In the mid-2010s, Instagram took over as the app for creators to make it big — and amass huge followings. The biggest “mega-influencers” had upwards of 10 or 20 million followers and secured million-dollar brand deals. These days, it’s not as easy to grow an account, as new platforms have launched (TikTok being the most popular) and algorithms have changed. To move with the times, brands are now looking at engagement and trust over follower count. In the past few years, those with 1,000 to 100,000 followers (“micro-influencers”) and 100,000 to 1 million followers (“macro-influencers”) have become the most sought after.
The world of affiliate marketing for creators has also expanded, which allows those with smaller followings to make money off their engaged audience. The biggest OG players include Collective Voice (formerly ShopStyle Collective), LTK (formerly rewardStyle and LIKEtoKNOW.it) and the Amazon Influencer Program. There are also the newcomers, such as ShopMy and Locker, which are pushing the older platforms to evolve and compete for influencers, with more sophisticated software and added features features like easy product seeding. Because influencers very much still drive sales.
“At first, it was a little novel or a little weird and it felt interesting like, ‘Oh, this person’s putting on a bathing suit for money and trying to sell it on Instagram, what does that mean?,'” reflects Katie Melton, head of creator success at LTK. “But now, they’re really the number-one trusted source. As we look at our consumer shopper studies, they are trusted even more so over friends or billboards or magazine editors.”
Image: Courtesy of ShopMy
Authenticity is key to growing a following, but also to selling products. Tiffany Lopinsky, president and co-founder of ShopMy, has found that smaller creators have major success on the affiliate platform because of their engagement from loyal followers. “We’re definitely seeing that a lot of the people who drive the most amount of sales are not people who are household names, and are in that 10-to-50,000 follower range,” she says. “If you have a million followers, but most of them are following you not for product advice but for funny videos, versus you only have 10,000 followers, but people are following you for your style and recs, and they’re watching all your Instagram stories, a brand would rather [work with] that person than the one with a million followers.”
This goes for brand awareness, too. In addition to driving sales, companies are willing to spend big bucks to simply tap into a creator’s community. According to Melton, the “key marketing decision makers that we work with, the number one goal is to grow their reach. So they’re thinking of creators more as this channel microphone to just reach their communities versus sell, sell, sell. They want that authentic content.” The goal is an “effortless sale” versus a QVC-style promotion. Followers who perceive content as more authenticare more likely to stick around.
This new type of creator also doesn’t have to be dedicated to fashion or beauty; covering topics outside that realm can actually make the sale more natural. Take Meredith Hayden, a.k.a. Wishbone Kitchen: a personal chef-turned-lifestyle influencer with a popular YouTube series, Dinner with Friends. One would expect her to sell a lot of pots and pans through her affiliate platforms, but it’s her sweaters that people are constantly asking about in the comments. Although Hayden has a reasonably large following (108,000 on YouTube and 2.3 million on TikTok), she’s not the typical fashion creator, and comes off more like a “normal” consumer with a cool job. As Louis Vuitton taps athletes as ambassadors and beauty brands such as Glossier and NYX Professional Makeup invest in WNBA partnerships, the appeal of these atypical or cross-category creators is becoming more clear.
Image: Courtesy of ShopMy
Substack is another platform where smaller creators, often people who have full time jobs and are writing as a hobby, are making big bucks. “If you can get hundreds or thousands of people to pay you $5 a month for whatever it is you’re going to say, they’re definitely clicking through your links,” Lopinsky says. “So there’s such a strong correlation there between the ability to drive affiliate sales and having Substack subscribers, which is one of the reasons it’s been a community that we have really focused on trying to understand their needs.”
There’s also a real synergy between Substack and a platform like ShopMy because of the ability for indie brands with smaller marketing budgets to get in on the action. “A lot of these smaller brands, they can’t pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to an influencer to work with them. That’s just not a risk they can take at the stage they’re at,” Lopinsky says. “But they can sustainably be like, ‘okay, yeah, we want to give this person 20%’ [on ShopMy] and it’s a very organic relationship.”
Maybe most importantly, ShopMy works to connect brands to the right creators with aligned communities, based on real analytics and insights, which is a win-win for both brands and influencers. There’s a greater level of transparency that’s new to affiliate marketing. ShopMy — and other platforms — are evolving into full-service agencies in order to get influencers’ attention and keep them on the platform, whether it’s by making Substack linking a breeze or building a multi-functional app. There’s much more competition these days, and that’s pushing innovation.
