What are affiliate programmes?
Put simply, affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy where leading voices in a certain field can earn money by promoting a product, service or brand.
Those being paid to promote, known as affiliates, aim to drive action from their large social media audiences through clicking affiliate links, driving traffic and making purchases. The affiliate will then benefit financially in proportion to how many actions they have created.
Essentially, brands are trying to tap into your engaged and devoted audiences through your voice and recommendations of their product, service or brand.
The fundamental pull of affiliate marketing programmes is that they are free to join and free to set up, i.e. they don’t require budget to be spent on content deliverables like most paid partnerships.
There are many cases of affiliates and brands respectively benefitting massively from these programmes, whether it’s the affiliate generating reliable, consistent income, or the brand gaining considerable website traffic and sales.
In regards to the different ways an affiliate can get paid, there are five main methods:
- Per sale – revenue is generated through commissions on the quantity of sales they drive.
- Per action – revenue is generated through a specific action being carried out by a customer e.g. newsletter sign-up.
- Per install – in the case of applications or softwares, revenue is given out for each installation the customer makes.
- Per lead – revenue generated every time a lead is created through the affiliate
- Per click – revenue is generated for each click made by a prospective customer
Of course, the most common of these is ‘per sale’ as it removes any question marks for the brand as to whether the affiliate has proved financially beneficial or not. In the case of a ‘per click’ arrangement, the commission would be considerably lower than ‘per sale’.
How do creators currently use affiliate programmes?
As discussed, affiliate programmes can take many different shapes and sizes, but the most common is the ‘per sale’ arrangement where the creator would earn a commission or percentage of the sale value.
However, among creators it is a very contentious and dividing topic with many creators loving affiliate programmes, and others steering well clear of them. But how do creators make the most of them, and actually earn commission?
Well, to put it simply, you get out what you put in when it comes to affiliate promotions. The more awareness you get for a product or service, the more engagement and sales you generate – to a certain extent of course… you never want to oversaturate your content with promotions as this can negatively affect your audience.
From my experience, there are two main approaches creators take when it comes to affiliate promotions that each come with their own pros and cons.
Firstly, some creators are very direct when promoting a brand in their content, in many cases producing videos with creative concepts centred around the brand at hand. A perfect example of this is James Coker’s affiliate partnership with GridRival. What James was able to do here was create an entertaining piece of content centred around GridRival without being too overt.
On the other hand, you have the more subtle, understated approach to affiliate promotions where the product is visible in the video but not necessarily integrated into the content itself. Here you can see Trine (@nutsaboutf1) promoting a merchandise store subtly by simply wearing their products. While this approach may not yield as many actions as James’s post, the subtle promotion allows you to generate commission without turning your videos into direct advertisements.
But this rule isn’t cut and dry for everyone, the amount of engagement, clicks, and sales you get primarily depends on how engaged your audience is in the first place. The engagement is essentially how much people are interacting with your content rather than just scrolling past. A view is one thing, but engagement measures the likes, comments, shares and saves. If your engagement rate is generally quite high then you can expect more success as an affiliate because people are more likely to take action. To understand your engagement rate, you can use this calculator. A strong engagement rate is anything over 5%.
The final component that decides the success of an affiliate is how relevant the brand is to the audience itself. If a Formula 1 creator started promoting washing up liquid as an affiliate, you can expect to get rather low engagement. Of course, this is quite an extreme example but the point is to work with brands that you know your audience will resonate with and have an interest in.
Are affiliate programmes worth it for creators?
So for the all-important question – should content creators get involved in affiliate programmes? Well, it all depends on your creative freedom, audience and brand relevance as explained previously.
Once you understand how engaged your audience is with your own content then you can begin to analyse whether affiliate programmes are for you. This includes finding the right brand to work with that you are passionate about.
Once you have completed this step then get creative! Find interesting and fun ways to naturally link a product into your content. A fantastic example is when Na Mochila made a YouTube video all about Hockenheim using a model of the circuit. This one video then resulted in the product being sold out – jackpot!
To simplify things, here is a quick criteria to follow when analysing if you should join an affiliate programme:
- Understand engagement rate of your audience, this helps gauge the tendency for your followers to purchase.
- Ensure the brand you are promoting is revelant to your followers and content. No washing up liquid!
- Get creative! Weave the product/brand into your content in an authentic and fun way.
- Test, test, test. Constantly try different ways of weaving products into your content until you find the magic formula.
- Replicate across new brands and affiliate partners.
In some cases, it can be worth involving yourself in an affiliate programme simply to build a relationship with a certain brand. After all, if you can prove your worth as an affiliate partner then they may be open to bringing you on as a full paid content partner!
