Maximizing Your Income with TikTok Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is arguably one of the best ways to generate passive income and make money online.

Affiliate marketers, often with a sizable audience on social media and elsewhere on the internet, leverage their audiences of like minded people for promoting products.

And the best part?

Make money without building or managing products.

The process is simple.

You basically partner with a company that builds products you’re passionate about. Direct consumers to the product pages using your unique affiliate link and BOOM! 💥

Sales made, money earned.

TikTok can be a great channel for anyone looking to diversify their affiliate income sources.

It has exploded in popularity in recent years. And has become a go-to destination for discovering new products and trends making it a prime location for affiliates.

With its massive user base and unique features, TikTok offers a range of opportunities to get creative and monetize your audience.

In this blog post, we'll show how to use the fastest growing social media app to make money through affiliate marketing, and share some helpful tips and tricks to get you started.

What is TikTok Affiliate Marketing?

TikTok affiliate marketing involves creating and sharing videos on the social media platform with the goal of monetizing your audience through the use of affiliate links. This can be achieved by including referral links in the description of videos or bio. The aim is to drive traffic and sales to the products, ultimately earning a commission for each successful sale.

Should You Start Affiliate Marketing on Tiktok?

That’s a valid question!

Before joining the bandwagon, it’s important to ask if TikTok is an ideal platform for your affiliate business.

TikTok is not only the second most downloaded iPhone app in the US, as of September 2022. It’s also the most downloaded app globally, as of December 2022. Given the rate of its growth, you can expect to tap into vast geographies and audiences.

But we know, traffic isn’t everything. You need people who’ll be interested in your topics.

That brings us to the next point - popular content categories.

Although entertainment, dance, and prank videos dominate TikTok users' attention, after analyzing hashtag views of popular categories it's clear that they’re also interested in exploring a variety of other topics, such as:

• Fitness/sports – 57 billion
• Home renovation/DIY – 39 billion
• Beauty/skincare – 33 billion
• Fashion – 27 billion
• Recipes/cooking – 18 billion
• Life hacks/advice – 13 billion
• Pets – 10 billion
• Outdoors – 2 billion

These groups and categories don’t represent the entire picture, of course, because main category topics can be divided further into subtopics and so on, and the numbers can be more interesting. For example, #dog which belongs to the pets category has got 244.8 billion views.

But you get the gist—if your affiliate business is remotely connected to any of the main topics above, you may consider doing it on Tiktok. Just be sure to check the hashtag views to get a clear idea.

Platform engagement rate is another major factor to consider. Afterall, what’s the point of creating affiliate videos if the platform audience doesn't engage with it?

The good news is, TikTok has higher engagement rates across various follower levels compared to Instagram and YouTube.

For example, micro-influencers on TikTok had an engagement rate of 17.96%, while those on Instagram had 3.86%, and on YouTube 1.63%.

Image: Average engagement rate benchmark. Source

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A place where users log in only to watch others’ videos (68%), like them (63%), follow other creators (63%) is a great place to be in!

After all, you’d want more eyeballs on your content so that it reaches more people, and gets you more likes and followers.

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TikTok also serves as a source for its users looking to learn and discover something new.

TikTok is a powerful platform for inspiring action. A staggering 92% of users take some form of action, such as liking or sharing the content, after watching it on the platform. Additionally, a significant 42% of users are motivated to try new things or go to new places as a result of what they see on TikTok.

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In addition, TikTok's algorithms are designed to surface videos that are likely to be relevant, interesting, and engaging, making it easier for literally anyone to go viral on TikTok.

All of these indicate that if your affiliate content is compelling and value-packed, your marketing efforts can pay off huge!

How to Start Affiliate Marketing on TikTok?

Fundamentally, there are two ways of doing it:

1. By joining TikTok’s native affiliate program.
2. By promoting affiliate links independently

TikTok’s native affiliate program lets both sellers and creators find each other and collaborate on its platform.

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But the problem is its availability.

For selling affiliate products on Tiktok, you need to create a Shop. Unfortunately, the program is active in limited locations. It has very recently entered the US market, it’s still not open for everyone, everywhere, yet.

That leaves us with option #2.

Don’t frown; this one’s actually better.

Because it gives you the freedom to partner with any brand of your wish, promote the products in your way, and drive traffic to any platform of your choice.

How to Promote Affiliate Products and Links on TikTok (With Examples)

Now let’s break it down and understand how to successfully promote affiliate products and make money on TikTok.

1. Promoting Affiliate Products and Links Organically

Organic marketing on TikTok can be a beneficial choice for several reasons: 

• It's free, so there are no upfront costs involved.
• Can lead to a more authentic and genuine connection with the audience.
• Is sustainable in the long run because it is not reliant on paid ad budgets, which can run out.

