How do you get creators to say yes?

Biggest pitfall in TikTok Shop program or affiliate or influencer programs is not getting posts from the initial gifting. When done incorrectly, you'll get no post. When done right, you'll get multiple posts, whitelisting rights, and a continual flow of creative content month after month.

Every affiliate joins a brand's program through a first yes, and the way that first gift is handled starts the relationship that keeps them posting every month.

Why do creators ignore cold messages?

Getting a yes means standing apart from the brands sending mass messages every day, and Neuro did it by going deeper, with great commissions and great product.

• Neuro says millions of people on TikTok Shop with 5,000 followers each get 100 message requests every single day. The speaker is one of those creators himself, and he has 10 companies reaching out to him every single hour.
• Neuro says other agencies send out mass messages every single day, which it calls a shallow approach, while its own team went much deeper. It treats its creators well, with great commissions and great product.

Click to enlarge

Heard on Open Residency at 4:57 and 14:03.

How to reach creators - tactics by different brands

What works better than a cold mass message?

Tracking the opt in rate from the first wave tells a brand how many creators actually said yes, and it is never the 100% brands expect.

• BRĒZ signed up a lot of affiliates straight away, and the first wave was automated, mass emails to TikTok creators.
• The agency Jones Road works with never starts a relationship with a creator as an affiliate, because in beauty and fashion a code is not as tempting as it was five years ago.
• Track your opt in rate first, which is how many people say yes when you reach out. Brands expect it to be 100%, and it never is.

Heard on Open Residency at 14:03, on Limited Supply at 12:39, and on Marketing Operators at 18:22, 13:06 and 35:18.

Where do brands find creators?

A creator no other brand works with yet is the excited one Comfrt looks for, and Ridge sponsored one with 10,000 subscribers for $50.

• Neuro recruits by pulling creators out of other brands' affiliate groups, not off a list.
• Comfrt's advice is to go scroll Instagram and TikTok yourself, and find creators that align with where you want to take your brand. It would rather see a creator with 10,000 followers who works with nobody else and is excited.
• TikTok's own line is that your creators are your customers.
• Ridge set out to be everybody's first sponsor on YouTube. A channel with 10,000 subscribers and no brand deal yet got $50 and a lesson in working with brands. Ridge was the second sponsor of Theo Von's podcast, back when a spot with him cost a couple hundred bucks.

Heard on Open Residency at 13:50 and 50:53, on Hudson at 26:02, and on Marketing Operators at 58:40.

What do you set up so creators can apply?

Any affiliate can join TikTok's open program, but good creators will not just join it, so their yes comes from being added by hand at a higher percentage rate.

• TikTok gives you two ways to recruit. One is an always open program that any affiliate can find, join and get sent product. Good creators will not just join that, so you add them manually at higher percentage rates.

Heard on Marketing Operators at 58:52 and 59:56, and on Open Residency at 1:02:04.

What if a creator writes in asking to be paid?

A request to be paid is still a creator who wants in, and HexClad gives every one the same answer, a place in its product seeding program.

• At HexClad everyone writes in wanting a deal, then quotes 15k per post for a post in the feed, and HexClad will not pay that.
• HexClad built a whole messaging flow for those requests. If someone asks to be paid, it puts them into product seeding (free product to creators), but the inbox of its influencer director is crazy.
• Ridge went back to sponsoring YouTubers. Creators said they used to get $1,000 CPMs (the price per 1,000 views), but their views had dropped and nobody would pay that. Ridge now tries to do fewer YouTuber deals and to be far more involved in each one.
• Ridge says cooking, beauty and fitness channels all know what they are worth and have very valuable audiences, which makes the numbers hard to work on a performance basis. Ridge sponsors any type of content instead, because everyone has a wallet, and that is how it finds underpriced attention.

Heard on Marketing Operators at 1:08:11, 1:08:24 and 1:13:27, and on Open Residency at 54:21.

Why does a big creator's post sell so little?

The yes worth chasing comes from a creator whose audience is there to be sold products, a social affiliate or a reviewer like Bethany Frankel.

• HexClad sees it again and again. A brand books a large influencer who does not talk about products, then is shocked the post did not do well, organically at least.
• HexClad says of Salt Hank, a cooking creator it used to work with, that he never pushes products, and his audience is not there to be sold products. A social affiliate is the opposite, because selling products is all they do.
• Ridge says many brands come in wanting to work with one awesome account, like MrBeast or one very prestigious female influencer. That is really hard and really expensive. Ridge wanted to work with anybody at its price, and was getting $5 to $10 CPMs to sponsor YouTubers.

