Content creators are driving the economy. But here’s the thing: while Gen Z trusts influencers more than traditional celebrities, they prefer those who seem like real people sharing their actual experiences with products. That’s where Flip comes in. The Flip app was launched in 2021 as a social shopping marketplace that lets users instantly upload and monetize their own TikTok-style product reviews.

All Flip videos aren’t created equally. Some users put hours into creating professionally shot, TikTok-worthy content built to grab users’ attention, while others videotape themselves trying the product for the first time in their bathroom mirror––no production value, no unique product information.

Flip Fave

The app caught on like wildfire. Adobe reports that today, one in eight people in the U.S. use the Flip app, and 58 percent of them use it at least once a week. Adoption is even more significant for next gens; a staggering 13 percent of millennials and 12 percent of Gen Z actively use the app––me among them. At this point, Flip has 5 million user downloads and boasts more than 5,000 featured brands.

On a personal note, I was contacted by the Flip team to create content for the app over a year ago. The staff offered me a stipend of free products––of my choosing––to review and after setting up my profile @YeOldeJG, I realized the potential to earn passive income on the platform. As months passed and the quality of my content improved, I was in awe of the free products I was raking in through the platform. At this point, I earn around $10 a day on Flip, and I’ve earned nearly $2,000 in free products. It’s the free products that are the real differentiator for regular platform users.

Let’s look at the fascinating ways that Flip lets users monetize content creation, take a deeper dive into the app’s value proposition, consumer concerns, what it means for social commerce, and how the platform is evolving.

Is Flip the “Only App with Honest Reviews?”

Flip is self-billed as “the only app with honest reviews.” In fact, Flip was created to mitigate the evils of social commerce: fake reviews, products that don’t match their pictures and counterfeits.

That said, there are a few factors that make this more of an aspirational slogan than fact; if you notice how content creators are monetized, you’d immediately be suspicious of the “honesty” in the reviews.

• Content creators on Flip receive a small commission from the products they sell, and negative reviews don’t make sales.
• App users rate videos with “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” based on whether they find the product desirable, impacting the video’s views and thus the compensation received by that content creator.
• The fastest way to make money on Flip is by becoming a brand’s featured video for a specific product––exposing one’s content to anyone who searches for that thing.
• Brands don’t choose to feature videos containing anything less than glowing accolades, so panning a product makes monetizing that video more challenging.

We also need to talk about how Flip incentivizes referrals. Last year, the LA Times covered the fact that Flip “puts a price tag on friendships.” Indeed, the app offers users a different dollar amount per friend to invite them to the platform, which comes out of the company’s (limited) ad revenue. While app owners don’t share exactly how each friend’s dollar amount is calculated, those with more friends using the platform seem to get a higher invite price than those with fewer.

So, is Flip really an “honest” app, or is it a popularity contest?

New Monetization Tiers for Free Products

When Flip was first launched, app users could choose a certain number of free new products to keep, with the understanding that they’d post video reviews of the content before their new order. This was particularly fascinating due to the fact that the value of free products often significantly exceeded the value of the customer’s cart. For instance, a user could buy $100 worth of groceries and get a $300 pair of sunglasses and a $200 face serum.

This initial structure was a win-win in theory: brands got free promotional content from real people to incentivize conversions; content creators got high-ticket price merchandise to wear around town. But all Flip videos aren’t created equally. Some users put hours into creating professionally shot, TikTok-worthy content built to grab users’ attention, while others videotape themselves trying the product for the first time in their bathroom mirror––no production value, no unique product information.

While this was great for the app users, one imagines that brands giving away $300 products for free took umbrage with the quality of videos they received. And if users can only choose two free products with their order, they’re probably going to go for the most expensive, so smaller ticket-price products probably struggled to get the necessary user-generated content to solidify sales.

Quality control was necessary, so it makes sense that Flip recently launched a new “On the House” tiered product compensation structure. On the House limits the dollar amount of free products that users get with each order, based on which of the 4 tiers––Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Icon––they’ve achieved through their video views and content output. Bigger spenders with more video views get more, or more expensive On the House products.

Is It Economically Viable?

Now for the real question: does Flip have the potential to generate revenue? The answer is complex. The AppLovin marketing platform recently invested $50 million into Flip’s $144 million Series C funding round. This will expand Flip’s audience to AppLovin’s 1.4 billion active daily users and let Flip use its AI advertising engine via AXON Connect.

At this point, Flip has locked down $236 million in venture capital and recently acquired the Curated luxury social commerce platform for a whopping $330 million in stock. Since Flip brands do their own drop shipping, the only factors limiting the app’s growth potential are the quality of the brands that apply to be featured. To ensure product quality, Flip turns down over 70 percent of sellers that apply. The pace of user adoption which, as of now, Flip is still generously incentivizing, also plays a role.

How long until the app reaches peak market saturation? And what will happen when those high-ticket On the House products become even harder for the average user to earn? There’s always the chance that Flip users could slink back to TikTok Shop and Instagram Reels. However, Flip’s business model of real users sharing real reviews does seem to have staying power beyond the free high-ticket products. After all, Flip’s business model definitely resonated with investors at AppLovin and Curated.

While it’s true that some app users would emphatically promote an old doorknob if it would knock a few dollars off their next purchase, many others pride themselves on the authenticity of their product reviews. Flip users can choose the content creators they follow so, like most social commerce platforms, the authenticity a user experiences on Flip comes down to the content (and content creators) that resonate with them.

And what of Flip’s longevity? It’s hard to imagine that Flip users would abandon the platform because they can’t make as much by inviting their friends––particularly not as online communities akin to TikTok’s continue to spring up on the platform. All we can say for sure is that the Flip further eradicated the fourth wall between products and their end consumers. As more next gens adopt the app, the excitement, interactivity, and earning potential of Flip is increasing consumer expectations of social commerce––whether or not the app ever becomes profitable.