Everything You Need To Know About Affiliates as an Influencer
If you're an influencer who recommends any kind of products or services to your audience, you can actually get paid for it.
Of course, I'm talking about affiliate marketing, which is an extremely powerful tool for influencers with some influencers earning upwards of six figures just from their affiliates. Ah, the dream!
I’ve seen a bunch of resources about why brands should use influencers for affiliate marketing but not a lot of information written for influencers about why they should care about affiliate marketing and how it all works. UNTIL NOW! (Lol, wink.)
Today I’m sharing a top level overview of everything you could possibly want to know about affiliates as an influencer, so you can start getting paid to share what you love.
Why affiliates?
There are a few reasons why creators might start to get involved with affiliate marketing.
You can get paid to recommend products and services that you already use and love
Affiliates can become a great passive revenue stream for you as a content creator
You don’t necessarily have to have a large following to make money from affiliates.
How affiliate marketing works
Affiliate marketing is where you can get paid for sending someone to a website to purchase a product or enroll in a service.
So as an example, if you left a comment on a YouTube video I filmed and said, “omg girl! Where is that dress from?” I could have an affiliate link in the description box of that YouTube video so that if you were to click through and make a purchase of some kind, I would get a small commission for driving that sale.
With affiliates, you have a designated commission rate that you will get paid if you successfully refer someone to buy a product or service.
I personally get so excited when I share a recommendation with a friend and they come back to me and tell me how much they love it. And to get a little kickback on top of that? I mean, what’s not to like??
Direct affiliates vs affiliate networks
There are two types of affiliate relationships that creators can have with brands:
Direct affiliate relationship
Affiliate networks
For a direct affiliate relationship with a brand a brand might reach out to me if I tagged Charlotte Tilbury on Instagram and they say “hey, we saw your Charlotte Tilbury fan, we would love to invite you to become an affiliate for us, we give a 20% commission rate to our affiliates on all sales and your unique code Austen20 will give your audience 20% off of our products.”
*Manifests brand deal with Charlotte Tilbury in the middle of a blog post*
Okay, sorry. I’m back.
Usually, the brand will either provide you with a unique code that your audience can use at checkout or a unique trackable link so that the brand can measure which sales are coming from you and pay you accordingly.
On the other hand, with an affiliate network, you will have the ability to link to many different brands.
Some of the top affiliate networks for influencers are LTK, ShopStyle Collective, Share-A-Sale, and Shop My Shelf.
I am a part of the Shop LTK network and I have been for several years now and within the last year, I have now seen my biggest year of affiliate sales so far, although affiliates do only make up 4% of my total revenue as a full time content creator.
(For my full income breakdown be sure to check out this blog post.)
Direct affiliates vs affiliate networks
Direct relationship pros:
You have a direct contact to that brand
They will be able to see on their end really clearly how many people you are referring and how many sales you are closing using your affiliate links.
If you're doing great as an affiliate for a brand, you can use that as leverage to pitch them a potential brand partnership and the likelihood that they'll say yes to that will be stronger if you've proven through affiliates that you actually drive sales to their products.
You also might even get a higher commission rate than you can with some of the other affiliate networks.
Direct relationship cons:
The big con is you're only working with that one brand, so it's not as scalable in terms of revenue as it would be if you could link to many different brands and have many different offerings and the other thing to remember is managing these affiliate relationships can start to get a little bit complicated if you're taking on a lot of them.
Pros of affiliate networks:
You can link to tons of different retailers. On LTK I can link to brands like ASOS, Glossier, Target, Amazon, Versed, and more of my favorites.
LTK-specific pro: they have their own app that is searchable so you can create shoppable collages in Canva and get discovered and refer sales to people who may not follow you on Instagram. You can follow me on the LTK app here.
Shop My Shelf-specific pro: you can request gifting and propose collaborations all within their platform so they help facilitate brand relationships.
Affiliate network cons:
You won’t have a direct contact with the brand in most cases. So that's just something to keep in mind in terms of building long term connections with brands you really love.
The affiliate commission rates are almost never negotiable on affiliate networks, they are usually set.