• HexClad booked Bethany Frankel for the opposite reason. She is talking about and reviewing products all the time, her audience is there for that, and HexClad spent 7 or 8 times what it paid her on those ads.

Heard on Marketing Operators at 34:00, 34:22, 37:46 and 43:55, and on Open Residency at 52:10.

Which creators should you go after?

Finding the five to 10 creators who bring most of the revenue takes hundreds of samples a month, and a retainer for the best ones attracts other creators.

• On TikTok follower count does not matter, only how good the video is. Most brands still build their creator list the other way round.
• The creators who work best are organic creators with some type of following who are not influencers, and not actors paid to read a script. They are paid hundreds of dollars per video, not thousands, and their following is usually 10K to 50K.
• The difference is stark. An Instagram food page with 50,000 people posts recipes. A TikTok Shop creator is selling products all day long.
• At one big TikTok Shop brand, six creators produce sixty percent of the revenue. Another brand on the same show has a long tail instead, with 350K done in TikTok Shop in 2 months and 15K from its largest creator.
• TBAR, a TikTok Shop agency, says every brand normally has five to 10 people who are super invested, and those five to 10 people bring 90% of the brand's overall revenue. It says it takes sending hundreds of samples a month to find those top 10.

Heard on Fitt Insider, on Marketing Operators at 21:05, 54:57 and 58:01, on Open Residency at 13:30, and on Common Thread Collective at 21:43.

Why does a small creator test tell you nothing?

Enough creators have to say yes for a test to teach anything, since Jones Road does not know ahead of time whose videos will do well.

• Jones Road does not want to start with 3 creators. It would rather start with 20 and give the test a fair shot. For its new organic creator program it vetted 100 creators, and the goal is probably to bring on 10 to 20 for the first month.
• Jones Road had no strong measurement plan and dabbled too much when it first tried YouTube. The recommended 50k a month budget was not enough, because that budget only tests a handful of creators. It cut the test after two months, and now tries to give a new channel three months, ideally six.
• Jones Road wants some share of its test budget, whether 30 or 50%, with creators who have a million plus audience. It splits the rest among enough creators, because it does not know ahead of time whose videos will do well.

Heard on Marketing Operators at 36:32, 1:13:32, 1:14:13 and 16:10.

How many creators and samples do you start with?

Each sample is one more creator who can say yes, and a brand starts at five a month, then 10, then 100, while Jones Road plans 500 per product.

• Jones Road plans to go 500 samples per product, to mid size creators, and will probably launch with two to three products. It will try a hero product, a second tier product and a bundle to see which does better.

Heard on Marketing Operators at 36:32, 44:28 and 7:56.

How much product do big programs give away?

Hundreds posting out of thousands gifted is the rate Ridge got, and the program made about 7,000 videos in May that fed a lot of its ads through June.

• Finding the few creators who sell means seeding a hundred or a thousand times more than you think.
• Ridge sent free product to thousands of creators. Hundreds of them posted.
• That produced about 7,000 videos in the month of May, from close to a thousand creators, and those videos fed a lot of the ads Ridge ran through June.
• O Positiv gives away more free product than other supplement brands, on purpose.

Heard on Marketing Operators at 58:34, 18:42 and 19:13, on Fitt Insider, and on Open Residency at 9:15.

When should you send product before a launch?

Seeding early means a creator's yes becomes a post on launch day, the bigger wave Taste Salud gets and the content pipeline Skullcandy had.

• For a big new product, HexClad seeds 100 units to 100 creators it has never sent anything to, to reach new audiences.
• Taste Salud seeds product well ahead of a launch. The earlier it goes out, the bigger the wave of posts on launch day.
• Skullcandy got a launch product in front of creators before launch, with NDAs in place, and answered the questions they had. That gave it a strong content pipeline from the second the product launched.

Heard on Marketing Operators at 54:11, and on Common Thread Collective at 20:07 and 22:36.

Why do gifted products bring so few posts?

Sending a box rarely brings a post, with most creators only there for the free stuff, Neuro says, and beauty creators already getting box after box.

• Ridge says it has not done TikTok Shop or seeding well. It sent hundreds of free products to creators and never saw the traction it wanted.
• Brands send out a thousand packages, get 45 posts and get discouraged. Often the product just went into a random box.

