welcome back to another episode of On the House. I am your host, Amanda S. Holmes, and in case you're new here, is a podcast brought to you by No Media House. I just so happen to be the founder and CEO of said No Media House and on the House is a podcast all about. Influencer industry insights that probably should not be free if I'm being completely honest, but with the big old giving heart that I have, I just can't help but take to the mic and share all the things with you guys. And today we are back with a part two of a series that I started almost six, maybe nine months ago. All about the ultimate showdown between LTK and shop, my So today I have some fun new updates and I cannot wait to give you guys a side-by-side peek about what's been going on behind the scenes with these two companies and my hot take on all of these changes. Welcome to On The House, a podcast by creators. For creators. Grab a seat at the table where we're breaking barriers in the influencer industry and serving up information that probably should not be free. Here you're going to get real unfiltered conversations about the creator economy, growing your business, keeping up with the latest trends and what that means for you. Grab that coffee friend, because we are diving on in. Now let's start off with the most recent update that actually landed in my inbox. Literally this morning, and that is Shop Mice. Recent rollout of a high profile summer launch, centered on new brand features, creator engagement tools, and a refresh performance first marketing push. This was all wrapped up into one singular launch of their brand new app. Now up until this point. Let's do a little backstory shop. My has been riding the momentum from a 77 million series B round of funding that closed back in January of 2025, which was this year. And at the time of this recording it is July of 2025. So over the past six months they. Out their funding in January, received 77 million in funding and have been using that to build out. The benefits and the features and all of the things that we have all been so excited to see come to fruition fueling automated creator performance tools like Lookbooks and opportunities which are built inside of the Shop Mind platform. One of the coolest things about their summer launch is it not only introduces enhancement in things like creator gifting, campaign automation and brand creator matching peaked for seasonal trends and high visibility gifting programs, but the biggest thing that they launched is the. Reinvention of their app. Now I'm gonna put a pause here for a second because if you go back and listen to my last episode all about the ultimate showdown between shop my and LTK, the difference between the two platforms really came down to two indicators. One LTK had a very, and has a very robust shopping focused app. I want you to keep that in mind as we get into the rest of this episode 'cause that is gonna be key here. And number two, shop my had very transparent data and the ability for creators to connect with brands in a way like they've never been able to do before. LTK believes that all of its data is proprietary and does not belong to the creator, and therefore they gate keep the majority of data that they have on creators. Now, they will share this with brands on the creator when brands are deciding to land partnerships. However, this is not typically shared with the average creator, which I know sounds counterintuitive, and it makes things like. Strategizing and tracking, and as we get into paid media, don't even get me started. It makes things very difficult as. Somebody who's trying to build a business around the analytics. Now, one thing that they did get right was their shopping focus platform, because that's what drives a lot of their sales for the creators, and it makes it really easy for people to find new creators to follow to favorite their favorite items. And to have a hub where they can go and just purely shop their creator's favorite things. It also makes it really easy as creators share a large quantity of content for people to go back and search and find that without having to go down the rabbit hole of a social media platform. Now that was Lt K's big winner shop's. Big winner was the fact that it had higher commission rates for affiliate marketing brands. So for instance. If you went on LTK right now, one, it is very difficult to even find what the commission rates are, but if you look at it, they all say up to X percentage variable rate, meaning that LTK basically gets to decide what rate you're going to have based on what they feel is best. Is also gives them the autonomy to change the rate at any point in time. Which could be good or bad. On the flip side, if you go to Shop nine, you go to link something, it automatically will show you right there, clear as day on your main homepage. On the backend, let's say I'm linking to J. Crew, I type in my J Crew Link. I create the affiliate link and it'll tell me whatever the percentage is. I can't remember off the top of my head. I think it might be like 12%. And then sometimes brands will run promotions where. They're trying to promote a specific new line or product or something along those lines. So they will increase the commission for a specific timeframe. And Shop Mite does a really good job of letting you know what the brand is, what the increase is, and what that timeframe is so that. If that's a brand that falls within your umbrella as a creator that you typically share, let's say your favorite denim jacket is from J. Crew. You own that denim jacket you wear all the time. You decide to share it during that timeframe. Now you get not just the 12%, but let's say 15 or 17%, which I know doesn't sound