If you’re an affiliate marketer or thinking to start in the industry, knowing about some affiliate marketing statstics will give you a proper image of the current industry and its attributes.
Affiliate Marketing growth statistics tell us that it did exist before the advent of the internet but has seen an exponential rise since Amazon started its affiliate marketing program in which bloggers and websites put up links to different amazon products discussed in their articles and earned advertising fees when a purchase was made.
To understand the importance of affiliate marketing in the present time, it is important to go over some Affiliate Marketing stats. In this article, you will learn about the state of Affiliate Marketing in India and the world through a detailed look at the different specifics related to affiliate marketing.
Affiliate Marketing Statistics: An Overview
Before going through a ton of data, we need to classify affiliate marketing stats so you can focus on what’s essential for you. In this article, we have recognized the most important statistics which set an image of the whole affiliate marketing business in current times.
Affiliate Marketing Statistics: Demography
- In affiliate marketing, males have a slight dominance, with 54.23% of affiliates being male and 42.97% female affiliates.
- Affiliate Marketing is the 7th most demanded skill by marketing agencies.
- 64% of affiliate marketing traffic comes from the USA, with 13.39% of traffic coming from Europe. India contributes a mere 1.85% to global affiliate marketing traffic.
- 37% of people who made their first online purchase in 2020 used affiliate marketing links.
- The success of Affiliate Marketing also lies in loading times; 47% of the visitors expected the website to load in less than 2 seconds and even a one-second delay in the website’s loading time results in 7% lower conversions.
- Most affiliate marketers are 35 and 44 years old, forming 31.86% of all affiliate marketers.
- 54.28% of affiliate marketers are working from home, whereas 19.21% of the affiliate marketers work from a marketing agency.
- If your website takes more than 3 seconds to load, you will lose 40% of your customers.
- Out of all affiliate marketers, 54.23% are married.
- Only 10% of affiliate marketers generate 90% of the revenue in most affiliate marketing programs.
Affiliate Marketing Statistics: Industry
The affiliate marketing industry has seen exponential growth in the past few years and has a
- 40% of marketing agencies believe that affiliate marketing is an important skill to have.
- 16% of all online sales have some affiliate marketing touchpoint in the process.
- Mobile affiliate marketing sales went up 49% in 2020 in the UK.
- 42.17% of all affiliate marketers prefer to promote between one and ten products.
- Through some clever linking methods, you can stop adblockers from blocking affiliate marketing links.
- Promoting many products is the key to the growth of affiliate marketing, and 7.53% of affiliate marketers are promoting more than 300 products at any time.
- 79% of all marketing agencies use affiliate marketing to increase revenues and conversions.
- 38% of affiliate marketers use affiliate marketing for customer acquisition.
- Brand spending on affiliate marketing is increasing by 27% CAGR.
- Affiliate Marketing statistics in India show that it is a growing market and around 1.84% of affiliate marketers are based out of India.
Affiliate Marketing Statistics: Trends
With the growing affiliate marketing market and its presence on social media and other consumer channels, we can look at some trends in the past few years and analyze what led to this growth.
Understanding these trends is quite hard when done manually, however, there are many tools that can help your affiliate marketing program reach new heights and gain popularity in the current market.
- Affiliate Marketing will become an $8.2 billion industry in the USA by the end of 2022.
- Currently, the global affiliate marketing industry is worth over $12 billion.
- 74% of all US consumers consult an affiliate marketing website before purchasing any item.
- In 2017, more than 5 billion clicks were made on affiliate marketing content.
- For affiliate marketers, coupons on certain products are a major source of conversions. In fact, 83% of customers state that a coupon was the major reason for their purchase.
- 80% of online merchants have spent 10% of their budget on affiliate marketers.
- 9 out of 10 marketers have confirmed that affiliate marketing is important for their digital marketing strategy.
- The retail sector alone makes up 43% of all affiliate marketing sales.
- 60% of the large merchants who earned more than $5 million used affiliate marketing over the last five years.
- Affiliate Marketing has been on the rise for many years, and it hit more than 170 million in 2017.
Affiliate Marketing Statistics: Categories To Promote
The category of your affiliate products is important to consider during affiliate marketing. Some categories have a major share in creating affiliate marketing traffic, and using it to your advantage is key to success in affiliate marketing. Here are some statistics about different categories in affiliate marketing.
- Fashion products make up 18.7% of affiliate marketing traffic.
- Sports products and outdoor equipment are popular categories in affiliate marketing and compose 18.7% of affiliate marketing traffic each.
- Art products are the least popular category in affiliate marketing, making up only 1.1% of affiliate marketing sales.
- Health products are another popular category in affiliate marketing, contributing 11.1% of affiliate marketing sales.
- 24% of affiliate marketing revenue is generated from the media and telecom niche.
- Tech products are the most promoted category by affiliate marketers, contributing 41.14% to affiliate marketing links.
- Online services are preferred by 29.88% of affiliate marketers, followed by beauty products which are preferred by 27.89% of affiliate marketers.
- On YouTube, 3.6% of all Science and Technology videos have an affiliate marketing link making it the most popular category on this popular video-sharing website.
- On Pinterest, women’s fashion is the most popular affiliate marketing category, with 4.62% of posts having an affiliate marketing link.
