Influencer marketing platform Glewee introduces a native affiliate marketing solution that connects e-commerce brands with influencers through commission-based campaigns. The new feature allows brands to set up campaigns in under five minutes, with real-time sales tracking and automated payments after a 30-day holding period. Available on all subscription tiers, this addition expands Glewee’s all-in-one platform beyond influencer campaigns, user-generated content (UGC), and product seeding.
“Smaller brands are looking for performance in that pay-per-result format,” states Dylan Duke, founder and CEO of Glewee. “They’re much more willing to take a risk and work with influencers if they’re paying for performance rather than putting thousands of dollars up front and hoping for a return.”
Glewee, founded in 2020 by Dylan and Christian Brown, both of whom were named to Forbes 30 Under 30 (Marketing & Advertising, 2023), serves over 5,000 brands and 15,000 creators through its platform. The Florida-based company has specifically designed this affiliate feature to help e-commerce brands collaborate with nano and micro-influencers and enhance performance-based marketing capabilities.
The Fourth Piece of the Influencer Marketing Puzzle
For Christian, who serves as Glewee’s CMO, this launch marks the culmination of a strategic vision that has been years in the making. “When we’ve looked at our product roadmap over the past few years, we have always planned to launch our affiliate marketing capabilities before the 2025 Holiday Season,” he says.
“We needed to get the influencer marketing side of things down. We needed to scale it, refine it, and make it extremely easy to use and grow with. Once we had done that, we moved into UGC. Then we moved into product gifting and seeding. And so the next piece was always to introduce affiliate marketing into our all-in-one platform.”
This methodical approach has enabled Glewee to build a platform that addresses key aspects of influencer marketing. Now, brands can work with various tiers of creators, from mega-celebrities to nano-influencers, all through one platform.
Why Affiliate Marketing Now?
According to Dylan and Christian, affiliate marketing was the most requested feature from Glewee’s user base. This demand stems from a core challenge faced by smaller e-commerce brands: budget constraints. While larger brands can allocate tens of thousands of dollars monthly for brand awareness campaigns, smaller businesses need performance-based solutions.
“In the market itself, we best pertain to e-commerce brands from startup to midsize,” Christian says. “With those businesses primarily built on Shopify, a lot of them are looking for growth and performance in many different ways.”
Dylan reinforces this perspective: “In the simplest way, it really de-risks the spend for brands. Many smaller businesses that come to our doorstep don’t want to spend and risk thousands of dollars per post. They want to focus on performance and pay when the sales come in.”
This shift toward performance metrics represents a major development in influencer marketing as well. What began as a tool primarily for brand awareness is increasingly expected to deliver measurable ROI.
As Christian notes, “awareness is not necessarily the largest goal anymore. And, as small businesses enter the influencer marketing realm, the goal is now shifting significantly towards a money-in, money-out approach, focusing on ROI or ROAS. And pay per result is the best way to guarantee that.”
Technical Development
Creating a seamless affiliate system required major technical development. Jack Greenwald, Head of Product at Glewee, explains the challenges: “One of the toughest parts was actually architecting the scalable backend system that drives the simplicity of the front end with real-time attribution. We needed to sit down and figure out how to build a system that could manage tens to hundreds of thousands of unique product SKUs, discount codes, flat or percentage-based commission rates, without slowing performance or complicating the UX.”
Despite this backend complexity, the user experience remains straightforward. For brands, the process begins by syncing their Shopify store (if not already done), selecting “affiliate campaign” in the Glewee interface, and then defining the campaign name, commission rate, timeframe, and products to promote. They can specify demographic criteria for the affiliates they want to work with, and the system handles the rest.
As Christian points out, this streamlined process eliminates the need for extensive onboarding. “The massive affiliate tools that are out there take a week to even familiarize yourself with the platform. Do your onboardings, meet with their team, and they’re thousands of dollars per month plus fees,” he explains. In contrast, he adds, “you can have an affiliate promoting your brand with a custom discount code within 30 minutes of joining Glewee.”
How Glewee’s Affiliate Solution Works
The affiliate system works within Glewee’s existing platform, creating a natural extension of their services. Based on a brand’s criteria (age, gender, location, category), matched creators receive notifications through the Glewee mobile app. They can review campaign details and apply with a simple pitch.