• Jones Road says influencers in beauty get box after box of free stuff, so exciting them takes a lot. If one still posts and uses your product, your customers will likely get excited too.

Heard on Marketing Operators at 1:09:15, 55:53 and 12:45, on Open Residency at 59:24, and on The Anatomy of a Dream at 27:56.

What do you set before the product ships?

A more strategic brief before the sample ships is how Ridge expects to fix its low hit rate, and IM8's 30 day test decides who gets future paid work.

• Neuro's answer is a system. Unless people are truly incentivized to create good content for you, most of them just hover around.
• Do not approve a sample until the creator joins your Discord or WhatsApp group. The agency owner who teaches this recommends WhatsApp, because everyone still has those notifications on.
• The IM8 UGC Creator program: Free IM8 product and merch. They make 2 videos from a content brief within 14 days of getting the product, and confirm IM8 may use them. A 30-day test decides who is invited into the IM8 Creator Directory for future paid work.
• Ridge seeded thousands of products this past year and had an extremely low hit rate from seeded product to ad. It expects to solve that by briefing the people it gives product to more strategically.
• A handwritten note that is customized to that one person makes a creator feel they have to post.

Click to enlarge

Heard on The Anatomy of a Dream at 28:16, on Finaloop ecommerce accounting at 39:26, on Marketing Operators at 57:44, and on Open Residency at 1:00:22. From infleuncer Community playbook.

How do you turn one post into several?

The posts after the one video a TikTok Shop sample obligates have to be asked for, and TBAR wants at least three videos back per sample.

• Jones Road's seeding program sends each creator a different follow up by what they did. One who posts a thank you story and is never heard from again goes into one funnel. One who then posts four in-feed reels goes into a very different flow.
• On TikTok Shop a creator who gets a sample is only obligated to make one video. If the first one makes no sales, follow up, say what has worked recently for other creators and ask for another post.
• TBAR's goal is to get at least three videos back per sample it sends to each creator, because one video is not enough. It says the more videos it gets back per sample, the more profitable it is for the brand.
• HexClad goes back to people who have posted from its seeding program before and gives them the new product, because its hit rate is going to be higher.
• One operator expects more seeded creators to post if the outreach also offers an affiliate link, so they make money on top of the free product. He also wants to go back to the creators he has already seeded with the same offer. This is a plan, not a result yet.

Heard on Marketing Operators at 36:41, 54:24 and 21:07, on MentorPass at 16:39, and on Common Thread Collective at 16:27.

What does seeding give you back?

One yes to seeding returns more than one post, about six or seven per person at Ridge, and HexClad's creators seeded in '23 were still posting the next year.

• It all comes down to three numbers, which are packages sent, people who posted, and what they sold.
• Ridge's math is probably six or seven posts per person on average. Hundreds of people made 1,200 ads for its TikTok Shop campaign in one week.
• HexClad calls product seeding the highlight of its influencer program in the last three years, with tons of social impressions, great CPMs and a really good hit rate. It started with an outside agency and then brought the program in house.
• Seeding keeps paying back. Creators HexClad seeded at the start of '23 were still posting the next year, when its tagged content reached 1.5 billion impressions, up 230% year over year.
• Expect a slow start. One brand spent the last year building up, then growth sped up and it now gets 500, a thousand videos.

Heard on Marketing Operators at 58:33, 34:46, 39:24, 1:08:12 and 10:57.

What else brands say about how seeding works and how big an affiliate program gets

One seeded video that takes off is meant to pull in many more creators, who copy it and sign up to sell as affiliates.

How does seeding work?

A creator's yes to free product is a tryout for the content team, and of 100 free wallets Ridge gives out, maybe two people make content worth ad dollars.

• Seeding, TikTok affiliates and micro-influencers are the same thing under three names.
• Plenty of brands run the shop this way. They gift product, see who makes good videos, and those people become the content team. When Ridge gives out 100 free wallets, maybe two people make content worth spending ad dollars on.
• If you are just launching, working with influencers is not TV, where you need a 50k production. Anyone can do it by getting the product in the hands of people. You can send 10 boxes a month, or 100, or 10,000.
• The plan is to seed lots of creators, wait for one video to take off, and then many more creators copy it and sign up to sell. One brand says it cannot get the first one to pop.

Heard on Marketing Operators at 56:58 and 59:45, and on Open Residency at 46:37 and 49:49.

