The Shocking Truth Behind How Much Internet Sellers Are Actually Earning—It’s Nothing Like You Think!

Ever wondered what it’s like to turn your daily scroll through Instagram into a booming business? Take Ashley Dorough — her followers don’t just watch her try on plus-size fashion; they click, shop, and unknowingly fuel a sophisticated machine called affiliate marketing. It’s a curious world where every link can be a potential payday, and the holiday rush cranks this hustle into overdrive. But here’s the kicker: the bigger the follower count? Not always the bigger the bank. Smaller, tighter-knit communities can rake in six figures while mammoth audiences sometimes barely scrape by. And as shoppers grow savvier—and maybe just a bit weary of being sold to 24/7—influencers juggle authenticity, profit, and the ever-shifting rules of the game. This isn’t your grandma’s sales pitch; it’s a complex dance where much more is at stake than just a little click. Ready to dive into the frenzy behind those tempting “Shop Now” stickers? LEARN MORE.

When clicking through Ashley Dorough’s Instagram stories, you’ll find that almost every single one includes a link to purchase the clothing items she’s trying on. Dorough’s Instagram bio reads “your plus size bestie,” and much of her content revolves around modeling plus-size clothes — and offering her followers the opportunity to buy them through affiliate links.

“I’m going to link things all day long because my audience that I’ve built here is so loyal to me now,” the 39-year-old tells Yahoo. “We feel like we’re family and friends in real life, even though we’re not. My mission is to represent plus-size women and size representation is huge to me.” When viewers buy a piece of clothing through the links Dorough posts, she earns a commission from the purchase.

Welcome to the wild world of affiliate marketing, a system through which influencers share products and brands they ostensibly use, and then recommend those products on shopping sites, which offer them a cut of sales. Those sites can range from corporate giants like Amazon to platforms like LikeToKnowIt (LTK) and ShopMy. Depending on the platform and the brand, the influencer doing the linking can make commissions ranging from 1% to more than 20% on any purchase made using their link. The customer doesn’t even necessarily have to buy what the influencer posted about — if they click the influencer’s link and fill their cart with other must-haves, the influencer still makes a commission. Industry insiders say the average commission is around 10%.

For years, the number of affiliate links on the internet has proliferated — it seems like everyone is hawking something. Did you want to use the same pots as your favorite cooking content creator? She’ll link it. Are you wondering how she gets her teeth so white? Click her shoppable link to teeth-whitening strips, conveniently available on her Instagram story.

But the sheer number of affiliate links is never greater than during the holiday season, when consumers are shopping the most and influencers stand to make the most income. One influencer, who requested to remain anonymous, told Yahoo they are on track to make over $70,000 in the month of December through affiliate links.

Affiliate linking has also been lucrative for Dorough, the 39-year-old plus-size influencer. She estimates that affiliate marketing makes up 80% of her monthly earnings. And her followers and viewers crave more content during the holiday season. “Starting November 1st, people are like, When do your gift guides come out? I want to see them. I want to shop,” she says. Dorough has an entire highlight of gift guides on her Instagram account, including gift guides geared toward husbands, trendy girls and bakers.

These operations might seem like homegrown small businesses, but often, there’s a professional team powering them. To help balance the load of affiliate marketing, Dorough, like many other influencers, has hired the Creator Society, a full-service influencer marketing agency.

Madison Weaver, chief marketing officer of the Creator Society, explains that the role of her company is multifold, including creating the affiliate links and posting them so that the influencer doesn’t have to do it themselves. It’s often the team at the Creator Society that logs into creator accounts themselves to post affiliate content. “We probably see a 20-30% increase in earnings [during the holidays] compared to the rest of the year,” Weaver says, adding that the Creator Society represents influencers who make over $100,000 a month just in affiliate earnings.

Interestingly enough, profits don’t seem to be directly related to follower counts. “Transparently, the influencers with millions typically generate less in affiliate earnings than some of our creators who have 100,000,” says Weaver. “We just see that these creators with these smaller followings have more of an engaged and trusting audience. I have a creator with 150,000 followers that makes six figures a month in affiliate earnings.”

But some consumers are getting tired of the culture of being endlessly hustled and marketed to online. On Reddit, users share discount codes that aren’t tied to influencers as a sort of petty workaround to deny influencers their commissions. “This is super useful and helpful! I’m not into supporting influencers’ pocketbooks,” read one comment. Dorough says she’s noticed the pushback against linking culture. “I didn’t want to be an annoying person that’s constantly linking,” she says. “I used to get too caught up in my head with that. But I let go of that finally.”

There’s a sense of exhaustion when it comes to affiliate marketing, explains Tiffany Ferguson, a popular YouTuber who creates content critiquing internet culture. “It’s like we’ve lost the plot,” she says. “[Influencers used to] link products they’ve used, their actual recommendations. Now it’s like, ‘I like the idea of this product, maybe, if you’re the type of person who wants it.’ What are we even talking about now?”

Consumers are also wising up to the way affiliate marketing works — they know that occasionally an influencer will make a commission from a shopper’s entire cart, depending on the affiliate program. They also have an increased awareness of the tens of thousands of dollars creators stand to make by acting as perennial (and stealthy) salespeople. “When consumers learn that, they feel even more duped,” Ferguson says.

It’s not only influencers who are upping the ante when it comes to affiliate marketing through the holiday season — it’s also the corporations and brands. Another influencer, who asked to remain anonymous to maintain personal and professional business contacts, showed Yahoo how Walmart changes its commission structure during the holidays. While an influencer would regularly receive a 10% commission for fashion-related items, during the holiday season, that commission doubles to 20%. The commission for electronics soars from 3% to 8.1%; for home goods, it changes from 7% to 13.5%.

“Amazon offered me $700 for a story share about Black Friday and $5,000 for a set of story shares on Prime Day on top of affiliate commission,” says the influencer, who has over 100,000 Instagram followers. “I declined both. I never want to rely on my followers buying things to make or break my income.”

The influencer also notes that it seems to be getting harder and harder to secure brand deals. Affiliate marketing is cheaper for brands and easier for creators (who don’t have to negotiate rates, reshoot content and submit for approvals). “Influencers would rather spend $1,000 a month on new stuff to shoot and then return or give away because they’re making so much money and all the stuff is basically worthless anyway,” she says. While talking to other influencers, she even learned that some of them buy Temu versions of clothing or goods and then link to the more expensive Amazon versions.

Though mom influencer Bekah Martinez (@bekah) has 854,000 followers on Instagram, she doesn’t do much affiliate linking. She tries to encourage her followers to live and shop sustainably, posting content about thrift shopping or mending something that’s broken instead of replacing it.

But she can see the allure of affiliate marketing. For one thing, followers are constantly asking her to link everything she’s using. “People do ask for links about literally everything,” she says. “‘Can you link to those binder clips that you’re using?’” Once, Bekah linked to a watercolor set her kids were using and made $2,000 from affiliate sales. But mostly, she stays away from it, despite the eye-watering amounts of profit up for grabs. “There’s enough people encouraging people to buy shit and I don’t really need to be part of that anymore.”