create an ad account. Simple shit. It takes like two minutes. Once you create that stuff, then you’re now able to start running out. So I would create simple spark ads. Take, you create one campaign with no budget. In that campaign, you know, the five ad groups, each with a budget, they want you to spend at least dollar 50 a day on each video. I think that’s a little bit high. I like to start with like ten to 15 a day. So let’s say, you know, I’m going to be anywhere between $50 to $75 in ad spend a day when I start with these five videos. So I’m taking the five videos, the ones that I think will perform the best, putting them in these ad groups, making sure that I’m optimizing for purchases. And then, you know, I’ll talk about demographic optimization, stuff like that later, but making sure I’m optimizing for purchases and then going from there. Turn on the ads. Now it’s starting to spend money. Some of the ads, first of all, you want to make sure that you have a 1% click through rate or more. Some of the ads are going to perform, well, 1% click through rate. You know, others are not. The ones that have good click through rate and the ones that have, you know, that are performing well. I’ll create a second campaign with another ad group with that same video. Again, same sparkle. And it’s very simple. When you create the ad, it’s going to be like, okay, what’s the campaign name. What’s the ad group name? Who are you targeting? Obviously, I keep the targeting open initially, and then it says, what video do you want to do? You can either post your own video, or you can click authorized post. Authorized post basically means a video where someone else has created it and authorized you to use it. Then it’s like, what’s the code for that video? You put the spark code in, and it’s like, okay, now you’re up and running. You have, like, that video that that person created. You’re now putting money behind it, and it doesn’t even show up as you. It shows up as them. It shows up, like, as if they’re spending more money. It’s like whitelisting. You know, it’s the best thing. So then from there, you look at the different videos. You’re like, okay, this one has a 1% click through rate or more, and it’s converted. Well, like, the CPA is $15. And remember, like, a few things we got to take into account here. You’re probably offering the affiliate anywhere between 20% to 30%. And then your ad cost is like, let’s say another 20% to 30%. So you’re probably not making a lot of money, but at least you’re getting the ball rolling. So you take that, you know, take that video or that ad, and then you create a new campaign. One ad group. Again, no budget. On the campaign level. On the ad group level, I would do maybe $30 this time. And then the final piece is, I would. Before launching it, I would go into my, like, I think it’s analytics at the top in the ad console. Analytics. And then it’ll say, like, audience insights. Click on audience insights. Then we’ll say, like, for example, you put the campaign. So I put the campaign, and it says that campaign. Like, that specific ad, it converted the best for men and women, like, 45 to 65. So I’m like, okay, now when I launch the ad, the new audience is gonna. Everything’s gonna be the same, but the audience is gonna be men and women, 45 to 65 only. And then I launch it. And then. And that’s basically, you know, me kind of optimizing the ad and trying to spend more money. And the final thing to keep in mind is make sure that the frequency does not exceed five. Frequency of five. It just means that people are seeing the ad too many times, and it results in ad fatigue. So you want to keep the frequency anywhere, like, two to three max. And you do that by not overspending on the same video, you know, multiple times. So that’s essentially the process. It’s a pretty simple process. You can get it pretty automated, right? Where it’s like, you know, you have a system of just reaching out to affiliates, get them on board, get them samples. Once they approve the sample, or once you approve the sample, they get the sample. You follow up with them. Hey, did you like the product? Amazing. You follow up with them, you get a video. Now you’re getting creatives, you’re getting ad creatives like at scale. And then from there, you know, you move on to the next stage, which is let me test these ads. Let me test these ads. So you’re testing, testing, testing, testing. Eventually you find the ones that work, you scale them. The ones that don’t work, you kill them and rinse and repeat. 

JONATHAN:  I love that. The part about zeroing in on the demographic through that process, too, because then you will be tailored to your audience by the end of that testing phase. Yeah, you mentioned optimizing for conversions. What are the other options? Just traffic and awareness? Or is there another something else that I’m not thinking about? 

MINA ELIAS: So you can optimize for different things for reach for purchases and then there’s one for one is tricky. It’s also for gross margin value. And so you’re like, okay, obviously I want the most revenue, so I’m going to optimize for that. But what it optimizes for is it optimizes for selling the most expensive product in your catalog. And I’m like, dude, I don’t care about that. I care about optimizing for the largest number of like units sold. So that’s just one thing I learned. Yeah. Recently. Obviously this is what I do. I basically just spend money to split test 100 things and figure out like, oh, this, all that, oh, this. You know what I mean? Same as I did with PPC. 

