Date: 2026-11-05

This article summarizes an interview with Ilya, a former Wildberries seller who now promotes marketplace products through VK Shops, a feature of the VKontakte social network. The figures and claims below are the speaker's and have not been independently verified.

The Speaker's Background

Ilya sold on Wildberries (referred to in the transcript as "Vbeshka" and "VB") for more than five years. He started in 2021 and operated the largest confectionery icing store on the platform, supplying cake decorations across Russia. He also sold marmalade and sweets.

Key points from his account:

• Early margins: Icing bought for 200 rubles was sold for 1,300 rubles.
• Scale: The brand shipped 30 tons per month in its second or third year.
• Margin compression: Competitors cut prices. By the end, the business earned a net profit of 5–6%.
• Marmalade project: He partnered with a marmalade manufacturer in Penza. In the first six months, he lost 500,000 rubles on lemon wedge products that did not sell.
• Supplier removal: During the peak season, the manufacturer's packaging line stopped. The manufacturer then listed the same products on a marketplace through its own seller account and removed Ilya's business from the supply chain. The speaker described this as unethical. He also said he could not know the manufacturer's reasons.
• SUP board venture: He ordered inflatable paddleboards from Vladivostok. Shipment delays of about three weeks, followed by a further three weeks, forced him to refund or delay orders for customers who had prepaid. He sold the remaining stock at cost after placing an advertisement with a blogger, the day before his son was born.

Ilya said these events led him to step back from commercial sales for the next few years.

The Launch Case: A Test Product on Ozon

The speaker describes a friend whose goods worth about 10 million rubles were destroyed in a fire at Wildberries. The friend had no prior Ozon account. The process was as follows:

1. Find a low-cost product on Ozon with a large stock.
2. List it on a new account as a test.
3. Post about it through VK Shops.
4. Use 100–150 fake reviews at launch, as the speaker described it.

Reported results:

The speaker also cited an account that generated 10 million rubles in revenue in one month.

How the Commission Model Works

Payment Timing

• Authors receive a commission after the buyer completes the purchase and the 14-day return period ends.
• The commission amount appears in the author's account as accrued immediately after purchase.

Revenue Split

The speaker gave this example:

• Sellers allocate 10% to the advertiser and 10% to promotion.
• For each purchase, the author receives 8%. VK receives 2%.
• VK uses its share to drive traffic to posts, according to the speaker.

Product Eligibility

• The speaker said products priced at 10,000–20,000 rubles are not accepted.
• He also cited examples of Android phones sold at 13,000–15,000 rubles and construction vacuum cleaners and loppers at 20,000 rubles.
• He said he was unsure of the exact price limit.

Seller Setup

To enable VK Shops, a seller must take these steps:

1. Set the commission. Ozon's minimum commission is 10%. The speaker recommends 15%. Many sellers since the Wildberries period have budgeted an advertising cost ratio (DRR) of 3–4%.
2. Enable the option. In the Ozon seller account, tick the checkbox that enables shopping.
3. Register with VK Blogger. Products then become visible to authors. No separate manager or direct coordination with authors is required, according to the speaker.

Requirements for Authors

The speaker listed the following requirements for authors:

• Registration as an individual, self-employed person, or sole proprietor with VK Blogger, to withdraw earnings
• A group or personal page with at least 100 subscribers, obtained through purchase or mutual promotion. The speaker stated this takes between two hours and one day.
• A ChatGPT subscription at 800 rubles per month
• A VPN for access to the service

The speaker said no specific training is required.

Content Production: Posts Versus Videos

Advertising

The speaker stated that VK does not require paid advertising. Posts reach audiences organically. He also stated that a small audience is not a barrier, because smaller audiences perform better in the algorithms.

Image-Based Posts

According to the speaker:

• Authors use AI-generated images (called "neurophotos") instead of photos of themselves or the product.
• A post built from three images and a text story takes 13 minutes, measured with a timer.
• One community requires about 40 minutes per day.
• Ilya stated that the company uses the latest image models from ChatGPT.