like a big deal, but when you compound that with a large audience, it can actually be a significant amount of. Commission earned for that creator. So those were the two big differences between these major players. But we've seen a huge shift with the new shop, my summer rollout launch that they just announced. So let's dive into what exactly that includes a little bit more into detail. Shop. My summer launch kicked off with an article that landed in my inbox, and I'm gonna grab some information straight from that article and I wanna share it with you guys. So at the very top of that article, it says, the future of shopping is human. Introducing three new ways to earn this summer. The future of shopping isn't driven by algorithms, it's shaped by you. So what Shop Maya is saying here is that. We're putting this back on the creator. This is our everyday high performing lifestyle creator that's not burning and turning products necessarily. They're monetizing their content in their life versus typically LT K's top 50 creators are burning and churn through products. They're doing tryon halls, they're doing outfits, they're styling pieces multiple ways, and they're sharing a high volume of links. Whereas shop my is targeting a completely different type of creator, and it truly is the lifestyle creator, and it's what they're saying in this statement. The future shopping isn't driven by algorithms, it's shaped by you. It's saying that, Hey, we recognize social media can be. A little bit of a bumpy terrain depending on who you ask, but ultimately it's up to the creator and it's shaped by them, the shopping habits that then trickle to these other platforms. And what they're saying is they're giving the power back to the creator with these. Three things that they introduce. So they're saying the future of shopping isn't driven by algorithms, it's shaped by you. And these are the new features we want to roll out to help you as the creator to earn. Number one is Reamp storefronts. So up until this point shop my had what was called a storefront, which is basically a URL that existed on the internet where you could save affiliate links to your storefront and organize them. You could connect your social media accounts. Let's say your TikTok, YouTube or an Instagram creator, you would link up those socials and then you would be able to pull whatever you post in on those platforms into shop my and link those posts so that people could go to your shop, my quote, storefront and shop your, not only your content, but then also your favorite products. And again. This worked really well for somebody who is not sharing a high volume of products. They're monetizing their life, and then they might be sharing curated product groupings. A great example of this is a lifestyle creator, but then they have their. Must have clean beauty fades in its 12 products, and it doesn't really change all that often. This was really great for them. But what they're saying is now they've revamped the storefronts to be more powerful than ever because they understand that there is more than one type of creator, and there's also more than one type of way that people. Want to shop content. Up until this point, you had to know a individual creator's URL and go to that URL to be able to shop this restaurant, and there wasn't really a way to bounce between multiple creators. Storefronts the second feature that they added is shopper wishlist. It says, your audience can now create dedicated shopper accounts built specifically for them to interact with your links from here. They can save products for later, so you can earn commission. Once they're ready to buy. What this is saying is very similar to the LTK app, if you've ever used that one before, you can go in there and heart something or create a quote wishlist. Let's say that my favorite creator shares a really cute outfit and in that outfit, there's this great pair of jeans, but I'm on the go. I'm about to grab my kids from school and I wanna look at those jeans. I might wanna purchase them when they go on sale, but I'm not gonna like immediately go to checkout. Right now, the way that I use the app is I will heart that, and then when I'm in the shopping mindset of like, okay, let me sit down on my computer and place my order for these jeans that I know I wanna wear for fall. I will go back to that wishlist and I will purchase from there. This is allowing you to do that same user behavior, but within the shop, my account, this is huge because a lot of users, as they're scrolling social media and they. Are taken to an external link. They're not always right, then primed and ready to buy. This allows 'em to save your links for later, and if they shop through that wishlist and the link was saved from your piece of content or your storefront, you'll still earn commission when they click that. So this is a really big deal. This is gonna help increase affiliate commission for creators and. It's gonna help with long-term conversions, but also with discoverability, because you'll be able to search. Not just the individual creator's storefront that you are taken to, but let's say, I'm just looking for, I'm just gonna go with the gene example. Let's say I'm looking for a pair of barrel jeans and I'm like, oh, those are cute, but maybe they don't have my size, or they're too expensive, or something along those lines. There's. A barrier as to why I don't wanna purchase those immediately. I can search barrel jeans and see 10 other creators that may have shared different styles of barrel jeans, see which ones feel like my style, and then purchase that way. And this is a really great way to be discovered by other people on another platform that doesn't necessarily take