TikTok Affiliate Marketing in 2024: How to Earn on TikTok

JANUARY 12, 2024 • AFFILIATE MARKETING • EXPERT OPINION

Artem Bates

PR Manager, Octo Browser

TikTok is the sixth most popular social media platform worldwide. The data shows that the app has been downloaded more than 4,7 billion times and it has more than 1,5 billion active users. This makes the platform attractive to affiliate marketers. However, affiliate marketing on TikTok has to work differently compared to other social media platforms because of a younger audience and a different feed algorithm. The Octo Browser Team offers you a detailed guide on how to make money doing affiliate marketing on TikTok.

What Is TikTok Affiliate Marketing?
Should I Do Affiliate Marketing on Tiktok?
How to Start Affiliate Marketing on TikTok?
Ways To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing On TikTok
Pros and Cons of Affiliate Marketing on TikTok
TikTok Affiliate Marketing Tips
Best traffic niches
Frequently Asked Questions

What Is TikTok Affiliate Marketing?

In a nutshell, you create a page that leads to a partner’s offer. Then you need to sell a product or service, and you will receive a commission for completed target actions, such as registering on a platform or purchasing a product.

Should I Do Affiliate Marketing on Tiktok?

Last year TikTok became the most downloaded service on Google Play and App Store; users spend 1,5 hours daily on it, collectively viewing more than 1 billion posts a day. They are not afraid of spending money and regularly purchase various products there. In Q1 of 2023 alone they spent more than 1 billion USD on the platform.

If this still doesn't seem impressive enough, consider that many marketers do not yet know how to use this platform effectively or do not see its true potential, which means that competition is not so tough here compared to other platforms.

You need to select products to sell carefully if you want to make money. You won’t be able to sell anti-aging creams, walking canes or garden fertilizers here. TikTok’s younger audience is interested in fashion, apparel and footwear, makeup, sports, healthy lifestyle, and gadgets and cutting edge technologies.

How to Start Affiliate Marketing on TikTok?

TikTok allows providing links in bio only to business accounts that have at least 1000 followers. You can switch to a business account by going to Profile Settings and Privacy — Manage Account — Switch to Business Account. Business accounts allow running ads.

TikTok blocks accounts posting affiliate links, so you will need to mask them. You can do so in the following ways:

Use Linktree. It’s a free, but not the most reliable service. If moderators or users notice a masked link, your account might get banned.
Redirect visitors: e.g., direct them from TikTok to a Telegram channel with an offer description, and from there to the offer itself. All accounts can link to other social media, irrespective of the followers count.
Create an intermediary landing page: e.g., buy a domain and host a neutral web page without offer descriptions. Then use the web master panel on MyLead, find the cloaking service HideLink, generate a link and post it in your bio. Moderators and bots will be directed to the secure landing page that you’ve created, and users will be directed to the page with the offer.

How to Start Affiliate Marketing on TikTok?

Ways To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing On TikTok

You need to start your promotion activities by preparing your account: after you’ve created it, spend a couple of days watching and liking top posts. This will convince moderators that you’re a real person. After that you can create several posts with creative content related to your niche, and several days after that clips related to the offer itself.

You can use the following promotion strategies:

Leveraging Organic Traffic

You can grow your view count organically. Here’s what you can do:

Streams. Even pages without followers can attract 100-200 viewers for a stream. You can stream all by yourself, invite a guest, or spoof the stream with a ready-made video running on your PC with Octo Browser.
Mutual likes. Popular posts are recommended by TikTok algorithms. You can use a multi-accounting browser to register multiple profiles and increase activity of your accounts. Using an antidetect multi-accounting browser will help you avoid bans for multi-accounting.
Commenting on top posts. These videos will be in most users’ feeds, so comments will also be seen by many. To make sure your comment is read, like it using your other accounts.

Paid Advertising

If organic traffic is not enough, you can always run ads. Use the following strategies:

Ad Sets funnels. Run several sets of unique videos to see which ones are the most engaging, and keep them: e.g., you can run 10 ad sets with 10 posts in each. After a couple of days you can analyze the CTR and see that only 5 out of 100 publications go viral. Then you combine those 5 in one ad campaign and one ad set, so that these posts don’t compete with each other for views. Then you can delete the remaining TikToks and use others in their stead.
A playoff system. Run several posts in one set. Monitor the results for several days and eliminate the posts with the most expensive conversion. Repeat the process until you end up with the most successful one.
From organic traffic to ads. If you have enough time on your hands, you can publish several posts and see the reaction. This allows you to test various ideas for free and promote only those that were organically liked by the viewers. Most likely they will have high conversion rates.

