Vivienne Chan / 30 October 2024 / Categories: Internet, Online Retail, Social Networks, Web Companies

TikTok Seller Center and My TikTok Shop

You are just not going to believe this

When I told my friend what had happened with my TikTok shop she said “I don’t you know why you are shocked, why do you think it’s being banned.”

Like many others a couple of years ago I caught the TikTok wave, people saying they were making pretty decent money with a TikTok shop so I opened one.

I had to jump through quite a few hoops to get my store up and running, I had to buy global product codes and get some images of my products shot and after a few weeks my store was finally approved by TikTok.

At first I did sell. I was making content, doing lives, following the instructions and guidance in the seller centre and it all seemed to be working.

I even had a couple of silly videos reach over 200K views. It made me happy, I told people, look I said I’ve managed to go viral on TikTok.

The problem I didn’t really know or understand why. In retrospect I think perhaps TikTok gives everyone a leg up at the beginning.

I worked pretty hard on it for about a year. The problem was I couldn’t grow, I couldn’t get traffic, sometimes I’d post a video and by the end of the day it had 5 or 6 views when the one the day before had 20K. It just didn’t make any sense to me.

Then just as I was about to quit, TikTok started looking like they were helping me, they started offering their customers discounts on my products but still paying me the same amount, i.e. losing money to get people shopping with me.

This is good, or so I thought but the discounts or the sales didn’t last.

Eventually I realised it just wasn’t worth it. I was making loads of content, doing a lot of work for little or no reward.

Then the fun begins. Has anyone on here actually successfully closed a TikTok shop.

What looks like a straight forward process from the instructions I could not make happen.

You have to access a security code to process your account closure however when you try to add the code from your email, a alpha code (letters not number) TikTok disables your keyboard and only gives you access to numbers so you cannot add the code. Get around that by cutting and pasting and TikTok will not let you scroll down and accept you want to close your account.

Like I said you couldn’t write it.

Then if you actually manage to make that button visible, I tried turning my phone that didn’t work, after a lot of tries to finish the process when I did manage to press it, I got a message, and this is 100% what happened,

Something that read like; we are so happy you have decided to stay.

I haven’t managed to delete my TikTok shop via the TikTok Seller centre.

Anyone who has would love to hear how you did it.