Influencer Advisory™Should you sell on live streams?
Lives give a brand a paid role to offer creators besides commission. Who should host and what it brings in.
Founder · October 2, 2026 · 8 min read
Lives give a brand something to offer its creators besides commission, a paid role on camera, and LG ended up with about five creators on rotation, some full time.
How brands sell on live streams, from picking hosts to counting what a live brings in
A brand going live has to settle who hosts, how many hours to stay on and how viewers arrive, and no two brands settled it the same way.
Who should host your first live streams?
A brand can find out whether lives sell for it with people it already employs, as MaryRuth's did, before paying anyone new to host.
- When MaryRuth's first started going live on TikTok, its chief revenue officer Jay Hunter asked any employee to go live on the brand's account from their house. People who worked in email or SMS went live in their kitchen with three products.
- Guru Nanda sells its oral hygiene products on TikTok live just like QVC, with staff doing it. A podcast host who had the founder on says he was just hiring interns to talk about it.
Heard on Ashley Wright - TikTok Shop at 24:31, and on Startup to Storefront at 35:13.
Who do brands pay to host live streams?
Keeping lives going means paying for hosts, through ambassador deals like HexClad's that require two lives or events a year, an agency, or a studio like Outlandish.
- MaryRuth's built a little bit of a studio at its West Hollywood office and brought in talent, because its employees have other parts of the business to work on. Today it uses external talent on contract to do the live streams.
- At LG, creators were hired to run live shopping, not only to make ads. In the end LG had about five creators on rotation, and the speaker thinks two or three of them were full time, split between making content and running the live shopping.
- HexClad writes live streams into its brand ambassador deals. An ambassador is required to come and do a shoot once per quarter, and to go to two events or live streaming events per year.
- HexClad runs its lives monthly through an agency that specializes in them, after first doing them internally. A live runs for about an hour with someone going through the products, usually around some moment and with flash sales during it, and it reaches a ton of new accounts.
- At Outlandish, a TikTok Shop live studio in Santa Monica, a typical live runs four hours, swaps presenters, and sells millions of dollars of product. Brands pay the studio by the month and it does everything for them, the booth, the cameras and the talent.
Heard on Ashley Wright - TikTok Shop at 25:03, on Marketing Operators at 17:23, 17:55 and 43:13, and on Startup to Storefront at 34:02.
How long should a live stream run?
The return on long hours is reach, as 70% of shoppers on Tarte's 12 hour live did not follow Tarte and Crocs tripled its followers in 744 hours.
Going live for 12 hours gets you a moment worth clipping by volume, rather than by planning one. Some moments can still be planned, as when Ramp had the Rizzler come in at the end of its live stream with Kevin from The Office.
- Tarte office live: 12-hour live with staff, average of 25,000 viewers, 70% of shoppers didn't follow Tarte
- MaryRuth's runs a live stream on TikTok Shop around the clock, using paid actors. HexClad heard this from Wyatt, a growth marketer at MaryRuth's, and thinks its price, in about the $40 range, really works for TikTok Shop.
- MaryRuth's went from 2 hours a day to 4 hours a day and then to 24 hours a day. Each host does a two to four hour shift, and one live manager runs it while also doing all of the company's organic social.
- Crocs' 744-hour Croctober live tripled its followers & got 550 million impressions
Heard on Marketing Operators at 41:07 and 15:39, and on Ashley Wright - TikTok Shop at 23:53. From Tiktok shop playboook.
How do you get viewers into a live stream?
Hosts and hours need viewers to sell to, and Quay, which goes live constantly, keeps GMV Max running behind its lives to send shoppers in.
- There are two types of GMV Max, one for products and one for lives. The live one pushes traffic to your live streams to generate sales, so you can run it whenever you do a live.
- Quay Sunglasses goes live on TikTok Shop constantly, with GMV Max running behind the live. A speaker who has Quay as a customer says it just crushes.
Heard on Jordan Kilgour Business at 12:10, and on Common Thread Collective at 57:07.
What should the host do during a live stream?
A live is worth a host's hours when it gives viewers something beyond the product, a guest like Steve Aoki, a giveaway, answers in the chat or a game.
- Going live is important because it's the most authentic way to interact with consumers, allowing for real-time conversation and engagement.
- The key to a good live is being interactive and offering something special beyond just the product, such as giveaways or guest appearances.
