“Sohun brought AI into every part of our TikTok Shop affiliate program: sample approvals, creator outreach, our Discord community, weekly reporting and content angle analysis. It all runs as one system now, and he trained our team to own it. He was a godsend.”
The challenge
CAKES Body sells shapewear and intimates on TikTok Shop and works with thousands of affiliate creators. Every brand at that stage has to answer the same five questions:
- Samples: who works through the sample request queue every day, and by what rules?
- Recruiting: how do we reach creators who already sell in our category, in our own voice?
- Community: where do creators go after their first post, so they post again?
- Reporting: how does leadership see what changed this week without someone building a deck?
- Content: which angles are working across hundreds of creator videos?
CAKES Body’s affiliate team was small and stretched across all five. They chose to put the repeatable work on software and keep their people on creators and decisions. I built each piece with the team, agreed every rule with them before it went live, and answered their questions in Slack between calls.
What I built
Sample approvals that run every weekday
The gap: every sample request was reviewed by hand, one creator at a time.
- A routine works the To Review queue each weekday morning using rules the team set: recent sales, one approval per creator and a cooldown between samples.
- Requests outside the rules are set aside in a way the team can undo. Nothing is rejected automatically, and edge cases are left for a person.
- Each run posts a one-line summary to the team’s Slack channel and keeps a report of every decision.
- In nine weekday runs from Oct 6 to 16 it worked through 592 requests and approved 117, with every decision confirmed in Cruva.
- Creators can also request samples through a form in the CAKES Body Discord. A daily check looks at each creator’s history, sends eligible creators a collab and posts repeat requests to the team.
Now: the queue clears before the team logs on, and no request is left waiting for a person.
Creator outreach that runs in the brand’s voice
The gap: no outreach automations were running, and finding the right creators took hours of searching.
- Three always-on workflows in Cruva find creators, invite them and follow up.
- Campaigns aimed at creators already selling competing brands, and at top sellers in the category.
- Every message follows CAKES Body’s own structure and voice, and creative briefs go out only after a sample is approved.
- The outreach rules (step limits, message length, when a brief can be sent) are checked automatically, so the workflows cannot drift from what the team approved.
Now: new creators hear from CAKES Body every day without anyone on the team writing or sending a message.
A home for creators after the first post
The gap: creators who posted once had nowhere to go next, and fewer of them kept posting each month.
- Built the 28-channel CAKES Body creator Discord with the team in two days, with starter posts ready for creators on day one.
- Connected the server’s sample request form to the daily check above.
- Built a creator coach, ready to switch on: a creator shares a video and gets plain-language notes on what to keep and what to change.
Now: creators have one place to learn the products, ask for samples and see what is working.
A weekly exec report nobody has to build
The gap: answering “how did we do this week?” meant pulling numbers from several dashboards by hand.
Every Monday a slide deck lands in the team’s Slack channel with a headline summary. On demand, the team can also run a program health score, a three-scenario forecast, an ad creative audit and a 21-point diagnostic.
| The deck covers | So leadership sees |
|---|---|
| Performance against last week | Whether affiliate sales are up or down, and by how much |
| Top creators and creator retention over eight weeks | Who is driving sales, and whether creators keep posting |
| GMV Max campaigns, top creatives and blended ROAS | Which ads are earning their spend |
| Trending products and what’s working | Where to push samples and briefs next |
Now: leadership reads the week in one deck on Monday morning. When the VP asked for blended ROAS, it was in the next Monday deck.
Content analysis across every creator video
The gap: no one could watch every creator video to see which hooks and angles were landing.
- Built a content analyzer that reads each video posted for CAKES Body and records its hook, selling points and angle. The first 515 videos cost under a dollar in total to analyze.
- Built a submission review, ready to switch on, that recommends approve, revise or reject on creator content using rules drawn from the team’s own past review comments.
Now: the team can see which angles show up across hundreds of videos, and brief creators toward the ones that work.
A system the team owns
The gap: automation only helps if the team understands it and can run it day to day.
- A system map of every automation, what it does and where its output goes.
- A team guide for the Discord server and the sample request flow.
- Training with the affiliate team on each piece as it went live.
Now: CAKES Body’s team runs the system day to day.
What this means for your brand
If your brand runs TikTok Shop through affiliates and your team spends its week on sample queues, outreach and reports, I can put the same pieces in place for you:
- Sample approvals on rules your team sets, with edge cases left for a person
- Always-on creator outreach in your brand’s voice
- A creator community with sample requests and coaching built in
- A weekly exec report delivered to Slack
- Content analysis across every creator video
I build it with your team so you own and run it after I leave.