How to Make Money with TikTok Affiliate Marketing?

Now you’ve decided on the ideal affiliate niche for you and joined the appropriate affiliate program, it’s time to create your affiliate marketing profile and start learning how to make money on TikTok?

It’s essential to consider which social media platforms, such as TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, or a blog, will be your strength and the most effective in promoting your advertiser’s affiliate program. This post will begin with affiliate marketing on TikTok and how you could make thousands of dollars in this emerging leading platform in recent years.

In this article, we’ll show you how this platform can assist affiliates in receiving more visibility with less work in this tutorial.

Understanding TikTok Affiliate Marketing

What is TikTok Affiliate Marketing?

TikTok affiliate marketing is a form of performance-based and social media marketing where a TikTok creator promotes a product/service to their followers and earns a commission for resulting sales through an affiliate link.

TikTok affiliate marketing allows a TikTok content creator or publisher to leverage their follower base for two purposes: promoting a product or service, or raising brand awareness, ultimately generating income.

How Does TikTok Affiliate Marketing Work?

TikTok affiliate marketing allows creators to promote products or services to their followers and earn a commission on any resulting sales. Here’s how it typically works:

Find an affiliate program: TikTok creators can sign up for affiliate programs that match your interests and niche. These programs offer commission rates for promoting specific products/services.

Promote products in videos: You can create videos showcasing the products/services you are promoting.

Include affiliate links: Remember that TikTok does not allow users to add affiliate links to your videos. You can include affiliate links on the profile page. (We’ll discuss this further below)

Track performance: Affiliate programs typically provide creators with a dashboard to track their performance and earnings. This allows you to see which products perform well and adjust their strategies accordingly.

UpPromote: Affiliate & Referral allows you to get an affiliate dashboard to track and monitor your TikTok affiliate marketing performance with ease.

It’s important to note that TikTok has strict guidelines on disclosing affiliate relationships to viewers. You must disclose any paid or sponsored content to comply with these guidelines. Additionally, creators should only promote products or services that align with their values and are relevant to their audience.

The potential of affiliate marketing on TikTok 

Originating in China, TikTok is a video-sharing app that allows users to make short films from various platform-sharing content.

Since its launch in 2018, TikTok has amassed millions of downloads and gone viral worldwide. TikTok surpassed a milestone of 2 billion global downloads in August 2020, making it the most downloaded app in that year, which is incredible.

Currently, TikTok has around 800 million active users, spread across 155 countries and 75 languages, with most of its users being Gen-Z. Moreover, on average, 52 minutes is the time that TikTok users spend every day.

With all of the potential, many businesses are seeking methods to use it, and there is no exception for affiliate marketers.

Many affiliate marketers are concerned the most about whether their affiliate niche matches the popular content categories on TikTok.

According to Statista, in July 2020, the following niches are now thriving on the platform:

These content categories are broad; practically every affiliate marketer could use them to create content in their niches. The key is to establish relationships and engagement with your target audience. In the following section, we’ll reveal the essential strategies for creating viral content and how to use affiliate marketing on TikTok properly.

Pros and Cons of TikTok Affiliate Marketing

Like any other social media platform, TikTok has its pros and cons that you should consider before deciding to make money on TikTok.

Now it’s time to learn how to use the app to grow your TikTok affiliate marketing campaign.

The A-Z Guide to Making Money on TikTok with Affiliate Marketing

Step 1: Find Your TikTok Niches and Build Your Audience

Step 2: Start building an affiliate marketing profile on TikTok

It would help to build an excellent affiliate marketing profile to start with several. First, you need to create content videos presenting your affiliate products appealingly. You can make sales by the number of impressions your videos receive. The more people view them, the more you’ll have conversion chances.

The recommended numbers of videos at first are 6-12 videos within 1 to 3 days.

Remember that the videos must be related to your affiliate industry, creating the first impression on your viewers. And all the videos need to be linked or associated with others.

Place your affiliate link, website, or blog link in your Bio

In the cons of the TikTok section, I mentioned that it’s impossible to place a clickable link in the video description or comment sections, or you may get banned. So how could you include affiliate links there?

The answer is easy; you could lead your audience to your Bio and find the clickable links (website, blog, Instagram account, affiliate links) there.

# Change to a business account

It’s free to upgrade to a business account since a personal account could not include a clickable link.

So you could directly link to your website or your social accounts (Twitter, Instagram, Youtube).

# Use a bridge page

Most affiliate marketers could build a website where their audience would find all their information; it’s COMPLETELY FREE.

