TikTok Shop affiliate programme for brands: commissions, samples and creators that pay back

On TikTok Shop, the video that sells your product is usually somebody else’s. The affiliate programme is the system that lets creators pick your products up, sell them and get paid for it, and for most brands it becomes the biggest single cost of the channel after the product itself. This guide is written for the brand, not the creator: how the programme is set up, what you pay and when, how samples work, which creators to back, and how to check that commission and samples leave you a profit. It is a spoke of our guide to selling on TikTok Shop in the UK, and the platform’s own fees are in TikTok Shop fees in the UK.

How the affiliate programme works

You list a product in an affiliate collaboration and set a commission rate. Creators add it to their showcase, feature it in short videos or LIVEs, and earn that commission on each qualifying sale. TikTok deducts the commission from the sale and pays it to the creator automatically¹. You find the tools in Seller Center under Affiliate Marketing, once your products are listed.

There are two plans to choose from, and a third name you may still see.

Sources: TikTok Shop UK’s Creator Collaboration Playbook, Open Collaboration walkthrough and samples guide²⁸⁶.

Open Collaboration makes the product visible to every creator in the marketplace¹. Sellers no longer approve creators individually; they are approved automatically⁸. It is reach without control.

Targeted Collaboration sends your product and terms to the creators you choose, who can accept and add it to their showcase. TikTok positions it for brands that care about who represents them². A product can sit in both plans at once; an invited creator then earns the targeted rate, not the open one. TikTok’s own example: a 15% targeted rate beats a 10% open rate for the creator you invited¹.

Shop Plan was a separate plan that applied one rate across a shop. TikTok has merged it into Open Collaboration, and its historic data now sits under Open Collaboration³. If an older guide or agency proposal mentions it, read it as Open Collaboration.

Beyond these, affiliate partners (agencies that manage their own pools of creators) can run partner campaigns that you register products into. Partners take a cut of the commission you set².

TikTok’s advice to new sellers is to start with Open Collaboration and add targeted invitations as you build relationships¹. That matches what we do in the accounts we manage, with one change: we run a small targeted list from the first week, so the creators who suit the brand best get a reason to choose it over everything else in the marketplace.

Commission rates and how they are paid

The range. You set a rate per product between 1% and 80%. TikTok’s UK playbook describes 10% to 15% as “an average commission rate” and suggests rates in Seller Center based on what top products in your category pay²⁸. A suggested rate is a reading of the market, not of your margin.

What creators earn. Commission = (revenue − refunds) × commission rate. A creator’s estimate is the product’s average discounted price × the rate, and the final figure can differ because of coupons and refunds⁵. If a buyer cancels before delivery or is refunded, the commission goes too; a partial refund means partial commission⁵.

When they are paid. Creators receive commission on the 3rd or 15th day after successful delivery, depending on the seller’s settlement period with TikTok Shop, and later if there is a dispute, refund or return⁵. From your side, it is simply deducted from the order before you are paid.

Cutting a rate takes 30 days. A commission decrease applies to creators already promoting the product only after 30 days; new creators get the new rate straight away. TikTok’s example: a product cut from 15% to 12% keeps paying existing creators 15% for 30 days⁴. Set your opening rate as one you can live with for at least a month.

Ads use a separate rate. When you boost a creator’s video through GMV Max, you can set a Shop Ads commission rate for the orders that come from the ad, as a whole number between 1% and 80%. If you don’t, the creator earns the standard rate on those orders too. TikTok notes that this commission is not covered by your ad budget⁹. Our GMV Max guide explains why that matters when you read the campaign’s ROI.

The commission is on top of TikTok Shop’s own platform commission, which is 9% in the UK, inclusive of VAT¹⁰.

Samples

Samples are how most creator relationships start, and they are a real cost.

• Free samples. You send the product free to creators who request it through Open or Targeted Collaboration. You pay for the product, the shipping and the tax⁶.
• Refundable samples. The creator buys the sample and you refund them automatically when they meet the criteria you set, such as a number of orders. If they don’t within 90 days, it stays a normal purchase. These are available in Open Collaboration only⁶.

The rules TikTok sets for creators:

• Any TikTok Shop creator with more than 1,000 followers can apply, though you can set your own thresholds above that, and a creator can have up to five seller sample requests open at a time⁷.
• You must review free sample requests within seven days, or they are cancelled automatically⁶.
• After delivery, the creator has 14 days to post a short video and keep it live for at least three days, or to host a LIVE that drives at least one sale. Creators who repeatedly miss this get fewer sample opportunities⁷⁶.

