I’m sure that in the past you have come across blog posts about affiliate marketing being “dead”, “dying”, too crowded, too risky, too dependent on this or that, and so on, and so forth… However, over the past few days I have witnessed a few signs that point in a completely opposite direction — namely, that affiliate marketing isn’t even just “alive and well”, but it is thriving, and working really well for those who take it seriously.
3 Signs of Affiliate Marketing Thriving
1. Largest Affiliate Summit to Date
Two days ago Affiliate Summit, the industry’s central conference, has completed in Las Vegas, NV. This has been the largest one to date, gathering nearly 5,100 attendees (yes, an almost tenfold growth in 7 years!) under one roof. More about the conference’s spectacular growth in the newest issue of FeedFront magazine here.
2. Wide Interest in Affiliate Management
Right after presenting at the above-quoted Affiliate Summit, I uploaded my 64-slide PPT deck to SlideShare. Yesterday I learned that it made its homepage. And at the time of this post, it is already nearing 1,000 views (in under 3 days). There certainly is great interest in serious affiliate program management.
3. Affiliate’s Hard Work Pays Off Big
Not sure if you’ve caught my yesterday night’s tweet, but as you can see above we’ve had an affiliate in Compete.com’s program make $1,000 from one sale; and this isn’t the first time it’s happening. Hard work certainly pays off.
I hope these encourage you as much as they’ve inspired me.
As always, if you have anything to share with regard to this post’s subject, the Comments are all yours.
Hi Geno,
I’m wondering are there any public, independent research available on the actual dollar value of the affiliate marketing business, U.S. or worldwide? I’m sure this can be hard to define, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for financial analysts following other similar sectors.
Thanks,
Juhani
Juhani, there is. See Forrester’s “US Affiliate Marketing Forecast, 2009 To 2014” (so, it’s expected to be at $4 billion in 2014 in the U.S.), as well as this report at Econsultancy (so, driving £4.5+ billion, or 8% of all online sales within the UK)
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I couldn’t agree more! There are plenty of affiliate marketers, managers and networks taking the online world by storm. I think people have a tendency to discard businesses they don’t entirely understand. (Sometimes that includes people who are in the business.) If you’re willing to work hard at it though, affiliate marketing is, as you say, thriving and will continue to excel.
Thanks for the insight Geno.
Exactly, Christelle! Thank you for taking the time to comment.
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