80+ Affiliate Marketing Statistics You Need To Know (2024)

Last Updated on 20th December 2023

Looking for affiliate marketing statistics?

Affiliate marketing has continued to soar year after year over the last 2 decades.

Aside from an increase in the number of publisher sign-ups, there has also been an increase in new ways of working, and a sense of flexibility as more brands continue to move into affinity partnerships.

In this article we’ve compiled 80+ affiliate marketing statistics you need to know if you’re working (or planning to work) in the industry. Here are the categories covered:

• Affiliate marketing trends 
• Affiliate marketing growth statistics 
• Affiliate marketing revenue statistics 
• Affiliate marketing industry statistics 
• Affiliate marketing demographics statistics 
• Affiliate marketing and social media 
• General affiliate marketing statistics

Affiliate Marketing Growth Statistics

• According to Statista spending on affiliate marketing efforts in the United States alone is predicted to rise to a staggering $8.2 billion by 2022. This is more than three times the amount it was 10 years ago and up by 5.4 billion from 2017 and $1.6 billion in 2010.
• Moreover, the Awin Report estimated that advertisers globally invested $13 billion in affiliate marketing back in 2017.  
• Based on these numbers and the upward consistent trend, it’s evident that those partaking in affiliate marketing will continue to have thriving businesses, even into the 2020’s and beyond.
• As affiliate marketing involves very little investment, 81% of brands and 84% of publishing businesses use affiliate programs and affiliate marketing networks to leverage their affiliate content and increase brand awareness.
• Over 80% of advertisers looking to increase their growth allocate more than 10% of their marketing budgets to affiliate programs. 
• The search interest for affiliate marketing has skyrocketed by over 200% between 2015 and 2021. 
• The biggest affiliate networks have over 100K+ affiliate marketers, as shown below:
• Amazon Associates: 900,000+
• Awin: 205,000+
• ShareASale: 700,000+
• ClickBank: 100,000+

The revenue created by content publishers is way up by 240% over the last few years, due to the growth of affiliate content, which grew by 175%.

In July 2020, the number of affiliate marketers who applied on Amazon grew by 150%.

Spending on affiliate marketing is growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 27% compared with most other sales channels.

Affiliate Marketing Revenue Statistics

• According to Statista, Groupon, a coupon affiliate website, makes an annual revenue of approximately $1.4 billion in revenue from affiliate commissions alone. Groupon’s number of active members peaked at over 50 million.
• According to AffStat’s benchmark study, 35% of affiliates reported at least $20,000 in annual revenue from affiliate marketing programs.
• Publishers earn approximately $65,000 per year from affiliate marketing.
• In 2021, Awin affiliates earned more than $915 million.
• Jason Stone, also known as Millionaire Mentor, generated $7million in affiliate marketing revenue in a year.
• 80% of Americans with a revenue of more than $200 million reported running affiliate marketing networks.
• The Forrester Report indicates that more than half of the surveyed affiliate publishers reported that affiliate marketing accounted for over 20% of their entire earnings annually.
• According to a SaaS Scout industry report, Affiliate programs yield 15% to 30% of total sales for advertisers.
• Affiliate marketing is the most effective method of generating revenue for 34% of publishers.
• More than 73% of merchants claim affiliate marketing programs help them meet their revenue targets.
• A staggering 86% of publishers expect their affiliate marketing revenues to increase or stay consistent going into the future, and 91% of merchants plan to increase or maintain their budget for affiliate marketing over the next few years to come.
• Today, around 9% of affiliates earn more than $50,000 per year.
• Affiliate marketing accounts for 16% of eCommerce sales in the United States and Canada.
• Affiliate marketing is the 2nd largest revenue generator for web publishers.
• In the last five years, 60% of the large merchants who made $5 million used affiliate marketing.
• Since 2015, revenue from affiliate marketing programs has increased by 10% each year.
• Over 80% of marketers anticipate an increase in affiliate marketing revenue moving forward over the next decade.

Affiliate Marketing Industry Statistics

• The fashion industry accounts for approximately 25% of all affiliate programs.
• Sports and outdoors affiliate programs make up about 18% of all affiliate programs, while health affiliate programs make up 14%.
• There are about 13.81% of affiliate programs in the beauty industry, 10.74 in the travel industry, and 8.7% in the home and garden industry.
• While 81.4% of affiliates promote B2C products and/or services, the remaining 18.6% promote B2B products and/or services.
• Affiliates most often promote computers and electronics at a 40% rate, followed by clothing/apparel 41%, online services 30%, accessories 29%, and beauty 28%.
• Affiliate marketers also promote business products at a 25% rate, as well as marketing products at 20%.
• Amazon has the most sizeable affiliate program, owning 35.7% of the market share by the size of accounts.
• The global value of the affiliate marketing industry is projected to be $12 billion, and the United States market share is about $4.5 billion. The U.S is followed by $1.7 billion in the U.K, $1.3 billion in Germany, and $4 billion in the rest of the world.
• The vast majority of affiliates (42.17%) advertise between one and ten goods.
• According to BrightEdge, organic search accounts for an average of 53% of traffic across industries, while paid search accounts for 15%.
• 30% of website owners thought there weren’t enough affiliate products relevant to their readers.
• The retail affiliate niche generates the biggest revenue percentage with telecom and media accounting for 24% of affiliate revenue, followed by travel and leisure at 16%.
• In many affiliate programs, the lowest commissions can be as low as $10, while some affiliates can earn thousands of dollars in commissions.
• In the United Kingdom, 627 million British pounds were invested in affiliate marketing in 2020, up from 569 million the previous year. Smartphone spending accounted for over 40% of total spending.
• 40% of marketers worldwide consider affiliate marketing to be a vital skill.
• Affiliate marketing is used by nearly 79% of businesses to engage existing clients and increase sales.
• According to 76% of publishers, affiliate marketing makes it easy to monetize their website.
• 54.28% of affiliate publishers work from home, while 19.21% work from an office.

