Have we reached peak affiliate link?
A deep dive into the evolving affiliate ecosystem
If you’re new here, welcome to Delivered, a newsletter covering the intersection of content & commerce. Subscribe to get all posts straight to your inbox.
I spend a lot of time in corners of the internet dedicated to shopping recommendations, somewhat for business but mostly for pleasure. I subscribe to many Substack newsletters, have a separate Instagram account where I only follow fashion and interior design profiles, and, sue me, but I love an Amazon influencer storefront. I don’t even buy that much, I just like to know what’s out there. And because I understand the business of affiliate, I tend to scrutinize the links in the content I consume.
Lately, I’ve been fascinated by the propagation of affiliate links. They are everywhere! Here are a few out-of-the-ordinary instances I’ve taken note of in the last month:
Meghan Markle’s ShopMy page (I shared some brief thoughts on it in my last newsletter)
A subscriber in a Substack chat using an affiliate link to share a pair of shoes she liked (she has her own newsletter but only has 10 subscribers)
A founder using an affiliate link in her Substack newsletter to send readers to her clothing company’s website (unclear if she’s aware she’s paying herself)
A woman I grew up with linking to self-tanner in an Instagram story (not an influencer, but has a couple thousand followers)
Each example above is honestly worthy of its own analysis—and I’m guessing Meghan Markle is the only one that makes money (the founder is possibly losing money)—but that’s not the point of today’s newsletter. They’re all indicative of a larger shift in the affiliate ecosystem, and how the industry has transformed from a relatively niche marketing tool used by websites to a veritable revenue stream that anyone with an internet following can turn on. Today, I’ll break down the factors that got us here and share my predictions for where we’re headed.
Breaking down the parts of the affiliate ecosystem…
To start, it helps to identify the four parts of the affiliate ecosystem:
The recommender (aka the affiliate): A publisher, influencer, or other locus of attention that creates commissionable links
The channel: Where the affiliate link is placed to reach an audience; can be the recommender’s owned-and-operated properties, social media apps, or other platforms that connect it to an audience
The merchant: Where the affiliate link sends audiences to complete their purchase
The affiliate network: The middleman that connects the recommender and the merchant; enables the linking and ensures the recommender gets paid
…And what’s changed
I’d argue that major changes in three of the four parts of the ecosystem over the last few years have made affiliate marketing mainstream:
The recommender: The major factor here is the growth of influencer culture. The market size for influencer marketing is projected to reach $32 billion in 2025, up from $21 billion in 2023;1 last year, people were six times more likely to make a Black Friday purchase after seeing influencer content than non-influencer content on social media, like an in-feed ad. Influencer posts are a lot more powerful than traditional ads! And riding that trend is affiliate, which is growing as a revenue stream for influencers. Traditionally, influencer marketing revolved around top-of-funnel sponsored posts that drove brand awareness, but the concrete traffic and sales data that commissionable links provide has made affiliate marketing more appealing to brands dealing with tighter budgets. With affiliate, brands pay for verified clicks or sales, making it very durable.
The channel: There are also a lot more ways for recommenders to share commissionable links with audiences now. Substack first became a haven for independent fashion writers to start their own publications in 2021, and in the last year, its growth and community features have led to a saturation of shopping newsletters by anyone who thinks they have taste. There are essentially no limits to where you can place affiliate links on Substack—in a newsletter, comment, subscriber chat, note—and opportunistic Substackers aren’t shy about where they drop them. Social media platforms have also gotten more permissive with their link integration features. Instagram rolled out link stickers in Stories more than three years ago, while TikTok enabled links in videos last November.
The affiliate network: Truthfully, I think the major disruptor to the affiliate ecosystem is ShopMy. Founded in 2020, ShopMy is an affiliate platform that has user-friendly features like aesthetic storefronts and link creation for products that aren’t commissionable (you can still track clicks, which is valuable data), and it reportedly offers creators higher commissions than its main competitor LTK. Most importantly for the evangelization of affiliate marketing is the variety of its creator network. On the high end, it’s attracted influencer-adjacent celebrities like Meghan Markle, Molly Sims, Hilary Rhoda, and Jenna Lyons, as well as the coastal elite fashion-y crowd. But it also allows virtually anyone with a platform to join, compared to LTK where creators have to show they have a large and engaged social media following as part of the application process. (I was able to create a ShopMy account for my extremely small running newsletter whose accompanying Instagram account is dormant and has less than 100 followers. I’ve made zero dollars.) The barrier to entry for using ShopMy is very low, but its high-profile creators lend it a credibility that’s benefited the affiliate industry at large, kind of like how everybody, no matter how rich or poor, drinks the same Diet Coke.
Looking back at the four link examples I mentioned above, only the Meghan Markle instance could exist in a pre-ShopMy era through LTK, which she used in her pre-Harry influencer days. The subscriber in the Substack chat and the woman I grew up with don’t have large enough followings to qualify for LTK, nor do they post regularly about brands and products, another requirement for LTK applicants. I still don’t fully understand the founder’s intention in linking to her own website via affiliate—it’s the definition of moving money from one pocket to another—I’m guessing she either doesn’t understand affiliate or she’s using the link to capture data that Substack doesn’t provide. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume the latter.
Where do we go from here?
Are we headed towards a future state as predicted by
, where everyone uses commissionable links when recommending anything online? I don’t think we’re totally at peak link, but we’re getting there as Meghan Markle’s foray into ShopMy will make a lot of previous naysayers comfortable with affiliate.I predict that more creators at both the high and low end of the influencer spectrum will flood our feeds with links, but those with small followings will eventually give up when they realize that for affiliate to be a meaningful revenue stream (and worth the ick factor they’re giving their personal network), they need scale. One of the most important inputs in the affiliate revenue formula is click volume, and someone with a couple thousand followers isn’t going to see enough conversions to make the effort worth it.
I also see a world where channels and networks converge into one, with social media platforms launching their own affiliate programs. A few have already attempted: YouTube rolled out an affiliate program last year, and Instagram launched one in 2021 before sunsetting it soon thereafter. Affiliate is a lot bigger now than it was in 2021 so Instagram could try again. It’s a tough task—the rates would have to be very competitive for creators to work with a new network and the tools easy to use—but a platform like Substack would be wise to introduce more monetization levers. A subject for a future newsletter, perhaps.
Statista, Influencer Marketing Market Size
Thanks for reading. If you liked this newsletter, subscribe or forward to a friend. You can get in touch with me directly at elaheh.nozari@gmail.com.