Shopee’s Free Sample feature allows affiliates to request, test, and review products for free from a wide array of Shopee sellers to promote their shops and products.
Whitelisted affiliates can simply request a free sample via the Affiliate Portal. Sellers will review the request and, once approved, will ship the product.
Once the product is received, affiliates can test out the item and post a review about the sample. The posted content is then submitted to sellers in the form of a screenshot or post URL so that the seller can see what content is posted about them.
Requesting a Free Sample
Free Samples are only available to selected users at this time. Whitelisted affiliates will see a “Request Sample” button at the bottom of each Affiliate product detail page.
Please note, all free sample requests require participating affiliates to post content about the free sample on their social media. Proof of posting must be provided to sellers via the Affiliate Portal in order to complete the free sample request. Failure to do so may result in revoked access to the feature or other penalties at the discretion of Shopee.
Once a request has been submitted, a new page will become available. The “Free Sample” page is accessible via the homepage and houses all ongoing or completed free sample requests.
All Free Sample Requests have four stages; Request Submission, Product Shipment, Product Receiving, Content Publishing & Link Submission.
Each step has various actions needed from either party which we will go through step-by-step now.
No. | Step | Project Status | Description | Action Required by KOL |
1 | Submit a free sample request | To Approve | KOLs are able to submit free sample requests to sellers of their choosing. | Submit a free sample request to the desired shop and wait for approval. |
2 | Seller to review the request | Sellers are able to review each request individually and approve if they believe it is a good fit for them. | ||
4 | Seller to ship free product sample | To Ship | Seller to ship free product samples to the delivery address. | No action required. Wait for the seller to ship the free sample. |
5 | Receive the free product sample | To Receive | KOLs to indicate the product has been received. | Once the product has been received, mark the product as “Received” in the app. |
6 | Create content | To Publish | KOLs to create content about the product | Create content using the free sample received, ensuring the sample is properly included in the content. |
7 | Post content & submit post links | Post the approved content to social media and submit links for the sellers’ view. | Post the content and submit the links via the “Submit Links” action on the app. | |
9 | Request fulfilled | Completed | Once links have been submitted the request is fulfilled! | No action required. The project is complete |
Upon submitting a new free sample request, a new request card will be displayed in the My Free Sample page. During this stage, the seller will review the request and approve if the requestor is the right fit for their shop brand. There is no action required.
Once the seller approves the request they will proceed to ship the free product sample. No action required. Wait for the seller to ship the free sample.
Once the shipment is enroute and has been received, indicate the product has been received.
Now that the product has been received, create content for social media that contains the free sample and information about the product. Once the content is ready, post the content and submit the links via the “Submit Links” action on the app.
Once links have been submitted, the free sample request has been fulfilled!
Requests may be cancelled during the “To Approve”, “To Receive”, and “To Publish” stages.