more work. So this is huge. The third feature that they rolled out and. I think this is one of the biggest ones is called circles. Shoppers can add you to the curated group of trusted taste makers to ensure they never missed your links. So essentially what this allows 'em to do is they can add, let's say I have my 10 favorite creators that I follow on Instagram. I can add them to my circle, like my inner circle, which is such a cute play on words by the way. Love that. For them. Then when I log into my shop, my app, I will see the content from my circles. This is very similar to LTK where when I log into the LTK app, any of the kudos that I'm following, they will typically show up on my home feed. The difference is. Currently LTK has what's called an auto follow. Let's say that I look at somebody on Instagram, they share a cute pair of barrel jeans, I click on the barrel jeans and it takes me to the LTK app. If I am not following them in the LTK app, it will automatically have me follow them, which sometimes is great because you discover somebody new and you sometimes you forget to hit the follow button. And then other times I go to my home feed and I'm like, who are all these random people? So that is because of the auto follow, which is great if you're trying to grow on the LTK platform, but can also be hindering at the same time. This does not have an auto follow, so people will have to make the conscious decision to. Add you to their circle, which probably means they're going to have less people that they're following, but will be highly engaged, which I anticipate seeing an increase in commission for creators if somebody adds 'em to their circle. Now, from a strategy standpoint, my number one advice that I can give right here is one, you need to log into these platforms and get super familiar with each of these different features as the user, not just the creator. And then you need to start educating your audience on how to use each one of these and why they should use them. Now I wanna dive a little deeper into some of the specifics of the storefront updates. On the shop my side, and then we're gonna get into all of LT K's updates and how they stack up to each other, because I find this to be very fascinating. Inside of the revamp storefronts category, they now have storefront search shoppers can search within a creator storefront to instantly find all of their recommendations. This is an AI powered tool that allows shoppers to locate. Specific products like let's say white sneakers or quilted handbag without needing to scroll or ask for links. This is extremely helpful, especially if somebody is trained to go to your storefront, knows that you shared the white sneakers and wants the link to it, but that was six weeks ago and they're just now seeing that piece of content. This is extremely helpful for them because. If they cannot find it easily, then they're just going to give up. That's the reality because people just don't have the time or the patience to. Find the items and what if you shared 10 pairs of white sneakers and they don't know which one it is. So this AI powered tool is going to be super helpful on the back end of things, this is also helpful for us because one of my favorite features of the LTK app is being able to search old pieces of content and give it new life. Another feature of the storefront update is platform search. So for trendsetters and icons. Now inside of Shop Mind, there are different tiers. You'll have to look and see which tier you are to know if you unlock access to this. But it says, for trendsetters and icons. Storefronts are now searchable and across the entire shop. My platform shoppers and other creators can discover your recommendations when searching for products, categories, or styles. This obviously expands the reach without any extra effort for the content creator, which gives them a greater chance to be discovered by new people who may be interested in them. Now, I'm curious to see what this looks like. I do find it fascinating that you have to be in the top tiers. It makes sense because basically what they don't want to happen is somebody just creates an account, they never post. They have two links, and then when people are searching, that's what's popping up. They want it to be true content creators that are adding value to their audience. So I actually think this is a really great. Decision on their part, and the most popular is that they will automatically sort all of your links so your audience can see what other shoppers are loving from you at no additional effort. So this is probably also an AI backed tool without them saying that. But basically, if you've ever been in an a lot of. Different apps are like this. If you go to Netflix for instance, at the very top it says Trending right now, and there'll be the top 10 TV shows slash movies that are trending. That is an AI powered tool that it's basically just like an algorithm where it's saying, Hey, everybody else is loving this. You may also love this too. That's what they're guaranteeing with this most popular section. LTK has something very similar. It says trending right now, and basically whichever posts have the most amount of engagement, those will end up popping up at the top of their LTK shop. It's a very similar feature, so love this, love that it requires no extra work. Now another feature of the storefront updates is what's called the latest finds. Now all of your links will automatically populate into the latest finds tab. Which when you go into the app is actually the very first tab. This tab will include visible collections and quick links so your audience can see all links in one place. You can update these settings to refine what