595: How To Launch A 75k/month Tiktok Shop With 0 Followers

595: How To Launch A 75k/month Tiktok Shop With 0 Followers Steve Chou: Welcome to the podcast, the show where I cover all the latest strategies and current events related to ecommerce and online business. Now in this episode, Ian from Bullseye Sellers and I dive deep into how regular people with zero followers are building $75,000 a month businesses on TikTok Shop. We'll break down exactly how this is happening, why it's working right now, and what it takes to launch successfully without a big audience or ad budget. So if you've ever felt overwhelmed by all the noise online or unsure where to start, this episode is a step-by-step, behind-the-scenes look at a strategy that's actually working right now. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that session recordings for Sellers Summit 2025 are now available over at SellersSummit.com. If you missed the event, you can now get instant access to every keynote, workshop, and panel. Now on to the show. Welcome to The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. Today, I am thrilled to have Ian Page on the show. Ian is the founder of Bullseye Sellers where he helps ecommerce sellers launch on the TikTok Shop platform. Right now, TikTok Shop is hot. It's exploding with an expected GMV of over $50 billion this year. And it does convert four and a half times higher than traditional social media. So in this episode, we are going to break down Ian's strategies on how to successfully launch your brand on TikTok, what it takes, what products work well on the platform. And with that, welcome to the show, Ian. How are you doing today, man? Ian Page: Thank you for having me, Steve. I'm doing well. Beautiful Pennsylvania. Where are you? Steve Chou: I am in California where the weather is perfect. I think I'm going to go for a run right after this. Ian Page: I had the same thing. It's like 75 degrees and sunny outside. So maybe I'll go for a run with you. Steve Chou: So Ian, many of the listeners, I know you were at, at a seller summit, but many of my listeners probably do not know who you are. So I want to know how you got started in e-commerce and how did you end up specializing in TikTok shop in particular? Ian Page: It all started with a back brace. In 2015, a back brace. Steve Chou: A back brace. Okay. Ian Page: Yeah. Yeah. So I did ASM5. For those who don't know, it's an amazing selling machine. I know you know, Steve. Yep. And it was one of those, it felt like a multi-level marketing scam because all my friends were trying to get a commission off me and sell me the course and it was like overpriced. And I was like, I don't know about this, but you know, I had that entrepreneurial itch and I had a day job and pretty much in a cubicle and kind of that nine to five lifestyle. And I just wanted to get out of that. Wow. That was 10 years ago. And, I bought the course. I just gave in. I was like, all right, screw it. I'm just going to give it a try. I'm going to learn Amazon. And the course after completing it led me to a clavicle support brace. You know how you pick your first product? Steve Chou: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Ian Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I did some custom designing on it because when it, when it came from China, I was like kind of unhappy with it. Steve Chou: It felt uncomfortable. Ian Page: So I actually like did a bunch of like custom designing on it with the manufacturer and it took off. The clavicle support launched selling like a hundred, 200 units a day. And I was like, man, this is easy. Later to find out it's not that easy for everybody, but I got lucky. I had the right product at the right time. And I actually had a really early exit because what happened was I had a competitor that reached out to me that was a little annoyed at my presence and made me an offer and I actually sold the brand, which at that point had a few SKUs in 2017. So I wasn't actually in the e-commerce space personally for too long. I had immediate success and a quick exit. And then what happened in 2017, 2018, a lot of my friends were asking me for advice. So, you know, that's just so common in the ecommerce space of like, you know, you know, a guy who knows a guy and he's in, they stumble over each other to get your phone number and ask Ian because Ian is an ecommerce expert or whatever they think I am, which I really wasn't. I just knew a couple things. So, um, I started doing a lot of like free consulting to friends. And then one thing led to another and I was like, maybe I could charge for this. You know, maybe I should just sell my time. So I started selling hourly packages of consulting. And then one thing led to another and I was like, I can't scale this. Like I can't scale my own hours in the day. That's not possible. So I think maybe I should like start an agency and see what happens. And that was 2018, 2019, Bullseye Sellers was born. So that's where Bullseye came from, really. It all came from a back brace. Steve Chou: How did that lead to TikTok? Ian Page: Yeah, so the way that led to TikTok was in 2020, God, it was only last year. I was looking for an old number and it was only last year. Last year, we went to Prosper, my agency staff and I, I think eight of us went from Bullseye and TikTok Shop had a big booth there at Prosper. And it was the coolest booth at Prosper. I mean, it was like lying out the door, people trying to talk to TikTok. And I already knew there was a TikTok shop. I already knew viral on TikTok was always a thing and everyone wanted to go viral. But I didn't really know like the weeds of it. Like, what does it take? So I met with TikTok Shop and the first thing they said is you have to become a TSP. I was like, what is a TSP? They're like, it's TikTok Shop Partner. You have to become a TSP before you can really do anything. Once you're a TSP, you're in. And I was like, okay. So I applied and supposedly it was really hard to become TSP. I didn't know because I had a lot of peers that were like still waiting for their approval. And I got approved within a month. Steve Chou: Nice. Ian Page: And then I was like, what do we do now? You know what I mean? Like, you know, I'm a TSP. I'm an official TikTok Shop partner, but I don't know TikTok at all. And what do I do with this new found, you know, license as a partner? And so here's what we did. We basically called all of our existing Amazon clients. I had all my account managers literally reach out to every single one and say, hey, we will manage your TikTok Shop for free, commission only. Because we need to learn how to do this. And we already manage your Amazon. We have asset, we have all your assets. We already have this communication and this connection. Can I, for 8% of your sales on TikTok, represent your account? And of course, everyone was like, sure. Because they were like, it's free sales. Like if you guys can get it and we give you 8% and there's no retainer, we'll take it. So we did that from Right when I got back from