Beacons is a website where to make things possible. With Beacons, you can include a profile with your website, blog, social media accounts, and affiliate products. All are built in one place in your way.

Make your affiliate link look professional with UpPromote; you can quickly generate each affiliate product link, shorten the link or get the affiliate link at a blink with a source thanks to UpPromote.

To get a product to promote, Select the Get product link in the Dashboard > Browse the product > Choose to Generate. Then the product affiliate link is ready to go.

You can add TikTok in the Add a source section to track TikTok converting your customer’s performance.

If you would like to add the whole website of your merchant to show your TikTok audience, you could use the Get link with source feature to see whether TikTok will gain the best referral orders for you or not.

# Add URL in your video description

If your audiences copy and paste the affiliate URL into their browser, this is a fantastic technique for generating clicks.

Many KOLs, and influencers on TikTok leverage this approach. The key is that your videos should urge their action.

Step 3: Launching your TikTok videos

Shooting your videos

You can use TikTok to record videos or upload them from your gallery. TikTok allows you to make videos from 15 seconds and up to three minutes in length.

However, there are pros and cons to each option.

When you shoot a video using TikTok, you can add filters and effects before filming, saving time. And one of the biggest pros is that videos in which you’re lip-syncing to a song or sound will be a lot easier to record on TikTok.

Protip: Leverage easy-to-use video editing apps to make your video more professional, like iMovie, CapcCut, and Inshot Video Editor.

However, because the TikTok app has a 3-minute time restriction, it’s better to use your device’s camera if you’re filming a movie with numerous segments. Then you may use your phone’s camera to record a long clip and trim it down for TikTok.

Filter on TikTok

You can select four filter sets from Portrait, Food, Vibe, and Landscape.

If you forgot to use a filter effect before you begin recording, you could also add a filter on the Preview screen to your clips.

Effects on TikTok

Effects are where magic TikTok happens. You could use beautiful or humorous effects to go viral. (Find trending effect on Discover page)

Music on TikTok

There are different ways that you could add music on TikTok, including:

• Add sound from the in-app music library
• Select a sound from Recommended or Favorites
• Use trending sound on the Discover page

Or you could make your own custom viral TikTok sound by:

• Uploading video with sound 
• Adding a voiceover sound

Tips and Tricks for TikTok Affiliate Marketing

Engaging affiliate marketing TikTok video ideas

Evergreen content is everlasting and can be reused for mediums like your blog. Consider these “go-to” TikTok videos that you can make repeatedly.

When you’re stuck in a creative rut, try these interesting TikTok ideas:

• Educational videos

You do affiliate marketing in an understandable and digestible way by sharing helpful information about your product or niche.

• Tutorials

Quick tutorials like cooking, makeup, gardening, working out tips, or tricky video guides are also popular on TikTok.

Find a way to bring your merchant’s brand to life with a short video tutorial, whatever his brand does/makes.

• Review products/ services

People love real-experience product sharing (trendy brands), don’t forget to create review videos to share with TikTok viewers.

• Join a viral craze

Viewers click on the audio link to see how TikTok users are doing the trend uniquely. That’s why following the trend is not enough; the trick is to be genuine, join yourself, and have fun with the challenge/ trend.

Hacks to get TikTok videos to go viral

• Viral hack 1: Follow the 3-second rule

The initial three seconds are crucial in keeping your viewers’ attention. Make it catchy or stimulate their interest to keep them hooked till the end. 

When a few viewers stick to your videos till the end, the TikTok algorithm values your content and possibly pushes your videos to other viewers’ “For You” page.

• Viral hack 2: Encourage interactions

CTAs are crucial: To motivate your viewers to do something after watching the video.

Ask your viewers and let them comment: Ask users to sound off in the comments section. You can comment first, and they may follow. 

Or provide a prompt from which people can Duet a response video.

• Viral hack 3: Don’t Forget Trending Hashtags

On the TikTok Discover tab, look for hashtags connected to ideas and challenges.

The more practical the hashtags you choose, the more you will have a chance to be widely seen by others.

How to grow your Affiliate Marketing TikTok profile?

Showcase your TikTok videos on your website

As a social media platform, TikTok is all about engagement and reach. And what better way to expand your reach than to embed TikTok videos on your website?

With an embedded TikTok widget, you can showcase your videos on your website, driving even more traffic to your content. Plus, it’s a great way to attract more followers to  your account.

Be consistent with updates

Post 4-8 times per day to TikTok. Produce content fitting your personality, audience, and goals.

