How to find creators for your Shopify brand every month

You have a Shopify store, a product you believe in and a loose plan to work with creators. So you open Instagram, start scrolling, and an hour later you have four names in a spreadsheet and no idea whether any of them will reply.

That is not sourcing. That is browsing.

Sourcing is a process you can repeat every month, with a shortlist at the end of it and a rough idea of who will actually post. Here is the order we run it in.

How do you find creators for your Shopify brand?

Work in three stages, in this order: publish a campaign and let creators apply to it, use discovery to fill the gaps applications leave, then hand-invite a small number of specific people. Applications come first because they surface creators who already want your product, which removes most of the chasing. Discovery comes second because you now know what a good applicant looks like and can search for more of the same. Invitations come last and stay small, because personalised outreach is the most expensive hour in the whole process and should be spent on the people you actually want.

Most brands do this backwards. They start with cold DMs to the biggest accounts in their category, get ignored, and conclude that creator marketing does not work for them.

Why start with applications instead of outreach?

A creator who applies has already read what you are offering, looked at your product and decided it fits their feed. You are choosing between people who said yes rather than persuading people who never asked.

The trade is that applications only arrive if there is something to apply to. That means a live campaign with a clear brief: which product, what you want made, which platform, and what the creator gets. On Linkable, a new campaign starts pulling first applications within 24 hours, and creators can be matched to it automatically rather than waiting to stumble across your brand.

Be specific about the deal in the brief. Gifted product, a fixed fee, affiliate commission on tracked sales, or a combination. Vagueness here is the main reason good creators skip a campaign; they cannot work out whether it is worth their afternoon.

One more thing worth doing before you open applications: write down who you are not looking for. A supplements brand that only wants creators who will film themselves actually taking the product has a much easier review process than one that just wants "content".

What should you look for beyond follower count?

Follower count tells you how many people might see a post. It tells you nothing about whether those people buy things, trust the creator, or care about your category. We have watched small accounts out-sell accounts many times their size on the same campaign, and the difference is almost always in the comments.

Read the comments on the last five posts. If they are conversations (questions about where something is from, replies from the creator, people tagging friends) the audience is real and engaged. If they are strings of emoji and generic praise, be careful.

• Does the creator already recommend products, and do people respond when they do?
• Is the audience plausibly in your category, not just adjacent to it?
• Does their existing content look like something you would be happy to repost?
• Do they post consistently enough that one collaboration will not be their only post that month?
• Have they handled a brand collaboration before, or will this be their first?

The last point is not a filter, it is a workload question. First-timers often produce the most honest content and need more hand-holding on briefs and deadlines. Our guide to onboarding your first 10 creators covers the difference in practice.

The five-minute check per applicant

Open the profile, read the last five posts, read the comments on two of them, and check whether their audience looks like your customers. Then decide. If you cannot decide in five minutes, that is a no for this campaign and possibly a yes for a later one, so keep a maybe list rather than deleting them.

How do you find creators when applications are not enough?

Applications skew towards whoever is already active on the platform in your category, which leaves gaps. Maybe you get plenty of skincare creators but nobody who films in a kitchen, or plenty of UK applicants and none in the market you are trying to grow.

Fill the gaps with deliberate search rather than more scrolling. Filter by category, platform, location and audience size, then judge with the same five-minute check. Linkable's matching does part of this for you by surfacing creators who fit the brand and the campaign, which is faster than keyword-hunting hashtags.

Two sources brands consistently forget. First, your own customers: people who already bought and posted about it are the warmest creators you will ever contact. Second, the accounts that have tagged you without being asked. Both groups have a real relationship with the product, which shows up in the content.

What makes a creator accept your invitation?

Short messages that prove you looked. Name the specific post that made you reach out, name the product you want them to try and why it suits their audience, then state the offer plainly: free product, a fee, commission on tracked sales, or a mix.

Keep the first ask small. One video or one set of photos, one deadline, one link. Long briefs with mood boards and five deliverables get ignored by exactly the creators you want, because they read as unpaid work.

Send invitations in small batches so you can actually reply within a day when someone says yes. Ten thoughtful invitations beat a hundred copy-pastes, and the reply rate difference is not subtle.

How many creators should you source each month?

Enough that a few good ones survive the drop-off. Some approved creators go quiet, some post late, and some produce content that does nothing. Plan for that instead of being surprised by it.

Say you run a coffee brand doing 300 orders a month and you want eight usable pieces of content plus some tracked sales. Open a gifted campaign with a clear brief, review the applications that arrive in the first few days, and approve twelve creators rather than eight. Send the product through your Shopify catalogue so the orders are created on approval, give everyone a unique link and code, then look at what came back after three weeks.

In that cohort you might get ten posts, of which three or four are genuinely good, and one creator who drives most of the tracked sales on their own. That creator is the reason you did the exercise. Move them onto a paid or affiliate arrangement, repost their content, and go looking for more people who look like them next month.

Your monthly volume should match your capacity to brief and pay people properly, which is why Linkable plans are sized by collaborations per month rather than by seats. If ten a month is your realistic ceiling, run ten well.

Where to start this week

Pick one product, ideally your best repeat purchase, and write a brief for it that a stranger could act on without asking questions. Then get it live so applications start arriving while you do the rest.

1. Write one campaign brief: product, deliverable, platform, deadline and offer.
2. Publish it and review applications with the five-minute check.
3. Search for five creators who fill the gaps applications left, and invite them by hand.
4. Approve more creators than the number of posts you need, then track what each one drives.

Once the first cohort has posted, read the per-creator results before you source again, and use them to rewrite your brief. If you would rather have someone else run the sourcing and the briefs, the Linkable team can do it for you through our managed service. Either way, the sequence stays the same: applications, discovery, invitations, then repeat with better filters. Our creator activation playbook picks up from the moment the first creators are approved.

Frequently asked questions

Should I offer gifted product or pay creators when I first start sourcing?

Gifted product is the cheapest way to test a lot of creators quickly and find out who produces content and sales. Once you know which creators perform, move those specific people onto a fixed fee, affiliate commission, or both. Paid arrangements work best on evidence rather than guesses.

How long does it take to build a first shortlist?

Usually a few days rather than weeks, because the review is the slow part, not the waiting. On Linkable, first applications to a new campaign arrive within 24 hours, so most of your time goes on checking profiles and approving people.

Do micro creators work better than large accounts for Shopify brands?

Often yes, because smaller audiences tend to be more engaged and the creator is more likely to reply and post on time. The more useful test is whether their audience buys things they recommend, which you can see in the comments.

What do I say to a creator I do not want to work with?

Reply briefly, say the campaign is not the right fit and that you will keep them in mind for future products. Keep them on a maybe list, since a creator who is wrong for a serum launch may be right for a body care one.

How do I know which creators actually drove sales?

Give every creator a unique tracking link and discount code so orders are attributed to them individually. Reporting then shows content delivered, reach, engagement and tracked sales per creator, which is what you use to decide who to re-book.