Prosper last year, and I got that TSP, official whatever, which ended up not really helping me in the first year, it's helping me now. And we, we got about 12 of our clients on TikTok. And it was a nightmare. It was an absolute nightmare. Okay. We, we got rejected like 15 times and documents never worked. And it was like, driver's licenses were rejected. We just couldn't get a break. It took six months. From March to October, to actually learn how to get someone on TikTok Shop in a reasonable amount of time. So I'm so glad I didn't charge a retainer. It would have been such a nightmare. My churn would have been terrible. So I was like, so happy. I was like, there's no pressure. It's commission only. Just figure it out, you know? Steve Chou: Yeah. Ian Page: And then in October, we made our first sale. Literally, it was like middle of October, we had a skincare client. And they're now my number one client on TikTok, actually. And they sell an eczema product. And we got our first sale on TikTok through an affiliate video. And we were like, oh my god, we are TikTok shop experts. Like literally right at that point, I was like, yeah, man, I'm an expert. And then October led into the holiday season. And that same brand did like 10 G's in December. And it was like, wow, like this is something we can scale. That same brand did 25 G's in January this year, they did 35, or maybe 38 in February, they broke 50 G's in March, they broke 75 G's in April. And right now they're hovering at that 75 mark. So they're my biggest brand that we started from $0. Without a TikTok presence, I would imagine. Literally from the first sale. Actually, they were banned on TikTok. They handed us over the account and they're like, we actually banned ourselves because we didn't know what we were doing, just getting it approved. So they were like negative, you know. Steve Chou: Right. Ian Page: So yeah, that's the journey of TikTok. It's not this like, it's not this like, beautiful, romantic story. It's like us just like knocking our heads against the wall for six months and figuring it out. And I think that's what a lot of people are still doing. And that's why there's a there's a big industry here now in the agency space, managing TikTok shops. Steve Chou: There aren't too many of you guys out there just yet. Maybe it's because it's the wild, wild west so far. But. Ian Page: It's the Wild West. Yeah. Steve Chou: I am interested in seeing what you had to say about it. Now, I know Amazon's been squeezing sellers and buyers more than ever before, and a lot of sellers are looking for alternative platforms and marketplaces to sell. So in your mind, if you're already selling on Amazon in your own store, where does TikTok Shop fall in the overall strategy and the priorities of selling to you? Ian Page: To me, it's about timing. And what that means is where you're at financially, because I don't believe that a brand should stretch themselves too thin when they're in the startup phase. And I would call that in the six-figure-a-year phase. Steve Chou: Okay. Ian Page: So if you're a quarter million dollar seller on Amazon, I wouldn't spend half your time trying to crack TikTok. I think you'll go broke. I really do. Because you're not getting enough profit from your quarter million to also seed samples, to also pay for maybe expensive early ads on TikTok. And I think you're going to stretch yourself too thin with your inventory and you're not going to succeed on either platform. Steve Chou: Okay. So what is the range that you recommend then? Ian Page: Seven figures on Amazon. And it's very rare that we don't take a client that's not seven figures. The only times I won't take a client that's under seven figures on Amazon is if they already have other brands or they, I just know that they're capital infused and they can support the TikTok journey. If they're not and they're bootstrapping the hell out of it, I wouldn't recommend Anybody hire an agency to do TikTok. And I say the same thing with meta, Steve. I don't believe that a new seller should be dabbling in meta, dabbling in Google Ads. I just feel like people get overly excited about all these different places that they can sell their products. And they're masters of none, really, at that early stage. Steve Chou: Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. Just pick one medium, master it, and then move on to the next one. Ian Page: Make your money, pull your money, put it into other places once you're ready. Steve Chou: So what I would like to do first is to get people excited about TikTok. Tell me about some of the big wins. You already mentioned that Eczema Skin Care Company. What are the expectations here on the growth that you should see? Ian Page: Well, let me go back to that because that Eczema Skin Care Company, when I say $75k a month on TikTok, it might sound like it's not a lot, but what it really is is 5-8 million impressions a month. That's what they're averaging. Wow. Okay. So 5 to 8 million impressions a month going to your Amazon store. And the reason I say going to your Amazon store is we found that 50 to 70% of people with intent to buy on TikTok will actually prefer buying on Amazon. So they'll They'll get inspired by a TikTok video. They'll search the product on Amazon and they'd rather prime it and get it the same day. Okay. I'm sure most of our listeners here, you're going to agree. If you find something on TikTok, what's more convenient than buying that same product on Amazon? Right. So that Eczema skincare brand is seeing success that they've never seen before. Their listing on Amazon for the same product is 3x from when we started. And it was actually kind of a dying brand. This was a brand friend of mine that for the last two years was just losing market share every single year slowly to more competitors. Their cost per clicks were basically being bid out because they couldn't afford those cost per clicks. So they were in that situation where just slowly losing market share on Amazon. And then we reversed that with this TikTok strategy. Steve Chou: So there's a halo effect on Amazon. What about their store? Did it have a halo effect as well? Ian Page: Yeah. Their D2C saw a 25% increase. What we surveyed is 11%, which I think is probably more accurate. So let's say 100 people see your video on TikTok and they all want to buy. What we've surveyed to our audience, we have a huge shopper network that we surveyed, regular people, and we said, where would you go? 11% said, I'll go to the website. 