Image: Courtesy of LTK
In May 2024, LTK sued ShopMy, alleging that the newer platform engaged in false advertising, trademark infringement and unfair competition, per Business of Fashion. LTK has since dropped the suit, though the two companies continue to compete for creator loyalty. LTK recently introduced new features, such as a Leaderboard dashboard (with details like conversion rates) and the Power Gifting program to connect influencers with brands. ShopMy raised $77.5 million in January and brought Meghan Markle (Sussex?) onto the platform. Companies have to keep evolving and listening to their audience.
LTK’s audience is all about video, Melton says, which allows creators to show their personality and connect with followers. So, the company continues to update its app to act as a “home base” for creators, evolving it into a consumer-facing social media app in its own right, instead of just a place for posting links. “Right now, creators are really worried about the reach that they’re not getting [on social platforms],” she continues. “It’s getting harder and harder and more non-followers are seeing your content than your community. So, we’re really trying to make sure it’s this sacred home base, where you can tell your community, ‘You can always find me on LTK.'”
New features include a FYP-style feed from which consumers can follow their favorite creators. Melton stresses the importance of talking to LTK users about their needs every single day, through things like webinars, in-person summits, and the annual LTKCon conference.
Image: Courtesy of LTK
ShopMy, Lopinsky explains, is working to democratize affiliate marketing by allowing creators and brands to work together right in the app. The company saw that the lack of communication between all parties involved was making the whole affiliate marketing process clunky and difficult to navigate for the creator and the brand. “There are brands that do gifting and they have affiliate, but the affiliate is not informing the gifting strategy,” she says. The company is focused on providing added value to brands as well. “Most of the brands on our platform, they’re going to do some combination of gifting to people, giving them generous commission and then usually monitoring performance and then doing some kind of paid [deal].”
The gifting side of the ShopMy platform helps creators secure products, but also makes brands’ affiliate deals way more powerful. “Just because a brand sets up an affiliate program, it doesn’t mean anything. Someone still has to want to talk about your product,” Lopinsky adds. Ensuring product gets in the right creator’s hands makes that much more seamless. It also allows brands to scale with those small influencers, who’ve established trust with their followers.
Affiliate platform Locker, which launched 2020, is betting on consumers whose followings wouldn’t even qualify them as influencers in the traditional sense. “Brands have continued to double down on the power of recommendations from real people over traditional ads, but at Locker we are actually seeing that the real everyday consumer is driving more cost-effective and measurable influence than bigger influencers,” says founder and CEO Kristine Locker. “When first launching my business, influencers were incredible at driving some of the first few thousand sign ups, but as we’ve scaled and influencer rates have sky-rocketed, the only channel that has scaled alongside us has been leaning into our own user base, giving them the tools and incentives to refer more shoppers like themselves.”
Image: Courtesy of Locker
To get on LTK’s platform, or even sell on TikTok Shop, you have to have at least 5,000 followers. For ShopMy’s application, “typically accounts must have a minimum of 1,000 followers” and share recommendations to their followers, though each application is judged on a case-by-case basis. Because Locker is focusing on the everyday consumer as an “influencer,” there are no follower requirements for its Payback program.
“By offering an affiliate incentive for every eligible purchase, we inspire shoppers who are already hardwired to share their favorite finds with friends, to do so through Locker,” Locker says. “With brands growing more desperate to better understand their customer profile and the realistic consumer journey — with consumers saving, discovering, sharing and ultimately converting all through Locker — brands can not only pinpoint who their most loyal consumers and consumer advocates are, but they can actually reward them.”
As the influencer economy evolves, affiliate marketing has to keep up. But it all could change again tomorrow. Meta and Instagram switch up the algorithm seemingly every day, and are even testing out AI-powered profiles. Plus, there’s still the possibility of a U.S. TikTok ban. If influencers flee these spaces, companies will have to evolve yet again to be where they land, whether that’s Substack or another platform that hasn’t even launched yet. Staying ahead of the curve will be the real challenge. Those who can adapt quickly will not only survive, but thrive in the ever-shifting digital landscape.
Source: Fashionista.com
