If you are interested in using Tiktok for Affiliate Marketing there has never been a better time to do it than now.

Tiktok is not only the fastest growing social media platform with over 130 million active users in the U.S alone but it has also overtaken YouTube’s average watch time with over 24 hours of content per month, compared with 22 hours and 40 minutes on Google’s video platform.

Put simply, Tiktok is probably one of the best opportunities to grow and monetize an audience there has been in the last 10 years.

It can be compared to what Youtube and Instagram were at their beginnings when you could grow your account to 10, 20, or 100k in months. This is now impossible on established platforms with more competition but not on Tiktok where creators have reached millions of followers in months.

So let’s get started with how you can take advantage of this platform to grow your affiliate profits.

Why should you use Tiktok for Affiliate Marketing?

Those who are not yet using TikTok, might still think of it as an app for teenagers and dances but studies show that the user base of TikTok is expanding beyond teens and the number of TikTok users aged 26-34 years is vastly higher as compared to 16-24-year-olds.

This is not a new phenomenon when it comes to social media apps. The younger generation is often the first one to adopt new technologies and other age groups eventually start pouring in as it happened with Facebook and Instagram.

According to this study by Statista, only 37% of TikTok users are between the ages of 10-18 which means that 63% of users are older than 18.

Additionally, the largest share (37%) – of unique visitors comes from households with a total income of $100K or more which means that there is no lack of purchase power and you’ll have no issues monetizing a TikTok audience with affiliate marketing.

While TikTok is the fastest growing social media app, it is still in its early stages and there is not as much competition as in other platforms. This along with its unique algorithm that keeps people engaged for hours making it possible to get exposure and grow a following faster.

To make my point clearer, let’s take a look at these two examples. The first one above is Tori Dunlap, a creator on the personal finance niche who started a Tiktok and an Instagram account at the same time and with similar content. While her Tiktok has reached 1.7 M followers, her Instagram only has gotten 390K.

Another example is Rachel Pedersen, a social media strategist who has been on Instagram for more than 4 years and has reached only 175k followers, while her TikTok account has reached almost 3 times that in less than a year.

That’s more than enough to show why you must be using TikTok for Affiliate Marketing so let’s get started with how to do it!

Pros of TikTok Affiliate Marketing

• You can reach a lot of people without a new or a small account.
• You can grow a following faster than on other platforms
• It works for a lot of niches
• Videos can be 5-60 seconds long so it is easy to create content
• You don’t need any equipment other than your phone
• You can add a clickable link in your bio
• They allow affiliate links as your bio link

Cons of Tiktok Affiliate Marketing

• You need to post frequently and cosnsitnelty to get results
• Not a passive source of traffic
• Views are inconsistent
• The algorithm sometimes takes down videos that do not violate any guidelines
• You can get you account banned even if you haven’t violated any guidelines.

How To Use TikTok for Affiliate Marketing

1. Choose your Affiliate Niche And Offers

Before getting started with your Tik Tok Affiliate Marketing, one of the most important aspects you need to decide on is your niche and offers. This means, what topic you are going to focus on and what products/services you will promote.

Choose your TikTok Niche for Affiliate Marketing

If you have already chosen your niche and offers you can skip to the next step but if you don’t, here are some factors to consider when deciding what topic and products to focus on:

• Focusing on one niche is crucial to promote affiliate offers sucessfully in Tiktok. Users like to follow accounts that post specific niche content instead of general content so they can be certain they’lll like most of your videos.
  
  More importantly, this will also allow you to get more targeted followers that will actually buy what you promote in the future.

• It is also important to choose a niche that you enjoy and have some level of knowledge about. Consistency is key on Tiktok so you will need to publish at least once a day to get results and you choosing a niche you have no interest in will only make things unnecesarily harder.

• Some of the most popular niches on TikTok include dancing, comedy, fashion cooking, and fitness. However, that doesn’t mean you have to choose one of these to be successful. As I mentioned before, Tiktok has 130 millions users of all ages so it can work for most niches as long as you make your content valuable and/or entertaining.
  
  The best way to validate your niche is to do a quick search on TikTok for some of the main related keywords and see if there are some accounts that are already doing well.This is a great sign that there is an audience you can reach and monetize.
  
  Below are some examples of accounts in “smaller” niches to proof my point.

• If you want to work with two different niches, it is best that you create two separate accounts so people know what to expect and they are more likely to follow and stay engaged.
  
• Some niches to stay away from are anything related to drugs, alcohol or sex since TikTok has strict polices againt these and will probably results on getting you banned from the platform before you make any money.

Choose Your Affiliate Offers

A key factor for a profitable niche is making sure that there are good affiliate offers you can promote so this step will also help you validate your niche selection.

Here are some tips to consider when choosing your affiliate offers:

• Commissions: It takes the same amount of work to promote a low ticket or a high ticket offer so why would you choose a product that pays you cents when you can choose one that pays $1,000? While each niche is different I still recommend choosing an affiliate offer that pays at least $40 per purchase so you can see significant results faster.
  