Note what the rule requires: a post, not a sale. In the accounts we manage, a large share of samples produce content that sells little or nothing, which is why we treat sample cost as a cost of every affiliate order, not as marketing overhead.

The default settings when samples are switched on for all Open Collaboration products are wide open: no quantity limit, an indefinite request period and minimum thresholds of more than zero followers, views and sales⁶. Change them before you switch samples on.

Choosing creators who pay back

Seller Center gives you most of the data you need to choose. When reviewing sample requests you can filter by product category, follower count, content type (video or LIVE), agency, fulfilment rate, follower age and gender, GMV in the last 30 days, and average views per video or viewers per LIVE⁶. TikTok’s Creator Ranking scores creators on sales conversion, growth, content performance, productivity and cooperation (response and sample fulfilment rates)².

The filters we put first, as our practice:

1. Sales, not followers. A creator’s 30-day GMV in your category tells you more than their audience size. Many of the creators who sell best have modest followings.
2. Fulfilment rate. The share of samples a creator turns into posts. Low fulfilment is a direct sample cost.
3. Audience fit. Follower age and gender against your buyer. A creator who sells well to a different audience will sell less for you.
4. Format. LIVE sellers and short-video creators sell differently. Match the format to how your product is best shown.

Then judge each creator on what they sold against what they cost, including the samples they received. Rank them every month and move the best onto targeted invitations at a higher rate; that is where the higher rate pays for itself.

Disclosure: paid creator content must be labelled

In the UK, a creator who earns commission, is paid or receives your product free is making an ad, and it has to say so.

The CMA’s guidance for content creators says that whenever a creator has been incentivised to post, the content “must be clearly labelled as an advert or ad”. It lists affiliate links, discount codes and “content about gifts received for ‘free’” among the cases, and defines payment as any incentive, “including money, commissions, discounts… gifts of any products”. Labels must be clear and prominent from the first interaction; tagging the brand or using an affiliate link is not enough, and the CMA lists #gifted, #aff, #affiliate, #spon and “in association with” as terms to avoid¹². The same page says that “everyone involved in creating content like this on social media must take responsibility to ensure all ads are labelled correctly”. That includes the brand.

The ASA and CAP’s influencer guide, written with the CMA, says the same for affiliate marketing: content that promotes affiliate-linked products is advertising, and the creator acts as a secondary advertiser who must follow all the relevant rules, not just the labelling ones¹¹.

What we ask brands to do:

• Put the labelling rule in every brief and invitation. “Ad” or “#ad”, upfront, plus TikTok’s content disclosure setting.
• Check claims. The creator’s video is your advertising. A health, beauty or environmental claim the creator can’t support is your problem too.
• Keep records. Who received what, when, and on what terms.

TikTok applies a commercial content label automatically to organic content in a GMV Max campaign in the UK and EU, and to affiliate videos boosted by it¹³. That covers the ads; it doesn’t cover a creator’s unboosted posts.

Commission plus samples against margin

Here is the test we run on every product before we set its rate. The VAT and platform commission follow published rules; the other costs are illustrative.

A £20 product (£16.67 without VAT at the 20% standard rate¹⁴) leaves £6.00 after the 9% platform commission (£1.80), £5.00 of cost of goods, £3.20 of pick, pack and postage and £0.67 for refunds. At 15% commission the creator earns £3.00. Samples: you send 10, each costing £8.20 landed and posted, and the creators who post produce 40 orders in the period. That is £82 ÷ 40 = £2.05 of samples per order.

95p on a £20 sale is thin, and it is very sensitive to the two numbers you control.

Raising the rate from 15% to 20% turns a small profit into a small loss. Sending the same samples to creators who sell a quarter as much turns it into a large one. That is why we spend more time on which creators get samples than on the rate itself.

Three ways to improve the sum:

1. Raise the order value. A bundle at £30 carries the same sample cost over a bigger margin.
2. Use refundable samples for unproven creators. The creator only gets the product free if the content sells⁶.
3. Pay more to the creators who sell. A 20% targeted rate for a creator with a proven sales record and no further samples can earn more per order than 15% on open.

Then look at the whole channel. TikTok Shop sales can lift branded searches on Amazon, which TikTok’s reports won’t show; our multichannel guide explains how to measure that before you count it.