62% said I'll go to Amazon and the other, what, 30%, 28% or whatever that number is said, I'll just buy it on TikTok. So we are seeing that spillover on their website and on Amazon and their overall lift on ecommerce is way up because of that $75k off TikTok. So that's the bigger reason why you do TikTok. Steve Chou: So of those sales on TikTok, because I know you had to give away a commission and then there's fees and whatnot, is the TikTok sales itself profitable or are you mainly relying on the halo effect for this whole operation to be profitable overall? Ian Page: Barely profitable. I think their profit now is about $10,000 a month. Steve Chou: Okay. So $10,000 on $75,000 in sales. Ian Page: Yeah. So that would not be a great contribution margin with Amazon if someone was doing that. Steve Chou: And so when you're measuring the halo effect here, you would just kind of extrapolate out the sales that you would normally get And everything else you would, I assume this brand isn't doing anything else, right? Except for TikTok Shop. Ian Page: Okay. That's it. That's all we're doing. Steve Chou: Nice. Ian Page: Yeah. Okay. They even, they even chilled out on their Google ads and they actually like have, you know, taken some of their Amazon PPC budget, Google budget, and they've given it to us. Steve Chou: So I do know since I'm on TikTok, there are certain things that work better than others. And I just want to, I want you to just tell the audience here what products work well. I know you have a screening process involved with the products. Can you kind of describe what that is? Ian Page: I want brand focused products. So what that means is like, let's just take, you know, any old product like this, you know, this charger here, this is not a brand, this is a charger, right? Okay. So if someone, even if it's a cool charger, if someone watched a video, and this was like a unique charger, but it wasn't really brand focused, like didn't have like the branding all over it, the box, It wasn't heavily branded. What's going to happen is people are going to watch the video and 60-70% are going to go off TikTok's platform and they're going to have a difficult time finding you and identifying you versus the other competitors on Amazon. That's going to be like a Swiss cheese situation, where you're basically just paying to get sales for everyone else. And maybe you get a little bit. I don't want that. So what I would rather have is brand focused products, where it's very easy for the consumer that's watching the video to be like, oh, yeah, brand blah charger. And they only go to your listing. So that's the first thing that we filter out when we're talking to people because we talked to a lot of Amazon sellers who just sell stuff. Steve Chou: Right. Ian Page: I don't really want people that just sell stuff. I want people who are building a brand. Steve Chou: So what is your definition of brand here? I mean, you mentioned having a box and, you know, with your, I mean, that's like par for the course today, right? So what else are you looking at? Ian Page: Yeah, I'm looking at a shop with consistent products, not just a bunch of products that you sell because they have search volume. Steve Chou: That all fall under like the same niche and they're, okay, trying to build a portfolio. Okay, got it. Ian Page: Okay. That's right. Steve Chou: Okay. Ian Page: Yeah. So that's number one. And then Number two, and this doesn't disqualify you, but this just highlights the type of client that does better, is a high LTV consumable, for sure. So if you have a supplement brand, a skincare brand, a haircare brand, something like that, You can absorb those costs, you know, for the affiliate commission, the TikTok commission, the ads, all that are much easier for you to absorb because you get the repeat customer and you know that your LTV is, let's say it's 15% of sales is going to result in two more orders or whatever that metric is. So that's, that's number two. It doesn't disqualify you, but I would definitely say if you are in that category, You're already on my radar as a great prospect for TikTok. Steve Chou: Do you have an example of a product that is not a consumable that's one of your clients that has found success? Ian Page: Yeah. We have a toy brand that sells bath toys for kids. Light up bath toys, little squeaky bath toys. They had this great product that's like a mold free. It doesn't have that little hole in it. Steve Chou: Right. Ian Page: So it's like a mold free light up little squeaky bath toys. We had a viral video back in April that just went nuclear and they completely sold out on Amazon. And the ROAS was awesome. I think their cost per order was like $1.50 for like a $12 product. So they were like thrilled and they didn't care that it wasn't a repeat customer because it was a profitable sale every single time for that product. And they were very well branded. Again, that's one of those things where a squeaky bath toy could easily just be a product, but they definitely have a good brand and they really made it branded so people could find them on Amazon. Steve Chou: And do they have cross sells for other stuff related to bath products or whatever that they're taking advantage of? Or is it just that main product? Ian Page: Mainly because, you know, I'm sure they do because they have other fun bath products, but we definitely on TikTok Shop. I saw that two of their products were really just getting 90% of the sales. Steve Chou: Got it. Ian Page: Because on TikTok, people are pretty impulse buy, right? They're not hunting. They're sitting on a couch and they're being hunted. It's the reverse, right? Right. So they're just going, oh, that's fun. I think my little toddler is going to love that. I'm going to buy it. And maybe three months down the line, if you're lucky, they might think, what was that brand I bought the bath toys from? Because I want to get something else. A little bit. A little bit. I personally think that their memory on TikTok is going to be not quite as loyal to a brand as it would on Amazon. Steve Chou: Sure. Ian Page: Because they're being hunted in the initial in the initial sale. Steve Chou: Okay. 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 6-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 and can be obtained at MyWifeQuitHerJob.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 MyWifeQuitHerJob.com slash free. Now back to the show. Okay. So consumables is a plus. What else do you look for? Ian Page: So obviously, I look for someone who can afford TikTok. I like to say $8k to $10k a month. And that would include my retainer. And so if you're doing it yourself, I would say $6k to $7k a month. Because if you can't afford six to seven K a month for six months knowing that like, I literally mean like that money is going away. So you are investing six to seven K for six months. So that'd be like, what $42,000 $45,000 if you can handle that, And you're, it's almost like don't invest money in the stock market that you're not willing to lose. That same concept. Steve Chou: Sure. Ian Page: Right. Steve Chou: Okay. Ian Page: We're going to be much more successful because you're not going to squirm or the moment we get a 1.2 ROAS or the moment something doesn't go right. So I would say if you're doing it yourself, 6-7k, that would include the cost for you to sample your products out. That would include the commissions to the affiliates. And if you are including an agency, I would go up to $10k to $12k because I would also pay for the agency as well. Steve Chou: What is the timeframe that