How big can an affiliate program get?

A program of creators who said yes can reach more than 25,000 affiliates, as Neuro's did, making millions of versions of content a month.

• Some operators run hundreds of creators through their own TikTok Shop Discords and WhatsApp groups.
• Comfrt is said to have hundreds of thousands of people signed up as affiliates.
• Neuro built an army of more than 25,000 affiliates, making millions of versions of content a month.

Heard on Marketing Operators at 44:11 and 47:35, and on The Anatomy of a Dream at 5:11.

What can you copy to get creators? 3 examples

Interesting situations -

Progressively increase the bar to getting in

Example 1: Let anyone join, then add rules later

Who says so: Ryan Gardner, CEO and co-founder of Bucked Up

Do this:

• Open the ambassador program to anyone at the start instead of restricting it to vetted people.
• Add requirements later such as a minimum follower count and a set number of required posts.
• Give ambassadors coupon codes to use instead of relying only on one large influencer.

Example 2: Make creators buy in store before applying

Who says so: Steven Vigilante of OLIPOP, who has worked on its influencer and celebrity partnerships

Do this:

• Set a minimum in store purchase amount, such as four lollipops, as a condition of applying.
• Have creators text in the purchase receipt into the app as their application to create content.
• Approve or reject each application before letting the creator upload content.
• Pay creators based on how their uploaded content performs.

Example 3: Give each publisher a different product

Who says so: Marketing Operators, hosts who run marketing at Ridge, HexClad and Jones Road Beauty

Do this:

• Recruit content publishers and build relationships with them before pursuing affiliate deals.
• Give publishers different products to write about if you sell a large number of products.
• Give publishers different tentpole moments to write about if you have a lot of them.
• Pursue affiliate deals with bigger content publishers, not just publishers that do nothing but affiliate.

How do I reach out to a creator the first time?

A first offer of product and no fee can still bring posts, as almost 100% of the people Tubby Todd shipped to posted without being paid.

1. Who is this for?

• Founders with product to send & no budget to pay creators.

2. What is the 1 number the story turns on?

• Almost 100%: the people Tubby Todd shipped free product to who wanted to post about it, unpaid.

3. How did they start?

• Tubby Todd: no marketing budget. 750 bottles in the garage, & a co-founder who had worked in social media & knew a lot of bloggers.

4. What was the first move with creators?

• Tubby Todd x bloggers: free product, no payment. They knew they could not pay, so they were not sure anyone would post.

5. What happened next?

• Almost 100% of the people they shipped to loved it enough to post on their own blog or social.
• That seeding became the brand's whole marketing strategy (co-founder, looking back in 2026).

6. What is going on now?

• Sol de Janeiro (2018): a thank you note to every person who talked about the brand, before Sephora. Its perfume later sold out online in 4 days.
• Magic Spoon (2020): the co-founder in the DMs himself, finding someone with 30,000 followers who might like it. Free product, no pressure to share.
• HexClad (2024): early access for its Cooking with HexClad Facebook group before launch, so the reviews land first.
• IPSY (2018): a spin class for influencers to test Too Faced's new waterproof mascara. Now a monthly ride for 50 influencers, a different sponsor each month.
• Hot Girl Pickles x Cloud (2026): 1 PR box for Cloud's pickle popcorn launch. Chloe, the face of Cloud, posted it. One of their most successful partnerships.
• Gisou (2024): a Gisou x Create Fridge of fruit & bestsellers to select influencers. In 11 days: $8.8 million in earned media value & 140,000 new followers.
• Poppi (2025): pink vending machines to 32 creators & fans in NFL team cities before the Super Bowl. Rival Olipop claimed $25K each.

7. What is the problem, or what went wrong?

• Neuro Gum (2019): product seeded to Joe Rogan in November through a PR contact. Then crickets through January. His first mention: February 2020.
• Revolve (2022): offered creator Averie Bishop $2,000 of free clothing with her Coachella invite. About 1,000 people in the shuttle line, & guests compared it to Fyre Festival.

8. What should they do next?

• Magic Spoon: a DM to someone who might like the product, asking if they want to try it. No pressure to share (if they like it, they typically will).

So

• So the first message is an offer of product, never a price, & the post comes when they love it.

Next comes what they actually pay.

Step 3 of 9 in the TikTok Shop affiliate playbook.

Next, step 4, What do you pay on top of commission?

Back to step 2, Who should run the shop?