How NUDAY Hit $70K in Monthly Affiliate Revenue With Just 3 to 5 Creators

CHALLENGE

• A bootstrapped, two-person brand that needed to grow fast with no room for heavy tooling.
• Past platforms like Impact required building full programs, application flows, and manual payout balances.
• Most brands recruit as many affiliates as possible, throwing content at the wall with little that works long term.

SOLUTION

• Deliberately kept a tiny roster of three to five active creators posting consistent videos.
• Ran a daily, data-driven feedback loop on every video (conversion rate, cost per click, retention).
• Found top creator Talon Krebs through a TikTok Shop analytics tool and signed him on a “smart retainer” with a minimum guarantee.
• Pushed ad spend behind the videos that converted, giving each creator $5,000 to $10,000 a month.

RESULTS

• Over $70,000 in affiliate revenue in the last 30 days.
• Full UpPromote setup completed in about one hour.
• Automatic commission tracking inside Shopify, with no manual reconciliation.

LESSONS

• A few well-supported creators can outperform a large, unmanaged roster.
• Treat affiliate content like paid media: measure it, iterate daily, and double down on winners.
• Give each creator a real budget and a fair deal, and the incentives align for everyone.

NUDAY is a hydration and focus drink that packs electrolytes and a nootropic stack into a single stick pack. Clean hydration for the body, L-Theanine and L-Tyrosine for the brain.

Founder Ethan King built the brand himself and still runs it lean: just him and one other person, fully bootstrapped. The product has been live for about four months.

Ethan is no newcomer to e-commerce. He spent eight to nine years in direct-to-consumer, started dropshipping in 2019, and was a TikTok affiliate creator himself in 2020. That background shaped a very specific way of running affiliates.

Why did a bootstrapped brand need a frictionless affiliate tool?

Ethan knew from experience that affiliates convert better than plain direct-to-consumer ads. The real question was which platform could run them without slowing a two-person team down.

He had tried Impact and a few others. They were powerful but heavy: entire programs to build, application processes for creators, and payout schedules with minimums and balances to manage.

UpPromote won on simplicity. Because it lives inside Shopify, it tracks commissions and creates links automatically, and a creator can sign up the moment they receive a link.

It probably took me an hour to get the entire account set up… I don’t have to worry about it not being tracked, because it’s already inside the Shopify orders.

For a founder doing everything himself, that “nothing to think about” setup was the whole point.

What made NUDAY’s affiliate program work?

Ethan’s edge isn’t the tool. It’s a deliberate, data-heavy way of working with a very small group of creators.

Most brands chase volume, onboarding as many affiliates as they can. Ethan does the opposite.

We’re mainly bringing on a handful of affiliates, so three to five people max at a time that are posting consistent videos.

A small roster means he can give each creator real attention and real budget, instead of spreading himself thin across hundreds of partners.

Creators make the content they think will work. Then Ethan digs into the numbers: conversion rate, cost per click, and retention on each video.

We just work with these creators and have a super tight feedback loop and go back and forth with them almost daily.

Each round, they fix what the data flags and rebuild the weak parts. Once something clicks, he doubles down and pushes ad spend behind it. Affiliate content, in other words, is treated like paid media.

How did NUDAY find and sign its top creator?

NUDAY’s standout creator, Talon Krebs, came from outreach. Ethan spotted him through a TikTok Shop analytics tool where a creator’s public commissions are visible. Talon was already making strong videos for an adjacent health and wellness brand, and his content looked like a fit.

After a call to align on goals, Ethan signed him on what he calls a “smart retainer”: a minimum guarantee that pays the creator if commissions fall short early on.

The whole point is not just to try to make money for yourself, but to make a deal that works for both yourself and the affiliate.

UpPromote’s separate programs make this practical. Ethan builds a distinct program per creator, so retainer and non-retainer partners can carry different commission rates and payouts.

What results has NUDAY seen with UpPromote?

The approach is already paying off for a four-month-old brand. In the last 30 days, NUDAY generated over $70,000 in affiliate revenue, tracked automatically through UpPromote.

Behind it sits ad spend of $5,000 to $10,000 per creator, per month, concentrated on the videos that convert.

Because tracking is native to Shopify, none of it needs manual reconciliation. For a founder splitting his time across the whole business, that operational simplicity is what keeps the numbers repeatable.

What’s Ethan’s advice for other founders?

Ethan’s core belief is that depth beats breadth.

It’s much more valuable… if I have five creators and I’m able to give each one five to $10,000 a month in ad spend, versus having 100 creators and only being able to get a couple hundred dollars in ads.

By concentrating budget and attention, he gives each creator a genuine chance to succeed, then lets new creators copy what already works as the brand expands.