How to Make More Affiliate Income

What Creators Make from Affiliates

Another week, another deep dive into how creators monetize. 🤓 This week, we’re looking at affiliate income.

*Before we get into the nitty gritty–quick disclaimer.

We do our best to extract meaningful insights from the data, but for example, it’d be quite impossible to know whether a payment from Stripe is a brand deal or affiliate payout. So, for the sake of clarity, the data below shows affiliate income only from well-known platforms like ShopMy, LTK, Amazon Affiliates, etc.

This data is also based on the creators in our database. There are likely creators out there making less/more than those in our database.

Alright, enough of that. Into the good stuff.

💡 This chart shows data for creators with 100k to 500k followers. The platforms listed are their primary platforms, or the one they have the largest following on.

A few fascinating things we noticed about this data:

1. Those whose primary platform is Instagram made the most affiliate income, by far.

2. Even top-performers hover around $1,000/month in affiliate income.

3. Affiliate income is surprisingly steady.

Why Instagram Creators Likely Make More Here

Instagram’s features are ideal for affiliate marketing. With a connection to ManyChat, you can automate sending your audience affiliate links.

Here’s a great example.

You can also add affiliate links to your IG stories, something you can’t do on other platforms.

What $1,000/mo in Affiliate Income Looks Like

There are creators making $10k/mo in affiliate income, so $1,000/mo does feel low. However, this is still a solid amount when you consider the number of conversions it takes to generate even $1,000 in affiliate revenue.

Sure, with some high-commission affiliate programs, this would mean landing 2 conversions.

But for the average affiliate program, you’d need to generate a ton in sales to earn $1k in commission:

• Clothing (avg. 1-20% commission) → $5,000 to $100,000 in sales

• Travel ($5 to $45 per conversion) → 22 to 200 conversions

• Beauty (avg. 5-20% commission) → $5,000 to $20,000 in sales

• Finance ($5 to $50 per conversion) → 20 to 200 conversions

*Commission rates based on the options shown in Impact, a popular affiliate marketing platform.

Why Affiliate Income is Steady

Once creators find a product that converts and offers them a meaningful commission, they tend to promote it on an ongoing basis.

It makes sense. If you love the product/service, get a solid kickback, and your audience eats it up, why not continue to promote it?

How to Maximize Your Affiliate Earnings

If you want to maximize your affiliate income, here’s 3 things you can do:

1. Leverage Instagram better

2. Compile your favorites into a guide

3. Don’t wait for affiliate programs to come to you

4. Keep it authentic and relevant

Leverage Instagram Better

If you don’t already use ManyChat, wyd??? 😬 ManyChat is a DM automation software (with a free tier!).

You can set up automations that allow you to send a specific link via DM when someone comments or DMs you a specific keyword. For example, on 3 of my latest videos, when someone comments “waitlist,” ManyChat automatically sends them a link to join my program waitlist.

You can use this to send any link—a course sign up, an affiliate link, a link to a guide, etc. This allows you to get the link in their hands faster, increasing the odds of you earning a commission.

Compile Your Favorites into a Guide or Story Highlight

One creative thing we’ve seen creators do is compile their favorite items or services into a guide. Here’s an example of a finance creator that (likely…we’re assuming he does this) compiles his credit card affiliate links into a spreadsheet.

If you find yourself getting questions about a specific product/item or service, create an IG story highlight linking out to it. Rather than needing to respond to every request for a link, folks can explore your links whenever they want to.

Don’t Wait for Affiliate Programs to Come to You

You might get 27,000 emails inviting you to join these…uh…ever-so-compelling affiliate programs (anyone else get the invite to the 5% commission pool vacuum affiliate program…🤠).

That doesn’t mean you should wait for your favorite brands to come to you though.

Many established brands offer affiliate programs 1) within their product, 2) to those that pitch them, or 3) via platforms like Impact, ShopMy, and LTK.

If there’s a product you use and love, look on affiliate platforms, and if you don’t see it there, pitch the brand. Keep in mind, you can negotiate the affiliate commission rate too.

Keep it Authentic and Relevant

If you want high conversion rates, promote products that are relevant to your niche and authentic to you. If the products you promote don’t seem like a good fit, it could diminish your audience’s trust, which will impact conversion rates on everything going forward.

Remember: You Must Disclose Affiliate Links 🚨

Just like you would a brand deal, you must disclose when a link is an affiliate link. According to the FTC, you should disclose the affiliate relationship in both the content piece and the description/caption.

Quick Links

🤝 Meta launches AI-powered creator marketplace to match brands and creators.

🎵 Universal Music Group is back on TikTok. What this means for creators.

👻 Snapchat launches new features, making it easy for brands to advertise and work with creators.

📷 Head of IG shares their new algorithm update that could help smaller creators but hurt larger creators.

👀 YouTube experimenting with new AI video idea generation tool.

See ya next week,

Karat