TikTok features people aged 13 to 60 in more than 155 countries. The app’s audience is rapidly growing and will soon overtake Instagram, which has 1.4 billion followers. How useful is TikTok for affiliate marketing and how can you make money from it? Read more about it in our fresh article, get ready to concentrate on the benefits.

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TikTok recently celebrated another record growth in users and now exceeds 1 billion people from all over the world! A year ago very few people took the platform seriously, seeing it as a place for children’s entertainment. Now TikTok is conquering the world. Here’s our guide to affiliate marketing on TikTok.

Why can’t you ignore TikTok?

The primary reason for using TikTok is that the audience size is huge. Young active users aged 16-24 enjoy spending an average of 52 minutes a day on the app, and log in 8 times a day. They account for approximately 40% of subscribers, which means there are over 400 million members of your target audience waiting for you in TikTok!

According to the latest statistics, 800 million active users spend time on TikTok every day. And 80% of users don’t just flip through their feed, but also add their own videos, follow trends and use recommendations from their favorite bloggers. 

How to start marketing on TikTok

The first thing you need to do is become a TikTok user and learn how the platform works. You’ll find that there are a few prevailing trends including humor, gadgets, fashion, style, and lifestyle. You should look at how people are making their videos and take notes. TikTok videos have a style which is very much their own, the most popular influencers know how to engage with their audiences.  

When it comes to making content for TikTok, a short video format of 15-60 seconds can be shot and edited directly in the application, or you can upload ready-made videos.

When compared to YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, TikTok makes it much easier to gain organic reach and views if your content is relevant. It also has all the tools you need to present your offers in a trendy themed video format. 

How do affiliates earn on TikTok?

At first glance it may seem very simple: you study the work of the social network, track trends, shoot videos in a popular style, and start testing the results. However, it’s still a very new platform, and the ads manager is not as well designed as those of some of the other major platforms, but you shouldn’t let this put you off. Remember, the early bird catches the worm.   

Where to place links on TikTok, and how to use the content to get conversions?

To make money from content in TikTok, you can:

• place links in your profile description;
• redirect traffic to other sites with a marker in the video;
• Encourage viewers to follow the link in the video itself;
• leave a link in the video description.

It’s best to use all available methods when marketing alongside the paid marketing tools provided by TikTok For Business as well. You should also switch to a business account in order to effectively use all the tools to monetize your traffic.

You can use the following options to promote your spots on TikTok:

• Topview - priority of display in the general feed of the selected target audience;
• In-feed ads - native insertion of your ads into user’s usual feed;
• branded hashtag challenge - mainly used by major brands and bloggers to popularize their content by engaging the site’s audience;
• Branded effects - the ability to brand stickers, effects and masks to create popular content on the social network.

For affiliate marketing, the first two tools work really well. 

4 Affiliate strategies for working with TikTok

When working with TikTok, it’s important to take into account not only the advantages, but also its unique features. We’ve prepared 4 working strategies, which will be useful for you when promoting your offers in TikTok.

Focus on Generation Z

60% of users in TikTok are under 30. Of course, you’ll be targeting a paying audience of 20+, but it’s important to know that they don’t behave like the millennials we’re all used to.

The buying power of younger audiences is often lower. Therefore, you should estimate a reasonable price for a young buying audience for each country you will target. 

Select verticals and offers that will really appeal to the new generation. Bid on trends, track their interests, and tailor all creatives to young people. Emotional purchases and subscriptions are just as (if not more) inherent to them, but you should pitch your ads as close to their daily feed as possible. Immerse yourself in eco-evangelism, LIFE, tolerance, recycling, vibrant colors, unrestrained dancing, mindful consumption and other popular trends. You need to be in tune with your audience if you want to attract them to convert.

Develop a strong TikTok profile

Your working account needs to be strong in order to attract a larger audience and reducing the price of promotion. Influencer marketing is gaining more and more momentum, which also cannot be written off.

To develop a strong profile, work on your account as a prospective affiliate marketing platform:

• shoot and post videos on a regular basis;
• Follow the trends and participate in the Challenges;
• use hashtags and brand your content;
• Create collaborations with bloggers.

By gradually increasing the audience in your profile, you’ll be able to build up your reach and get more organic traffic. Unlike bloggers who suddenly become popular, you know how to monetize your traffic and make a profit from your first ad launches.

Don’t forget about another cool tool - live streaming! Regular live streams on TikTok, just like on Instagram, help retain old subscribers and attract new ones. 

If you have your own team of affiliates or if you don’t want to be in your commercials yourself, you can create (hire) a creative character to manage your working TikTok profile. Be sure that many popular bloggers have their own teams of writers, editors and other creative people working on their accounts and content.

Take advantage of TikTok’s advertising opportunities

We’ve already said that the site is quite capable of gaining views for viral content without involving paid tools. However, if you’re going to make money in TikTok, you’ll have to allocate an advertising budget.

TikTok has carefully refused to publish its standard price list, although it’s no secret that the site charges quite a bit for the use of display privileges and is more expensive than other sites.

On average, you’ll have to spend $20-50 on in-feed ad tests due to the minimum budget restraints in the ads manager. If you don’t want to spend this much on testing, then you can always try things out organically first, and then migrate them across to the ads manager. 

Create organic advertising content

Integrating advertising natively and organically into short videos is a bit tricky, but TikTok is perfectly suited to doing it! Dynamic content is popular and you can creatively integrate high-quality ads for your offers. The more you immerse yourself in the world of TikTok, the faster you’ll track trends and produce relevant videos with the right links. 

The Bottom Line 

Often, brands involve already promoted Tiktokers who simply use products in their videos. Even if the video is shot for a different subject, the product or link is still present in the video, to stir the interest of the audience. Then, when the final promotional video is released, the product or link seems more familiar to regular viewers and garners more trust. 

If you are still not using TikTok as a source of traffic, now is the time to start. The sooner you start getting into the rules of the game, the better results you’ll get in the future.

The site’s audience is growing by the hour and shouldn’t be ignored. Arm yourself with useful tips from experts, develop your strategy, choose your verticals and offers and take action.