Affiliate Marketing Statistics: Traffic Source
Affiliate Marketing is all about generating traffic to your links. More clicks on an affiliate marketing link directly affect the sales for that particular product.
Traffic for affiliate marketing can be generated through multiple sources, and most successful affiliate marketers use several different platforms to promote their product links.
- 79% of affiliate marketing programs engage existing product customers and focus on customer retention.
- Blogging contributes a major share in generating affiliate marketing traffic as 65% of affiliate marketers use blogging to generate traffic for their links.
- The current affiliate marketing industry focuses on smartphone users, and 50% of affiliate marketing traffic comes from mobile devices.
- Since social media websites have gained immense popularity, many affiliate marketers are gaining customers from social media. About 65% of affiliate marketers connect with their audience on social media.
- SEO is the top traffic source for affiliate marketing websites making up 69% of affiliate marketing traffic.
- Using influencers for affiliate marketing campaigns will result in higher traffic as 49% of the customers trust the product recommended by an influencer.
- AI and voice search has seen exponential growth in recent years. They are among the fastest-growing sources of affiliate marketing traffic in 2019.
- Email marketing has been a key component of digital marketing for over a decade now, contributing 41.47% of affiliate marketing traffic.
- 40% of customers have made a purchase based on a Twitter update.
- Pay-per-click links are getting popular among customers and affiliate marketers alike. Thus, it isn’t a surprise that they contribute 34.28% of affiliate marketing traffic.
Affiliate Marketing Statistics: Affiliate Networks
- 94% of online publishers use multiple affiliate networks to increase revenue for their business.
- 80% of affiliate marketers expect their revenues to grow by the end of 2022.
- Amazon’s affiliate program has more than 900,000 publishers registered with its network.
- ShareASale has the highest share in the affiliate marketing industry at 55%.
- Amazon’s affiliate program offers its marketers a commission between 1% and 10%.
- eBay offers one of the most lucrative affiliate marketing programs with commissions between 50% and 70% of the site’s profits.
- Brand interest in affiliate marketing has also increased, which can be seen by the 150% rise in the number of brands wanting to join Amazon Associates in 2020 from 2019.
- 79% of advertisers visit affiliate events to find the best affiliate partners.
- CJ Affiliate is the second biggest affiliate network after Amazon Associates comprising 8.99% of affiliate marketers.
Affiliate Marketing Statistics: Revenue & Earning
We have mentioned several statistics about the Affiliate Marketing Industry but the most appealing statistic to any affiliate marketer or potential affiliate marketer is the revenue generated from the affiliate marketing industry.
- 73% of merchants achieve their expected earnings from affiliate marketing programs.
- 9% of full-time affiliate marketers earn more than $50000 per annum in the USA in 2021.
- Many affiliate programs pay their marketers 1000$ per sale made by them.
- 60% of merchants in the USA reported that their affiliate marketing programs made more than $5 million or more in 2021.
- Affiliate Marketing is considered the second-best revenue stream for online publishers.
- 76% of online publishers stated that affiliate marketing made monetizing their websites quite easy.
- About 3.2% of affiliate marketers make more than $150000 per annum.
- 34% of the publishers who have less than 5000 unique viewers for their website make a living out of affiliate marketing.
- Jason Stone earned more than $7 million from affiliate marketing in 2019.
- In France, affiliate marketing programs earned more $772 million in 2019.
- 35% of affiliate marketers earned more than $20000 in 2019.
- PayScale surveys found that the average earning from affiliate marketing was $51,639 per year.
Affiliate Marketing Statistics: Profitable Niche
Affiliate Marketing programs make money from the popularity of their products and some niches have higher popularity than others. The difference between the popularity of promoted products differentiates the top affiliate marketers from naive ones.
While other statistics on affiliate marketing are important, understanding your audience’s choices and products from popular niches is important for any affiliate marketer.
- Fashion products make up 25% of all affiliate marketing programs.
- Life Insurance products have seen a rise in affiliate marketing programs since the pandemic.
- The travel industry pays commission around 1% to 3% on its affiliate products.
- Software affiliate marketing programs are some of the most profitable programs with up to 30% commissions on offer.
- Accommodation affiliate programs are also on a rise and pay its marketers between 3% and 12% commissions.
- Web Hosting has become one of the most competitive and profitable affiliate marketing niches.
- Travel and Leisure affiliate marketing programs generate 16% of revenue.
What Do These Stats Mean For The Average Affiliate Marketer?
Well, we have gone over statistics of different aspects in the current affiliate marketing industry and gained clear insights about its growth and the categories to focus on.
It is clear that affiliate marketing has a bright future especially due to the increasing number of people being interested in eCommerce products. Some categories like Fashion and Electronics are the most profitable for affiliate marketers and have produce immense traffic on websites and social media.
Countries like the USA or the UK were early adopters of affiliate marketing, thus generating a lot of revenue in the industry but South Asian countries like India(with more than 490 million smartphone users) have many new affiliate marketers who have a large digital consumer base for product promotion.
To put it simply, affiliate marketing will grow at an increasing rate in the coming years and its revenue generation capability will only be enhanced with the rise of social media use.