Build your trend

Try to produce your unique trend (the most popular is dancing) with CATCHY audio. People may pick up your trend and copy it.

Participate in TikTok trends

Join in the trend that you see on the Discover page. Now, you have a chance to jump on the trend and put your spin on it, matching your affiliate niche.

Go live daily (if you have at least 1000 followers)

Live streaming allows you to interact with your TikTok community and communicate back and forth with viewers.

Create a series of video

This will pique your viewer’s curiosity and keep them engaged and coming back the next time.

Duet viral videos

Performing a duet to an already-viral TikTok video. People like seeing people’s reactions to viral videos.

Run TikTok ads

We’ve compiled an article on TikTok ads eCommerce that you can follow. Basically, are some required steps in running TikTok ads:

Create a TikTok Ads account: Go to the TikTok Ads website and sign up for an account. You’ll need to provide basic information about your business, such as your name, email address, and payment details.

Create a campaign: Once you’ve created your account, you can create a new campaign. Choose your ad objectives, such as traffic, conversions, or app installs, and set your budget and schedule.

Target your audience: Define your target audience based on factors like age, gender, location, interests, and behaviors.

Create your ad: Choose the format you want to use, such as in-feed ads, brand takeovers, or sponsored hashtags. Then, create your ad using images, videos, or a combination.

Submit your ad for review: Before it goes live, TikTok will review it to ensure it meets its ad policies and guidelines.

Launch your campaign: Once your ad is approved, you can launch your campaign and monitor its performance using the TikTok Ads dashboard.

Remember to keep your ad creative and engaging to capture the attention of your target audience and drive conversions.

Examples of affiliate marketing on TikTok

Here is a real-world example of TikTok affiliates generating money.

First is @nadyaokamoto, with 1.7M followers and 83.8M likes on TikTok.

She built her TikTok profile by posting educational videos about issues related to women, such as periods, cramps, etc.

And she uses Linktree to build a website with all her information in one link. The link includes the stores selling tampons she promotes, which relates to her TikTok content videos by posting educational women’s videos and urging them to buy her product.

Also, she provides users with her training materials featured on her Youtube channel and blog.

By attracting viewers on TikTok at first, she redirects them to her store and her youtube channel. Isn’t it great?

Another example is @giangchann, a smaller TikTok account, but her TikTok continues to grow and has a reasonable engagement rate.

She makes videos about her life, what she does in a day, etc. People also love those content materials since it’s entertaining.

Do you consider how she does affiliate marketing? By being such a KOL to several followers, her audience would care about her style and what she wears. And she put all of her affiliate apparel in one link. Her videos will lead them to look for her clickable link in her Bio and purchase the product she promotes. By doing so, she’ll quickly receive a commission.

Without really attempting, this channel is potentially generating a sizable recurrent revenue.

Last words of TikTok Affiliate Marketing

Because of the potential of TikTok, affiliates and advertisers that focus their affiliate marketing on TikTok efforts may expect high conversion rates.

TikTok also allows affiliate marketers to experiment with new exciting, stylish, and innovative advertising strategies. Compared to traditional and mainstream approaches, advertising efforts are significantly less expensive, and the power of word-of-mouth marketing adds gasoline to the fire.

TikTok isn’t showing any signs of slowing off anytime soon. TikTok’s focus on developing more ad packages and shoppable content solutions for clients might become their primary source of revenue.

With all affiliate marketing on TikTok tactics in your hand, it’s time to gain millions of dollars on TikTok.

FAQs about TikTok Affiliate Marketing

How do I become an affiliate in TikTok?

To become a TikTok affiliate:

1. Join an affiliate program.
2. Create content promoting products.
3. Include your affiliate link.
4. Track your performance.

Remember to be transparent with your audience and promote products that align with your niche and audience.

Is affiliate marketing on TikTok worth it?

Affiliate marketing on TikTok can be worth it if you have a large following and engage with your audience effectively. TikTok has a massive user base and offers influencers and content creators a unique opportunity to promote products and earn commissions.

However, success as an affiliate on TikTok requires creating engaging content, promoting products that align with your audience and niche, and being transparent with your followers about your affiliation. Building a following and establishing yourself as a trustworthy and credible influencer also takes time.

How many followers do you need to be a TikTok affiliate?

There is no specific follower requirement to become a TikTok affiliate. However, having an engaged following can increase your chances of success as an affiliate.

Can you do affiliate marketing in TikTok?

Of course, TikTok is a potential platform for you to start affiliate program.