How do I find TikTok creators for my product category?

Short answer: look for creators who already sell products like yours, not creators with big followings. A creator with 20,000 followers who sells kitchen gadgets every week will do more for a kitchen brand than one with 500,000 followers who has never linked a product. On TikTok Shop, sales history in your category is the signal that matters most, and TikTok gives you ways to see it.

Here’s where to look, what to check, and what to skip.

Where to find them

1. Find Creators in Affiliate Center

TikTok’s own creator search lives in Seller Center under Affiliate Center > Find Creators. The most useful filter there is the category filter. According to TikTok’s guide to category creator filters, it narrows the list to creators who either post consistently in that category or have strong sales (GMV) in it over the past 60 days.

You can stack it with other filters, such as follower count and average views. Look out for the Category Pro tag too, for example “Beauty pro” or “Tech pro”. TikTok gives it to creators with a high volume of content or proven sales in a category over the last 60 days.

2. The creators already selling your competitors’ products

Search TikTok for your product type and your competitors’ brand names, and look for videos with a TikTok Shop product link. Those creators have already shown they’ll promote something like yours and that their audience buys it. They’re usually the strongest shortlist you can build, and they’re easy to miss if you only ever use the filters.

3. The creators already promoting you

If you run an open collaboration, some creators are already picking up your product on their own. The ones who post and sell are your best candidates for a better offer. (More on that in Target vs open collaboration on TikTok Shop.)

What to check before you send a sample

Every sample costs you product and shipping, and about half of samples never become a post. So check these, roughly in this order:

1. Sales in your category. Has this creator sold products like yours recently? That’s the best predictor you have.
2. Posting reliability. TikTok tracks how reliably creators post after receiving free samples, and you can see it. A creator who requests plenty of samples and posts about few of them will cost you a sample and deliver nothing.
3. Average views, not followers. Followers tell you how big a creator’s audience once was. Average views tell you how many people actually see their videos now.
4. Engagement. Comments and shares are a sign the audience trusts the creator’s recommendations, which is what turns a view into a sale.
5. Audience fit. Does their audience match who buys your product? TikTok’s own matchmaking advice lists audience demographics alongside product relevance and content performance.
6. Followers, last. Useful as a rough sense of scale, and nothing more.

Turning a shortlist into collaborations

Once you have a list, send each creator a target collaboration with a free sample and a commission. Target invitations let you write a personal pitch and pay a proven creator more than your open rate. (If you’re unsure what to offer, see How much commission should I offer TikTok Shop affiliates?)

A few things make the pitch land:

• Show you’ve watched their content. One specific line about a video beats a paragraph about your brand.
• Say exactly what they get. The free sample, the commission rate, and anything that makes the product easy to film.
• Make it quick to say yes. Creators get a lot of invitations. The ones that get answered are short and specific.

Then keep the list alive. Drop creators who took a sample and didn’t post, move the ones who sell up to a better rate, and go looking for more creators like them.

Doing this every week without a spreadsheet

The method is simple. The trouble is that it never ends: new creators appear, good ones slow down, and a shortlist from last month is out of date by next month. Most sellers build one good list, work through it, and stop.

Loomo does the searching for you. Pick a product and Loomo searches TikTok’s creator marketplace in that product’s category, filtered by how reliably creators post samples, their GMV tier, minimum followers and minimum engagement. Each creator comes with their followers, average views, posting rate, engagement and a score, and you can also look up any specific creator by @handle.

1. 01

   Search

   Pick a product. Loomo searches creators in its TikTok category with your filters.

2. 02

   Invite

   Send a target invitation with a free sample, your commission and your message.

3. 03

   Ship

   The sample is pre-approved, so it ships as soon as the creator accepts.

4. 04

   Repeat Only Loomo

   Save the search. With automation on, Loomo re-runs it and invites new matching creators within your limits.

That last step is the one that makes this sustainable. Instead of rebuilding your shortlist every month, the saved search keeps running and keeps inviting while automation is on, inside the monthly, weekly and per-product sample limits you’ve set.