How to get influencers to promote your products - without paying $ upfront!

I am highly against the idea of paying influencers to post about your product.

It fosters transactional relationships and makes your influencer program perform poorly.

The key is to get to know influencers, send them free product, and see if they're interested in promoting you in the first place, then do affiliate deals with them (when you start).

This can be tough, here are some principles that'll help.

Start small

It's tempting to go after popular influencers with >250K followers, but start lower... way lower.

Influence has nothing to do with the number of followers. Larger influencers are also more likely to ask for payments upfront, which means you’ll see more rejections right out the gate.

I recommend anything below 50-100K followers depending on how mature your niche is.

How to structure the engagement

Ball Rolls: Get some influencers to post about you on a commission-only basis (or for free product). These are your true fans and will get your program rolling. Their posts also help you estimate the sales someone of their size can drive.
Once you see that, you will notice patterns. Try getting more of these creators onboard. They truly believe in what you do and promote you without upfront fees.

Flat Fee: Once you have these estimates of how much traffic a creator with X audience size drives, you can start considering paying upfront if it makes sense ROI wise, sometimes you have to take the leap. I still don't recommend it - only do this for creators with a high degree of alignment with your brand.

Fee + Commission: You'd be surprised how many creators who quote a flat fee change their minds when you negotiate the upfront fee down to a comfortable amount and pay commissions on top. It gives them unbounded upside to their income and gives you profitability.

Sweeten the deal

Offer milestone based boosts: Increase commissions on driving more than a certain benchmark of sales per month.

Give away free products: Surprise them by shipping free products, make the packaging great :)

Create special discounts: Only 10% off just for their audience. It'll make them feel special and help you drive more sales.

Hope this helps, let me know what you think and if you've had success doing something similar.

I also created a cheatsheet about this, comment if you want access and I'll send it to you!