Makeup Affiliate Marketing Tips for Beauty Influencers
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Hey there, Beauty Influencer!
I think I know a little bit about you. Tell me if I’m close.
You LOVE makeup and all things beauty. Your friends turn to you for tips on how to do their makeup and what skincare is the best. And they often take your recommendations.
So you started to post your ideas on Instagram and Facebook. And you’re building a following. You consider yourself to be a credible beauty influencer, but you don’t feel like brands are treating you like one. And you really want to make some money as a makeup affiliate.
But, maybe the beauty brands you are working with right now are making you jump through hoops to get free products. And you’re trying to promote those products on your instagram.
Or if you do get paid, it’s taking forever. 🙄
This was supposed to be makeup affiliate marketing! How are you supposed to do it if you’re not getting paid?
Maybe you have makeup affiliate links in place – but no one is buying.
Overall, you’re just feeling like it shouldn’t be this HARD to monetize your beauty brand.
I want you to know, you are not alone. And, for the most part, you probably aren’t doing it completely WRONG. But maybe there is a way you can enhance your brand as a makeup affiliate – beyond the things you’re already doing.
So let’s get you started with Makeup Affiliate Marketing 101. We’ll learn how to monetize your beauty brand so you can finally make yourself into a paid beauty influencer. If you don’t have any makeup affiliate links yet, check out my guide to the best beauty affiliate programs out there. And as an added bonus – I’ll give you a suggestion on how you could get paid MORE per link!
Making Money with Makeup Affiliate Marketing
It’s the whole reason you’re here right?
But it’s probably turned out harder than you thought it would to build a business online, right? Especially at first.
You thought if you posted your makeup pics, made a LinkTree with your links and sat back and waited for the sales to come rolling in.
But they didn’t.
You can’t work for free! You want to be making money as a beauty influencer right? Otherwise, why are you spending so much time as a makeup affilliate?
Let’s look at some of the resources you may not be tapped into yet to help you make money with makeup affiliate marketing.
Make Money as a Makeup Affiliate by Starting a Beauty Blog
The most successful digital marketers in the beauty space have a blog that helps them monetize their brand. If you are looking to make money as a makeup affiliate, you need to legitimize your brand.
By posting longer format content, you can drive your super loyal followers to develop a super strong connection with you. This is where a blog comes in. You don’t need to spend eight hours a day blogging either. An hour once per week will do.
I even put together a complete guide for you on how to build a beauty blog for makeup affiliate marketers.
Once you have some useful content to help your audience, you can move right into the next most important component to your beauty brand – an email list.
Successful Makeup Affiliates Build an Email List
You may have a loyal audience, but experts will tell you that gathering contact information is the most important key to success. That way you can market to your following on autopilot by working just a couple of hours per day. (Sometimes even less!)
Think about it. When you post on IG, people see that one time, on one platform. They may shop your makeup affiliate link or they may not. They may shop and abandon their cart.
But if you are collecting their email address, you can continue to market that product to them in a more personalized way – on autopilot. Research shows that consumers need to see something between 7-10 times before they make a purchase.
So that means, you would have to post about the same product 7-10 times to get maximum sales! Doing so could take the focus away from all of the fun inspiring content you should already be posting!
But if you post it once with an engaging headline that draws them to head over to your website, you can collect their email address by offering a deal they can’t refuse.
Then you can email them beauty tips, new product offers and help them further build a more personalized bond with your brand.
Making Money from Your Beauty Website
Collecting email addresses and legitimizing your beauty brand isn’t the only reason you should consider blogging as a makeup affiliate. Many successful affiliate marketers find success in multiple streams of income.
Your new beauty blog is a great way to accomplish this!
When you enable a website, you can monetize it in a variety of ways. You can use beauty affiliate program links the same way that you do on your social media channels.
But you can also monetize your beauty blog in other ways as well. You could develop a course or write an e-book and sell it on your website! What if you could teach others about how to do makeup? Or even about how to get into makeup affiliate marketing? What knowledge do you have that other people would pay for?
I don’t know about you, but I miss opportunities ALL THE TIME because I assume that everyone knows the same things I know. THEY DON’T!
Starting a beauty blog might seem a little cumbersome and unnecessary at first, but it can be just what you need to propel you earnings forward as a makeup affiliate.
But don’t worry. I’ve got you covered. Here are two step-by-step guides to help walk you through every step of how to start a beauty blog as a makeup affiliate marketer.
Marketing – Know your Audience
If your goal is to make money as a beauty influencer and makeup affiliate, you have to start looking at it like a business.
When you make the mindset shift from “hobby” to “business” everything can change.
So, once you start thinking of your brand as a business, you will find that basic marketing knowledge is EVERYTHING.
Have you been posting your makeup looks blindly to your followers with no real thought to the actual person you are attracting? What could happen do you think if you took a more targeted approach.
Marketing 101 for Beauty Influencers
The first step of being a successful affiliate marketer is knowing your audience. The next step is identifying the PERFECT audience for whatever it is you’re trying to sell.
Say your audience LOVES drugstore makeup brands. You know this from looking at your channel and social media analytics.