you would expect to get a better ROAS? I can understand burning cash in like the first X number of months. What is the expectation? Ian Page: Six months. Steve Chou: Six months. Okay. Ian Page: And the reason being, and I say that more of like, you can expect to be at a profit in six months if you have the right agency partner. Steve Chou: Okay. Ian Page: I see guys doing it themselves that are eight months in and they're still losing money. So I'd say if you have someone that knows their stuff, You can be profitable in six months. Steve Chou: Okay, so the expectation here is be willing to lose, let's say, $10k a month for six months. $60,000 investment. This is no different than meta ads, for example. In the beginning, you're just panning for gold, right? Ian Page: Yep. Steve Chou: You're going to lose money in the beginning. Ian Page: Yep. Steve Chou: Okay. Ian Page: And a big part of it is the sampling, okay? We just did a webinar with Mary Ruth, the CRO. His name is Jay Hunter. I recommend checking that on my YouTube. I'll shout out to my YouTube. Just type in Bullseye Sellers. Steve Chou: You'll find it. Ian Page: It's a great webinar because they're doing they're projected to do 70 million this year on TikTok. So they're in the top 10. They're like in that they're they're hanging out with TikTok corporate at the office. They're at that level. So but they started at zero January 2024. They were at $0. So within only 16 months from zero to 70 million in a year is insane. Steve Chou: Yeah. Ian Page: They told me that the reason why people fail is what Jay said. The reason why most people fail on TikTok is they just don't continue long enough. They squirm. They send out 100 samples. Some videos come back. The videos suck. This is what happens, right? And they put a little ad dollars behind the videos. They spend $500. They get no sales. And they're like, screw TikTok. I'm just going to go back to Amazon. Steve Chou: I think that can be said about any content platform, right? If you start a YouTube channel, you got to keep with it for at least a year. Same with anything, right? Ian Page: That's true. That's true. And it's no different on TikTok. So what Jay said is their sampling, they really ratcheted up their sampling and they just got less picky about who they sent them out to. I asked Jay point blank on the call. I was like, you guys are the big dogs. Who are you sampling? Are you looking for those Kylie Jenner influencers? Are you sampling plain old mom and pop affiliates? And he's like, if they have an 80% post rate, Meaning for each sample they receive, they post 80% of the time a video or higher. I will send them a sample. I don't care about their GMB history. I don't care anything else. I'm like, wow. Steve Chou: You mean 80% of the people that receive a product actually do at least one video? Is that what you mean? Ian Page: The post rate is a metric on TikTok for the affiliate. Steve Chou: Okay. Ian Page: So that'd be, I received a hundred products and samples this month and I did videos on at least 80 of them. Steve Chou: Ah, okay. Basically you're measuring whether they're going to take action. Ian Page: That's exactly right. Steve Chou: Okay. Ian Page: So he said, if they have an 80% or higher, I don't care about their GMV, which is their sales metrics, I will send them a sample. Steve Chou: Interesting. Okay. Ian Page: And they're huge. So the point is, is they're not getting pickier. They're getting less picky as time goes on. Steve Chou: I mean, I've noticed TikTokers make a ton of money when they have like hardly any subs. There's been a lot of case studies on that. So maybe that's why the theory like it's panning for gold, right? It's like playing the lottery in a way. Ian Page: And he knows his COGS. So he knows that he's sending out a sample to get 300 impressions. Like he knows that. That's what he's factoring in. I'm getting 300 impressions. Steve Chou: Okay. Ian Page: Okay. If I get more than that, that's a bonus. And if I can get a Spark ad and turn that 300 impressions into a monetized sponsored ad, and it does well, great. That's a bonus too. But he just factors in COG sample out equals 300 impressions. Steve Chou: Let me ask you this, and I'm sure you don't know his numbers, but of those 300 impressions, what would the expected conversion rate be? Or just a ballpark, what would you expect to be a good conversion rate on that? Ian Page: Yeah, I don't know those numbers, but... Steve Chou: I mean, is it higher than Amazon or is it much lower? I would imagine it's lower, right? Ian Page: Yeah, it's definitely lower because it's not bottom of funnel. Exactly. Yeah, no, it's not. But what happens is, and what Jay was saying on the call is, If you do that enough times, you appear to be everywhere. And the average person starts to see your videos that 8 to 10 times, which is what they need to see in order to be like, okay, I'm going to buy the product. And you have that apparency of just being everywhere. Steve Chou: Got it. Okay, that's like Alan Somrosy's strategy. Ian Page: 100%. Yeah. And you can't be everywhere on Amazon. Steve Chou: You can't. Ian Page: Right. The platform doesn't allow you to be everywhere. You're only with intent. That's it. And the other downfall of the Amazon strategy is you are as good as your competitor to your left and to your right. If you're a little bit more expensive and you don't have enough differentiation, you're losing. If you're a little bit cheaper, but your reviews aren't as good, you might still be losing. So you're only as good as the guy to your left and to your right, or if it's mobile, above you or below you. So with TikTok, you don't have to worry about your competitors. There are no competitors. It's just between you and the person watching your video at that moment in time. Steve Chou: Okay, got it. All right, so now that at least I have a better idea of how this all works, what is the process that you guys take to take a brand with zero TikTok presence and then grow it to, I guess, break even within six months? Ian Page: Yeah, I like to say $50k within six months. That's what we always go for. Steve Chou: Okay, sure. Ian Page: $50k a month in six months. So the first thing is we have to cut out the shop setup time. We've gotten that down to under a week. Steve Chou: Wow. Okay. Ian Page: Yeah. Because if we spin our wheels on that, time is money. That's an upset client. We don't want that. So we got it down to under a week, unless you're in a really tough category like weight loss or something. And if there's FDA approvals, it might go to 10 days, but for most products, it's under a week. And then right after that, we're using our sister company Sellico to basically do giveaways. So we're actually in the giveaway business too now because TikTok is aware that there's this cold start period where they don't allow you to do much. So it's kind of a catch 22 because as soon as your shop is live, they're like, good, you can only outreach to 2000 people a week on the affiliate network. And you have no