Did you know that TBS founders Cathy (Poor Little It Girl) and Jessica (An Indigo Day) have been blogging for a collective 25+ years? Crazy huh? So needless to say, they’ve learned a few things about affiliate income and revenue strategy in their day as full time content creators. And that’s why today we’re chatting our ShopStyle Collective (now known as Collective Voice) review and why it’s the superior affiliate platform for bloggers.
We are all about using the best tools that make their jobs easier and, in turn, make them more money. And for them, one of the biggest changes they’ve both made is switching their affiliate strategy to focus on using, almost exclusively, Collective Voice (formerly ShopStyle Collective).
While many influencers use and love rewardStyle for their affiliate needs, we have found Collective Voice is best for our blogs. Plus, the backend of Collective Voice is much easier to navigate and manage than rewardStyle.
If you’re wanting to learn more about the best features of Collective Voice, then this post is for you. We’re sharing our Collective Voice review and our favorite features of Collective Voice affiliate platform that we use daily to manage our blog affiliate income.
A ShopStyle Collective Review – Our 10 Favorite Features Of Collective Voice
There’s a long list of things we love about ShopStyle Collective (Collective Voice). Overall, it’s ease of use and the time saved in creating widgets for our blogs that really make a difference. But there are also tons of great features that Collective Voice (formerly ShopStyle Collective) offers that no other affiliate platform does. And that’s why we LOVE using SSC as our affiliate platform.
No Need To Save ALL The Product
Creating a product widget is so easy in Collective Voice, it’s one of our favorite features of the affiliate platform! Let’s say you want to create a widget just on pink coats. There’s no need to find a dozen pink coats across the internet and save them with a bookmarklet to your folders.
Instead, just head to Collective Voice and select Widgets, and then start creating! You can search the massive database of products and easily filter by brand, retailer, price, and color. It makes creating widgets a breeze. While there are a handful of brands who are not part of the search catalog (yet you can link to them on their site directly), we rarely find it an issue as there are so many retailers and especially multi-brand retailers for us to pick from.
All Your Widgets In One Spot
Every time you create a widget, it lives in your widget dashboard. It’s saved forever so you can easily access it in the future. You can even name them so you can find them with a quick search. This is great if you need to re-use a widget, or need to update an old post. This is a feature we haven’t seen on any other affiliate programs before and it makes it so easy to update.
Easily Star Widgets That You Update Frequently
In your widget dashboard, you can star a widget so it is pinned to the top for easy access. This makes it really easy to update the widgets you permanently have on your site.
For example, Jessica of An Indigo Day, has several widgets that she updates on her shop page with various categories. Anytime she shares something new on IG Stories, she can easily find this widget, add the products, and update. The widget automatically updates on the front end making it super quick and easy to share products with her followers.
A Live View Of Clicks
When you log in to your dashboard, you can get a live view of what’s happening with your links. What’s being clicked, the increase in clicks and also where they’re coming from in the country.
Enhanced Analytics
Ever wanted to know where your clicks are coming from? Are they coming from Instagram, your blog, Facebook, or that widget or Look you created? One of our favorite features of Collective Voice (formerly ShopStyle Collective) is the enhanced analytics to show you a detailed breakdown of where your clicks are coming from via traffic sources, tool types (widgets, looks, or text links).
In addition, you can view stats by brand, retailer, or product category. This allows you to see where you earn commission which can be useful in crafting an affiliate strategy for your business.
Get Sale Alert Feature
When creating your widgets, you can opt to have a “Get Sale Alert” under each item. Readers can heart this so they can receive a sale alert via email with your affiliate link when the item goes on sale. Thus increasing your clicks and probability of making a sale.
Sold Out Feature
Easily update sold out items in your widgets so users are always landing on in-stock products. This can be done quickly on your widgets dashboard. SSC even provides similar items to swap out sold out pieces with so you aren’t searching for product.
A Helpful Homepage
When you log on, the homepage not only shows your latest sales and clicks, but also helpful blog posts that are timely. Plus, a countdown for major sales and deals. It’s a great resource to access brand updates, commission info and more.
Brand Partnerships And Gifting
While you can monetize your blog posts, Instagram and more, one thing we love is getting brand deals through Collective Voice. Just like LTK, they manage brand partnerships with top retailers and you can be hired to create content for them. They also do some gifting as well which is always nice when there’s a specific launch, or they’re testing out creators and interest in brands.
The best part about the brand partnerships are that they pay out in 30 days as their payment terms. No waiting for months for payouts like the other platforms. You earn your flat fee payment typically in your next payout cycle.
Comment DM Feature
The most recent feature at Collective Voice is their new comment DM feature. When you create a Look to share on social media, you can enable an automated DM via a comment. This is a popular feature on Instagram to encourage followers to comment a trigger word so that it sends them a DM with a link to shop. Many platforms charge for this, and Collective Voice offers it for free for their users.
Collective Voice will send a DM when users comment “Shop The Look” on your posts. Once you’ve enabled it, you don’t have to do anything else! This can help increase conversion rates on Instagram. The only downside is that it just sends the Look link. So, if you ever want to send any other links, like blog posts or newsletter links, you’ll need to use a different platform like LinkDM or ManyChat.
So don’t sleep on Collective Voice as your go-to affiliate platform when creating content for your blog and Instagram. If you’re ready to start making money with your influence, this is one you better check out. It’s truly our favorite platform for ease of creating widgets, the time we save and the brand partnership opportunities that are run smoothly and professionally.