- Neuro brings guests onto its live. It did a live with Steve Aoki, and it does founder lives all the time.
- MaryRuth's is big on repetition, because customers have to hear a message a few times. To keep it fresh, its hosts speak back to people who type in the chat or purchase, and answer questions.
- Braden Flack, a creator out of Utah without a huge audience, got 500,000 likes on a single live selling Built Bars in a TikTok auction. He was not paying for distribution, and he made a game of the whole thing.
Heard on The Anatomy of a Dream at 19:16, on Ashley Wright - TikTok Shop at 28:08, and on Common Thread Collective at 1:03:33. From Playbook to livestreams.
How much does a live stream sell?
A brand should count lives as a side channel, and even at $500 plus an hour MaryRuth's says they are not its number one source of sales.
- HexClad has done 40 or 50 live shopping events in the last 6 months, and they have probably made about a quarter of its TikTok Shop revenue. HexClad adds that it is not doing a ton of TikTok Shop revenue.
- Jay Hunter thinks MaryRuth's lives do $500 plus per hour on average across all the hours, which he calls pretty profitable. He says it is not the number one contributor to overall sales.
- Jay Hunter does not recommend being live 24 hours a day for most brands. In some of the early morning hours the sales are not the greatest, but it gives the brand a lot of visibility, impressions and viewers.
- Guru Nanda is not making money on its lives yet. A podcast host who asked the founder says the lives do introduce people to the brand, and that in his head it is only a matter of time before it flips.
Heard on Marketing Operators at 15:52, on Ashley Wright - TikTok Shop at 24:03 and 26:33, and on Startup to Storefront at 35:39.
What does a live stream get you besides sales?
A live's chat is feedback a brand can act on, and e.l.f. introduced bronzing drops 6 months after its chat said $38 was too much.
- Clicking into a live on TikTok places you within that company's retargeting algorithm, increasing your visibility on their feed.
- Neuro calls lives the fastest way to get consumer feedback. Its founder says to do lives for a few hours a day and then focus on the business the rest of the day.
- At e.l.f., the CMO takes the big boss on TikTok live every once in a while. On one of those lives the chat said it loved a prestige bronzing drop but could not afford 38 bucks. The team had bronzing drops 18 months out, and e.l.f. introduced them 6 months later.
Heard on The Anatomy of a Dream at 18:12, and on Rapid Response at 14:20. From infleuncer Community playbook.
How do brands send TikTok Shop buyers into stores?
TikTok buzz also sells product in stores. Here is how Cyklar and Onside used it, and what SEEQ does when stock runs short.
- Cyklar was on TikTok Shop before it launched in Sephora in February 2026, and it says the shop built the buzz that sent people into Sephora to smell the fragrances they were hearing about. It has sold at least 200,000 products through TikTok Shop alone.
- The Quality Group uses TikTok to send people to Target instead of selling through the shop. It does this for Onside, a men's care brand sold only at Target, and in the week it turned its TikTok marketing on it saw a 20% increase in store sales.
- When stock is short, SEEQ fills its Target, Sam's Club, Walmart and Vitamin Shoppe orders first, so flavours run out on TikTok Shop first.
- When a flavour is gone on the shop, SEEQ sends people to Amazon, then Shopify, then the store.
Heard on Hot Smart Rich at 33:36, on Open Residency at 1:42:39, and on Shelf Talks Podcast at 21:34 and 21:53.
How do brands make products only for TikTok Shop?
Some brands make a product that is sold only on TikTok. Here is how Bloom and Coca-Cola did it.
Bloom says a small brand should turn a cultural moment into a shop product within a week. If the new Drake album cover shows a bedazzled Michael Jackson glove, a small company that moves fast should have a bedazzled product on TikTok Shop. Bloom did this itself last February with a Valentine's Day edition of its energy drink, though it says it can no longer move that fast.
- Coca-Cola launched a flavour, Happy Tears Zero Sugar, sold only on TikTok. It is a Coca-Cola Creations flavour, and Coca-Cola says it is the first ever to be sold in a hype kit available only on TikTok.
Heard on School of Hard Knocks Podcast at 37:55, and on BevNET at 18:50.
Next comes what it is worth, and how they know.
Step 8 of 9 in the TikTok Shop affiliate playbook.
Next, step 9, What is the shop really worth?
Back to step 7, When do you put ad money behind a video?