Plus, TikTok does not seem to limit the amount of traffic that creators receive. And we’ve already discussed in the previous section that the audience is eager to see content from others and TikTok’s algo also makes it easy for marketers to be seen.

Let’s take advantage of that and promote content organically.

There are several ways to promote your affiliate links on TikTok:

• Add a clickable link to your profile: By upgrading to a business account, you can include a link to your website or blog in your TikTok profile. You can also use link in bio tools to create a bridge page and direct traffic to multiple URLs. 

⚠️ Note that even with a business profile, you need at least 1K followers to be able to add clickable links in your profile.

You’ll notice that most creators have already linked to their website, store, or other online properties either directly or through link in bio tools, like Think Media’s official TikTok page:

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• Link to your social profiles: TikTok makes it easy to include links to your Instagram and YouTube profiles in your account settings. Add them to your profile and ask followers to visit your other social media profiles where you’re selling affiliate products. You can even use this tactic to grow other social channels.

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• Use promo codes: Some advertisers will provide coupon codes or promo codes for their affiliate program that you can share in your content:

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• Add a URL to your content: Create engaging and relevant content that showcases the products or services you're promoting. This could be in the form of a tutorial, review, or demonstration. Now add the affiliate links in the description:

2. Promoting Affiliate Products through TikTok Promote

Sometimes, organic reach isn’t enough and you may want to use ads to be able to market your affiliate content. So you may want to take help of paid marketing methods to boost your posts.

One such method is TikTok Promote.

The TikTok Promote feature is an easy way to give your existing TikTok videos an extra boost! With just a few taps, you can turn your videos into ads and reach a wider audience.

The Promote feature is available for everyone who has a TikTok account, and you can find it right in the app. You can customize your promotion to fit your budget, timeline, and target audience, and then just sit back and relax while TikTok takes care of distributing your video far and wide.

Promote can help you gain more views, drive more traffic to your website, or grow your following. And the best part is, if you have a few bucks to spare, Promote is a great way to supercharge your reach on TikTok and give your affiliate content a boost.

And you can run it for as low as $3!

Give it a try!

• First, pick a video that you want to give some extra love. You can choose any of your own TikTok videos to promote. We suggest starting with one of your best-performing organic videos because it has already generated positive results and is likely to do great.
• Now select the "Promote" button in the individual video settings. Or, navigate to "Settings and privacy" and tap on "Business suite", where you'll find the Promote button.
• Next, set up your promotion. You get to choose a goal for your campaign, like getting more views, website visits, or followers.

• Choose your audience.

• Now set your budget and the length of time you want to run the promotion, and select the audience you want to reach with your video.

Lastly, sit back and watch your numbers grow! Once your promotion is approved, you can check in to see how your video is doing and how many new people are learning about your business. It's that simple!

TikTok Affiliate Marketing Tips

Successful affiliate marketers know how to effectively use TikTok for affiliate marketing and reach a new audience of potential customers. 

1. Make sure you have a clear and compelling affiliate marketing strategy in place.

Before you start posting on TikTok, it's important to have a clear plan in place for how you use the platform to promote your affiliate products. This should include identifying your target audience, choosing the right products to promote, and coming up with creative and engaging content ideas.

2. Use relevant hashtags and participate in trending challenges.

Hashtags on TikTok are a great way to get your content seen by more people. By using relevant hashtags, you can make sure that your content is seen by people who are interested in the products you're promoting. Additionally, participating in trending challenges can help your content go viral and reach a wider audience.

3. Use stunning visuals and trending music.

TikTok is all about creating visually appealing and compelling content. Make sure to use high-quality images and videos to showcase your affiliate products, and choose catchy music to go along with your content. This will help make your TikToks more engaging and increase the chances that people will click through to your affiliate links.

4. Be authentic and transparent.

One of the keys to successful affiliate marketing on TikTok is authenticity. Be transparent about the fact that you're promoting affiliate products, and make sure to disclose any potential conflicts of interest. This will help build trust with your followers and make them more likely to purchase through your affiliate links.

5. Monitor and optimize your results.

As with any marketing effort, it's important to track and analyze your results to see what's working and what's not. Use TikTok's analytics tools to see how your content is performing, and adjust your strategy as needed to optimize your results.

If you're interested in earning money through affiliate marketing on TikTok, it's worth taking the time to do your research and understand the platform's algorithms and best practices. 

By identifying your target audience, partnering with the right brands, choosing the right products to promote, and effectively promoting your affiliate products, you can increase your chances of success on the platform.

With the right approach, TikTok affiliate marketing can be a lucrative way to monetize your audience and drive sales for the products you promote.

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