How to Use UGC in Your Shopify Affiliate Program

In an affiliate program, UGC should mean one thing: short videos you pay creators to make, which you then have the right to use.

It should not mean customer reviews, and most guides on this topic go wrong by treating the two as the same thing.

A review is social proof for your product page, it gives an affiliate nothing to post, and a guide that ends by recommending a review platform has answered a different question from the one you asked.

This page covers the first kind: where commissioned UGC earns its keep in a Shopify affiliate program, where its licence stops, and how to pay for it without undercutting your commission structure.

What UGC means here

For those who don't know, UGC stands for "User-Generated Content".

And the term has become a catch-all, so it is worth being precise about what is in and what is out.

• In: a vertical video, usually 15 to 60 seconds, made by a creator you paid, showing your product the way a real person would use it. You own the right to use it in your ads and on your own channels.
• Out: star ratings, written reviews, testimonials and customer photos collected after purchase.

Review content is valuable, and I am not arguing against collecting it.

It is simply a different job.

Reviews reassure someone who is already on your product page.

Creator content persuades someone who has never heard of you, which is exactly the person an affiliate is trying to reach, and that is why only the second kind belongs in a conversation about affiliate programs.

Where UGC comes from in an affiliate program

There are two sources of creator content in a running program, and the difference between them is mostly about who owns what.

• Your affiliates' own posts: every affiliate who films your product is making UGC already. It is theirs, published on their account, and paid for through commission when it sells. You do not automatically have the right to reuse it in your own ads, so if a post performs and you want to run it, ask the affiliate in writing first.
• Commissioned videos: content you pay a creator to make for a flat fee, delivered to you as a file. On Affilitrak this runs through UGC gigs, and the gig terms give you the right to use the video in your ads and on your own channels from the moment the creator is paid.

The first kind scales with your program and costs you nothing up front, but you do not control it.

The second kind costs money every time, but you choose the brief, you get the file, and you decide where it runs.

Where to use commissioned UGC

Three places, in the order I would prioritise them.

1. On the pages your affiliate traffic lands on: across Shopify stores in our program data, the home page takes 54.2% of affiliate landings, which means most referred visitors never arrive on the product the affiliate was talking about. A creator video on the home page and on your best-selling product pages meets that traffic where it actually lands, and it is squarely inside the licence because those are your own channels.

2. In your own paid ads: this is what the licence is built for. A video that worked in a creator's hands tends to work in a paid placement, and you can test it without asking anyone.

3. As a reference for your affiliates: show the video when onboarding affiliates as an example of an angle that works, so an affiliate stuck on what to say can see one done well. The point is to show it, not to hand it over for reposting, and the next section explains why.

What you cannot do with it

This is the section most UGC articles leave out, and it is the one most likely to cause a problem.

You cannot hand a gig video to your affiliates to post as their own

The licence covers your ads and your own channels.

An affiliate's personal Instagram or TikTok account is neither, so if an affiliate uploads the video as their own post, the use falls outside what the creator agreed to.

You cannot run an affiliate's post as an ad without asking

The reverse applies too: the affiliate made it and published it, and a commission agreement is not a content licence.

You should not assume a time limit either way

The gig terms state when the licence starts, which is when the creator is paid, but I would confirm how long it runs before building a campaign that depends on a video for years.

None of this makes commissioned UGC less useful.

It just means the value sits on your side of the program, on your pages and in your ads, rather than being something you distribute through affiliates.

Paying per video versus paying commission

We have argued elsewhere that paying creators on commission lines up incentives better than paying for a post, and in why affiliate marketing is the best way to get sales on Shopify the flat fee comes off badly.

That argument holds for distribution. It does not hold for production, and the difference is the whole point of this article.

• Commission is the right way to buy reach: you pay only when the audience buys, so the risk sits with the person who controls the audience.
• A flat fee is the right way to buy an asset: a video you run on your home page or in your ads has no audience attached, so tying the creator's pay to sales would make them carry risk for traffic they do not control.

There is also a base-rate reason not to buy content on commission.

Across 8,687 affiliates, only around 16% ever make a single sale.

Asking a creator to produce a video for commission alone is asking them to take odds most of them will lose, and the good ones know it.

So pay for the video, and pay commission for the sale, and treat them as two separate purchases even when the same person makes both.

How to set it up

1. Decide which job you need done: if you need reach, recruit affiliates and pay commission. If you need a video for your pages or your ads, open a gig and pay for the asset.
2. Write the brief around a specific angle, not a product description: "Show the three questions people ask before buying this" gets you a better video than "show the product in use".
3. Choose video-only or posting: a video-only gig gets you the file. A posting gig also puts it in front of the creator's audience, and it requires at least 1,000 followers on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook or YouTube.
4. Put the finished video where affiliate traffic lands first, which for most stores is the home page, then into your ads.
5. Show it to your affiliates as an example, in onboarding and in briefs, without handing it over for reposting.
6. Ask before you reuse an affiliate's own post, in writing, even when the affiliate is happy for you to use it.

Conclusion

UGC in an affiliate program means commissioned creator content, not reviews, and keeping that line sharp is what makes the rest of the strategy work.

Put the videos where affiliate traffic actually lands, run them in your own ads, and use them to show affiliates what good looks like, while remembering that the licence covers your channels and not theirs.

Pay a flat fee for the asset and commission for the sale, because the first buys production and the second buys reach, and treating them as the same purchase is how you end up overpaying for one and underpaying for the other.

You can install Affilitrak free and run UGC gigs alongside your affiliate program in the same app.