How much do creators actually earn during Black Friday?

Part of: Black Friday and Cyber Monday For creators

Every November a wave of posts tells creators what they will make over Black Friday weekend. Almost none of them show their working, and the ones that do are usually quoting a single creator’s screenshot. Here is what can actually be measured, 87 days out, and what cannot.

Nobody can tell you what you will earn during Black Friday, because the two numbers that decide it — your commission rate and your conversion rate — are specific to your programmes and your audience.

What is measurable is the third number: order value. Across the categories we priced on 1 September 2026, the median live listing runs from $20.00 for a baby tee to $80.00 for a camcorder. That is the range your percentage is a percentage of.

Last verified 1 September 2026: order values from live US advertiser feeds. Commission rates below are illustrative bands used to show the arithmetic, not rates quoted from any programme.

The half of the equation that is knowable

Category	Listings priced	Median ask
Turntables	221	$81.00
Camcorders	453	$80.00
Baguette bags	222	$59.50
Steelbooks	486	$48.06
Headphones	347	$40.00
Platform sandals	340	$40.00
Rhinestone belts	401	$40.00
Oval sunglasses	330	$35.50
Cargo trousers	348	$32.00
Bluetooth speakers	358	$30.99
Bucket hats	357	$25.00
Baby tees	371	$20.00

Read that as a strategy table rather than a price list. A creator covering audio hardware is working with order values three to four times those of a creator covering Y2K tops, for the same amount of posting. That gap does not close on Black Friday; if anything discounting narrows it.

The arithmetic, with the rate as your input

We will not print a rate card we have not been approved for. So here is the multiplication table instead: find your actual rate in the top row and your category’s median in the left column.

Median order	at 3%	at 5%	at 10%	at 20%
$20.00 (baby tees)	$0.60	$1.00	$2.00	$4.00
$25.00 (bucket hats)	$0.75	$1.25	$2.50	$5.00
$40.00 (headphones)	$1.20	$2.00	$4.00	$8.00
$48.06 (steelbooks)	$1.44	$2.40	$4.81	$9.61
$59.50 (baguette bags)	$1.79	$2.98	$5.95	$11.90
$81.00 (turntables)	$2.43	$4.05	$8.10	$16.20

The uncomfortable implication is the one worth stating plainly: at a mid-single-digit rate on a $25 median order, a creator needs roughly 800 completed purchases to clear $1,000 over a Black Friday weekend. Not clicks. Purchases. Any projection that skips that sentence is selling you something.

Open Twisters limited edition steelbook showing the metal case and disc, a $61.99 retail listing — A $61.99 order. Higher-order-value categories do more work per post than a bigger audience in a cheap category does.

What the discount data says about timing

One genuinely actionable thing we can measure this far out: how much is already discounted, because that tells you where a November deal post will have something real to say.

Category group	Listings priced	Carrying a sale price on 1 Sept
Electronics and physical media, retail advertisers	2,445	7.3%, and 110 of those 179 come from one permanently-discounted shop
Same, excluding that one advertiser	2,335	3.0%

Plain cotton bucket hat retail packshot against a white background — A $32.00 order. In apparel, more than half the catalogue is already marked down in September, so a November deal post here has less to announce than it looks.

Three per cent. Electronics is essentially undiscounted in September, which means a November price cut in this category is a real event and a deal post about it has actual news in it. Apparel is the opposite: our night desk measured 3,087 of 5,640 apparel rows already marked down on the same date, 1,609 of them by 50% or more.

The planning conclusion we would act on: build your electronics and physical-media coverage now so the pages are indexed before the discounts land, and treat apparel deal posts with suspicion, because "50% off" in that category is the everyday price wearing a badge.

Honest empty: we cannot tell you a conversion rate, an average order value for your audience, or what any network pays, because we have earned nothing and joined no programme. Every figure on this page is an order value from a public product feed or a piece of arithmetic you can redo yourself.

Frequently asked

How much do creators earn during Black Friday?

There is no honest single number. Earnings are order value multiplied by your commission rate multiplied by conversions, and only order value is publicly measurable. Category medians on 1 September 2026 ran from $20.00 for baby tees to $81.00 for turntables.

What is a realistic Black Friday affiliate target?

Work backwards from purchases, not clicks. At a mid-single-digit commission rate on a $25 median order, roughly 800 completed purchases are needed to clear $1,000 over a weekend.

Which categories are worth covering for Black Friday?

Electronics and physical media, on this evidence. Only 3.0% of 2,335 retail listings in those categories carried a sale price on 1 September 2026, so a November discount is a genuine event. In apparel, more than half the market was already marked down.

When should I publish Black Friday content?

Before the discounts, so the pages are indexed when the searches start. Publishing a deal post on the day competes with every other deal post; publishing the underlying answer in September does not.

Disclosure, in full: LinkToLooks has earned $0 in affiliate commission to date. No network has approved us. Everything below is measured from public product-feed data, not from our own payouts, and we will say so on every page that touches money until that changes.