How Many Influencers Do You Need? Data From Shopify Stores

You probably need more influencers than you plan to start with, because most of the people a brand recruits never make a single sale.

And that's not just me saying random stuff.

Across 8,687 affiliates recruited by Shopify stores on Affilitrak, about one in six ever made a sale, and in stores with two or more sellers, the top one brought in a median of more than half the orders.

So the useful question is not how many influencers to hire, but how many you need before one of them sells.

Personally, I think that turns the plan into a cycle:

• Recruit a batch.
• Give each person a fair window.
• Keep whoever sells.

These figures describe affiliates paid on commission, so I am applying them to influencers by analogy, the same way I would read any creator program built on a link or a code.

Affilitrak is built to supply that volume: creators apply to your funded UGC gigs, and affiliates find your program through the Affilitrak marketplace and apply to it.

How many influencers should you start with?

At a one-in-six selling rate, six recruits produce one seller on average.

An average hides the programs that get none, though, because sellers cluster in some programs and miss others entirely.

So I would start with a batch of at least ten and keep adding until one person sells, rather than wait on a shortlist of three or four.

Why most influencers you recruit never make a sale

• About 16% of recruited affiliates ever make a sale: that holds across 8,687 affiliates in our data, and it barely moves with time, at 16.6% among affiliates with at least 30 days in a program and 16.8% among those with at least 90.
• A longer wait does not rescue a quiet batch: three months in a program lifts the share by only 0.2 points over one month. That's because the people who are going to sell mostly do it early.
• A quiet recruit is the normal case: roughly five out of six people you recruit will produce nothing, so plan the budget and the batch size around that rather than treat it as a failure.

Why one influencer usually drives most of your sales

The more sellers you have, the less you depend on your top one

Selling affiliates in the store	Median share of orders from the top affiliate
2 or more	54.5%
3 or more	44.6%
5 or more	35.1%
10 or more	26.4%

• The top seller takes more than half: in stores with two or more selling affiliates, the top one brings in a median 54.5% of referred orders, across 171 stores.
• That share falls as sellers are added: 44.6% with three or more sellers (100 stores), 35.1% with five or more (53) and 26.4% with ten or more. The last group is only 18 stores, so read it as a direction rather than a precise figure.
• The drop is partly arithmetic, but the concentration is not: in stores with ten or more selling affiliates, the top one takes a median 26.4% of orders, and a median of 8.4× an even split of that store's own sellers. Those are separate medians. Ten percent would be an even split only in a store with exactly ten.

So more sellers is how you stop depending on one person, even though one person will still lead.

How long to give an influencer before you judge them

These figures cover only the affiliates who eventually sell, not everyone recruited:

• Within a week: 46.5% make their first sale within 7 days, and 28.9% within a single day.
• Within a month: 69.8% have made their first sale within 30 days, and 89.8% within 90.

For affiliates on commission, 30 days from when they joined is a fair point to judge the batch, because most of the ones who eventually sell have already sold by then.

A verdict on a batch does not mean you drop it, though.

An affiliate on commission costs you nothing while quiet, and about three in ten eventual sellers make their first sale after day 30, so I would keep quiet affiliates in the program and recruit the next batch alongside them.

For an influencer you pay per post, judge that post on the orders it produced while it was up. The 30-day figure above is time since an affiliate joined, and only among people who eventually sell.

How to work out how many influencers you need

1. Recruit a batch, not a shortlist: ten or more at a time, so that one seller is likely rather than lucky.
2. Give commission affiliates the same 30-day window: judge them at the end, counting from when they joined, not person by person in the first week. Judge a paid post on the orders it produced while it was up.
3. Keep whoever sells, and recruit the next batch: the second batch is easier to pick, because you already know what a seller looks like.
4. Put your attention on the top seller: they are likely to bring in around half your orders, so their onboarding, commission and content matter most.
5. Measure each person separately: give each affiliate their own link and code, and each paid post its own discount code, so you know who sold rather than guess, which is the method in our guide on whether a creator's audience buys.

How to find enough influencers without cold outreach

Ten or more applicants per batch is hard to reach one message at a time, and that is the part Affilitrak takes on for you.

• Funded UGC gigs: you post a brief with a set number of slots, and the money for every slot is held before the gig opens, so creators only see a gig that can pay them and apply to you. On a posting gig, each application shows the follower count the creator entered and a link to their profile.
• The affiliate marketplace: affiliates browse brands by category and apply to your program, and each one you approve gets their own tracked link and code. Affiliates who join through the marketplace carry a 20% share of the commission they earn, charged to you, while affiliates you recruit yourself stay free.
• The order matters: a creator who is already your approved affiliate cannot take your gigs, so run a gig first and invite the strong producers into your affiliate program afterwards.

Affilitrak brings you applicants and records what each affiliate sells, but it does not vet audiences for you or guarantee buyers.

If you are deciding between a gift, a fee and commission for each batch, our piece on paying creators to post compares the three.

Methodology

• Source: Affilitrak first-party data, the same dataset as our statistics report on Shopify affiliate programs.
• Selling rate: 8,687 recruited affiliates. The 16.6% and 16.8% figures are among affiliates with at least 30 and at least 90 days in a program.
• Top-affiliate share: the median share of referred orders from each store's top affiliate, in stores with 2 or more (171 stores), 3 or more (100), 5 or more (53) and 10 or more (18) selling affiliates.
• First-sale timing: shares of the affiliates who eventually sold, not of everyone recruited.
• The analogy: these are affiliates paid on commission. Influencers paid a flat fee may behave differently, so read the figures as a guide to commission-based creator programs.

FAQ

How many influencers should a small brand work with?

Recruit around ten at once rather than two or three, because only about one in six recruits ever sells. A small brand can keep the cost down by recruiting on commission, which costs nothing beyond product samples until someone sells.

Is it better to work with one big influencer or many small ones?

Our data cannot tell you whether bigger accounts convert better, but it does show how heavily a program leans on its top seller. I would spread the risk across several people, because a program built on one creator loses around half its orders if that person stops posting.

How long should an influencer campaign run before you judge it?

For a commission affiliate, 30 days is a fair checkpoint, because 69.8% of the affiliates who eventually sell have made their first sale by then, counting from when they joined. That is not the share of everyone you recruit, and it is not the clock for a paid post. Keep the quiet ones on commission while they cost you nothing, since most of the remaining sellers appear by day 90.

Conclusion

You do not need a fixed number of influencers, you need enough that one of them sells, and that is usually more than a brand plans for.

Recruit a batch of ten or more and keep whoever sells. Judge commission affiliates at 30 days from when they joined, and judge a paid post on the orders it produced while it was up.

Affilitrak brings both kinds of applicant to you, creators through funded gigs and affiliates through the marketplace, and tracks every sale your affiliates bring in.

You can install Affilitrak free and open your first gig or list your program the same day.