sales. So those 2000 people are probably going to ghost you, right? You have no reviews. So the consumer is not going to buy any of your products. And We're gonna limit the amount of people that you're allowed to talk to because you haven't made any sales and you haven't proven yourself. So it's kind of an impossible situation. So the way we get out of that is we have our own shopper network that we created with Seller Co. and we basically just pay for our own GMV. So we say, we tell our clients up front, you're gonna give away a couple hundred units and you're gonna basically, we're gonna pay up front for those units, full retail price, and then we're gonna send shoppers to your shop And they're going to really make a purchase. Check out the products going to be shipped. That's going to increase your shop score. It's going to show TikTok that you're making sales. And then we're gonna ask them to write reviews, okay? So that's the first 30 days usually. Steve Chou: This is like old school Amazon. Ian Page: Dude, it's right back to where it was. And I was so nervous about doing this because Amazon's been so hard on this. And then I talked to guys at TikTok Corporate, and they love it. They love it so much that we're in the TikTok Lark channel, which is like TikTok Slack. So we can actually talk to people at TikTok. We love it so much that they're like tagging my name and tagging other people's names and saying, hey, can you show this seller your Cold Start solution? Because they're constantly getting that type of messaging from other agencies. So like, I'm actually like getting leads from TikTok for this other service. Steve Chou: Hilarious. Okay, so you have this database of shoppers who want free stuff, right? Just like the old days of SnagShout. Ian Page: Yeah, or like Rebakey. It's kind of like that. Steve Chou: Oh, Rebakey. Ian Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Steve Chou: And so you're basically just jump-starting the reviews on your shop. Ian Page: That's right. Okay. Steve Chou: And that creates the necessary social proof for the other people who want to jump on board. Ian Page: That's right. Okay. And we're getting through the $2,000, what's called the $2,000 GMV threshold. That's what it's called. Steve Chou: So you have to sell $2,000 worth of stuff for TikTok to allow you to expand? Ian Page: Yep. I have it right here. If I can share my screen, I'll show you. Steve Chou: Yeah, go for it. Yeah. Ian Page: I have a good old ChatGPT for everybody here. So here are the Thresholds. I'm going to have to do entire screen because it's not finding my ChatGPT. So if you haven't made a single sale, you can't outreach to anybody. Wow. It's kind of weird, right? You can't do anything. Steve Chou: Can you buy your own stuff though to jumpstart that? Ian Page: Yeah, but it has to be through an affiliate. Steve Chou: Ah, okay. Ian Page: So TikTok's going to have to do something about this, but because it's a little bit of a, it's really the definition of a Catch-22. Right. Once you get $2,000 in sales, then, or once you have a single sale up to 2,000, then you're allowed to reach out to 2,000 creators a week. 2,000 creators is nothing. Steve Chou: It sounds like a lot though, but it's nothing. Ian Page: The reason why it's nothing is because you're going to get ghosted because you're a brand new product. Then if you have 2,000 to 50,000 sales, it over 3x's your outreach per week. So that's why we're always focused on that 2k to get right here. Steve Chou: Got it. Ian Page: And then obviously once we get to 50k, which we're not going to seed products for $50,000, no one's going to pay for that. That's when it's just complete unlimited outreach at that point. Steve Chou: Give me an idea of how many creators you guys typically reach out to in a given week because even 7,000 sounds like a ton. Ian Page: Yeah, we usually max out. Steve Chou: Okay. Ian Page: Yeah. Steve Chou: Is that an automated process or is that a manual process? Ian Page: It is a, um, A little bit of both. A little bit of both. We use some really good software partners. That help us automate it because we're managing 38 shops right now. So obviously like with 38 shops, we're not going to be doing it all manual, but there are some components that have to be manual. Especially when we have a video that performs well, we manually reach out to that person and invite them into a Discord channel where we can have much better dialogue with that individual and like do more long-term strategy with that affiliate. But I'd say it's like 90% automated at this point for us. Steve Chou: But for the individual, not you guys per se, do you typically have to go through each creator and hit the invite button? Yep. Ian Page: Unless you sign up for a software. I'll do some call outs. Uptick.io, U-P-T-K.io is great. There's another one called Reacher, reacherapp.com. These are softwares where you can basically set thresholds and parameters like I want people, I want females, I want, you know, People that have dog channels or whatever right for dogs or you know whatever threshold you want or you can say I want people with 80% or higher post rate or I want people that have their GMB levels here. So we will usually max out that $7k and we usually get about a 5% response rate. Out of 7k, so that's 350 people responding saying, yeah, I'm interested to work with you. And out of those 350, we're gonna probably distill that down to about 200 affiliates that we work with that week, every single week. Steve Chou: So of those 350 who respond, you distill it down to 200 before you send out samples or are you sending out samples? Ian Page: Usually. Usually because we let them respond and then sometimes it fizzles. Sometimes they never take the sample. Other times we only have a limit or a budget with our client of 200 samples. So if we have more people than we need, we're going to pick our favorites out of those 350 for the week and then maybe Bench the other 150 for next week, right? Right. Because none of our clients tell us, hey, you can send out unlimited samples. That does not happen. Everyone has limits, okay? Right. Of course. Yeah. Steve Chou: But it seems like in the beginning you're pretty much constrained to 350 at most, right? Based on the percentage. It's just a numbers game, right? Ian Page: It's a numbers game. Yeah, you are. You are pretty much constrained. Steve Chou: So at most 350, it sounds like samples every week. Ian Page: At most. In the early stages, yeah. Right. Steve Chou: In the early stages. Ian Page: Okay. Like Mary Ruth, for example, is doing about 7,000 to 10,000 samples a month. They're at that level where they can manage that. Steve Chou: Right. Ian Page: Yeah. Okay. That's crazy. Steve Chou: So when you're talking about profitability overall, you're factoring the cost of those samples, right? Ian Page: 100%. Steve Chou: Okay. Ian Page: Alright, we're tracking sample costs, MCF fulfillment, if you're using MCF, if you're doing a 3PL, we'll factor that in. If you're invited by TikTok for