Are Brand Affiliate Programs Worth it for Food Bloggers? ~ Barley & Sage

Like most things, there are pros and cons to brand affiliate programs. So I want to help explain what exactly brand affiliate programs are and if they're worth it for food bloggers. The answer, it depends.

What is a brand affiliate program?

Affiliate marketing is when a blogger or influencer promotes a product on behalf of brand, then if their followers make a purchase based on their recommendation (using a special link or code), the influencer gets a small percentage of the profit as a commission.

A brand affiliate program may also be called a brand ambassador program.

There are two main types of affiliate programs with some very important differences.

Type 1: Voluntary Participation

Voluntary participation is when you purchase a product yourself and if you like it, you include an affiliate link to it either in a blog post or Instagram stories. A great example of these types of programs is Amazon Affiliates or Reward Style! I'm a member of both programs and use their affiliate links on my blog.

A lot of fashion bloggers utilize Reward Style to link their outfits. I use Amazon to link my favorite cooking tools in all my blog posts. Not because I want to make a lot of money off of it, but because it's helpful to my readers to link my recommended kitchen scale).

I only make $50-$100 a month off of Amazon affiliate links, but it's still a nice bit of extra passive income.

Another great example of this is Foodtography School. I purchased their course with my own money and after several months of recommending it to people on my own, I asked if I could become part of their affiliate program. Because if I was already talking about it, why not make a couple extra bucks? My participation in that program is completely voluntary is there is zero requirement that I ever post about them.

These types of programs are usually worth it because again, there is no requirement to post on their behalf and there are no deliverables.

Type 2: Commission as Payment

These are the types of programs that I have a HUGE problem with (and the reason I'm writing this post).

These types of programs are when a brand asks you to create content for them (sponsored post, review on your blog, recipe development, image creation, etc.) but instead of paying you to create content and promote their products, they offer you affiliate commission instead. Typically, they make it sound like you can make thousands of dollars worth of commission and there's no cap to the amount of money you can make!!

Sounds great right, so what's the problem??

Commission is the ONLY form of payment
Commission is typically very low and on a relatively inexpensive product
The math doesn't make sense unless you have a LOT of followers

In order for affiliate commission to be worth it, your follower count and engagement rate is SUPER important. However, the problem is that these programs are typically offered to bloggers and influencers with very small followings.

If you're offered a brand ambassadorship or commission in addition to being paid fairly for your work and there are no extra posting requirements, then why not! Affiliate programs can be a great source of extra small income if you sprinkle the links organically into blog content or when it makes sense to share on Instagram stories. The problem is when affiliate commission in the ONLY form of payment!!

Scenario

A brand sends you the following pitch about their product. Let's say it's a $10 box of gluten-free pancake mix.

"In exchange for 2 in-feed Instagram posts and story slides, we'll give you a special tracking link and code for your followers. You'll then get a 10% commission on any sales made through your link!!"

You follow up and say something along the lines of, "Unfortunately I'm not able to accept unpaid work at this time."

So they hit you back with,

"This opportunity IS paid! You'll receive commission for any sales made through your link!"

This is what I want to break down further and explain why it's so problematic!

The brand is claiming that you'll make enough money through their affiliate program, that it should count as a form of payment. However, there are very few scenarios in which that's actually true.

Let's say you charge $500 per IG post, but you accept this offer of commission only payment. What usually happens is you create the content and post on their behalf, and then make a total of maybe $20 in commission. You've barely made any money so you keep talking about their product and linking it in your stories because you want to make enough commission to make this project worth your time.

This is exactly what the brand wants!! They barely have to pay you anything but you're continuing to promote their brand and create content for them because you want to be compensated for your time. It's a vicious cycle that leaves you having made only pennies.

Are there scenarios in which accepting commission as the only form of payment can be worth it? Sure, but it's rare.

Affiliate Commission Considerations

As I said above, follower count and engagement rate are the most important considerations for if a commission based structure is worth it for you.

Engagement rate = the average percentage of your followers that actually engage with your content. I.e. like, follow, share, click on links, etc.

