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Affiliate Marketing Statistics Every Marketing Professional Must Know

Affiliate marketing has been prospering in recent years. Affiliate marketing spending reached $12 billion in 2017. That’s in the United States and Europe alone which is great for a marketing professional. 

Affiliate marketing has finally reached its tipping point, becoming an established industry in its own right. It is now equal to email marketing in terms of generating company revenue. Considering how lauded email marketing is among digital marketers, this is proof enough that you should be focusing on affiliate marketing as part of your online business strategy. 

If you’re a marketing professional working with affiliate marketing, we’ve compiled some useful statistics to help guide your way. Whether you’re brand new to affiliate marketing or looking to take your practice to the next level, these stats will give you something to think about!

15% Of Marketing Revenue Comes From Affiliate Marketing

The relationship between publishers and affiliate marketing has often been fraught and complicated. Many of those complications have now been resolved, as we can see from the fact that media publishers now report affiliate marketing to make up 15% of their total revenue

Both readers and publishers have gotten more comfortable with the idea of sponsored content. As long as a publisher makes it clear they’re making a commission off of a sale, there’s nothing wrong with promoting a product or service. For the readers and users, it offers a chance to get a recommendation from a trusted source. 

It’s a win-win for all parties involved. You simply can’t go wrong with that in the business world.  

Affiliate Marketing Generates As Many Sales As Email Marketing 

15% of online sales are generated via affiliate marketing at this point, as well. That’s how much email marketing accounts for, as well. This fact alone should make you stop and take notice. 

Think about it. Email marketing is going to a captive audience – people who have signed up to receive your emails. That fact alone makes them quality leads. They’re interested, and they already have a relationship with your company. 

The fact that affiliate marketing generates as many sales as direct email marketing says something about consumers. People suffer from the Paradox of Choice. There’s simply too much out there, of everything. 

Affiliate marketing offers consumers a guide through the line noise. 

Affiliate Marketing Can Cost As Little As $7/month – Or Even Less

Affiliate marketing is well-known for being one of the least expensive ways to break into online business. You could run a successful affiliate marketing business for $7 a month. Or even less, if you’re diligent about it.

If you want to be as successful as possible, running an affiliate marketing business, you’ll need organic traffic. That means appealing to the search engines as well as your audience.

Having a dedicated host and domain name are a quick way to get Google to take your site more seriously. A domain name can be registered for as little as $4 a year. Hosting a website can cost as little as $6 a month. 

There are other ways you could spend more to build your business more quickly. You could do it for less, as well, if you’re serious and dedicated. 

There are endless free website platforms out there, like WordPress or Wix. Affiliate marketing is really about your reputation and your relationship with your audience. You could build that just as easily running a free blog as a flashy, expensive website. 

Having your own host and domain name just means you’ll get found more quickly and rated more favorably by the search engines. 

81% of Marketers and 84% of Publishers Use Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has finally reached the tipping point towards mainstream acceptance. Consumers are skeptical of official advertising. They’re also resentful when they’re being advertised at when they don’t want to be. 

That’s one reason that 81% of marketers and 84% of publishers use affiliate marketing. 

Affiliate marketing solves both of these issues simultaneously. Affiliate marketing is often a part of a content marketing strategy, where a publisher creates some content around some organic search terms. This means the content will be found by people looking for that information. 

It’ll also give their audience some context about the product or service. This is increasingly important in today’s ever-shifting world. Consumers appreciate having quality products brought to their attention. 

It’s a win-win for the publisher, the affiliate marketer, and the affiliate, all in one. 

Affiliate Marketing Spending To Reach $6.8 Billion by 2020

Projections have shown that affiliate marketers are on track to be spending $6.8 billion on affiliate marketing by the end of 2020. As digital business owners seek more ways to increase their revenue and diversify their income stream, this goes to show that affiliate marketing is an industry worth looking into. 

$6.8 billion is the current size of the ride-sharing industry, to put that into perspective. If you had the opportunity to earn as much as Uber or Lyft with only passive income, wouldn’t you take it? You do have that opportunity with affiliate marketing. 

With the internet changing the business world so quickly, and so thoroughly, we need to be investigating every revenue source we can find.

Google Searches For ‘Affiliate Marketing’ Increased 44% In One Year

Google Trends isn’t the most accurate or detailed keyword tool out there. It is a useful metric to measure the general public’s interest, however. It lets you know what people are looking up, and when, to get a sense of what direction the breeze is blowing in a particular industry. 

Between December 2017 and June 2018, the number of searches for ‘affiliate marketing’ increased an impressive 44%. This alone should tell you the interest is there for people on both sides of the affiliate equation. If you heard another industry had increased by almost 50% in a single year, wouldn’t you investigate further?

The number of people searching for ‘affiliate marketing’ is nearly 3x the amount of when Google first started keeping track in 2004. Whether that’s due to how increasingly prevalent the internet is in our lives, the uncertainty of the economy, or just businesses getting savvier with how to integrate the digital economy into their business model is difficult to say. 

