The short answer: LTK is the established giant for fashion and lifestyle creators who want a shoppable storefront inside a consumer app. ShopMy is the challenger loved by beauty and wellness creators for its brand relationships and gifting marketplace. Both are application-gated, both skew fashion and beauty, and both are storefronts: they wait for fans to browse. If you are in another niche, below their bar, or tired of curating shelves, the third option is an AI link in bio that earns from the questions your fans already ask.
Here is the honest comparison.
What LTK does well
LTK (formerly rewardStyle and LikeToKnow.it) is the incumbent of creator commerce. Fans install the LTK app and shop creator storefronts directly, which means LTK brings its own audience of shoppers, not just a tool. Commissions are set per brand and typically land in the low-to-mid double digits for fashion and home retailers.
Where it shines:
- A shopping destination of its own. Your storefront can be discovered inside the LTK app, not just through your bio link.
- Retail depth in fashion, beauty and home. The brand catalog in these verticals is the deepest in the industry.
- A mature payout machine. Established reporting, established brand budgets.
Where it hurts: acceptance is selective and the platform is built around polished, high-output fashion and lifestyle content. A tech reviewer, a gaming channel or a 50k-subscriber outdoor creator is not who the app’s shoppers came for.
What ShopMy does well
ShopMy grew fast with beauty, wellness and expert creators for one reason: it treats the creator-brand relationship as the product. Commissionable links come with a gifting marketplace and direct brand chat, and rates on direct brand programs are often noticeably higher than generic network rates.
Where it shines:
- Brand relationships. Gifting, direct outreach and negotiated rates in one place.
- Strong rates in beauty and wellness, where direct programs pay far above the big-retailer baseline.
- A cleaner, curator feel that fits experts (dermatologists, stylists, trainers) as well as classic influencers.
Where it hurts: it is also application-based, also strongest in a narrow set of verticals, and your page is still a shelf. You curate it, you update it, and it converts only when a fan decides to go browse it.
Where both fall short
- The application gate. Both platforms select for existing, polished audiences. The creators who most need monetization, small and mid-size ones, are exactly who the gate filters out.
- The niche skew. Fashion, beauty, home, wellness. If your audience asks about graphics cards, camping stoves, guitar pedals or protein powder brands they saw in your videos, these storefronts were not built for you.
- The storefront model itself. A shelf is passive. It answers “what does this creator recommend in general,” not “what should I buy for my situation,” and the second question is where buying decisions actually happen. Your DMs are full of that second question right now.
The AI alternative: earn from the questions, not the shelf
Rylies is an AI link in bio: instead of a storefront, fans get a conversation that answers in your voice, grounded in what you actually said in your content. When the answer involves a product, your affiliate link is attached automatically from verified networks, at the exact moment the fan is asking what to buy. It learns only from your own words (a podcast guest’s opinions never become yours), you approve the voice before it goes live, and you can pause it any time.
The practical differences:
- No application, no follower minimum. Any niche, any size, free to start.
- Any vertical. Tech, gaming, fitness, outdoor, food: if fans ask you what to buy, it monetizes.
- Active, not passive. It answers the buying question directly instead of hoping the fan scrolls to the right shelf.
- You learn what fans want. Every conversation shows you what your audience is trying to buy next, which is also the proof brands want to see when you pitch sponsorships.
Which should you use?
Honestly: they stack. If you are an accepted LTK or ShopMy creator in their core verticals, keep the storefront; it is real revenue. Add a conversational layer for the fans who ask instead of browse. If you are outside those verticals or below the application bar, start where there is no gate: see what your channel could earn with the creator affiliate earnings calculator, or get Rylies and let your catalog do the selling.