is visible. So basically if you want people to just always have your most recent links, then this is great if you're somebody that only links things that you want your audience to see. This makes a lot of sense. But if you're somebody that might be more niche in, let's say a fashion or home decor niche, you're probably sharing a lot of links. And as you're linking things, that is for content that is in the future. So you'll wanna just adjust the settings on the backend so that maybe it doesn't show everything that you link in real time. This is just my advice. Speaking from experience, some of the storefronts look a little wonky right now. Now there's also what's called the for you feature. And as shoppers build their wishlist, this tab will update to highlight the products from your links they're most likely to love. This is obviously powered by an algorithm that learns their taste over time, but this can also be really powerful. So the reason that we're going over this is because these are really big indicators and. This gives us insight into the mindset behind Shop, my and the future direction in which they're going. On the front end, they're really trying to increase the user experience, which then increases the creator's overall business and conversions, which means higher commission rates overall. And the more that those numbers increase, the more likely brands are to work with creators, as you guys know. One of my favorite pieces about Shop Mite is how easily accessible it is to get to brands and land collaborations. Another one of the features that they chat about is. The ability to automate gifting, and there's some really cool things on the back end. You'll have to poke around a little bit as a creator, but you guys are going to love these updates. So basically their whole premise is they're looking for more passive income, less manual work. I love, love, love that they see the value of AI and are integrating it into their platform in the capacity in which it makes the most sense. Higher intent. So shoppers find what they're looking for faster and making them more likely to convert, which obviously we just chatted through. And then expand visibility they understand that links are important and now they can surface in product searches and SEO pages across shop. My, which we're gonna do a whole episode on the podcast here within the next couple weeks, all about the shift between social media and social searching. Which I can't wait to dive into with you guys, so that is something to look forward to. Another big thing is the shopper wishlist. The wishlist, say hello to lasting earnings and longer attribution windows, which an attribution window, in case you're not familiar with that term, means that. Let's say somebody clicks on a link to target with your link, there might be a seven day attribution window, meaning that that person must purchase within seven days for you to commission credit for that sale. Longer attribution windows means higher chances for earning increased conversion, increased commission. Not every purchase happens in the moment like we talked about. I rarely purchase in the moment unless I'm just, on a whim, like, absolutely I need this. And it's under probably a certain price point, in which case it was likely on Amazon. Now your audience can save products to a wishlist from their shopper account and return to buy when they're ready, whether they purchase tomorrow or in three months. You'll still own commission. The reason that they're able to do such a long attribution window, this is because it's inside of their app, so they have control over that. Somebody could save your item and a year from now purchase that item. Let's say it's a Christmas tree. They saved it from last year. They're purchasing it this year. You will still get credit. How amazing is that? This matters to you because it captures long teal purchases, especially for high consideration items like home luxury and skincare. We want this to be part of your everyday strategy when you are thinking through, okay, I know my volume is not gonna be super high, but let's say that. There's a handbag that is typically in a larger price point than your average consumer is purchasing. You know, your average price point for your customer is $150, and this bag happens to be $500, but this bag is 20% off, still higher than the one 50, but it's 20% off. So those people that might be buying it and have it in their wishlist, if you remind them that that's on sale. Boom, this long tail purchase is exactly what they're talking about. This is also designed for real shopping habits, saving first, buying later. And the best part is all of this runs in the background. If you ask me, I think these are exactly what shop my users. As a consumer and also as a creator. We're looking for, and I'm super excited about this for them and for you guys. The last one I wanna touch on a little bit deeper is circles. Circles are curated shoppable feeds where your recommendations appear alongside other trusted pacemakers. Not as competition, but as social proof. Shoppers can add you to their inner circle to never miss a link, and your recs can now surface in more places, including SEO pages and product discovery searches. I personally love. Inspiration and being inspired and finding new people to follow. And sometimes that's challenging in social media apps, but this is giving people the ability to do that without having to rely on a social algorithm to feed them information that may or may not be in line with what they're looking for. And this is a big deal because of compounding influence. Appearing alongside other trusted voices drives confidence and conversion. Yes, please. Recurring revenue