JONATHAN:  I mean, proof is in the pudding and it always will be, right? That’s surefire. That’s reliable. I think people should always test with live ammo, but I think people always want to skip that part or play it safe and use something like PickFu, which I dont think will ever give you an accurate read of what consumer behavior will be like. Not until there’s actual money on the line and people are actually making authentic purchases and what’s driving them to make those purchases. Right. So I think that that’s always important. I’m curious if there’s a product type or category that you’ve seen do better than others on TikTok. Maybe just incorporating with affiliate or influencer marketing does better. Like, I don’t know if it’s apparel or whatnot, but maybe it’s a product that doesn’t do as well. 

MINA ELIAS: No, I mean, it’s hard. First of all, the data is so little, so it’s hard to tell. I could tell you, like, supplements, CPG, that kind of stuff, anything that you can visually show well on TikTok will do well. You know, the more polarizing, the better. If it’s, like organic, if it’s like, you know, any of that kind of shit, I think that’ll do better. Anything like, I mean, someone wanted us to sell, like a cans holder. So it’s like something you put in your fridge and you put all the cans. It’s a cans organizer. I’m like, that’s just gonna be a little bit like, you know, difficult. But again, I don’t have all the data. Right. It’s not like with Amazon. I’m like, dude, I’ve gone through so many products and we have so many different clients that I can tell you, like, yeah, you can do this one, I’ll stay away from that one. Stay away from the spatula, stay away from the, you know, cutlery organizer. Like, that stuff is like not working. Stay away from the phone cases. But with TikTok is just so new and so I don’t want to say, oh, like, stay away from something. And then you try it and, you know, all of a sudden explodes. I have one friend that is killing it with pimple patches, you know, like similar, like similar to mighty patch. So it’s like, it’s just hard, really hard to predict right now, but which is good. It’s the wild west, so get in. 

JONATHAN:  That’s great. I mean, that means there’s opportunities for everyone, right? Who doesn’t love a level playing field? Trey, I liked what you said earlier about as time goes on, you’re going to have younger consumers who are more heavily invested in TikTok versus Amazon and then more likely to spend their money there. And i’m curious if Amazon could or would or can do anything to compete with that. I know that they had Amazon posts at some point and that’s more or less still incorporating the platform in some shapewear form, but I’m wondering if they could iterate on that and do anything to compete with TikTok. Actually, you know what? I just thought about this. Never mind. It’s just because it occurred to me that TikTok is such an organic, that entire culture came about so organically, and it was made by that audience and by all the users who were literate in TikTok, and I don’t think Amazon could recreate that. It would be like them trying to trap lightning in a bottle. If they tried to do it, it would just be a less cool version of TikTok and no one would want anything to do with it. 

MINA ELIAS: Exactly. That’s. I honestly, you put it in the best way. Like, one of it is a store, the other one is just like a hangout, a place where you’re hanging out, and then you just all, you just happen to see these things and you’re like, I’m interested. I want to buy it. 

JONATHAN:  Yeah. I imagine there will be a number of Amazon sellers who are hesitant about getting onto TikTok Shops. Do you see any value in them trying to push traffic to their Amazon listings from TikTok with influencers? Or is there really no value in that? 

MINA ELIAS: No, I don’t think there’s value because you could try and your gauge could be, I mean, there is some value. You could just be like, you know what? I’m going to try and drive traffic to Amazon and then just say, okay, I’m spending $2,000 a month on TikTok Shop. How much more money did I make on Amazon? Did I make $4,000 more, $6,000 more this month? And kind of play it that way, but it is a very, you might as well do, like, billboard ads, or you might as well do television ads, right? Because you’re going to have that same level of tracking. But when you do TikTok Shop, you can essentially liquidate. Okay, so think about it this way. Me, as an agency owner, if I could spend money on ads and, and sell, let’s say, like a $15, you know, ebook, right? Every single time someone sees me, they’re still seeing my face, right? And so if I could spend $100,000 a month and only make $100,000 a month in revenue from that, but I’m getting like 5 million impressions of people seeing my face. Like, how amazing is that? Like, okay, my agency, I’m not getting direct, like, results from it, but at least I’m liquidating my ad spend. And, you know, 5 million people a month are seeing me is the exact same thing with TikTok. If I can get it to a point where I’m, you know, spending 50k on TikTok Shop and breaking even, I still have, you know, the, all of that impressions that I’m getting from the 50k in ad spend and all of the affiliates creating content that people are seeing, my brand so now, like, you’re like, you know, you just hear someone’s like, oh, yeah, I just bought, like, you know, hard work. Electrolytes, they’re like, hard work. Like, I just saw that thing the other day. You know what I mean? Like, you’re getting this additional benefit which will then result into people naturally overflowing going to Amazon. But at least I know if I’m promoting my products on TikTok Shop, I can at least liquidate it. I can break even. And so when you break even, yeah, you’re not making money, but you’re getting the visibility for free. So that’s one thing. That’s the bonus. If you just go straight to Amazon, it’s like, okay, which ad is doing better? You have no idea. You’re just shooting in the dark. 