You may not know what your commission rates are. Typically on LTK it'll say low, medium or high commission. So there isn't a lot of clarity there in terms of how much money you'll actually make based on what you're linking.
I currently have a handful of direct affiliate marketing programs for influencers with brands that I really use and love and then I am also on the LTK affiliate network so I feel like I get a great balance of both types of affiliate partnerships.
There are two types of affiliate relationships
You can have a direct affiliate relationship with a brand or you can join an affiliate network and create commissionable links for many brands. As an influencer you can decide which you prefer and what makes the most sense for your creator business.
Will affiliates work for me?
As I mentioned earlier in this blog post, I think affiliates can work whether you have a small audience or a large audience, it's just knowing what type of affiliates and what your audience is really the most interested in.
But for the sake of an example, let’s get into some math! Wow, never thought I’d write that on my blog.
So let's say you're a beauty influencer and you have a large audience of 100,000 Instagram followers.
If you link the lip product that you're wearing, and you get 500 sales (0.5% conversion) from that lip product, and your commission was $1 for each one of those products, that's $500 right there.
However, this doesn't necessarily translate to smaller creators. What about a micro influencer like myself with ~12,000 Instagram followers?
If I recommend the same product but only make 10 sales at $1 commission each, then I've only made $10. So it's going to be a little harder for a smaller creator like myself to promote products and yield a high conversion rate.
If you do already have a big audience, you have a huge opportunity with affiliates, because you already have scale to your advantage even if a commission rate for a product seems like a low amount.
Tips for making affiliates work with a smaller audience
Now if you're a smaller creator, I have two other ideas for you.
Start promoting higher cost items
Try promoting subscriptions
When it comes to higher cost items, you’ll automatically get a higher commission on those sales. One item my audience loves is the Anthropologie Gleaming Primrose Mirror, and the largest size of that mirror costs $1,500.
But whenever it goes on sale, I’ll let my audience know and provide a link. Lots of people want the mirror but are hesitant because of the price, so if I’ve alerted them to the fact that they can save a few hundred dollars, they might finally decide to purchase.
That worked well because I know my audience and what they like. Even with the mirror being on sale, if the commission on the $1,200 mirror was 10% then I’d make a $120 commission.
Becoming an affiliate for subscription services you use is also a great way not just to earn extra affiliate commission, but in many cases consistently earn that affiliate commission.
Some subscription services will pay out their affiliates for each month someone they referred has an active subscription. I’m an affiliate for a few of my favorite creator tools like Later, Canva, TubeBuddy and Loom.
Many of these subscriptions will offer your audience a 14 or 30 day free trial of their product so that’s a great selling point to share with your audience if you think they may want to test the service before committing to a monthly subscription.
Where to share affiliate links
The top two places I recommend sharing your affiliate links are in your YouTube videos and blog posts because there can be a higher conversion of someone actually using your link if they’re watching or reading on desktop.
One problem with linking on Instagram stories for example is that one of your followers may click on your link at first to check out the item or service you’re recommending on their mobile device but then actually go buy it using their desktop later.
Conversion is still tricky to measure in this industry even with trackable links and codes, so keep that in mind as you’re talking to brands about affiliate relationships or even brand partnerships that are focused on closing sales.
Disclosures
Lastly, it’s important to disclose when you’re sharing affiliate links so your audience understands that by clicking on the link you may earn a small commission of that sale. I have a disclaimer about links in the description box of my YouTube videos and in the footer of my blog and newsletter.
I’ll share a link here to what the FTC recommends for affiliate disclosures here in the US in case you’d like to reference that to make extra sure that you’re covering all of your bases.
Wrap up
Influencer marketing is extremely powerful and brands often like to start building relationships with influencers through affiliate programs. Affiliates haven’t always been a focus for me as a creator and they still make up a small percent of my yearly revenue.
However, as I’ve learned more about them over the years and gotten to know my audience more and more, I feel confident knowing when to share them and focus on providing quality recommendations rather than spamming tons of links.
What about you? Are you currently making use of affiliate links? Is affiliate marketing a large percentage of your income as a creator?
Share your experiences or ask any questions in the comments of this post!
yours,
Austen