from Evergreen content. Your past links keep earning as shoppers rediscover them later, which is huge. Our creators work so hard to pump out a high volume of content. There's nothing I want more for them, that content to live on and like breathe new life into it. And I love that shop might understand this and not to mention passive growth Attribution is built in, so if your link drove the click you get credit, which is huge. Now, obviously this is also big for the consumers too, but I'm just so excited what this means for our creators. Now let's talk about how this stacks up to the changes that LTK has been making. LT K's latest moves on the flip side. LT K, which has been like the titan of creator commerce, has been pivoting from a shopping only model towards a richer lifestyle and social platform. I find this to be fascinating because they basically built their entire business on creating this shopping platform that is highly optimized and they're constantly making updates to it and tweaking it and all the things. But in July, 2025. Earlier this month, LTK rolled out a new video first consumer app, allowing users to discover creators via interest, location, and connect through public profiles and chat. Essentially. What they did is they shifted from an a shopping only platform, and they relaunched their app to host everyday content, parenting, travel, cooking, social connectivity beyond purely tagging the products and moving on. It used to be you couldn't upload a piece of content to the LTK app without having a product tagged to it. You had to have at least one product tagged to it, otherwise you couldn't hit the post button. Now you can have comments on your post. You can post without any sort of product link to it. And they even have like a baby built in editor where you can kind of edit your post before you post it. Very similar to like what Instagram first initially launched with. So this makes me think that they. Want to move towards a social media type app where instead of logging onto Instagram or TikTok or YouTube, people will build the habit of logging onto LTK. For their entertainment slash shopping. Has this user behavior actually started to happen? I'm not really sure. I'm excited to see what the data says about this. I have not noticed a shift on the backend in terms of analytics of how this has impacted in of our clients positively or negatively. I think it's just kind of neutral, but I find this to be interesting. Now, I will say I don't see many creators. Utilizing the app in that way. They're not posting content with zero links, and they're not doing it with the intention to connect with their community. They're still very much using their social media platforms for that connectivity and selling, and then they're bringing them over to LTK for the affiliate length. TBD, the jury's still out as to if this is actually gonna change or not, but. Good for them and wanting to move in that direction. Okay. Now what's interesting is LTK still continues to dominate over 8,000 retailers in house that you're able to link to. They have over 40 million monthly users and more than 5 billion in annual creator driven sales, and roughly 38% reach among Gen Z and millennial women inside of the us. This was data that I grabbed from the back end of their website, I'm assuming that it's credible. I'm curious to see at the end of this year how that data changes and if the rise of other platforms like Shop Mys new revamp app actually impacts this or makes them evolve in a newer way. We will see what continues to unfold. But I have to say I love nothing more than a little bit of healthy competition. I feel like LCKA has been on their toes now more than ever, as. The rise of AI has continued to evolve, and as more and more affiliate marketing platforms pop up and try to discover their footing in the space, and I feel like it's challenging the status quo of LTK because it's making them think, okay, like who are we? What do we really wanna be known for in this space? Is the path that we've kind of forged for ourself truthfully the path that we wanna continue to go down? Or do we wanna pivot a little bit? And it'll be interesting to see. As shop my kind of rides out this last funding round. What pops up over the next six months, this last quarter of the year will be very interesting to see what sort of features they roll out. What's their audience saying based on the new. Updates that they just launched and what that actually ends up looking like from a numbers perspective. You guys know I am a data girl through and through, so I wanna see, they're telling me that this is going to mean higher conversion, higher commission. I wanna see the data. So I'm super excited to continue to watch this play out and stay tuned for a part three of Ltk Versus Shot My The Ultimate Showdown and also. I'm super excited to hear your thoughts on LTK versus Shop. My what is your favorite? Have you used both? Do you use both? Like are you interested in possibly diving into one versus another? If you haven't tried out, shop my, I definitely recommend it. I'll put a link down in the show notes for you guys below with our affiliate link to join the platform and it is super user friendly. I've been so impressed. Just. How easy it is to navigate on the backend. Of course, there are a few things that I would love to tweak just because I spend so much time on the backend, but overall I would get them a nine out of 10 when it comes to user ability. Be sure to check out that link if you're interested but I think things are about to get really interesting and I'd love to hear your thoughts. So shoot me a message over on Instagram at NATO Media House and I'll see you guys next week. Bye for now.