The numbers don’t lie, though. The interest is clearly there for affiliate marketing. And it’s still growing.

The Highest-Grossing Affiliate Generated $7 Million In Sales In One Year

A lot of people wonder “How much money can I earn with affiliate marketing?” As with all things relating to business, that answer varies. In the case of affiliate marketing, it varies a lot

Of course, affiliate marketers who don’t expend much time or energy into their efforts aren’t going to earn very much. If you’re diligent, hard-working, consistent, and pick a profitable niche, however, there’s quite a bit of money to be made acting as an affiliate marketing professional. 

The highest-grossing affiliate award goes to Jason Stone, according to entrepreneur.com. Stone is best known as an Instagram influencer, going by the handle Millionaire Mentor. Stone delivered $7 million in sales to his affiliate partners between June 2016 and June 2017. 

That’s without excessive hustling or grinding, either. Stone would just post the occasional affiliate link to his social media profile that he thought would appeal to his followers. Apparently, he was right. 

According to Jason Stone, the secret to affiliate marketing success is to pick products to promote that will appeal to their core audience while still adhering to their niche and personal brand. 

Fashion Is The Most Profitable Niche – Followed By Sports and Health/Wellness

Digital business owners are obsessed with the newest and latest trend. It makes sense. Online business changes and evolves exponentially more quickly than any other business model. 

Trying to keep up with all of the latest trends will leave you chasing your own tail, however. You’ll spend all of your energy trying to keep up with whatever’s trending on Twitter, only to have that change the following day. You’re much better off spending time, energy, and resources on tried-and-tested methods, especially if you’re just starting out in the industry. 

Fashion is by far the most profitable niche for affiliate marketing professionals. Fashion sales make up 18.7% of all affiliate marketing. Sports and outdoor hobbies accounted for 14.6%. Health, wellness, and beauty make up 11.1% of affiliate marketing sales. 

If you’re a clothes hound or fashionista, there could be serious money in fashion blogging if you’re an affiliate marketer. You’ll want to make sure your taste is on-point, though. Fashion marketing may be timeless, but fashion itself is as fickle as the tides. 

Affiliate Marketing Makes Up .8% Of The UK’s GDP

Affiliate marketing isn’t just for amateur bloggers anymore. It’s a proper industry in its own regard. It even factors into an entire country’s GDP. 

The UK branch of the Interactive Advertising Bureau reports that affiliate marketing now makes up .8% of the UK’s overall economy. It makes up an impressive 10% of their eCommerce industry. 

Nearly 50% Of Affiliate Sales Come From Mobile Devices 

Mobile traffic has been outpacing desktop usage since 2016. It shouldn’t exactly come as a surprise that a large share of affiliate sales are coming from cellphones and tablets. Just exactly how much traffic is coming from mobile devices might be a little bit of a shock. 

Popular affiliate network Awin report that nearly 50% of their traffic was coming from mobile devices. This means you need to make sure that your affiliate marketing website is optimized for mobile. 

That’s just one reason mobile optimization is mandatory. It also greatly impacts the page load time. Which, in turn, affects your search engine ranking. 

To get even more granular, Awin reports that Apple users spend more than shoppers browsing with an Android device. iPad users spent $114.15 during Q1 of 2016. Android users $76.75. 

iPads also had a higher conversion rate. iPad users saw a conversion rate of 4.11%. Android users only had a 1.29% rate during the same period. 

Content Is King

Content marketing has been all the rage in recent years. It yields genuine organic traffic that builds over time. It’s one of the best ways to develop your company and build a relationship with your customers at the same time. 

It’s also one of the best ways to make marketing actually desirable. 

That’s one of the reasons that content marketing has grown a staggering 175%. The revenue generated by content publishers has increased by 240%. 

Content marketing, as a whole, creates three times more leads than ads. It also costs 62% less. 

As you can see from some of these stats, there are so many different reasons to get into affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing links are an excellent source of passive income, for one thing. Any business owner or entrepreneur can tell you that passive income is the Holy Grail of income generation. 

It’s also a way for businesses and publishers alike to grow their reputations and their brands. It’s a truly healthy symbiotic relationship with powerful implications. How often do you find that in the business world?

Affiliate marketing is a useful and powerful tool for marketers and business owners of any size. Whether you’re a brand new blogger just beginning your online business journey or a Fortune 500 company looking to diversify your assets, you should really consider affiliate marketing as part of your business strategy. 

Are You A Marketing Professional Looking For Financial Freedom?

It’s one of my greatest joys to help business owners, marketers, and entrepreneurs find their way to financial freedom. I’ve helped countless entrepreneurs find their way, discovering their unique voice and place within the business ecosystem. 

If you’re a marketing professional ready to take your career to the next level, or start generating precious passive income, check out my latest affiliate marketing eBook

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