Which Product Should a Creator Promote? An Idea We Want to Test

A creator who opens TikTok Shop’s affiliate marketplace sees a very long list of products. Many show a similar headline commission: 10%, 15%, 20%. Picking one looks easy. Knowing what will actually land in your account is much harder.

We’re Simplico, a software studio in Thailand. We have an idea for a search tool that helps creators and affiliates choose products by what they would really earn, and we want to find out whether it’s worth building. simpliPick (a working name) is an idea, not a product. There is no app yet. This post describes what we would build and asks you to tell us whether you’d use it.

A big percentage is not the same as big earnings

Three things can make a headline commission misleading:

• Refunds. Guides that summarise TikTok Shop’s seller documentation describe commission as paid on revenue after refunds. A product that gets returned often pays less than its rate suggests.
• Slow-moving rates. Sellers can set a commission anywhere from 1% to 80%, and a change to an open offer takes 30 days to apply (5 days for an invite-only offer). So the rate you see is a standing commitment by the seller, and worth tracking.
• Caps. Some marketplace offers limit what is paid per order. We’ve seen a 70 THB cap on base commission listed for Shopee Thailand on an affiliate network’s offer page; we’ll re-check it before relying on it. A product with a high percentage and a cap can pay less than one with a lower percentage and no cap.

What exists today

Kalodata and FastMoss are the best-known TikTok Shop research tools. A comparison published in October 2026 lists Kalodata from $49.99 a month and FastMoss from $558 a year. Both are built to show what is selling: products, creators, shops and trends. As far as we can tell, neither ranks products by what an individual creator would take home. We could be wrong about that. If you use them, we’d like to hear what’s missing.

The idea in one paragraph

You describe your audience (in Thai, English or Japanese) and what you want to earn. The tool searches products using the platforms’ official affiliate data and filters by attributes such as commission, price range, category, country of origin and shipping time. It then ranks the results by estimated take-home per sale, with a short reason for each pick and the date the data was last refreshed.

flowchart TD
    A["Creator describes audience and goal"] --> B["Search official affiliate product data"]
    B --> C["Filter by commission, price, category and origin"]
    C --> D["Estimate take-home per sale"]
    D --> E["Ranked list with reasons and data date"]

Why we think it might be buildable

TikTok announced the general release of its Shop Affiliate APIs for developers. The announcement says they let developers find products with open collaborations by category, commission rate and keywords, and generate affiliate links. In the same post, creators said they want products that fit their audience’s demographics, which is the matching problem this idea is about. We don’t yet know whether Thai accounts get the same API access, and that’s the first thing we’d check.

The Thai market looks relevant. AnyMind’s Thailand report, summarised here, found TikTok was the top platform for influencer marketing in 2025, chosen for more than 50% of campaigns. It also reports that for some brands, affiliate creators bring in more revenue than the brand’s own TikTok Shop, at 60% against 40%. That figure is for some brands, not an average, and the report gives no margin data. It shows the pattern exists, not that every seller will see it.

What is designed and what is built

Item	Status
Product search by attributes	Idea only
Take-home estimate (refunds, caps)	Idea only
TikTok Shop affiliate API	Documented by TikTok; Thai access to be confirmed
Shopee affiliate data	Thai access to be confirmed
App or website	Not started

Our rules if we build it

• Official APIs only. No scraping. If access is refused, we’ll say so and rethink the idea.
• Always show when the data was last refreshed.
• Label every earnings number as an estimate, never a guarantee.
• Keep user data to the minimum needed.

Questions for you

1. How do you choose which products to promote today?
2. What matters most to you: commission rate, price, refund rate, shipping speed, or the brand?
3. Do you use Kalodata, FastMoss or something else? What is missing, and what would you pay each month for a better tool?
4. Should it cover TikTok Shop only, or Shopee and Lazada too?
5. Would you search in Thai, English, Japanese, or a mix?

Help us test it

We’d like to check the idea by hand before writing any code. Send us a short description of your audience and your platform. For the first 20 creators, we’ll pick and rank 10 products for you, and explain our reasoning for each one. Then tell us honestly whether the list was useful.

Email hello@simplico.net

FAQ

Is simpliPick something I can use today?
No. It is an idea we’re validating. Nothing is built yet.

Will it scrape TikTok Shop or Shopee?
No. We’d use official affiliate APIs only. If we can’t get access for Thailand, we’ll tell you and rethink the plan.

How would it differ from Kalodata or FastMoss?
Those tools focus on what is selling. We would focus on what a creator would take home and how well a product fits their audience. We haven’t compared every feature, so tell us if they already do this.

Is the 60/40 affiliate-to-brand split typical?
No. The report states it for some brands, not as an average, and it says nothing about margins.

Will it be free?
We haven’t decided. Pricing is one of the questions we want your help with.