Affiliate Marketing Demographic Statistics

• Male affiliate marketers account for 54.23% of all affiliate marketers, while female affiliates account for 42.97%.
• Approximately 5% of all affiliates are between the ages of 18 and 24.
• 31.86% of people who do affiliate marketing between the ages of 35 and 44.
• The United States accounts for 39% of the global affiliate marketing market, followed by the United Kingdom and Germany, with 15% and 11%, respectively.
• According to the Forrester report, 71% of U.S. affiliate publishers are affiliated with three or more affiliate networks, while 6% work with a single affiliate network.

Affiliate Marketing and Social Media

• According to an empirical study conducted by Princeton University, 0.67% or 3,472 of 515,999 YouTube videos and 0.85% or 18,237 of 2,140,462 Pinterest pins contained at least one affiliate URL.
• The Science and Technology category on YouTube is the top category for affiliate engagement, with 3.6% of its videos containing affiliate content.
• Affiliate marketers use social media to connect with customers 67.32% of the time.
• For most product categories, the top 3 traffic sources are SEO 69%, social media 67%, blogging 64%, email marketing at 41%, and Pay per click advertising (PPC) at 34.28%.
• Approximately 49% of social media users rely on influencer recommendations before making a purchase.

General Affiliate Marketing Statistics

• Almost 90% of the advertisers said affiliate marketing is crucial to their digital marketing strategy.
• According to affiliate marketing statistics, the average conversion rate is between 0.5 and 1%.
• Over 65% of affiliates utilize blogging to attract traffic (Awin)
• In April 2020, Amazon reduced commission rates for its affiliate marketing program to as low as 1% to 10%.
• In the United Kingdom, £627 million was invested in affiliate marketing in 2020, up from 569 million the previous year. Smartphone spending accounted for almost 40% of overall spending.
• At the beginning of 2020, 1 in every 4 shoppers who were new to a brand ordered through affiliate links. By April 2020, that figure had risen to 37%, and it has remained above 30% ever since.
• More than 50% of affiliate-referred traffic is generated by mobile devices.
• At least 40% of merchants in the United States claim affiliate programs are their top customer acquisition channel.
• Approximately 83% of surveyed marketers targeted consumers during the discovery and awareness phase, while 79% target them during conversion and purchase.
• 24.46% of affiliate learn about affiliate programs from the merchant’s website.
• 61% of Australian affiliate marketers use the “last click” attribution model, whereas 13% use the “first click” model.
• 83% of advertisers use affiliate network dashboards to recruit partners, and 79% attend affiliate network events.
• According to AM Navigator, the United States has approximately 11,400 affiliate marketing programs. ShareASale has 49% of the market share, meaning it’s one of the biggest affiliate marketing networks with about 5,594 programs.
• Although “pay per call” affiliate marketing is more time-consuming, it has a high conversion rate of 10-15%.
• According to Backlinko’s global affiliate marketing data, affiliate programs are the leading customer acquisition method for 40% of US companies.
• According to 18.5% of affiliate marketers, product relevance is one of the most important criteria when selecting a program. Moreover, it’s also important to consider the reputation of the affiliate program and affiliate network.
• 22% of Chief Marketing Officers claimed that the area of marketing they’re least knowledgeable is affiliate marketing.
• North America is home to 2 out of every 3 affiliate marketers.
• Affiliate marketing fraud cost advertisers $1.4 billion in 2020.If left unchecked, the problem will worsen as affiliate marketing expands into new markets and countries around the world.
• It was anticipated that the global expenses of digital advertising fraud would rise tremendously between 2018 and 2023, from 35 billion to 100 billion US dollars.
• People are becoming increasingly interested in learning about affiliate marketing. In less than a year, the search volume climbed by more than 50%.
• In the near future, strategies involving the use of multiple channels is expected. The number of people listening to podcasts has increased by 37.5% over the last three years, for instance. Since 2015, the amount of marketers that have reported earning a positive ROI through the use of video marketing is more than double. So far, this peaked in 2020 at 88%.

Final Thoughts On Affiliate Marketing Statistics

As you can see, affiliate marketing is going from strength to strength, and it doesn’t look like it is going to slow down any time soon.

These affiliate marketing statistics will help you to better analyze the business model and determine whether or not to invest your time and money in affiliate marketing.

---