Pros and Cons of Affiliate Marketing on TikTok

Benefits of this platform are connected to its algorithms:

The audience grows quickly;
It is used in various regions;
The audience has money and is already buying various products on the platform;
The feed is mostly based on recommendations, not on subscriptions, so posts go viral more easily;
Less competition among affiliate marketers.

However, TikTok has its downsides too:

You won’t be able to sell anything you want: this is a predominantly youth-oriented platform;
You can’t add links to videos;
Only business accounts with more than 1000 followers are allowed to post links in bio;
Partner offers are prohibited, and if you don’t mask them well, your profiles might get blocked;
Moderators ban videos related to gambling, betting, and weight loss.
Promotion is more expensive compared to other social media platforms.

TikTok Affiliate Marketing Tips

Here are some extra tips that will help you increase your sales:

Publish videos regularly. 2-3 clips a week are enough for your subscribers to remember you. More often is still better, but be careful: don’t publish TikToks more often than once every 2-3 hours, or you risk your accounts getting shadowbanned.
Use hashtags. Two or three will be enough to promote your post. You can see the trending ones in the descriptions of top TikToks.
Be careful when choosing offers. The younger audience is not interested in certain goods, such as anti-aging products or fertilizers, and moderators will ban prohibited subjects, such as gambling, betting, and weight loss.
Run ads. You can start with organic traffic, but you won’t always be able to promote an account from scratch by yourself. If you need quick results, sometimes it’s better to pay than to wait for organic traffic that might not come.
Use different strategies. You can find the best way to promote a given product only by trial and error. Organic traffic might be better for one niche, and ads for another.
Publish only unique TikToks. You can use works by others as inspiration, but don’t carbon-copy them. Look for the Get inspiration section to find ideas sectioned into goals, industries, and products.
Use popular formats:

Trends. Use an audio or an idea from recommendations and create your own TikTok. You need to do this while the audio or pattern are popular. Usually trends stay alive for around two weeks, after which you will need to make new creative content.
Conversational clips. An interesting speaker, their ability to quickly draw attention, convince, and sell are a recipe for a successful promotion. You will need to find a person who will be trusted.
Video cuts. Combine shots from trending creative materials or your competitors' content.

Best traffic niches

TikTok is mostly used by younger people: for example, 80% of its audience in the USA is between 16 and 34 years old. They positively respond to offers related to fashion, healthy lifestyle, and modern technologies. These are the main niches in which you can earn:

Dating

Many young people are looking for a soulmate or a partner, so they eagerly respond to dating offers. It’s safer to choose offers with “smart” links, so that each visitor will see relevant profiles for their region and gender preferences.

“White” goods

TikTok's audience is diverse, so you can find buyers for almost anything there. Household goods, clothes, Korean makeup, jewelry, and electronics are among the most popular niches, and branded items can be promoted through popular bloggers.

Nutrition

Young people strive to look good and lead a healthy lifestyle. Workout videos, stories of weight loss, healthy nutrition recipes all garner a lot of views. Your creative materials need to be realistic, without promising miraculous weight loss and anti-aging techniques, otherwise your profile might get blocked.

Betting

Straightforward betting and gambling are prohibited, but in practice videos covering sports events and “expensive” creative content from casinos can easily go viral. If you mask your offers well, creating unusual content that appeals to emotions, you can earn in this niche too.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I do affiliate marketing on TikTok?

Yes, you can make money with affiliate marketing on TikTok. You will need to create or buy a business account with at least 1000 followers, and you will be able to post clickable links in bio.

How do I become a TikTok affiliate?

All ad account users, digital marketing professionals, and influencers can take part in the TikTok Affiliate Program. For each user creating a business account with a referral link and depositing money there you will receive $40.

How do I make money as a TikTok affiliate?

You can earn as a TikTok affiliate by redirecting users to your partners’ offers. To do so, you need to direct users from your profile to a landing page or social media resource that will contain a product description and the link to it. After clients follow your referral link and buy the product, you will earn a commission.