Ten years ago, when I was writing my very first book on affiliate marketing, I greatly struggled with the lack of statistical data on this industry, and quoted lack of research on it in my first interviews too.
In this day and age, however, there is plenty of great data out there; and today I bring you my compilation of 20 bite-sized Tweetable nuggets (each representing an interesting stat related to affiliate marketing). I hope you will find them as fascinating as I did.
1. U.S. affiliate marketing spend nears $5B. That is twice the economy of Belize [source 1 | source 2]
2. UK affiliate marketing drives ~1% of the country’s total GDP (more than industry of agriculture) [source]
3. Affiliate marketing ROI in the UK amounts to £15 per every £1 spent; with 4 in 5 Britons involved [source]
4. 40% of marketing professionals quote affiliate marketing as the most desired digital skill [source]
5. Approximately 15% of all digital media industry’s revenue comes from affiliate marketing [source]
6. 78% of CMOs admit affiliate marketing to be their least mastered area of digital marketing [source]
7. Developed affiliate programs account for generating 15% to 30% of all advertiser’s online sales
8. Over 80% of brands utilize affiliate marketing [source]
9. 38% of marketers call affiliate marketing one of the top customer acquisition methods [source]
10. In 2015 Amazon.com revenue surpassed $100B. Likely, its affiliates generated at least $10B of it [source 1 | source 2]
11. In the UK brands spend £1.3B a year on affiliate marketing and lead generation [source]
12. Nearly 50% of affiliate-referred traffic originates from a mobile device [source]
13. More than 30% of affiliate-generated sales originate from a mobile device [source]
14. As early as in 2008 Amazon’s affiliate program already had over 2 million affiliates aboard [source]
15. Rakuten’s aquisition of Ebates for $1 billion marked largest amount paid for an affiliate [source]
16. More than 75% of Australian market is owned by one affiliate network, Commission Factory [source]
17. ShareASale affiliate network has more than 1,000,000 affiliate accounts registered [source]
18. Over 50% of top affiliate programs fall into 4 categories: Fashion, Sports, Health & Beauty, Travel [source]
19. In most affiliate programs less than 10% of affiliates drive 90% of traffic and conversions [source]
20. Pay-per-call affiliate marketing campaigns convert at 10-15% (vs 2-3% online conversion rate) [source]
Feel free to spread the word about these, as well as add more via the “Comments” area below.
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Great and fun post. Some many great tweets, I will have to pace myself :))
Haha, Steph.
Believe it or not, it took me over 2 hours to put this one together (which makes this 1305th post of mine one of the most labor-intensive ones).
Glad you’ve enjoyed it though.
Those are some pretty eye-opening numbers Geno, thanks for collecting.
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Thanks a lot Geno for providing these stats. An eye opener which gave me another boost to keep moving in my journey to become a successful affiliate marketer.
I had to tweet #19. I’m trying to learn how to do affiliate marketing and it is not an easy way to make money.
Thanks for the stats!
Ed, it certainly isn’t anything “easy” or “fast” (unlike some try to position it).
On your journey of learning of affiliate marketing consider my video courses, books, and, of course, my conference.