How much money do you think you would make trying to sell that audience on SK-II Skincare? Likewise, If you are promoting Sk- II skincare, you have to look at where that audience is hanging out.
What are they currently buying? What do they do in their free time? Who are they?
You have to narrow down WHO the person is and find out where they are hanging out online and then decide how to attract them.
Avon Representatives are also affiliate marketers because they sell products through their free beauty affiliate link. They found out what this was like recently.
Avon Introduces an $800 Face Cream
Avon is a company that has been around for 134 years and it has a rich heritage. Many of us know someone in our family who bought Avon and often we have fond memories of how much the products mean to that family member.
In 2018, K-Beauty Giant LG H&H acquired New Avon Company and brought with it some super exciting innovations in the K-Beauty space.
One of the major launches was for an ultra-luxe high end J-Beauty Skincare System, Mission Luxereve. It’s made with fermentation technology to preserve potency and takes essentially two years to make before it can be bottled.
You see, Avon has a cult-following for some of its more inexpensive makeup products. So, many Avon Representatives that had been with the 134 year old company for many years were shocked by the announcement.
“My customers are shocked by the price point,” they said.
They won’t buy that. My customers can’t afford that!”
The point is – their current customer maybe wouldn’t look at a $465 face cream. But there ARE customers out there that WILL. Otherwise, companies like SK-II, Dior, Amore, and Chantecaille. ALL of these have high-end luxury face creams in their market.
Mission Luxereve sold out in the first week of opening, by the way. Successful Avon Representatives identified the perfect customer for that product and where that person might be hanging out.
So the key ISN’T whether or not your current following will buy the product. But it IS about find the PERFECT person who wants what you are selling.
Top Makeup Affiliate Programs
You probably already have links to the most common makeup affiliate programs. But, let’s take a look at some of the most popular makeup affiliate programs and what they pay.
- Amazon Affiliates Program – 5%
- Sephora – 5%
- Ulta – 5-7%
- Elizabeth Arden – 5%
- BH Cosmetics – 8%
- Elf Cosmetics – 5%
- Bare Minerals – 8%
These percentages were compiled from research from 3hundrd, One More Cup of Coffee, and JustineGrey.
What it basically breaks down to is less than 10% of sales to the beauty influencer come from most makeup affiliate programs.
Add to that the ultra competitive nature of this niche, you have to realistically assume it is going to take a while to build yourself a sustainable and maintainable affiliate marketing business.
But don’t lose hope yet.
How to Make More Money with Makeup Affiliate Marketing
The brains over at Income School are amazing at teaching people how to build affiliate marketing business. They have new tips every week on how to make money online. Their episodes are a must-watch for me and I’ve learned so much.
Anyway, they broke down the top paying affiliate marketing programs for different niches.
In the case of beauty, they said there was one way to dramatically increase your income inside the beauty affiliate space.
You’re truly not going to believe what they said.
I’ve linked the video below so you can see for yourself. It’s a great video all around to get ideas on how to monetize your niche.
But as it relates to beauty in particular, if you fast forward to 8:53, Ricky talks about how the beauty niche is a tougher niche to really bring in a big profit because there aren’t a ton of high margin profits.
EXCEPT when you can find a high margin profit that can work.
Network Marketing and Makeup Affiliate Marketing
What if, like Ricky suggested, you took a look at a beauty based network marketing business to help boost your profits as you get your feet wet in makeup affiliate marketing?
What if you could promote products like these – and earn commissions between 25% to 45%?
- belif true cream moisturizing bomb
- belif true cream aqua bomb
- Chi Hair Care Products – shampoo, conditioner, repairing serum, and thermal protecting spray
- Chi Hair Color – all natural product
- Chi Hair tools – Lava straightener, Hair Dryer and and Spin and Curl
- CBD Skincare Products with just 8 ingredients #cleanbeauty
- Mission Luxe Reve – J-Beauty Moisturizer comparable to top -end Tatcha
- The Face Shop skincare and makeup – Most popular K-Beauty Brand in South Korea
- VDL – The MUST HAVE primer to create glass skin – the next upcoming K-Beauty Trend
Best Makeup Affiliate Program in Network Marketing
If you’re looking into network marketing as a way to generate income as a makeup affiliate, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. After all, this is a venture to MAKE money, not lose money. And sometimes the network marketing industry can get a bad rap.
But, I personally have found great success in building an online beauty business as an makeup affiliate with a network marketing company. Network marketing can open a lot of doors if you use the opportunity to your advantage correctly.
Learn how I become a top beauty influencer in my network marketing company in under two years.
Here are some things to look for when you’re choosing a network marketing company to align yourself with as a makeup affiliate:
- Very low to no-cost start up
- Consumable products that you can advertise to your followers
- no monthly fees
- No Charges for minimum Sales
- No requirements for leadership
- Social Media Training Program
- Product training programs
- Align yourself with an successful advisor with a strong background in online marketing. Don’t just join with any advisor.
- Ask questions about how the advisor markets the business and trains the team. If your interest is affiliate marketing and an online business, you don’t want to be aligned with an advisor who advises maintaining stock or doing vendor shows.
I’d love to help you get your online beauty business started and help you make the most money possible with your new makeup affiliate venture.