JONATHAN:  So as far as the evolution of a seller, you’re going to start out, you’re going to have a DTC site, you’re going to build brand awareness, and then you’re most likely going to go to Amazon. Or would you say go to both Amazon and TikTok? Or would you go to build a brand on Amazon first and then go to TikTok? What recommendation would you have? 

MINA ELIAS: Okay, so there’s, there’s a few paths to take here. We have to start somewhere. So if you’re a brand new seller that has nothing, if you have a lot of money, I would dedicate 80% to Amazon, 20% to TikTok Shop. If you have no money, I would probably start on TikTok Shop, build up, you know, like some awareness, get, you know, kind of get the reps in, get my feet wet, build some sort of listen that I can use later on for ad, for reviews. Also fix the product to get the feedback from people to improve the product. So when I do go on to Amazon, I can go on with a good product, with a list and maybe be able to say, hey, guys, anyone who buys the product on Amazon and give them a second one for free and get a launch list going that way. That’s the two cases. If you have a little bit of money, if you have a lot of money, Amazon will definitely generate you more money faster. Um, and so that’s why if you do have a lot of money, then invest 80% of it on Amazon, because you build a nice listing, you get reviews, you run the ads. If the product is a fit, you’re going to make money on Amazon. Now, if you are like a DTC founder that’s not on Amazon or TikTok Shop, you again, you’re, you’re probably better off starting on TikTok Shop, getting that going, and then move on to Amazon. But again, like, I would probably just spend 20%, get it set up, get it up and running, and then just move on to Amazon from there. And then that’s where I would invest a lot of money. If you’re a big Amazon seller, then again, keep all of your money into Amazon. It’s still what’s going to pay the bills and make you a lot of money. But try and take maybe 10% of your budget and put it into TikTok Shop. Get that going, try to increase it to 15 or 20%. And if you can liquidate it, if you can break even on TikTok Shop, you will make more money on Amazon, inevitably. 

JONATHAN:  I love that. I love how you broke that down. So I know TikTok has trends and then there’s seasonal events as well. Is there any value in sellers building their ad campaigns and content around seasonality and trends? Or do you think it’s better for them to make it more timeless so that it could be repurposed at any given time?

MINA ELIAS: Yeah, I mean, you’re asking the wrong guy. Right. Because I’m in a very evergreen category. I would say my brand is supplements. 60, 70% of our clients are supplements or CPG related products. So we don’t really deal that much with seasonality. I mean, it totally makes sense if you are selling Stephen Pope, he sells or Age of Sage, when he owned it, he used to sell this box, this care box. So it would do amazing for Mother’s Day. It would do amazing for Valentine’s Day if I would take full advantage of that. So I would basically, leading up to the event, say, hey, guy, like, maybe, like for all of your older affiliates, say, hey, we have an opportunity. Our product is very seasonal. You might sell ten times more on Mother’s Day. Why don’t you create a Mother’s Day video and post it on this day? And it’s like maybe two days before Mother’s Day, so, or, I don’t know, maybe one week before Mother’s Day. That’s where people are doing their shopping or something like that. And then you can essentially have a Mother’s Day campaign. 

JONATHAN:  I would imagine that would do so well because you’re going to have so many people who are lazy and don’t want to shop for mothers Day, and then they’re just going to be on TikTok, see the product and add it to cart. 

MINA ELIAS: They’re like, I haven’t gotten anything for my mom yet. This is good. 

JONATHAN:  That’s amazing. And then as far as costs associated with TikTok Shop, what’s the costs associated with selling look like? 