FBT, which is another subject we can talk about, it's really exciting. We factor that in. And Now, another thing you should know, and I want people to know this, you don't have to pay the same rate to the affiliate if you're running an ad on their video versus if it's an organic video. Steve Chou: You can set your own rates for ads? Ian Page: That's right. You can negotiate with them and say, good, so I know you were at 20%. Your video is doing okay organically, but I really want to try it with ads. In order for me to spend my money, On ads, I need you to go down to 5%. And then they'll send you what's called a spark code, which gives you authority to run ads on their content, and then they get that automatic 5% commission. So that's how we can afford to fit in an advertising budget in a video. Steve Chou: What is the typical affiliate rate? Typical is 15 to 20. That's the expectation from the creator. Okay, that's pretty high actually for a physical product. Ian Page: I know. Steve Chou: Yeah. Ian Page: I know. Steve Chou: All right, so let's continue on the process. You're sending out, let's say, 200 based on the 7,000. You're sending out 200 samples. What is your expected hit rate on that? 80% will make a video, right? Ian Page: Yeah, 80% will make a video. So then we're at, what, 160 videos a week, right? And then we don't expect any of those videos to go viral. We don't. We don't have that expectation whatsoever. Okay. We expect the videos to Potentially perform in an advertising campaign. And then what we do is we get the spark codes for all those videos, we negotiate the 5%. If a video is trash, we're not going to offer anything. That video is just going to sit on the page and just die. Okay. But if the video has any glimmer of hope, and our thresholds are low, Steve, because we know we've been wrong. We have had times where the videos did not look great and we were wrong. We did not think that video was gonna perform and it ended up being a $10,000 video in sales, right? You just don't know. So unless the video is absolute garbage, the captions backwards, I didn't even mention the brand, they're in a cave, can't even see their face, we will offer them, we will negotiate a spark code, 5% commission and we will put it into what's called GMV Max Ads. Steve Chou: What are your thresholds? You said they're low. What are your thresholds? Ian Page: It mentions the brand name. It at least goes over the features and benefits of the product. Maybe it identifies the problem and solution, right? Steve Chou: Okay, that's a pretty low bar. Ian Page: It is. Like, my baby had eczema. I rub this on the baby. The baby no longer has eczema. Okay, cool. Maybe the video quality isn't great, but it looks super raw and it might work. You know what I mean? Steve Chou: You don't care about the view count. Ian Page: No. Steve Chou: Okay. Interesting. All right. Ian Page: So here's why. We're only going to put five, 10 bucks on that video, Steve. Steve Chou: Okay. Ian Page: You see, we're just going to see if the video can get a little bit of little action, one sale. You see? Steve Chou: Okay. I would think that if it didn't do well organically, that it wouldn't do on the video in the ad, but I guess that's not the case. Ian Page: Not the case at all. Steve Chou: Okay. Ian Page: Yeah. And I thought the same thing. I had the exact same assumption as you. I was like, let's, this is how we did it at the beginning. Let's see which videos perform well and only run ads on those. Okay. And guess what happened? We had nothing to run ads on. Steve Chou: And then, you know, it's like, and then what do we do? Ian Page: Like, you know, and then, you know, we wasted all those samples. Like, why would you do that? That's a lot of money the client paid to get samples in their hands. We got to do something. So we just went, screw it. Let's put a little money on everything. And it worked. And GMB Max is a genius program. So here's why. Just because it doesn't go viral, doesn't mean that The ad platform can't turn it into a performing video. And here's why. The ad platform actually is good at identifying the avatar. It's actually really good at finding the right people for the video. It matches up the shopper to the video. So if the person has a thousand followers and you know, The video doesn't have a crazy hook or something like that. Just because it only gets 300 videos doesn't mean that the advertising console can't find the right shopper for that video and get it into the right impressions. You only pay per click. That's it. So you're just trying to get enough of the right impressions to the right avatar And then once you start getting a few clicks, and those clicks are $1.50, $1.25, way cheaper than Amazon, $0.75 a lot of times. So yeah, you'd be surprised how well those perform on ads. Steve Chou: I can see. TikTok knows who shops a lot on TikTok Shop, so they can easily just... Okay, I get it. All right. Ian Page: Yeah, it's smart. Their AI is extremely intelligent. I think their advertising console is probably a couple years ahead of Amazon. Steve Chou: Because I would think that this is one of my questions for you actually. I would think going viral would be bad because then you run out of stock and everything. But I think this way it seems like You're getting consistent sales as opposed to waves of sales. Is that accurate? Ian Page: Yeah, and it's never bad to go viral. It's awesome because at the end of the day, all the expenses are covered now, right? They're like, great, that first four months was painful and now it's all kind of paid back because I got a shit ton of organic sales and Amazon and I paid nothing almost for those sales. But you're right, it's not controllable. It's not something that I can scale. It's not something I can promise or something I can predict. And I don't like that. Steve Chou: Well, what percentage of your videos have you seen go viral just in your experience? Ian Page: I don't even know at this point because we have 38 accounts with more videos being added every single day. But I can count on one hand the amount of videos that have gone viral. Wow. Steve Chou: Okay. And most of your people are probably having 200 new videos added every single week, right? Ian Page: That's right. Very, very rare. Now, here's another reason why. You're less likely to go viral talking about a product than you will just making a funny video of your dog farting in the background or something like that. That's different. People are going to share that. But people aren't necessarily going to share a video that talks about how to cure your eczema to all their friends. They might share it to one person that they know has eczema. You see the difference? So it's situational. Steve Chou: So of those five that went viral, was there some crazy hook involved? Ian Page: One of them was a doctor that was talking about the dangers of parasites and it was terrifying. Steve Chou: Okay. Ian Page: Okay. So his hook was scaring the living crap out of you that your body is full of parasites. Okay. It