20+ Affiliate Marketing Statistics for Your Business to Know

Affiliate marketing has been around for a while, but over time it has gained popularity among marketers and business owners.

This is a digital marketing strategy where third-party publishers include links to your website in their online content. When people follow these links to your site, those publishers can earn a commission from you while you get the benefit of new leads or customers.

Now that you know what affiliate marketing is, you’ll no doubt want to know more about this strategy before trying it. That’s why we’ve listed some useful affiliate marketing statistics below. Keep reading for our 20+ affiliate marketing statistics, sorted by these topics:

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General affiliate marketing statistics

What can affiliate marketing offer your business? In this section, we will look at the general aspects of affiliate marketing, including some of the advantages of this marketing strategy. Keep reading to find out!

1. The affiliate marketing industry is expected to grow to $15.7 billion by 2024.

This stat roughly shows the monetary value of the affiliate marketing industry. This strategy is not a small, rarely used tactic – it is worth the financial investment enough to prove to be a highly effective tool for many companies.

2. More than 16% of online orders come from affiliate marketing.

There’s a reason why marketers include affiliate marketing as part of their digital marketing strategy – it’s because it generates revenue. Affiliate marketing is responsible for about one-fifth of all online sales, which makes it worth the investment.

3. Affiliate marketing links are clicked over 5 billion times every year.

If you add up the number of clicks earned by all affiliate marketing affiliates in a given year, it comes to over 5 billion. This is a huge amount that shows how effective affiliate marketing can be in driving clicks and driving people to your site.

4. The average affiliate marketing conversion rate is between 1% and 5%.

At first glance, 1% to 5% may not seem like much. But it is good for conversion rate! The average conversion rate for paid advertising – a strategy known to be effective – is only 2.35%. This means that affiliate marketing can be great for increasing conversions!

5. 8 out of 10 companies use affiliate marketing.

This stat shows how much affiliate marketing is used. The fact that many companies rely on it shows how effective it is. Additionally, this stat shows that most of your competitors are using it, so you don’t want to be the company in your industry that doesn’t!

6. The retail sector generates 43% of affiliate marketing revenue.

The retail sector has the highest share of affiliate marketing revenue. Because most of the opportunities are in this sector.

Many lifestyle blogs may feature various retail products and link to these brands on their site.

Read: How to Start an Affiliate Program

7. Over 73% of companies say affiliate marketing meets their revenue expectations.

Maybe you’re worried that if you try affiliate marketing, it won’t earn as much as you expect. Well, don’t worry—about three-quarters of companies say affiliate marketing meets all their expectations for generating revenue.

Best practices for affiliate marketing

Now that we’ve talked about some statistics on the benefits of affiliate marketing, let’s take a look at what you can do to get the most out of it. Here are some affiliate marketing statistics on best practices!

8. On average, companies allocate 15% of their marketing budget to affiliate marketing.

This statistic gives you some idea of ​​how much the average company budgets for affiliate marketing. Of course, it is not necessary to transfer this number. Budget as much or as little as you like, but this number serves as a guideline for what the average business spends.

9. Product compatibility is a key factor that businesses consider when choosing publishers to work with.

What does this stat mean? Basically, this means that when you choose affiliates to link to your site, you want to consider whether they are relevant to your products or services. If you sell golf clubs, try to choose golf websites as your affiliates. A cooking website is probably not the best affiliate for you.

10. 83% of affiliate recruiters say they use affiliate network dashboards to search for publishers.

In theory, you can search for new branches manually. However, this statistic shows that the best way to develop your affiliate marketing strategy is to use affiliate networks – platforms designed to connect affiliate advertisers and publishers.

11. 94% of publishers use multiple affiliate networks.

Based on previous statistics, this statistic shows that most publishers use more than one network to find affiliate opportunities. This means that you can benefit from doing the same by expanding the reach of your advertising strategy.

12. 50% of affiliate traffic happens on mobile devices.

This stat shows that when it comes to mobile, affiliate marketing is no different than any other digital marketing strategy. It is very important that you optimize your website for mobile traffic and also choose publishers with mobile friendly sites.

13. 0.7% of all YouTube videos have at least one affiliate marketing link in their description.

A recent stat established the value of using social media for your affiliate marketing. One of the best social platforms to use is YouTube. You can do what many businesses do and partner with various YouTube channels to get links to your products through their videos.

14. Affiliate advertising is the third largest source of revenue for 31% of US publishers.

Publishers are exploring other revenue opportunities. As online shopping becomes more popular, it’s no surprise that affiliate advertising has become one of their main sources of income.

Affiliate Marketing Success Rate

Does Affiliate Marketing Get Results? Here are some statistics that show the results that affiliate marketing creates for businesses.

15. 40% of US companies say affiliate marketing is their best customer acquisition channel.

A large number of companies not only find affiliate marketing effective, but also call it a major source of new customers. This is an incredible statement in favor of this digital marketing strategy and you don’t want to pass it up.

16. 99% of affiliate programs use a cost per action (CPA) payment model.

The CPA model is one where you pay your affiliates every time users take a certain action on their site. You can pay a commission for each click or when a user buys a product after following your affiliate link.

17. 64% of affiliate marketers use blogs for affiliate marketing.

One of the best types of affiliates to partner with is blogs. Blogs often attract people looking for informational content. Blog posts then get users invested in a topic related to your industry, so when they link to relevant products on your website, people are more likely to click through.

18. 75% of affiliate marketers say social media is their biggest source of traffic.

While third-party websites are great for affiliate marketing, you can also use social media. If your products belong to an organization, personality or influencer on social media, use them as an affiliate to send traffic to your site by linking to your products on their page.

19. 69% of marketers say they use search engine optimization (SEO) for affiliate marketing to increase traffic.

When combined with SEO, affiliate marketing is a great way for a business to attract qualified leads and gain new customers. These statistics show that most marketers have used SEO and affiliate marketing to increase site traffic.

20. 34% of marketers say they use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising for affiliate marketing to generate website traffic.

PPC can instantly generate traffic for marketers. Using PPC for affiliate marketing allows you to test your landing pages or copy and better understand your target audience.

The future of affiliate marketing

Our last few affiliate marketing stats are dedicated to looking at the future of this strategy. Where is it going? Is it increasing or decreasing? Should you invest in it for the long term?

Let’s answer these questions with these three statistics about the future of affiliate marketing!

21. Searches for “affiliate marketing” have increased significantly in the last few years.

If you look at the graph for the term “affiliate marketing” on Google Trends, you can see that interest in the term has increased significantly since 2017 and is poised to continue doing so. By all indications, this strategy will attract more stakeholders down the road.

22. The annual growth rate of affiliate marketing costs is 10%.

It’s not just general interest in affiliate marketing that has grown over time. Business owners are also investing 10% more money in this strategy each year, consistently making it a higher priority for their marketing efforts.