Forum Moderators: skibum
Some interesting stats. Affiliate marketing is driving $14 billion in internet sales and getting bigger every day.
The largest share of a marketer's margin comes from affiliate sales.
While the article places focus on scumware - parasite issues, its not my purpose here in referring to the article to foment debate about that issue. Its been treated at great length on other boards specifically dealing with affiliate matters. Please, lets not try to replicate that debate.
I just thought the numbers were interesting.
The report shows that sites generating the most revenue (not profit) are sites with good affiliate program and commission.
The site is willing to give good commissions is because of if it can create more revenue it will have more bargain power to acquire cheaper service/product to its customer.
The report also shows that sales grows a lot when affiliate program has adopted.
IMO, there will be more and more merchant offering affiliate program.
Some things I noted:
It's becoming more and more difficult for smaller sites to succeed with affiliate marketing. Something that's very true, and we don't discuss it much.
Interesting numbers for total affiliate-merchant relationships -
CJ - over 15 million
BeFree - 2 million (down from 4 million, after whittling down to strong performers)
Performics - 3 million
I decided to take a closer look at performics merchant lineup, and found it funny the number of search engines listed as their "select distribution partners" (read super-affiliates). They have 18 affiliates listed, and 5 of them are search engines:
AltaVista
Inktomi
Looksmart
iWon
Overture
These guys are up there with the big shopping engines. That is real competition.