worked. I mean, people were buying that product left and right thinking they were going to drop dead with parasites. Um, and he was a doctor, so he had some clout and we were lucky to get him. Steve Chou: Okay. Ian Page: Another video that went viral was the bathtub video and it went viral because it was really pretty. The lady turned off the lights. She turned on all the little toys and the kid was in the bathtub and the whole bathroom lit up. It was awesome. So it just it was kind of a spectacle. Steve Chou: Okay. Ian Page: Yeah. With the Eczema product, which is our top selling product we have in our portfolio right now. They've never gone viral. Steve Chou: It's been. Ian Page: One dollar out, two dollars in. One dollar out, three dollars in. The whole time. It's been painful. Videos have performed well, meaning the ROAS has been four and a half, five. Cost per order has been reasonably good. But it's been one of these brands where we've had to work for every single impression. Steve Chou: The reason why I'm asking you this is because can you provide guidelines for your people? To go viral? Yeah. Ian Page: No, you can't. I'm glad you brought this up. Jay talks about this. He's like, don't try to chase virality. It'll actually happen less often. If you try to rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat and like find that formula, you're actually going to end up having worse performing videos. You have to let people do what they're going to do and that magic quality is only in the idea that that person had at that moment in time. Now you can give them basic parameters like this is what my product does and they have to make the proper claims and they have to not say things that they shouldn't say. But outside of the basic here's what it does and you know, You know, just the basic description of the product. It's up to that creator. And you want it to be up to that creator to find a exciting, fresh, inventive, and personalized way to communicate it. And then you have better chances because I was asking Jay the same thing. I was like, man, my percentages are really low. He's like, your percentages are on par. I was like, okay, wow, that almost Makes me depressed and also makes me happy at the same time. Steve Chou: So give the creator total freedom. You tell them basically about your product and just let it run. Let it run. Okay. Yeah. Amazing. Ian Page: Because there are certain things that do matter, like the watch time. There's a six second watch time that TikTok looks for. So if your video never gets past that six second watch time, the odds of it going viral are zero. But if your video can hook people and keep them on the video for over six seconds, your odds are actually higher. So we do know that we do know that that first six seconds really matters. So you don't want to start your video of Hi, my name is Joe. And, you know, let me tell you about my, you know, that's too slow. Okay, there has to be a hook. You know, the famous concept of the hook. Steve Chou: Yeah. Ian Page: But we don't want the hook to be the hook. We want it to be the hook that the person comes up with on their own. We want it to be organic. Steve Chou: Got it. Ian Page: Yeah. Steve Chou: I know a lot of people have gotten banned from TikTok shop. Like can you just provide some like things not to do? Ian Page: At this point, it's getting better. It's actually getting a lot better. A lot of that was a problem with TikTok last year. Everyone was getting banned left and right and they were getting banned for no good reason. They were getting banned for just trying to submit the same document multiple times. It's like, come on, man. That's the only document the guy has. Don't ban him because he tried three times. He only has that document. That's the invoice or that's his LLC document for crying out loud. So it's gotten a lot better. But I would say if you do have that problem, reach out to me and we have people on the inside. Most of the time it's stupid and we can get it fixed. Steve Chou: There was people getting banned for false claims and whatnot too. Are there any guidelines? Ian Page: Yes. Yeah. So that's in the supplement world more than anything. At the end of the day, There is something called the Federal Trade Commission. Steve Chou: Well, I thought incentivized reviews was part of that too, but apparently not, right? Ian Page: Well, it is, and we figured out how to make it compliant. So there's some very nuanced rules to reviews, okay? Reviews are actually totally legal if they're incentivized. They're totally legal as long as you claim that it was incentivized in the review. That's how Amazon's allowed to sell millions and millions, billions of dollars worth of Vine reviews. Steve Chou: Right. Ian Page: Because it says free product. Steve Chou: Got it. Okay. Ian Page: Okay. So I actually, I have a lawyer, an Amazon lawyer that I've been working with for years. And I said, how do I sell reviews and not get in trouble? And he said, here's what the FTC laws say. You have to say this. So we actually distilled it down to a very simple sentence. Every single review at the end of the review says, I received this product for free and we're cleared. Now, every marketplace has its own rules. Maybe Walmart doesn't like it. I don't know. I can't speak for Walmart, but just know that you are 100% in the clear with the FTC and you're not committing any federal law, breaking any federal laws by incentivizing reviews as long as you have that disclaimer. Steve Chou: I guess what I was trying to get at is what if your affiliate just starts making wild claims about your product? What happens? Ian Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the affiliates going to get banned or they're going to get a strike. So there's like a three strike system and your account is going to get the same strike. Steve Chou: Even if it's not your fault? Like you have no control over the affiliates, right? Ian Page: The only control you have is to make sure you send them the proper information in advance. So what Mary Ruth says is don't say and they have a list of sentences. Don't say these things. Steve Chou: But if they do, you still get in trouble? Ian Page: Yeah. If they get the strike, you get the strike. Steve Chou: Okay. See, that does not seem fair because you have no control over your affiliates, right? Ian Page: I know. Steve Chou: If I wanted to take any of your brands down, Ian, I would just sign up as an affiliate and just start spouting nonsense. Ian Page: Oh, hell yeah. Steve Chou: Right? Ian Page: You know, be like, this cures every form of cancer I've ever seen. And it's just, it's a cure all for all diseases. And yeah, for sure. It would be a terrible thing to do for a for a shop. Steve Chou: They got to fix that, right? Ian Page: I mean, you know, the reason why they do it is they do it so that the shop is very mindful. And if the shop didn't get that mark, or whatever you call a flag or whatever on their, you know, on their point system, they have a 24 point system, every shop, if they