Average engagement rates based on follower count:

10,000 followers = 5-10% This means only about 500 - 1000 people actually interact with your content

100,000 followers = 1-2% This means only about 1000 - 2000 people actually interact with your content. It interesting to note that only about twice as many people will see your content as compared to the person with 10,000 followers even though you have ten times the number of followers.

1 million followers = <1% This means only about 10,000 people actually interact with your content

This is why engagement rate is just as important (if not more) than follower count!

Affiliate Commission Math

So let's do some math to see just how problematic these models are!!

To keep things simple, we're using nice round numbers and average engagement rates.

Something important to remember is that engagement rate is not the same as click through rate or conversion rate! If you have 1,000 engaged followers, only a small percentage of those people will actually click on your affiliate link (this is the click through rate). And then an even smaller percentage of those people will actually purchase the product through your link (this is the conversion rate). This is why it's so important to understand the math behind affiliate commission!

For the purposes of keeping the math as simple as possible, we're also assuming that everyone has the same click through rate and conversion rate regardless of follower count. Obviously in real life these numbers are much more complicated, but this is still a good example of just how low commission usually is.

This table is for a $10 product with a 10% commission

Followers	10,000	100,000	1,000,000
Engagement Rate	10% (1,000)	2% (2,000)	1% (10,000)
Click Through Rate	20% (200)	20% (400)	20% (2,000)
Conversion Rate	10% (20)	10% (40)	10% (200)
Commission Rate	10% ($1)	10% ($1)	10% ($1)
Actual Commission	$20	$40	$200

10,000 followers x 10% engagement rate = 1,000 engaged followers

1,000 engaged followers x 20% click through rate = 200 clicks

200 clicks x 10% conversion rate = 20 sales

10% commission rate on a $10 product = $1 per sale

20 sales x $1 per sale = $20 total commission

In this scenario it's not worth it AT ALL for the account with 10,000 or 100,000 followers! It's a okay return for the person with a million followers, but $200 is still pennies compared to what they would charge for an IG post so it still isn't worth it.

Now let's do the math with a higher value product and higher commission! You'll notice that the click through rate and conversion rate are lower than the previous example. This is because the more expensive a product is, the less likely your audience is to make a purchase.

So this table is for a $100 product with a 30% commission

Followers	10,000	100,000	1,000,000
Engagement Rate	10% (1,000)	2% (2,000)	1% (10,000)
Click Through Rate	10% (100)	10% (200)	10% (1,000)
Conversion Rate	5% (5)	5% (10)	5% (50)
Commission Rate	30% ($30)	30% ($30)	30% ($30)
Actual Commission	$150	$300	$1,500

In this scenario it's probably worth it for the person with a millions followers! But it's still just not really worth it for the smaller accounts.

Okay, let's do one more example with a super expensive product and a super high commission rate! You'll notice we've again reduce the click through rate and conversion rate because way less people will be willing to buy a $1,000 product.

So this table is for a $1,000 product with a 50% commission

Followers	10,000	100,000	1,000,000
Engagement Rate	10% (1,000)	2% (2,000)	1% (10,000)
Click Through Rate	5% (50)	5% (100)	5% (500)
Conversion Rate	2% (1)	2% (2)	2% (10)
Commission Rate	50% ($500)	50% ($500)	50% ($500)
Actual Commission	$500	$1,000	$5,000

In this scenario, it's worth it for almost everyone. But programs like this are extremely rare.

So you can see from these examples that most commission based payment structures and affiliate programs produce miniscule revenue. Based on the math, I don't recommend ever accepting affiliate commission as the only form of payment in exchange for creating content for a brand.

So When are Affiliate Commission Programs Worth it?

High cost item + high commission % + large audience
In addition to getting paid $$
No posting requirements
Aligns well with your audience, so there will be a much higher than average conversion rate
Something you’re already recommending anyway so you might as well link to it (for example, you purchased it with your own money and love it and want to talk about it)

If you've ever been duped into accepting affiliate commission as payment instead of actual money, let me know in the comments!