  An exception to this principle would be if you plan to promote products that appeal to a massive audience like Amazon’s in which case the volume justifies the smaller commissions they pay. Below is an example of one TikTok account doing great with these types of products.

• Reputation and Quality: This applies for any platform but TikTok users feel specially empewered by the anonymity they can have on the app so before you start promoting an offer, make sure it is one you like, trust and would be happy to buy yourself.
  
  Your followers will be your biggest asset so you want them to have a good experience with the products you promote so they can continue to trust you and buy what you promote in the future.

2.Set up your TikTok Profile

Choose your account type

There are three different types of accounts you can have on TikTok:

• Personal Account: This is the account that you will get by default when first signing up for TikTok. As the name suggests, this account is merely for personal use so it doesn’t any features that you can take advantage of as an affiliate marketer.

• Creator Account: Thys type of account is geared towards influencers and content creators but you can also use it as an affiliate marketer. The main benefit of a creator account is that it gives you access to all the cool sounds that are what TikTok is all about, while also having access to statistics.
  
  The only drawback of a creator account is that you don’t get access to a clickable link in your bio until you reach 1,000 followers so it’ll hard to drive traffic to your affiliate offers before that point. But if you post consistently, it shouldn’t take you more than a couple of weeks to reach that point.

• Business Account: finally, a business accounts is the other option that you can go for since it gives you access to a clickable link in your bio without any other requirements. However, business accounts don’t have access to most of the sounds so you do miss out on all the trends and opportunities to create cool content.

Which account should you choose? I would recommend choosing a creator account since it won’t be hard to reach 1,000 followers and get a clickable link in your bio. Plus, it’ll help you focus more on creating valuable content and building trust since you won’t be promoting any offers at first.

Optimize your profile

After choosing what type of account you want to have, it’s time to optimize your bio so people know what your account is about when they visit your profile and can decide if you want to follow you. Here are some tips to consider when creating your Tiktok bio:

• Add relevant keywords related to your niche to your name and username so your profile can show up in search results. This gives you more opportunities to be discovered by people who are already interested in your topic.

• Tiktok space for your bio is short. Use it wisely by writing a concise description of yourself and how you can help you potential audience with their needs and problems so they feel inclined to follow you.

• If/ once you are able you are to add a clickable link in your bio, add also an attractive call to action inviting people to visit it.

• Add a picture of yourself that shows your face clearly. Remember that this is a social media app before anything and people want to connect with other people.

• Depending on the type of account you choose, you can also link your Youtube channel and Instagram account.

3. Set up your your affiliate marketing funnel

Before you start pumping out content, you need to know where you will direct all the potential customers you get for your affiliate offers.

While the “easiest” option would be to add your affiliate link as a clickable link in your bio, that could cause you to lose a lot of sales and to miss out on buildable a valuable asset for your business.

Instead, you can create a simple sales funnel that allows you to collect people’s emails and follow up with them to increase conversion rates (aka commissions). Here are a few reasons why I recommend using a sales funnel when using TikTok for affiliate marketing:

• When people are scrolling through TikTok, they are not actively looking to make a purchase so it is very unlikely that they are ready to buy the affiliate product right after clicking your link. A majority of them will not buy it the first time but if you collect their email first, you can follow up with them and increase the sales and therefore, commissions.

• A simple sales funnel like the one I will show you how to create includes a bridge page where you’ll be able to introduce yourself and pre-sell the offer to your audience. This will not only increase the chances of them buying the affilite product but it’ll also allow you to start building your authority and trust with your followers.

• While you can build a following easier on Tiktok than on other platforms, the truth is that you still don’t own that audience and it can also dissapear if one day your account gets banned so builidng your email list by promoting your affiliate offers is the best way to protect your business long-term and have an asset that is truly yours.

• As an affiliate marketer, building your email list is the best way to create consistent passive income. Depending on your niche you can make between $1 and $5 a month per email subscriber by promoting related offers that you can do on autopilot by using an email autoresponder.

Now that you know why you must use a sales funnel for Tiktok Affiliate Marketing let’s take a look at how to build one easily.

Opt-In Page

The Opt-In Page of your sales funnel is where your audience will first land after clicking on the link in your TikTok profile.

The main objective of this page is to capture visitors’ emails so you can then follow up with them. This is usually done by offering a free item also known as “freebie” or “lead-magnet” or by simply offering an attractive promise or benefit that they will be to discover in exchange for their email.

Below is an example of a simple yet effective opt-in page. As you can see all you need is an attractive headline highlighting the benefits of the affiliate offer. (In this case, the email form pop-ups when you click the “Show Me How button”

Bridge Page

As the name suggests, the bridge page is a connector between the opt-in pages and the merchant’s sales page.

It usually consists of a simple video where you introduce the offer to your audience. Since they have clicked on your link after watching your TikTok videos, watching you present the offer gives it an extra layer of trust and credibility than if you simply send them to the sales page.

It also helps you start creating a relationship with them so they are more likely to read your emails and buy the future offers that you share with them.

Here, you will also add a Call To Action button and place your affiliate link in so people can be directed to the merchant’s website when clicking.