didn't get it, the shop wouldn't be constantly reminded to do a better job at getting the right product briefs out. Yeah, because at the end of the day, it's up to the shop to properly educate the affiliate and go, Hey, yes, this is a weight loss product. But you are not allowed to say that it's going to guarantee weight loss, or you're not allowed to say the even the word weight loss. So what you can say is pant sizes, I now fit in this dress, those kinds of things, people get the idea. Steve Chou: I mean, this just makes negative, like you thought negative review bombing was bad on Amazon. This could take down entire accounts, right? This is much more severe. Ian Page: Yeah, but you'd have to have a ton of like, you know, if you wanted to be one of those guys, you'd have to have like a ton of TikTok accounts and ask for a ton of samples. You know what I mean? Probably true. It's not as bad as you think. Like we have a lot of supplement brands and we also try to focus on products that are less risky in the portfolio. So like the parasite cleanse I was telling you about. It's less risky, but we don't say guaranteed to kill parasites. We don't say stuff like that extreme. We just say, parasites are really bad for you. Here's some signs that you have parasites. And here's a great product that if you feel you do have them, could help you with that. And that's fine. But there are certain areas like weight loss, Just catch all medical claims that, yeah, you got to watch out for. Steve Chou: So I want to switch gears and talk about your services here. Do your clients typically use you for the launch phase and then feel like they can handle it themselves in steady state? Or do they tend to stay with you in the long run because you're constantly getting new affiliates, new leads? What's the life cycle like? Ian Page: They all stay. They all stay with me. Yeah. And I think it's just because a lot of our sellers are a lot more mature. They've been on Amazon for a long time. They have a DTC presence. A lot of them are working on getting in a lot of stores. So they're already stretched pretty thin between like Meta, Amazon, Chewy or whatever other marketplaces, Walmart now. So they're usually just like screw it. Like if you can just do your job and Talk to me every two weeks. Give me reports. I know where things are at. And in six months, it looks realistic that I can make a profit. Great. Steve Chou: That's true, I guess. If it includes your fees, your retainer fees and everything, and you're making a profit. Yeah. Ian Page: Maybe at some point, maybe it's early, right? Maybe in six months or a year, some of my clients will be like, you know what, we've learned a lot. You guys got us to this place. Now we're doing $150,000 a month. We want to take it in-house and that's going to happen. But right now, TikTok is such an anomaly. And another thing, TikTok is so much more work than Amazon. Think about on Amazon, you just list your product, send it into FBA, and then you run ads. Steve Chou: Right. Ian Page: I might be oversimplifying it, but it's really I mean, there's more to it. Steve Chou: But yeah, at a basic level. Ian Page: Yeah. At a basic level. Right. On TikTok, that does nothing for you. Like you have nothing with those things. Without affiliates, you have nothing. And without affiliates, that's where all the work is, is all those negotiations, all those conversations, the sampling, pulling those affiliates over to Discord, getting them on You know, running games with them, keeping them engaged with the brand, building up that Discord community. Come on. How many people want to spend time doing that? Steve Chou: So what is expected from the client? I just want to get an idea of the workload for the client. Ian Page: Stay in stock. Steve Chou: Okay. All right. So it's just like selling on Amazon. Ian Page: Stay in stock. Don't run out of stock. Steve Chou: You handle the rest. Stay in stock. Okay. Ian Page: Yeah. Stay in stock. And when we Slack you a request for increased budgets, please respond. Right? Just simple stuff like that. Like, let us know. Let us know that, you know, we just need that cooperation on ad spend, sampling. If there's any documentations we need, just be available. That's it. Steve Chou: What percentage of that $10k we were talking about earlier is towards product versus services? Ian Page: Mostly product and ads. Our retainer is $4k. We're very open about that. On our website, we literally have a deck with our pricing. I'm very open about my pricing structure. We charge $4k. You're looking at that additional $6k is in sampling and ads. Steve Chou: Okay. Ian Page: Yeah. Unless your product is like an $800 air filter, then we have a different conversation to talk about. Steve Chou: Of course. Of course. Yeah. Hey, so Ian, where can people find you and get an idea of whether this will work for them? Ian Page: So I actually recommend that people go to the YouTube channel, watch the Jay Hunter webinar first, because he breaks it down, I break it down. It's the best place to get basically a long format pitch of if TikTok is for you. Okay. Because we have a 25 minute live Q&A on there with a lot of sellers asking those tough questions. So watch that. It's great. And if you still are interested after that, and you feel like you kind of You're ready for that TikTok investment, financially speaking, and you want to outsource instead of doing it yourself, you can find me at bullseyesellers.com. And if you book a call right on bullseyesellers.com, I will actually be invited to the call and I will meet you on that call. So then we can just talk about it and see if it's a fit for you. And I will turn you away if I don't think you're ready or I don't think your product's a fit. We'll be super honest with you. Steve Chou: Yeah. Ian Page: I don't want to fail. I hate failing. Steve Chou: Plus you don't want to deal with someone who has the wrong expectations, right? That's even. Yeah. Ian Page: Yeah. How is it going to benefit me? And if month three, we're doing exactly what we said we're going to do in month three, but you're like tapping out because of the finances. It's like, I don't really want to play that game. I don't want you as a client for three months. I want you as a client for years. So I'm in it for the long haul. Steve Chou: Sounds good, Ian. Hey, thanks a lot for coming on the show. I learned a lot and I'm sure the audience did too. So thank you so much. You're very welcome. Ian Page: Thanks for having me. Steve Chou: Hope you enjoyed this episode. If your brand falls under the guidelines discussed in this episode, then you should definitely give TikTok Shop a try. For more information and resources, go to mywifequitherjob.com slash episode 595. Once again, the recordings for Sellers Summit 2025 are now on sale over at SellersSummit.com. And if you're interested in starting your own ecommerce store, head on over to MyWifeQuitHerJob.com and sign up for my free six-day mini course. Just type in your email and I'll send the course right away via email.