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How TikTok Became Amazon's Biggest Threat
Issue #109
Rankster Team
July 04, 2025
Reading Time: 3 min | Readability: Grade 3 (kindergarten kids view me as Shakespeare) |
Welcome to Rankster 👊
The weekly TikTok Shop newsletter that’s needed like SPF 50 on a hot day
In today’s issue:
🔥 DEEP DIVE 🔥: How TikTok Became Amazon's Biggest Threat
Trump claims to have found a TikTok buyer
How to sell digital items on TikTok Shop
TikTok is coming after Prime Day
🔽 Let’s get started
BEST LINKS
What Caught My Eye This Week
🚀 Seller News….. News you need to know
DEEP DIVE
The TikTok Shop Gold Rush
How a Dance App Became Amazon's Biggest Threat (And What's Coming Next)
TikTok just quietly built a billion-dollar shopping empire while everyone was distracted by dance videos.
And now they're about to eat Amazon's lunch.
Here's the story nobody saw coming...
November 2022 - TikTok starts testing "TikTok Shop" in the UK. Most people thought: "Great, another gimmicky feature that'll die in 6 months."
I was part of the UK launch….. it was terrible, I lost a lot of money…. I was convinced the platform would die.
Plot twist: It didn't die.
September 2023 - They launch in the U.S. with a full shopping tab. Now you could buy stuff directly from videos without leaving the app.
The results? $1 billion in sales by December.
$1 billion. In 3 months.
For context - it took Instagram Shopping 3 years to hit that number.
December 2024 - Black Friday hits different. TikTok Shop does $100 million in sales in ONE DAY. That's more than some entire e-commerce companies make in a year.
March 2025 - They expand to Germany, France, and Italy. Boom. 200 million new potential customers unlocked overnight.
Mid-2025 - Mexico and Brazil join the party. U.S. sales are up 120% year-over-year. People are doing 8 million hours of live shopping streams.
Let me put this in perspective: TikTok went from "haha funny videos" to a legitimate threat to Amazon's e-commerce dominance in less than 3 years.
The secret sauce? They didn't just copy Amazon's boring product pages. They made shopping entertaining.
You watch a 30-second video of someone testing a face mask, get hooked, and buy it without thinking. It's impulse buying on steroids.
But here's where it gets REALLY interesting...
Remember when everyone said "TikTok is just dancing teenagers"? Yeah, well... those teenagers are about to make Jeff Bezos sweat even more.
What’s next for TikTok Shop?
TikTok is building their own Amazon FBA.
They're calling it "TikTok Fulfilled" (creative, I know) and it's rolling out everywhere. You send your stuff to their warehouses, they handle shipping, and boom - your products get the little "fast shipping" badge that makes people actually buy.
But here's the kicker: Products using TikTok's logistics get algorithm juice. More views, more sales, more money.
It's like Amazon Prime, but for the app where people spend 2 hours a day.
The AI is getting scary good.
TikTok's algorithm already knows you better than your mom. Now they're using that same brain to match products with the perfect creators.
Imagine: AI that can predict which 19-year-old from Ohio will make your acne cream go viral. Then it automatically connects you two and splits the commission.
We're talking about a creator-product matchmaking system that could turn any random person into a sales machine overnight.
They're stealing Black Friday.
2024 was just the warm-up. This year, TikTok is planning their own shopping holidays. Not just riding Amazon's coattails - creating entirely new reasons for people to spend money.
Think about it: They control when 1 billion people see content. They can literally manufacture shopping frenzies whenever they want.
Global domination mode: activated.
While everyone's focused on the U.S., TikTok is quietly conquering Latin America and Eastern Europe. Argentina, Colombia, Poland - they're adding new countries every month.
For sellers, this means 200+ million more new customers just... appeared. Like magic.
But here's what scares me...
Most business owners are still treating TikTok like a "nice to have" marketing channel.
Meanwhile, some random college kid is making $50k/month selling LED strips because they figured out the creator affiliate system.
The gap between "I get it" and "I don't get it" is becoming a chasm.
What this means for you:
If you're selling anything online and you're NOT on TikTok Shop yet... you're missing the fastest-growing sales channel on the planet AND you're about to miss the next wave too.
The affiliate program alone is printing money for creators. Regular people are making $10k+ per month just by posting videos about products they like.
"But isn't TikTok just for Gen Z?"
Nope. My 50-year-old neighbor just bought a blender because some lady on TikTok made the smoothest smoothie she'd ever seen.
The bottom line:
TikTok isn't just becoming another place to sell stuff. They're building the future of commerce - where entertainment and shopping are the same thing.
In 2 years, when your customers are buying everything through 30-second videos, you'll either be riding the wave or wondering what happened.
When the platform where people are already spending 90 minutes a day adds a "buy now" button AND starts building their own logistics empire... you better pay attention.
The choice is yours.
That's it for this week 👊
But I need to ask a favour...
What did you think of today's newsletter? |
Thanks for reading.
- Paul 👊
P.S. - If you're still on the fence about TikTok Shop and want to test the waters….. talk to me
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