Video Content

The speaker said video takes four to five times longer to produce. He also noted these constraints:

• VK moderates videos separately from posts.
• At any time, three posts or clips can be in moderation. New content cannot be submitted until the review finishes.
• A single author can run 10 communities with the same details and upload up to 15 items at once.
• Clips appear in a separate tab. Their reach is lower than posts. He cited posts reaching 1 million, 5 million, and 10 million views, and some reaching 30–35 million. He said clips can reach about 1 million.

Reach Versus Conversion

The speaker said authors earn from reach, not conversion. He described one post in a group with 147 subscribers that reached 12 million views. The post showed an image of oversized underwear hung in a bathroom. He argued that attention drives reach: the image and first line of text capture the viewer, who then reads further and comments. He also said VK, like Yandex Zen and Odnoklassniki, has a highly polarized audience, and that posts provoking strong reactions are amplified.

Speaker's Video Experiment

Ilya reported these results:

• Six months learning horizontal YouTube production
• Six months producing AI-generated content, with practically zero results
• A regional blog about Penza that brands later asked to feature in promotional videos
• Earnings of 55,000 rubles over two weeks from 50 brand videos, which took 30 hours to produce

He cited a tool that produces one-minute review videos from a template and a product listing. He said the cost is about 300 rubles per minute of video. He also said he had not yet verified that claim independently.

Product Selection and Pricing

The speaker described the following principles:

• Price range: Products costing 300–500 rubles perform best. He said products at 3,000 rubles rarely sell, because buyers compare prices and read reviews. He also cited a range of 3,000–5,000 rubles, but later recommended 300–500 rubles.
• Purchase type: VK Shops sells emotional, impulse purchases. Buyers respond to a before-and-after image of an inexpensive item.
• Sets: Cheap goods are often sold as bundles or multi-unit sets to raise the average order value. The speaker cited this practice from Vietnamese TikTok Shop sellers.
• Dedicated cards: Sellers create separate product cards for VK Shops, with a higher starting price. This allows commissions of up to 30% because buyers do not compare the product with competitors.
• Categories: The speaker cited dietary supplements and household chemicals as categories where prices vary widely, so a higher price does not signal lower quality. He gave an example of a napkin sold at 600 rubles against a market average of 300 rubles.
• Low-price items: The speaker said items under 300 rubles, which keep Ozon's commission low, are disappearing from the platform.

Growth Statistics

The speaker reported:

• VK Shops recorded 9.5 million orders over the past year, according to a news report he cited.
• The current rate is 140,000–150,000 orders per day.
• Based on the speaker's calculation, the platform processed about 4.5 million orders in the past month.
• He cited 600% growth.

Market Context

The speaker gave four reasons why the model could be predicted:

1. No comparable models existed in Russia. He pointed to Amazon, Amazon Shop, Shopify, TikTok Shop, and YouTube Shop abroad.
2. VK is the only major social network still operating legally in Russia, which concentrates traffic in one place.
3. Ozon overtook or closed the gap with Wildberries, which the speaker did not expect.
4. Sales of low-cost products rise during economic difficulty, a pattern he called the "red lipstick effect."

He also described a TikTok Shop model negotiated with Yandex Market. The arrangement gave TikTok Shop 2–4% of sales. The remaining funds covered influencers, logistics, and delivery. He said Russian platforms later adopted a similar model.

The speaker compared the opportunity to buying bitcoin in 2009 and entering Wildberries in 2018. He said it requires no initial investment. He cited a 23-year-old participant who earns 3 million rubles net per month, and said that people began paying attention to the trend in May.

Historical Pattern

The speaker said trends of this kind appear every five to seven years. Early participants earn the most. The trend fades as more participants join, and early participants look for the next cycle.

He also described how VK's author program changed. Earlier, VK paid authors poorly, and users left the platform. Later, VK began paying higher commissions to authors and lowered its own share. He said this change led authors to post on other networks and direct their audiences to VK. He described this process as a network effect that brings in new buyers and new authors.