Top 10 sellers do not pay affiliates more: median commission is 9% and 20% list none

1. Introduction

Brands choosing what to offer affiliates on TikTok Shop face a practical question: do the products that already sell best pay more to the creators who promote them, or less? A high rate might be what buys a top rank, or leaders might be able to pay less because they already sell. Prior work on affiliate programmes shows that referral fees are set by trading off the seller's margin against the incentive to refer, and that they vary across sellers and products [1]. It does not tell a founder what the going rate is among the products winning today.

This paper describes the commission that top-selling products list, how many list none, and how commission lines up with price and with the share of revenue that comes through video. It is descriptive. It cannot say whether commission causes sales or the reverse.

2. Data

The sample covers 2,800 top-selling products across 29 categories, with the latest-week rankings taken as of 2 October 2026 within a window running from 3 September to 2 October 2026. Each category contributes its tracked top 100 sellers by revenue, grouped into four rank bands: top 10 (280 products), 11–25 (420), 26–50 (700) and 51–100 (1,400).

For each product we recorded its listed affiliate commission rate, price, revenue and the share of its revenue that came through video. No individual videos are analysed in this paper. The category comparison covers 28 categories, because one of the 29 could not be compared.

Weekly category figures for the US (estimated revenue, its split between video, LIVE and the shop tab, affiliate revenue, shops and active products, and a year of weekly revenue) and daily rankings of each category’s top-selling products (unit price, commission rate, launch date and revenue by channel) were collected from several independent sources. Medians of price and commission are weighted by revenue; momentum compares the latest weeks with the same number of weeks before. This paper covers 2026-09-03 to 2026-10-02: 2,800 top-selling products across 29 categories.

3. Methods

Products were ranked by revenue within each category among its tracked top sellers in the latest week. For each rank band, and for each category's top 10 against ranks 11–100, we computed the revenue-weighted median commission rate: the rate at which half of the revenue sits on products with lower listed rates and half on higher. Products listed at 0% commission were left out of these medians and reported separately as the share of products listed at zero. Commission rates on offer are known to vary with how sellers trade off margin and referral volume [1].

We report the same revenue-weighted median for price, and the share of revenue that came through video by band. Uncertainty ranges are not available for these figures, so differences of a point or two between bands should not be read as meaningful.

4. Results: commission by rank in category

The revenue-weighted median commission was 9% for the top 10 products in each category, 10% for ranks 11–25, 9% for ranks 26–50 and 9% for ranks 51–100. There is no sign that the best sellers pay a clearly higher rate. The highest band is the one just below the top 10, and the gap is one point.

The top 10 account for 30.7% of revenue among the 2,800 products while making up 10% of them. Ranks 11–25 account for 20%, ranks 26–50 for 21.3% and ranks 51–100 for 28%, so revenue is concentrated at the top but a substantial share sits in the long tail [2].

5. Results: zero commission, price and video share

Listing no commission is common at every rank. The share of products listed at 0% was 20.4% in the top 10, 18.3% in ranks 11–25, 24.7% in ranks 26–50 and 22.8% in ranks 51–100. About one in five top sellers therefore offers affiliates nothing through this listing, and these are excluded from the medians above.

The revenue-weighted median price was $43 for the top 10, $39 for ranks 11–25 and $38 for the two lower bands. The share of revenue that came through video was 78.8% for the top 10 against 75.2%, 76.9% and 78.3% in the lower bands. Top sellers sit at slightly higher prices and slightly higher video share, but the commission did not rise with either across the bands.

6. Results: top 10 against the rest, by category

Of 28 categories compared, the top 10 had a higher median commission than ranks 11–100 in 12 and a lower one in 9; the remaining 7 were level. Differences were large in some categories: Furniture 9% against 6%, Fashion Accessories 6% against 3%, and Home Supplies 11% against 9% at the top; Automotive & Motorcycle 6% against 10%, Computers & Office Equipment 5% against 8%, and Tools & Hardware 4% against 6% in the other direction.

Levels differ far more between categories than between ranks. Health had a top-10 median of 20% (rest 19%), Books, Magazines & Audio 14% (rest 12%), and Beauty & Personal Care 13% (rest 14%), while Collectibles had 2% (rest 3%) and Household Appliances 5% (rest 5%). Zero listings among the top 10 ranged from 0% in categories such as Health, Shoes and Food & Beverages to 90% in Collectibles, 40% in Fashion Accessories and 30% in Household Appliances, Phones & Electronics, Home Supplies and Jewelry Accessories & Derivatives. Where most top-10 products list zero, the median rests on very few products.

7. Discussion

For a founder, the main message is that the category sets the commission norm and rank adds little. Top sellers in Health list around 20%, while top sellers in Collectibles mostly list nothing. Matching your category's median looks more useful than matching the overall 9%.

Several explanations fit these patterns. Established leaders may have enough organic demand or brand pull to pay less, or may rely on other routes such as their own shop or LIVE selling [3]. Low-margin categories may simply not afford higher rates, consistent with the view that fees reflect margins [1]. Products at 0% may rely on other arrangements, and a listed rate is not the amount actually paid. Because commission and rank are observed together, we cannot say whether higher rates help sales; returns to promotion are hard to establish from observational data [4].

8. What this means for brands and founders

• Benchmark against your category, not the overall market: top-10 median commission ran from 2% in Collectibles to 20% in Health, against 9% across all top-10 products.

• Do not assume a higher rate buys a top rank: the top 10 listed a median of 9% against 10% for ranks 11–25, and paid more than the rest in only 12 of 28 categories.

• Check whether zero commission is normal where you sell: 20% of top-10 products list 0%, and 90% do in Collectibles, though in Health, Shoes and Food & Beverages none did.

• Price in line with the leaders when planning your margin: the top 10 had a revenue-weighted median price of $43 against $38–$39 lower down, and 79% of their revenue came through video.

9. Conclusion

Among the top-selling products in 29 TikTok Shop categories, the top 10 in each category list a revenue-weighted median commission of 9%, close to the 9%–10% of lower ranks, and 20% of them list none. Category, not rank, is the clearer guide to what to offer.

These are listed rates for a single latest-week ranking, with no uncertainty ranges, so small differences should be treated cautiously. We cannot tell whether commission drives sales.