How much commission should I offer TikTok Shop affiliates?
Ask around and you’ll hear the same ranges: open collaborations commonly sit around 10 to 15%, with targeted offers to specific creators a few points higher. Those numbers are a reasonable place to start a conversation. They’re a bad way to set your rate, because they say nothing about your margin, and they leave out the one cost that makes creator sampling different from any other affiliate program: the free sample.
This post walks through working out your own number instead.
How TikTok calculates commission
It helps to know exactly what the percentage applies to. TikTok’s affiliate commission guide defines it as:
Commission = (revenue − refunds) × commission rate
Revenue here is what the customer actually paid. So a discount you fund lowers the commission you pay, and a refunded order pays no commission at all. Creators are typically paid about 15 days after the order is delivered, later if there’s an open return or dispute.
Step 1: Find your ceiling
Start with what one unit leaves you before any commission. Here’s a worked example. The numbers are made up but realistic, so swap in your own:
| Per unit | Amount |
|---|---|
| Price the customer pays | $30.00 |
| Your landed product cost | −$8.00 |
| TikTok referral fee (assume 8%; check your category) | −$2.40 |
| Fulfillment (for example, an Amazon MCF fee) | −$6.00 |
| Left before commission | $13.60 |
$13.60 is 45% of the $30 price. That’s your absolute ceiling: at a 45% commission, every sale earns you nothing. You obviously want to pay well under it. Here’s what each common rate leaves you per unit:
| Commission rate | Commission paid | You keep per unit |
|---|---|---|
| 10% | $3.00 | $10.60 |
| 15% | $4.50 | $9.10 |
| 20% | $6.00 | $7.60 |
| 25% | $7.50 | $6.10 |
Step 2: Add the cost of the sample
This is the step most commission advice skips. Every creator you work with through a free sample costs you the product and the shipping before they sell anything. In our example that’s $8 of product plus $6 to ship it: $14 per sample.
And not every sample becomes a post. Roughly half of creator samples never do. So the real cost of getting one creator to post is about $28: two samples for every one that turns into content.
Now divide that by what you keep per unit to see how many sales a posting creator has to drive before you break even:
| Commission rate | You keep per unit | Units to cover $28 of samples |
|---|---|---|
| 10% | $10.60 | 2.6 |
| 15% | $9.10 | 3.1 |
| 20% | $7.60 | 3.7 |
| 25% | $6.10 | 4.6 |
That’s the real trade-off. A higher rate attracts more and better creators, but each of them has to sell more before your program pays for itself. If a typical creator in your category sells five units from a video, 25% works. If they sell two, even 10% loses money on sampling.
Step 3: Use different rates for open and targeted collaborations
TikTok gives you two ways to offer commission, and they deserve different numbers.
Open collaboration is one rate that any eligible creator can pick up from the Marketplace. You don’t choose who promotes you, so set it at a level that’s profitable even when an average creator sells an average amount.
Targeted collaboration is an offer to a specific creator you’ve chosen. This is where a higher rate makes sense, because you’re paying it to someone whose track record you’ve already checked. A few points above your open rate is common. Creators with proven sales in your category can justify much more.
Step 4: Start lower than your maximum
TikTok treats raising and lowering a rate very differently, and that should shape where you start.
- Raising a rate takes effect right away for creators promoting your product.
- Lowering a rate is slow. Creators already promoting your product keep the old rate for a 30-day protection period, with advance notice before the lower rate applies to them. Edits to open collaborations also take much longer to take effect than edits to targeted ones.
So a rate you set too high follows you for at least a month, while a rate that’s a little too low can be fixed the same day. Start at a level you’re sure you can sustain, and raise it for the creators and products that prove they can sell.
The short version
- Work out what one unit leaves you before commission. That’s your ceiling.
- Add the sample: product plus shipping, doubled because about half of samples don’t turn into posts.
- Pick a rate at which a typical creator’s sales cover that cost.
- Use targeted collaborations, not your open rate, to pay more to creators who’ve earned it.
- Start conservative. Raising is instant and lowering takes a month.
Where Loomo fits
Loomo is built around this math. You set a default commission for your shop, override it for any product, and adjust it on each creator invitation. If you ship samples from Amazon FBA, Loomo shows the estimated MCF cost of a sample for each product before you turn automation on, so the cost of Step 2 is in front of you rather than in a spreadsheet. Then it ships approved samples, follows up with creators, and tracks which ones posted and what they sold, which is how you find out whether your rate is working.