Being a content creator not bound by any agencies has its own hurdles.
One being, many companies only use affiliate schemes or “influencer” agencies for partnerships. So it’s incredibly difficult (or not even an option) to directly contact major brands if you want to work with them.
Boohoo and many other well established fashion brands use AWIN as their featured affiliate marketing platform. This costs a small fee to join, which I won’t personally entertain. Other companies use their own review platforms such as Johnson & Johnson’s “Super Savvy Me”, where you can create content for free for them & hand over all your rights to that content… for a chance to get some products to review. No guarantees, of course.
(Influenster are also like this.)
A couple of months ago, some unsolicited marketing emails from Stylink made their way into my inbox. At a quick glance, there’s not much about them online except a slew of (potentially fake) 5* Facebook reviews.
Despite my better judgement, I decided to give signing up to their affiliate scheme a try. They offered an “up to 10p per click” incentive for joining up, and advertised partnerships with Boohoo, Shein etc. which you could apply for. So I was curious as to whether their collaboration opportunities were actually legit.
First impressions
10p per click is the maximum you can earn, you start off from 3-6p per click depending on the company. This increases depending on the sales you make. In order to withdraw earnings, the minimum you have to earn is £50.
Within days of being signed up to Stylink, along with several marketing emails, I was contacted with an unsolicited phone call appointment. A ‘talent coach’ had scheduled me in for a phone call during a work day. The email stated that if I had any objections with the time, I would have to reschedule. 🙃
This antic was what caused me to ask for my account to be removed.
In account settings, there was no option to permanently delete your account. Not a good sign. Instead, their website FAQ directed you to contact them on WhatsApp. This has since been amended to include a contact email, however I made a deletion request over a contact form.
Stylink spams you with emails and not much else
Mostly from their ‘brand ambassadors’. Some of the emails had fairly useful but generic marketing advice.
However, there was no option to opt out of being forced into having phone calls arranged on your behalf. If Stylink is an influencer coaching program, it should be clearly advertised as such. To add to my frustration; when I first joined, the “unsubscribe” link on emails was also not working.
The only benefits of Stylink were – they did not require me to connect my social media accounts. They also purport to being ‘free’ to use, so where AWIN have a signup fee, Stylink do not.
So, how reputable are they?
It’s hard to say, their practices were questionable. It certainly didn’t inspire me to want to earn with them. Since I didn’t receive any feedback on the application I made, there’s a chance they might honour the brand partnerships they offer to some people. Whether the terms of that partnership would be worth bothering with, is speculative.
I still wouldn’t recommend signing up, though. Maybe things have improved since, but their tactics were MLM-ish and too invasive. At best they are an irritating middle man for brand partnerships.
If this is the way major brands want to partner and reach out to content creators – it reflects poorly on them. Hard pass.