MINA ELIAS: Essentially you’re paying 8%. That’s the 8% I think plus $1020 or $0.30, something like mini, mini like that. But 8% is not bad for each sale that you make on the platform. So it’s 8% plus your ad cost, plus your fulfillment cost plus which is, you know, the multi channel fulfillment by Amazon plus your affiliate commission. Do not do a ten or 15% affiliate commission because most affiliates are just going to be like, well I’m not interested. You can do that when you’re really, really big and everyone wants to work with you, but when you are smaller, um, you can’t, you just, you’re like, you, whatever, you know, like I’ll give you, I’ll give you a big amount just so you can get the ball rolling. So what I did was I started with 30%, got a lot of people involved, built up my page and then I dropped it down to 20% and, and I was still getting a lot of people at 20% because uh, they just saw that there’s so many people that are promoting my product as opposed to if I started uh, you know, like 20, 15% or something like that, I might have just gotten a lot of people saying I’m not really interested. You’re not that big. And you know, why should I spend my time trying to get only 15%? That’s one thing. Another thing is do not forget about reviews. So like any, like anything else, you’re going to have your page on your, you’re going to have your storefront with your products. You’re going to need to get reviews for your products. It’s not that hard. You can reach out to a bunch of affiliates. So just think of a way, I’m going to hint this, think of a way where you can get these people without them requesting a sample to buy the product and leave a review. It’s pretty straightforward, but you need some reviews on your products or else people are going to be like, I don’t know if I trust this. Just the purchaser. They’re going to see the product in a video. Amazing. Let me click on it. Oh, zero reviews. Well I can’t trust that. And then also build up your Instagram page. So the hard work page, there’s at least like 20 or 30 posts on there of different people creating different content around the product. And that’s one thing that again, people will review like, they’ll look at the product, they’ll quickly look at the page of the, you know, the TikTok page of the brand and be like, okay, cool, this looks like a real reputable brand. I’m interested, I’ll buy from them. So, and all of this stuff, guys, just go look at your top competitors and copy what they’re doing. And it is the Wild west. It’s super new. You have, you have an opportunity to be a first mover. Like, if you listen to this podcast and act now, you’re still in the top 0.1% of the world. Like, you know, of brands who are still haven’t acted on TikTok Shop because they have all of these, like, hesitations and like, oh, I have to put my Social Security, or how are we going to do the outreach or how am I going to do fulfillment, all this stuff. Don’t let these obstacles get in the way because you’re like, eventually I’m going to speak on enough podcasts, enough people are going to get motivated, enough people are going to hire me to do their TikTok Shops, and then it’s going to be a little bit late. So take all the kind of knowledge I’m giving you and just implement it, and there’s so much we haven’t figured out yet. So it’s like you’re in a perfect stage right now to like, go and experiment and figure it out before others do. 

JONATHAN:  I will make sure that your contact info is wallpapered all over the podcast descriptions when we launch this episode, just because I’m sure that there will be a number of people who have questions and will want to reach out and ask them. But you brought up the idea of, you know, we’re still in the early days, things need to be sorted out. Do you have any sense of what’s to come? Like, have you heard rumors or changes that are going to be made? Any read of what’s on the horizon? 

MINA ELIAS: No, it’s still very finicky. Like, people are getting suspended left and right, things are getting blocked, whatever support is completely useless. So I would just say it’s just like another Amazon. I just expected that they are going to keep improving over time and the issues that are issues are going to get better. I think their ads are pretty decent where they’re at now. I’m pretty impressed at how far along it is and I think it’s only going to get better and they’re going to give you more analytics and things like that. But at the end of the day, any platform like TikTok Shop, it always comes down to creatives. So Facebook used to do all this stuff with pixels and like retargeting and all this stuff. And by the way, you can also right now do retargeting on TikTok Shop. So like, maybe another thing that I should have covered is you can build an audience that, that is basically people who viewed your product but haven’t purchased from your product and build that audience and then you can create a campaign with let’s say like different videos going after that audience so that like everyone who views your product but doesn’t purchase, they start getting retargeted. You know, as they’re scrolling, they’re like, oh, I’m seeing it again. You know what I mean? So it’s a powerful platform. Just remember that any platform, like, you know, meta as a whole, basically, any platform that has creatives on it, essentially, like eventually, like with enough competition, the differentiator becomes your creative. So it becomes how good the quality of your creators are, what they’re creating. So I think over time there’s going to be a little bit more sophistication. Like what I’m working on is eventually, once I see what works from all the different contents, maybe building like a little bit of a brand guide and with every affiliate be like, hey, you know, I’m glad that you’re willing to become an affiliate, whatever. Here is a link to our brand guide. I’m only, I don’t want to kind of constrain your creativity, but I’m giving you this because this is basically what’s worked for us in the past. This is what has converted. So I would love, I would love for you to kind of just take a look at it and maybe if you’re going to do a few videos, try to kind of mimic what’s worked in the past, obviously you have creative freedom, but, you know, I just want you to make more money, right? We’re in it together. So that’s where I see TikTok heading. Not because of like anything they’re doing, but because of, I understand, like with Facebook, that’s what happened with Instagram, that’s what happened to creative platforms is essentially you head to a point where, okay, we’re all competing, we all have the same technology, software, all this kind of stuff. What’s left? Okay, whoever has the best creative wins. 

JONATHAN:  I love that. I can’t think of a better note to end on. And yeah, it’s just there’s a lot of exciting stuff and opportunities for people, and I’m really excited to see how it all plays out for everyone. And I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and school me in it. 

MINA ELIAS: I love it, man. I’m happy to help. I know this is exciting in this school, and, like, I’m. I’m investing a lot of money so I can, like, remove the mystery in the black box of TikTok Shop, same way I did with Amazon PPC. And everyone can take advantage. 

JONATHAN:  Very exciting stuff, Mina. Thank you again. 

MINA ELIAS: Of course, man. My pleasure. Take it easy, guys.