Affiliate Marketing vs Influencer Marketing: A Streamer's Guide

So you’re a streamer. You’re building your audience on Twitch, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and more, and you’ve undoubtedly got some intentions of growing your platform so you can make more money doing what you love for a living.

If you’ve been in the streaming world for any time at all, you probably know that you can’t be a successful, full-time streamer without utilizing some form of marketing and advertising. Different brands pay streamers to get in front of their audience, and it’s how pretty much every streamer makes a massive chunk of their income.

So today, we’re going to break down the two biggest types of advertising you can do from your channel: Affiliate marketing and influencer marketing. Both of these can be used to your advantage in your streams and videos.

Affiliate Marketing

Let’s start out by discussing what affiliate marketing has to offer. It’s one of the most popular forms of marketing and advertising on the Internet. If you want to make money as a creator, you’ve got to get involved in affiliate marketing.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

In simple terms, affiliate marketing is a partnership with a brand designed to generate sales for that brand. You generate sales for the company through your platform, and you get paid a commission on the sales you generate. It’s a simple concept that is super scalable with your platform and audience.

Here’s how it works: Typically, the brand will partner with creators who either have a very large or very niche, loyal audience. The company will give you, the creator, a unique link to their website or a unique discount code to use at checkout.

Now, you blast that link or discount code across all your platforms. Advertise it in your bios, in your ad breaks on your stream, in the middle of your YouTube videos, anywhere you can. The company tracks the data from those unique links or codes and keeps track of how many sales and dollars they generate.

Again, oftentimes, these unique tools come with a significant discount or special deal for your audience members, incentivizing them to click on that link and buy something.

What Is the Goal?

Typically, companies want some very specific things from these types of deals. First and foremost, they want to generate as many sales as possible. They have to sell their products, and they’re using your audience to help do that, all while benefiting you, too. It’s a win-win.

Their second goal is to establish domain authority. By generating a bunch of unique links that all garner traffic across various spaces of the internet, the company can bolster its SEO and metadata.

What Metrics Do They Measure?

Obviously, the company will keep track of how many sales and dollars you generate, but the data they want doesn’t stop there.

They’ll also keep track of the conversion rate, which is how many people make a purchase compared to how many people see the advertisement. They’ll also keep track of average order value (AOV), cost per acquisition (CPA), and customer lifetime value (CLV).

All the data helps a company decide how successful its partnership with you is. So, if you can, you should try to get your hands on this data as well so you can refine your strategy and get your links in front of the right people who will actually buy a product, translating to money in your pocket.

How Do I Get an Affiliate Marketing Deal?

You’re going to want to start by researching potential brands to partner with. Make sure you pick brands that make sense for your channel and relate to the content you make.

If you’re a gamer, find companies that make products specifically for gaming. If you’re a fitness streamer, find products designed for athletes. You want to ensure that the products appeal to your audience so they’ll be more likely to purchase.

Then, reach out to the company to try to get on their PR list. When you reach out with your pitch, make sure to include data metrics about your channel. Viewership, post frequency, data from past sponsorships, etc.

Once you make their PR lists, you can start that relationship and grow it from there. Stay in contact with them and provide updates on your channel’s growth. Eventually, ask to get an affiliate marketing contract.

Of course, you can always start out with the Amazon Affiliate program. It’s a great way to get your foot in the door, get some experience, and make a little bit of money. It’s not the best commission percentage out there, but it’s a great way to get started.

Influencer Marketing

It might seem like affiliate marketing and influencer marketing are interchangeable terms, but the reality is that these two forms of advertising are quite different. They have different goals, different payment styles, and different data they keep track of.

What Is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is similar to affiliate marketing. They both partner with third-party creators who help spread the word about their brand, and then they compensate them for it. However, influencer marketing has some key differences from affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing involves generating sales, but influencer marketing is more about increasing and spreading brand awareness. In influencer marketing, companies will partner with large creators, give them free products, give them a flat rate to make a video or product placement, and even offer commissions on sales.

The compensation package is usually a lot larger than that of affiliate marketing. Most influencer marketing deals involve a flat fee from the brand. The company is essentially paying for your endorsement and to be associated with you, a high-value, large-audience creator.

A company might have you make a whole video reviewing their product. They might pay to have one of their products front and center during each one of your streams. They might pay you to have their logo spread throughout your videos. All of these are various forms of influencer marketing.

The Goal of Influencer Marketing

Again, the primary goal of influencer marketing is brand awareness. Of course, the company will also welcome any sales you generate, but that’s more of an added bonus. They want to spread the name of their brand and get people to view it more positively and reliably.

The brand recognizes that your audience views you as an expert, and they want to associate themselves with you as an expert, boosting the public opinion of their brand. They’re building credibility and trust with people, which is incredibly valuable to large, growing companies.

The Metrics They Care About

While affiliate marketing deals focus primarily on sales numbers, influencer marketing deals have broader, more long-term KPIs.

They’ll keep track of social media engagement, such as likes, shares, and comments. They’ll also keep track of email sign-ups and closely monitor their Google analytics. They want to see a boost in their overall traffic and a general lift in the public opinion of their brand.

How To Get an Influencer Marketing Deal

Generally, influencer marketing deals are much harder to come by than affiliate deals. With affiliate deals, brands only pay you for the sales you generate, so it’s pretty low risk for the company.

However, the risk is a lot higher with influencer deals because their goals are broader and more nebulous. That, coupled with the fact that they pay you upfront, makes these deals much more rare.

This means that only the largest creators are going to get their hands on influencer marketing deals. Companies need influencers who will undoubtedly help them meet their goals, and small creators just don’t have the influence necessary to offer that guarantee.

So, if you want an influencer deal, focus on growing your channel and developing a highly loyal audience. Start with affiliate contracts, and make sure you keep track of the data from those deals. That way, you can use that data to become more appealing to potential clients in the future.

At the end of the day, most of the time, influencer deals come to you. You won’t find them. So just keep growing your platforms and bide your time until you get those sweet influencer marketing contracts.

But if you’re really looking at getting into the influencer marketing game, it might be a good idea to go to industry events that relate to your field of content. Meeting representatives from brands face-to-face might give you a leg up with them and could get you a deal faster than you otherwise thought.

Marketing Deals For Streamers

If you play your cards right, keep growing your channel, and find the right brands, you could land yourself a few of these marketing deals and make some substantial cash through your streaming and content creation. That next deal could be the one that helps you reach your goals and become the streamer you’ve always wanted to be.

Now, you know everything you need about the marketing deals that are out there. So take this information and run with it! Get yourself a deal and make some money playing the games you love.

For more information about how to be a successful streamer, check out the Powder blog and see how our AI tools can help you create incredible content for all your platforms.

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