Hey,

I've met quite a few brand owners that have become seven- or eight-figure brands solely off of Meta ads or Amazon. Yet when it comes to TikTok Shop, they have a unique challenge in getting started on the platform, and actually operating in the black.

One brand owner joked with me that, despite being only 30 years old, he had already aged out of the algorithm too quickly and just didn't know what was trending anymore.

Good news is I'm 21, and I've been doing tiktok organic for ecom since I was 15. More importantly, I've worked with brands that have become seven- or eight-figure brands off of Amazon and Shopify, and I've helped a lot of them launch on TikTok Shop and scale to six figures on here.

Let's talk through how to do TikTok Shop at break-even or profitably instead of losing money.

Sales are not the same as profit

TikTok Shop can make it pretty easy to get sales, which is awesome, but can also become an issue. Every sale has new costs that come with it: - TikTok Shop transaction fee - creator commission - sending samples - shipping orders If nobody’s actually watching these costs, a great month in terms of revenue can still quietly be losing money. What I’ve found is that the problem is not usually too few sales, but instead it’s major leaks.

The five leaks we see most

1. Leading with the wrong product.​
Some brands push the product they love or the one they want to see win the most, rather than the one with the right amount of margin. If you're keeping very little profit per order, there's often nothing left to pay creators, send samples, or use to run ads.

2. Nobody knows the real number.​
Costs of living in different places, nobody knowing what they actually make per order, spending money on GMV Max, and not having any plan in place. TikTok Shop essentially requires running sales and flash sale programs to encourage people to buy the product, so you have to be able to bake that in when you set up your product pricing.

3. Paying to push products that aren't selling yet.​
Way too many brands are running GMV Max ads on TikTok Shop before they're getting 100 videos live per week. You got to have at least 100 videos live per week for GMV Max to actually perform because it needs organic videos to actually run spend on.

5. Samples with no plan.​
Sending free samples to the right creators is great, but don't just send samples to creators that you don't have a relationship with or are not likely to post consistently for you.

Want your TikTok Shop math done for you?

Book a free discovery call with my team. We'll look at your hero products, your margins, and what an affiliate army would cost you, all in.

You'll get a straight answer on whether TikTok Shop fits your brand right now.

​Book your free discovery call →​

How our biggest brands break even (and then profit)

Here's what's working for the 8- and 9-figure brands we scale.

1. Pick a hero with room to breathe.​
We lead with products that have margin on them so that the brand can have a little bit of money left over after commission, after agency fee, after TikTok's transaction fee, etc

2. Put every cost on one page.​
Product, creator pay, samples, shipping, refunds. As Peter Drucker says, "What gets measured gets managed," and it's important to be able to measure this stuff to actually make sure that you're optimizing for the right metrics.

3. Guard your shop score like cash.​
Make sure that the videos and the listings promise the same thing, and that that thing is what the product actually delivers. Otherwise, refunds, unhappy reviews, or fewer customers are just going to cause health issues on the backend, and we want that shop score to remain strong.

4. Only pour fuel on what's already burning.​
We run GMV max for products that are already doing super well, have good reviews, and are building organic momentum. We don't just spend on ads.

5. Send samples with a plan.​
Samples need to go to creators that fit your ideal buyers and are also creators that are already posting in this niche and about this kind of product. Then we follow up and train these creators too, so that each sample actually has a shot at becoming a viral video for your product

6. Judge videos on profit, not views.​
A video with a million views and no sales attached: maybe super entertaining to watch and maybe awesome to brag about, but it's not going to pay the bills. At the end of the day, likes are not paying the bills. We optimize for sales from content, not just views.

Why this matters in 2026 and beyond

TikTok Shop is already getting a lot more crowded with so many more brands, so many more offers, and so much more noise. The brands that win the biggest in 2027 will not be the ones with the most views, but they'll be the ones who know their numbers and know how to operate and build real systems on the platform. Having profit is what's going to let certain brands keep growing while their competitors are forced to quit.

Want your TikTok Shop scaling done for you?

Book a free discovery call with me. We'll look at your hero products, your margins, and what an affiliate army would cost you, all in.

You'll get a straight answer on whether TikTok Shop fits your brand right now.

​Book your free discovery call →​

Talk soon,

Noah

Noah Frydberg
CEO & Founder, Maverick Creative
​

P.S. - Hit reply and tell me the biggest leak in your TikTok Shop right now. It might be a future issue.

P.P.S. - Disclosure: Most brands that sell on TikTok Shop, including established 8-figure brands, find that reaching $200,000 a month in GMV, is extremely difficult and uncommon. Results shared here are examples of what has worked for some past Maverick Creative brands, not typical results, income claims, or guarantees, and your results will vary. This content is for education only, not financial, legal, or tax advice.