If you’re a content creator looking for more ways to work with brands and expand your UGC portfolio, there’s a platform you’re going to keep hearing about: Trybe. People on TikTok have been talking about it constantly, and there’s already a small industry of folks selling courses on how to “master” it. I don’t have a course. I don’t have a PDF guide. What I do have is enough real experience on the platform to walk you through exactly how it works so you can decide for yourself whether it’s worth your time.

I’ve made a little bit of money on Trybe. Not a lot — but here’s the part that matters: I’ve barely put any time into it. That ratio is what got my attention, and it’s why I recorded a full desktop and mobile walkthrough. Below is everything I covered, plus the strategy notes I’d give a friend who was signing up today.

Table of Contents

What Trybe Actually Is

Trybe is a free platform — no cost to join, no subscription — designed to connect content creators directly with brands. You’re still making UGC-style content for products, so if you’ve done TikTok Shop or Amazon Creator Connections, the muscle memory transfers immediately.

The payment structures vary by brand. Some pay a flat fee just for making the video. Some do a flat fee plus a percentage of the ad spend they put behind it. Others go straight percentage of GMV — I’ve seen 10%, 15%, and some that climb significantly higher than that. You can see each brand’s structure before you ever apply, which I appreciate.

Why Trybe Is Different From TikTok Shop

Here’s the single biggest difference, and it’s the reason I bothered making a video about this at all: virality is taken out of the equation.

On TikTok, your video has to get pushed to a lot of people by the algorithm before you make anything. You’re gambling on reach. On Trybe, the brand picks your video up directly. They can pay you simply because you made a good video. Nobody has to see it organically for you to get paid.

The second difference is niche relevance. On TikTok you can make a random video about a tin of mints and the algorithm might hand you a windfall — the brand had nothing to do with it. On Trybe, brands are actively reviewing applications and accepting creators whose existing work lines up with their products. That’s a meaningful shift in how you should approach it. I would not apply to a women’s clothing brand, because there’s no world where that makes sense for my portfolio and they’re never going to pick me anyway.

The third: the interface is clean. TikTok Shop’s creator side has always felt like a lot of scrolling and clicking through layers to find anything. Trybe’s desktop layout is genuinely simple — home, discover brands, analytics, payouts, chats, profile. That’s it.

Setting Up Your Profile and Portfolio

Your profile is your application. Trybe gives you up to five portfolio slots where you upload examples of past work, and those five videos are what brands look at when deciding whether to let you into their Trybe.

Here’s how I’d approach those five slots:

  1. Show some variety, but not chaos. Mine include clothing shot in a home gym setting, gym equipment, a shaker cup, a purse, and a beauty product. Different categories, consistent production quality.
  2. Niche down a little. Complete diversification actually hurts you. If a brand can look at your five videos and immediately understand what you do, your acceptance odds go up.
  3. Check your “areas of focus” setting. Mine somehow says skincare and I don’t remember choosing that. Go look at yours — it’s shaping what brands think you’re about.
  4. Treat them as sales assets, not archives. These are the only five things most brands will ever see from you.

If you’re an Amazon influencer, you almost certainly already have footage that fits. Pulling your best-performing product videos into a portfolio is exactly the kind of asset-reuse thinking that separates creators who scale from creators who grind. It’s the same philosophy behind how I built Oink — find the leverage you already have and stop starting from zero every time.

How to Find and Apply to Brands

The Discover Brands section is where you’ll spend most of your time. Important: you have to apply to be part of a brand’s Trybe. You can’t just show up and start firing content at fifty companies hoping something sticks. They review your application — which is really just your portfolio — and decide whether to accept you.

When you open a brand, you get their details, their commission structure, and — this is the useful part — how busy and popular they are. Cuts Clothing, for example, pays 10% of GMV on ads run against your content, but they’ve already accepted 3,200 creators and taken 7,300 submissions. That’s a crowded room.

Which is why my main tactical advice is this: work the “New on Trybe” section. It’s positioned near the front for a reason. Newer brands aren’t oversaturated with creators and submissions yet, and your odds of both acceptance and actual usage are dramatically better. I found one with only 23 creators in it and multiple products needing content. That’s the kind of listing to jump on.

A few more things I learned the hard way:

  • When you hit Request, you can attach an additional video specifically for that brand. Brands don’t always click through to your portfolio, so attaching something relevant is worth the extra thirty seconds.
  • Prefer brands with multiple products needing content. One-product brands aren’t bad, but multi-product brands give you options once you’re in.
  • There’s no way to sort the brand list. You scroll and take what you find. Budget the time.
  • Don’t mass-apply. It gets overwhelming fast and the acceptance rate on irrelevant applications is basically zero. Apply where the fit is obvious.
  • Expect silence. I have five applications sitting out right now, some from weeks ago. Ignored or unchecked — either way, that’s normal.

Requesting Samples and Submitting Content

Once a brand accepts you, they show up under “My Brands,” and this is where Trybe gets genuinely good. The sample program has been the strongest part of the platform for me. If I’m getting accepted, I’m usually getting product.

The mobile app is where I do most of this, and the layout is nearly identical to desktop. Open a brand you’ve been accepted into, hit Request Samples, then New Request. You’ll see the products available, pick your variant (you have to select one even when there’s only a single option), continue to shipping, and submit. Not every request gets approved — I’m running about 50/50 — but when it is, you’ll typically get a shipping notification by email.

Uploading content is straightforward: hit Create Content, choose single or multiple upload, and send it through. One expectation to set now — approved does not mean paid. I have submissions marked approved that the brand simply hasn’t run anything against. There’s no obligation for them to use your video, and no required timeframe. Some of what you submit will just sit there. That’s the game.

Reverse-Engineering What Actually Converts

This is the feature almost nobody talks about, and it’s the most valuable thing on the platform.

Once you’re accepted into a brand, you can view the top-performing videos other creators have submitted — filtered down to a specific product if you want. That means you can see exactly which creative the brand is putting its ad budget behind before you shoot a single frame.

I’m not telling you to copy someone’s script. But you can absolutely study the hook structure, the pacing, the angle, and the format that’s already winning, then bring your own version of it. That’s not cheating — that’s research, and it’s the same instinct that makes a good Amazon influencer good. Find the demand signal first, then create against it. If you want that same approach applied to Amazon product research, that’s exactly what Oink was built to do.

Is Trybe Worth Your Time?

My honest take: yes, with realistic expectations.

I haven’t made much money on Trybe — but I also haven’t spent much time on it, and the money I did make was easy. The platform is easy to navigate, it’s free to join, the samples have been legitimately good, and removing virality from the equation is a real structural advantage for creators who make solid content but don’t consistently hit the algorithm lottery.

It’s not a replacement for Amazon. It’s a supplemental channel — another place to point the content you’re already producing and another way to get product in your hands. For a free signup and an afternoon of setup, that math works.

And you’re going to hear about it regardless. Between the TikTok chatter and the growing pile of people selling Trybe courses — some of whom I’m not convinced have actually used the platform — this one’s going mainstream. Better to form your own opinion now.

Here’s the full walkthrough, desktop and mobile, if you want to see every screen for yourself:

If you want to try it, you can sign up for Trybe free here. That’s an affiliate link, and there’s no cost to you for joining.

And if your main engine is still Amazon — which for most of us it should be — make sure the products you’re making content for are actually worth the effort. Oink is the Chrome extension I built to find high-commission, low-competition Amazon products fast, so you spend your shooting time on things that actually pay. Come check it out at oinkforinfluencers.com.

I'm an Amazon Influencer since 2023 and blogger since 2021. My goal is to help you succeed in the Amazon Influencer Program.

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