Email Campaign

After people click your affiliate link they will go to the company’s website where some of them will buy the product and some won’t.

But they have also been added to your email list since they entered their email on your opt-in page so you can follow up with them via email to help convert another group of them into buyers.

This is usually done through a 5-day email campaign that helps build more trust with by providing value and helping eliminate some of the potential obstacles for buying the product.

You can automate this whole process with an email autoresponder like ActiveCampaign so you only need to set it up once and then your funnel and email campaign will be working for you 24/7.

4.Grow Your TikTok Audience

Once you have your profile optimized, you are ready to start creating content so you can build your audience. Here are some tips to consider for your content strategy:

Have a clear niche

The TikTok algorithm is really good at finding people who might be interested in your content but it is important that you stay focused on your niche so it can help you find your audience. This will also help you gain followers since people will have a clear idea of what your account is about and know what they can expect from you.

Use hashtags

When you first start creating videos, Tiktok has no idea what your account is about so using as many relevant hashtags as possible in your description is the best way to “help” the algorithm to know who it should show your content to.

Note: It is important to mention that TikTok videos can not be edited after being posted – as it can be done on other apps – so double check your video and description before hitting that “Post” button.

Follow Trends

Trends are a huge part of what makes TikTok so fun and addictive for users. Put simply trends are either sounds or types of videos that users replicate with their own version and that TikTok groups together under their hashtags and songs tabs.

Trends are a great opportunity to get more views on your videos since the algorithm usually shows users videos that are similar to the ones they have engaged with and if a song or challenge is “trending” most users have probably interacted with it already.

Additionally, is an easy way to create content related to your niche that is fun and entertaining at the same time. Once you start noticing TikTok trends, you will never run out of ideas for your videos.

You can find the biggest current TikTok Trends within the app, by clicking the ‘Discover’ magnifying glass and choosing Trends at the top of the screen but, to be honest, once a trend appears in the discover tap it is probably too late to hop on it. You will have more luck simply scrolling through your “For You Page” and identifying the audios that appear repeatedly.

Duration

TikTok videos can be anything from 5 seconds to 3 minutes long but one of the main factors that the algorithm takes into account to determine if it keeps showing your video to more people is Watch Time, meaning what percentage of your video the users watched.

For this reason, and because people’s attention span is shorter every day, shorter videos tend to perform better. Try to keep your videos as concise as possible and use an attractive “hook” at the beginning to catch viewers’ attention and hopefully, make them stop scrolling to watch your video.

Respect Community Guidelines

Tiktok might seem like all fun and games but it actually has very strict policies on what is allowed on the platform and repeated violations can get you banned either for a few days or completely.

Prohibited content includes anything that promotes bullying, drugs, alcohol, nudity, or any form of sexual content.

Unfortunately, many times a video can get flagged without violating these guidelines simply because the algorithm made a mistake or because people reported the video.

Why would someone report your video? I have no idea but it happens so my advice is that if you get a hater in your comments simply block them and hopefully you’ll avoid getting more of them into your profile.

Add A Call To Action

A Call To Action is a final message that you can add at the end of your videos to tell people what to do next.

You can’t expect people to follow you or click the link in your bio if you don’t ask them to do it but I can’t tell you how many affiliates have told me they are struggling to grow and get commission while not having a clear call to actions on their videos.

When you are first growing your account, I recommend asking people to follow you so you can build your authority and credibility faster and once you have at least 1,000 followers, you can start asking people to visit the link in your bio as a call to action.

Replicate what works

Tiktok is a unique platform with its own language and codes so when you are first starting out it can be challenging to find what type of content works best for your niche.

The good news is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel since there are probably other creators in your industry (or a similar one) who are already getting good results and from who you can get inspiration.

And no, you don’t need to copy their videos but —as you will notice— Tiktok is a lot about creating your own version of someone else’s videos so that is a great place to start exploring what sort of content works for your niche.

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TikTok Affiliate Marketing FAQ

Can you do affiliate marketing on TikTok?

Yes! Tiktok is a huge opportunity for affiliate marketers. The app is still in its early stage so growing a following and getting traffic is easier than on other platforms.

Additionally, you can add a clickable link in your bio and they don’t have any restrictions when it comes to affiliate links. So, while this might not the best practice, some beginners will be glad they can add their link directly without having to own a domain or use a landing page.

How do I use Amazon affiliate on TikTok?

Tiktok is a great place to promote Amazon affiliate products since you can reach a wide audience easily but the key is to choose products with a novelty or surprise element so people are more likely to engage with your videos and share them.

Accounts like @amazonbadger and @teresalauracaruso are two accounts to look out for great results promoting amazon affiliate products on Tiktok.

You can also use a tool like Linktree or Beacons so you can add multiple products to your bio and not be limited to just one link

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Takeaway

Using TikTok can help you kick start your affiliate journey and get you results faster than other platforms.

The app is still in its early days but it is definitely harder to grow on it now than it was 1 year or even 6 months ago so if you want to take advantage of this opportunity the best time to get started is now.

Keep in mind that you don’t own your audience so it is best to grow your email list while promoting your affiliate offers so you can protect your business and income long-term.