Upon approval, creators receive their custom discount codes automatically and can begin promoting products immediately. The platform tracks all sales generated through these codes, with commissions held for 30 days to account for potential refunds before automatic payment.
Glewee provides transparency to both parties. Creators can immediately see commission percentages, product values, and all campaign details before applying. Meanwhile, brands receive clear reporting on performance metrics.
“The more transparent we can be with our users, the easier it is for them to understand and best adopt the tools,” Christian explains. “The clearer we are with the users, the easier it’s going to be for them to create these campaigns, scale these campaigns, and drive great results from the campaigns.”
Nano and Micro-Influencers
A key focus of Glewee’s affiliate solution is empowering nano and micro-influencers who typically can’t command large upfront payments for traditional campaigns.
Dylan sees strong potential in this approach: “The nano and micro-influencers are the bread and butter of the affiliate marketing model, because they’re able to mass distribute content, especially on Instagram and TikTok Shop. The way that short-form content is shared nowadays, you don’t have to be someone who’s a largely followed influencer to have a viral video and grow a brand globally overnight.”
This opens opportunities across the creator economy. As Dylan explains, “The algorithms are built in such a manner that anyone’s content has the ability to go viral, and it has completely leveled the playing field for someone to have a video go viral, produce six figures to seven figures, even generate revenue for a business off of one viral video.”
Christian adds that the affiliate model expands creators’ monetization opportunities beyond traditional platforms: “What this does is it now allows for the influencer to be rewarded for sharing across all of their different socials – and everywhere they have an audience – because anywhere they’re sharing on any platform that is driving any results for the brand, they are earning off of.”
The Full-Funnel Approach
Rather than replacing traditional influencer campaigns, Glewee positions affiliate marketing as a complementary piece in a marketing strategy. The company is already seeing brands combine both approaches to maximize results.
Dylan explains, “In the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen certain brands launch an influencer campaign and also add that affiliate program to it where they’re able to say, ‘Hey, this is a traditional campaign. However, we want the influencers who are part of this program to be motivated, to be driven by performance, and understand that you can make additional revenue with those conversions.’”
Christian elaborates on how these tools fit into the marketing funnel: “Your brand’s top-of-funnel awareness comes from short-form content primarily in the form of 15 to 60 second videos across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Facebook Reels. When you start to go into the consideration and conversion level, that’s when you have to start utilizing Instagram Stories and links in bio to drive audiences from social platforms to a brand’s native website.”
By combining awareness-focused influencer campaigns with conversion-focused affiliate programs, Christian believes brands can create a more effective overall strategy. “Your brand will never grow with just a strategy focused on one part of the funnel,” he says. “There are all the pieces of the marketing funnel that need to be working at once. To drive your brand growth from both awareness and sales perspectives, a full-funnel approach is extremely important. Now, you can do that within your very own influencer marketing strategy.”
Q4 Launch and Universal Availability
Launching just ahead of the crucial Q4 holiday shopping season is a strategic decision for Glewee. “We want them to be driving as much revenue and sales during this time as possible, while letting creators earn real income,” says Dylan. “Right now, we’re primed to do that, and we strategically brought this to market ahead of the 2025 Holiday season.”
The company has made a deliberate decision to offer the affiliate feature across all subscription tiers. “We don’t want to gate it, and we don’t want to hold it off the higher tier,” Christian says. “We want every brand of every size to be able to use this and grow their company with it and find great success and value and great return.”
This approach aligns with Glewee’s mission to make influencer marketing more accessible. Essential brands at $99 per month and professional brands at $249 per month will all have access to the affiliate engine, with new users able to test the platform through a 30-day free trial.
Changing the Industry Direction
For the Glewee team, this launch represents more than just a new feature; it’s part of a broader vision to enhance the collaboration between brands and creators. “This affiliate tool ultimately is about alignment,” Dylan explains. “From the creator side, we’re basically saying you are completely in control of your revenue that you will produce.”
Christian sees the potential for industry impact: “Many of our brand partners that we’ve spoken with over the past few weeks have said they would be more than happy paying out over a million dollars in affiliate fees through our platform if our affiliates work for them, are great partners, and drive great results.”
With affiliate marketing now integrated into its platform, Glewee is well-positioned to navigate an industry that is increasingly shifting toward performance-based models.
“Brands are ready for this,” concludes Christian, “and I think that we’re going to see a massive shift in this industry toward rewarding those who drive great results over those who drive eyeballs.”
