This article reveals the exact business model to make money with TikTok Dropshipping. TikTok shop is brand new, so you’ll have to move quick to take full advantage.
Meet Sebastian Esqueda.
He’s 23. He doesn’t come from money. In his own words, he’s not “the smartest person ever”.
Unlike most 23-year-olds, Sebastian is very good at one thing. Making money. Lots and lots of it.
Last year, he made $2 million. How? Dropshipping.
Fortunately for you, Sebastian shared the exact model he used to get to this scale on the WGMI Media Podcast.
Isn’t dropshipping dead?
Sebastian started making dropshipping videos at the peak of its popularity in 2017.
Back then, dropshipping was as easy as messaging a few influencers to promote your product. Set up a simple online store and watch the money roll in.
As the internet caught on to the opportunity, the competition got tougher. Naturally, dropshipping became less popular.
Sebastian, however, stuck to his guns and doubled down on dropshipping. His loyalty to the industry has paid off massively.
- Learn all the tips, tricks, and tactics to start and scale an online store ✅
- Build a phenomenal network with suppliers and content creators ✅
- Discover the biggest emerging opportunities in dropshipping and e-commerce before anyone else ✅
It’s that last point that’s most important to us: Discover opportunities before anyone else.
Sebastian’s finger is on the pulse of dropshipping, and he’s found a new opportunity he believes will bring dropshipping back to its former glory.
Wait, what is TikTok Shop?
If you haven’t heard of it, that’s because it’s literally only a few months old.
TikTok (yes, the social media platform with 1 billion users) has added a Shop feature. You can now buy products directly within TikTok.
It’s like if Amazon and Instagram had a baby.
It’s genius from TikTok. They saw how much money people were making by marketing products through the platform. Now:
- TikTok keeps everything in TikTok, stopping anyone from leaving the platform to go to other websites
- TikTok takes a 5% slice of every sale.
The most exciting part about all of this is the TikTok affiliate program for content creators.
What is the TikTok affiliate program for content creators?
The content creator affiliate program is a HUGE opportunity for content creators AND dropshippers to make money on TikTok. Here’s how it works:
- A TikTok Shop can send its product to a content creator on TikTok.
- That content creator can make a video promoting that product on their own account.
- Anyone watching that video can buy the product DIRECTLY within TikTok.
- The TikTok Shop makes a sale, and the content creator gets a commission. Everyone’s a winner.
As you can imagine, content creators are about to experience a bombardment of requests from TikTok Shops to promote products. That means there’s no better time than now to get started with this opportunity.
How to make a TikTok Shop (an exact model you can copy)
In the WGMI Media Podcast, Sebastian laid out his model for building a successful TikTok shop in grueling detail.
Step 1: Find a product
First things first, you need a product to sell. Here are some of Seb’s tips for finding a product that will sell like hotcakes on TikTok:
- See what’s already working: Open up Tiktok, go to the ‘Shop’ section, and look at what products are already selling (the app tells you how many have sold). Don’t sell the exact products, but use it as data to figure out the type of products that work well on TikTok.
- It must solve a problem: The product should solve a problem. The bigger the problem it solves, the bigger the opportunity.
- Must be easy to make content for: The product has to be simple to understand. You need to be able to understand the value of the product from just a short video. Typically, the value the product offers needs to be instant. That’s why clothes that make you look good work well on TikTok, and serums and medication that take months to work do not.
- It must be scaleable: Ideally, the audience of people who would buy your product must be large. The larger the potential audience, the easier it is to scale.
Step 2: Find a supplier
When you’ve identified the kind of product you want to sell, look it up on AliExpress. When you find the product on AliExpress, send that link to ZenDrop. ZenDrop will then provide you with all the pricing and shipping details for that product.
Note: ZenDrop will manage all your fulfillment for you. So, when someone makes an order, you send the details to ZenDrop and they will send the product out to your customer
Step 3: Set up your TikTok Shop
This step is as simple as heading over to TikTok and setting up a seller account. You can do that here.
Step 4: Find content creators to promote your products
Remember the TikTok Shop affiliate program for content creators we talked about? Now is the time we take advantage of it.
- Find creators in your niche: TikTok allows you to filter creators to find the best creators for your product. Sebastian looks for creators with over 10k followers who have a good ratio of views to followers… he typically goes for a 5x ratio (so if a creator has 10k followers, their posts get an average of 50k+ views).
- Send them a message: Ask them to promote your product with a message along the lines of “We love your page, we have a few products we think your audience would love, would you be interested in promoting them? You’ll get a 20% commission for every sale”.
- Use Virtual Assistants to message at scale: Seb uses VAs to message 50-100 content creators per day. You can find VAs on Fiverr.
Step 5: Test which products work best
You’ve identified which products you want to sell and you have a list of content creators who are going to sell them. Now, it’s your job to figure out which product works best.
- Send the products to your content creators: Aim to send out 5 units of each product to a bunch of different creators. Then, the creators will work their magic and promote your products on their pages.
- Analyze the results: From this first stage of testing, you’ll be able to figure out: 1) which products are working best; and 2) which content creators are working best. When you know your winners, it’s time to scale.
Step 6: Organic TikTok content
Now you know what products work best on TikTok, you’re going to send that product to as many creators as you can.
Ask the creator to post content about your product. Share the types of content that have been leading to the most conversions for other creators.
Step 7: TikTok Ads
You’ve come a long way. Now, this is where the big money gets made. TikTok Ads.
When you know what products are killing it on TikTok, you can start to scale with ads.
Think about it. If you make $50 profit from each sale, and you can generate sales by spending $20 on ads, you’ve made yourself a money-printing machine. Here’s how to do it:
- Use content from creators: Mash up clips from a bunch of different creators demo-ing your product. This montage will showcase the value of your product and show that it’s valuable for lots of people (social proof).
- Highlight the offer in the first few seconds: Show your value proposition immediately. If you have a ‘buy one get one free’ offer, make that highly visible with text in the first few seconds of the ad. This will explode your conversions.
- Let TikTok do its magic: Unlike Facebook ads, the optimal strategy is to let TikTok do all the targeting. Simply run the ad, and TikTok’s algorithm will figure out the best people to target with the ad.
- Go surfing: Because TikTok’s ad platform is in its infancy, there are still a few tips and tricks to get the most out of it. One way is to manually watch which ads are performing the best, then scale them gradually. At the end of the day, reset all your ads to the same baseline. Rinse and repeat every, single, day.
Sebastian used this exact strategy to make $250k in sales in just 60 days.
The exciting thing is that TikTok is currently giving away $1,500 in free TikTok ads. It’s only a limited offer, so use it soon, or lose it. To redeem the offer, make sure you use the link that is appropriate for your geographic region:
Want to learn more about making money with TikTok Shop?
To get into the nitty gritty of this business model, make sure you watch the full WGMI Media Podcast.
Please note: Some of the links in this article may be affiliate links, which can provide compensation to us at no cost to you if you decide to purchase a paid plan. We only include links to high-quality products we’ve personally used.
