Creator Lola Torres has publicly stated she prefers the stability of affiliate marketing over one-off brand partnerships, according to reporting from Digiday. The declaration matters because it comes from the creator side of the transaction — the supply of traffic and audience that affiliate programs, CPA networks and rev-share offers depend on to fill their funnels.

The specific economics of Torres's affiliate income were not disclosed in the available report. What the story does establish is a directional verdict: a working creator has compared the two monetization models available to her — sponsored brand content and affiliate commission — and chosen affiliate as the steadier revenue stream.

Why would a creator choose affiliate over brand deals?

The logic tracks with patterns performance marketers already know well. Brand partnerships are typically lump-sum, campaign-based payments that arrive irregularly and disappear when a brand's budget cycle turns over. Affiliate income, by contrast, is tied to ongoing conversion behavior: a creator's audience keeps clicking, and the creator keeps earning on whatever model the program pays — CPL, CPA, rev-share or hybrid.

For a creator with a durable content library, that difference compounds. An evergreen product review or recommendation link can generate commissions months after publication, while a sponsored post stops paying the day the contract ends. No cookie-window or attribution figures for Torres's deals appeared in the report, so any claim about her specific program terms would be speculation.

What does this signal for affiliate program managers?

One creator's stated preference is anecdote, not data — a single data point with no sample size behind it. But it aligns with a broader recruiting environment in which affiliate managers compete directly with brand-partnership teams for the same creators.

Programs that want to attract this caliber of partner generally lead with the arguments Torres's choice implies:

• Predictable, recurring commissions rather than fixed-fee placements
• Longer cookie windows and attribution that rewards content built to last
• Transparent, on-time payouts — the single most cited trust factor in partner surveys across the industry
• Hybrid structures that let creators earn a base plus performance upside

The Digiday report did not indicate which affiliate programs or networks Torres works with, nor her vertical or audience size, so readers should treat any broader inference about program-level trends accordingly.

The compliance angle

A creator publicly endorsing products for commission falls under the same disclosure regime as any affiliate publisher. In the U.S., FTC endorsement rules require clear and conspicuous disclosure of material connections — the #affiliate label or equivalent — whenever a creator links to a paid relationship. Creators migrating from brand deals, where disclosure norms are more established contractually, sometimes under-disclose in affiliate contexts, a gap compliance teams at networks and programs increasingly police through partner education rather than enforcement alone.

Program terms can also conflict with how creators prefer to operate: some affiliate agreements restrict how partners may describe products or prohibit mentioning commission rates, which can chafe against the editorial transparency audiences reward.

The takeaway

Torres's preference is a reminder that affiliate marketing's core pitch — steady, performance-linked revenue — is not only an advertiser value proposition but a creator-side one. As more creators weigh irregular sponsorship income against compounding commission streams, programs that pay reliably and attribute fairly will keep winning the partners who drive volume. Whether that preference hardens into a measurable migration of creators from brand deals into affiliate programs is a trend worth tracking in Digiday's ongoing creator-economy coverage.