How to Go Viral on TikTok (and Profit From It) — Joseph Choi, Viral App Founders

List the product on TikTok Shop and set an affiliate commission (brands commonly use 15-20%). Creators sign up to affiliate on their own and make videos; TikTok handles payments. Brand pays only commission, no upfront creator fees.

After growing Tabs Chocolate on TikTok Shop, the founder launched an AI homework app and openly applied the same e-commerce short-video marketing to it, building in public. Reasoning: apps have higher margins, exit multiples and retention than e-commerce.

Instead of pitching general health analytics (a weak TikTok pitch), the app emphasizes one novel feature on TikTok: a graph of the user's anxiety levels throughout the day from wearable data. The single viral feature is used as a funnel into the app's full set of features.

Skit format on TikTok and Instagram: a college student sits asleep in a lecture hall with a laptop on their lap running the app, which is recording the lecture. Filmed over the shoulder by a student behind. Caption: "WTF, college isn't even real anymore." Relatable, funny and a bit controversial while showing the product and its value.

Copy existing relatable ADHD content (talking heads or skits: forgetting why you walked into a room, procrastinating). Change only the CTA: "Anyone else relate to this? By the way, I use this app." Plug after viewers have given 50-70% watch time. Variant: open with a pain point, give real tips/hacks, and make the app one tip (e.g. tip 3 of 5). Search #ADHDhack for copy structures.

Dozens of TikTok accounts post similar content. Split screen: gameplay (Minecraft parkour, Subway Surfers style) keeps people watching while the foreground shows Tinder conversations with funny AI-generated pickup lines. Another format is a live screen recording: stuck on a reply, swipe to the app, paste the screenshot, copy the generated line back. The product demo comes at least 50% into the video.

Multiple accounts post 5-10 image TikTok slideshows. First slide: "Here's five controversial rules we had at our wedding" over a wedding photo. Rules like no kids or no taking pictures; the no-pictures rule leads to the last slide: guests used the POV app from the App Store instead. The app is named as part of the story, never "go download this".

The founder makes founder-led TikToks talking about the app, showing Figma screenshots and some beta screenshots, and sends viewers to a waitlist. The app is built after the demand shows up.

Remake Spotify Wrapped for a niche; guest says this goes viral reliably every year. Verse generated an AI image of a bedroom styled after the music the user listens to and used it as the hook for its social app.

A community member paid a single creator $3,000 per month on retainer to post one video every day.

Skip 100K+ follower influencers (media kits, agents, thousands per video). Look for creators under 50K followers who have had one or two viral videos but don't go viral consistently, are charismatic on camera and have few brand deals. In the email or DM, say explicitly you want to pay cash for a video (rate can come later), what the app does, and that their audience fits. The brand acts as director: give them scripts and train them on the app; TikTok's For You feed supplies the audience.

Have the creator open a brand-new TikTok account named closer to your app and post one video per day for a month (30 videos). Retainer of $500-$3,000/month (up to ~$100/video) depending on experience, plus a view bonus of about $1,000 per million views ($500 per 500K) = $1 CPM, since soft CTAs leave little attribution. Agree a brief up front that sets required elements, including exactly how the CTA must appear, so viral videos also convert.

Avoid 'link in bio' or promo-code CTAs for cold For You viewers. Instead, make genuinely useful list videos such as "top five apps I use for tracking my progress in the gym" that name five apps, one of them yours; put more pain point and dream outcome into the hook. Works like 'top 5 credit cards' SEO articles.

For talking-head storytelling videos (e.g. across 100 creators), open with: "Am I the only one that saw that viral video from that [authority figure] about this thing?" Widely used in e-commerce and apps; guest expects it to saturate as viewers catch on.