How do I prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday as a creator?

Black Friday is taken to be the Friday after Thanksgiving. According to the US Office of Personnel Management, the US holiday falls on Thursday 26 November in 2026. The weeks in the table are guidelines. Your own photos and videos, and anything you need to agree with a brand, take the most lead time. That is why brand requests come first.

Why note prices from 28 October: if a shop in Germany announces a price reduction on 27 November, it has to state the lowest price it charged in the 30 days before the reduction started (§ 11(1) PAngV, the Price Indication Ordinance). With weekly notes you can check for yourself if a Black Friday price really is below what you saw in the weeks before. If a shop starts its sale before the Friday, its 30-day period starts earlier too. Whatever you post, still take it from the shop’s page.

Why the wish list comes weeks ahead: planned purchases outweigh impulse buys. According to Bitkom, 61% already knew how much they wanted to spend. 48% describe themselves as rather planned buyers, 30% as rather spontaneous. A wish list you share weeks ahead fits that better than a spontaneous post on Friday night. And since a third mainly buy presents, a second collection by person or price range makes sense.

• Two collections: a wish list with products you use or have had your eye on for a while, and one with presents by person or price range.
• Check prices and availability the day before and on Friday morning: are the size and colour still in stock, and does the link go to the right variant?
• Use the discount the shop states: the sale price and the lowest price of the last 30 days shown there, rather than working out your own percentage from an older price. According to the EU Court of Justice, a shop announcing a percentage discount has to calculate it from the lowest price of the last 30 days (judgment of 26 September 2024, C-330/23).
• State a code’s terms: dates, minimum order value, exclusions. They must be easy to access and stated clearly and unambiguously (§ 6(1) no. 3 DDG, the German Digital Services Act).
• Label discount codes: “Werbung” or “Anzeige” clearly legible right next to the code, and in videos audible or legible at the code. That is what the German media authorities’ labelling matrix says (row F).
• Stories with an affiliate link: “Werbung” at the top of every slide with a product or link, plus an asterisk and an explanation right by the link (row G). The media authorities name prices, where to buy and affiliate links as possible signs of promotional intent. According to them, “ad” is not enough.
• Only state deadlines that are true: falsely claiming an offer is only available for a very short time, to push people into an immediate decision, is always prohibited towards consumers (UWG, the Act against Unfair Competition, annex no. 7).
• After Cyber Monday: remove sale prices and codes from highlights, pinned posts and descriptions as soon as the sale is over.

These texts are examples. Fill in the brackets. Only write “your price stays the same” if that is true for the shops you link to.

If you earn from a link, § 5a(4) UWG requires the commercial purpose to be made clear unless it is obvious from the context. That is why the templates put “Werbung” at the top of every slide with a product, code or link, and the affiliate link also gets the asterisk and explanation. If a slide is a video with the product as the focus, the German media authorities say “Werbung” stays on screen for the whole promotional sequence. Their guide says foreign-language wording such as “sponsored by” is not enough. If you post in English for an audience in Germany, you are therefore better off keeping the German “Werbung”.

In your wyrld storefront you set up collections, such as a Black Friday wish list and one with presents. The photos you produced without prices go in as your own images, up to five per product. If wyrld finds a product in several partner shops, your community sees the offers with prices side by side, and the cheapest new offer carries the “Best price” label. Prices come from the shops and are updated regularly, but not always to the minute. The price the shop shows at checkout is the one that counts.

You put your storefront link in your bio or in your story’s link sticker, and wyrld creates the affiliate links to the individual shops. So the storefront link gets the asterisk and explanation too, for example “*Affiliate links: depending on the shop, I earn from clicks or purchases, and your price stays the same.” You earn per click, per sale or both, depending on the shop, and you can also earn when your community picks another shop from the comparison.

Earnings are settled at the start of the following month for the previous month, with a self-billing credit note. wyrld pays out commissions from Black Friday sales once the shop or the affiliate programme has paid them to wyrld. Commission is based on the net value after returns and cancellations.