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"The problem with affiliate marketing is that there isn't much money in it." A better statement would be: "The problem with the eBay affiliate program is that

• AznHisoka 14y ago
  Actually there's a bit of truth in it. The dirty secret is that 90% of affiliate revenue is generated by coupon sites. For the most part retailers are giving away money that they probably would've generated any way w/o the affiliate.
  • smackfu 14y ago
    Really? I would think the big dog for affiliate payments is Amazon, and they don't really have much in the way of coupons.
    • AznHisoka 14y ago
      Amazon has a 24-hour cookie. So you get paid even if someone clicks on your link and buys something else later in the day. I wouldn't be surprised if this accounted for a huge majority of their affiliate payouts. Cases where someone buys a product directly from Amazon after reading a review are a minority, imo.
      • makomk 14y ago
        Yeah. At one point I was seeing pop-up ads on some sites that were simply random searches on Amazon - I assume they were trying to take advantage of Amazon's affiliate scheme.
      • unreal37 14y ago
        I can remember talking with the Amazon Affiliate people in a conference call 10 years ago. They have been leaders in this game a long time, and I can believe they have tightened their security on fraud as tight as it can go.
      • kposehn 14y ago
        Amazon is not that big of a program actually. They have compelling data offerings, but the 24-hour cookie is a liability and there are far fewer driving traffic since Google went to town on spammy sites.
    • nzealand 14y ago
      My wife represented someone busted for being an Amazon cookie stuffer. He was essentially a script kiddie who paid for the script. He wasn't as successful. I think Amazon devotes more resources to tracking this kind of fraud.
  • milesskorpen 14y ago
    This. There are a very small number of sites which make a lot of money (and I don't think they're just coupons ... Pinterest probably does well here). I suspect the long tail for affiliate revenue is much longer than with AdSense.
  • AJ007 14y ago
    The dirty secret is that 90% of e-commerce affiliate revenue is generated by coupon toolbars. Its like what Shawn Hogan did, except it involves every single e-commerce affiliate program instead of just one.
    • a5seo 14y ago
      Not toolbars. 3 words: Retail Me Not. They are going public this year w/ a whisper valuation of $2 Billion. Search any merchant + coupons and they are there. It's like printing money.
      • ansible 14y ago
        I know someone who occasionally uses that site, but only searches it for things like a free shipping code after deciding to purchase a particular item from a particular online vendor. How effect, really, are any of these affiliate programs? Are online retailers actually able to measure how much new business the affiliates are really bringing in?
    • rgovind 14y ago
      I run a website/app where I drive traffic to ecommerce companies(Mostly fashion companies). I am looking at various affiliate networks now. Are you saying that I am most likely not going to make much money unless I do a couponing website?
• kposehn 14y ago
  Ok, there was quite a bit of discussion below about where the money is. In verticals like e-commerce, it is indeed dominated by about 100-200 players. These guys range from RetailMeNot which is owned by Whale Shark Media to companies like FatWallet and Ebates. There is actually a big variety of major players in the space, but still most commissions are concentrated with them. If you get into CPA, there's many, many more players out there. I know a few personally that make ~$100k+/month and one that does $500k. However, the commissions aren't concentrated with them. There are thousands of players making $5k-$15k/month with campaign churn. They tend to be 1-person shops working on the latest hot offer. CPA is very crowded but is easy (sort of) to break into. There's a lot of money to be made, but you also deal with a huge amount of fraud and competition. I was able to make a very comfortable living as an affiliate in high-end lead generation and B2B, both places where it was extremely difficult to compete with me. There are many segments like this where time and being willing to pick up the phone are often all the competitive advantage you need. However, what happens is you can build a business or a site or do the campaign churn. People that build sites make some money for a while but are often crushed by more dedicated competitors. People doing the campaign churn (they don't own sites, just advertise stuff and make money off the difference) can keep going for a while, but have to constantly seek out new advantages. Last, the ones that build businesses make the big bucks. And they often become more than affiliates, seeking to sell the products themselves or vertically integrating in their chosen space. One I know was dealing with travel and eventually became the booking agency for his vertical. No one can compete because he has exclusive direct relationships - the same advantage I sought in my own verticals. There is a ton of money to be made, but it is a field fraught with risk, fraud, deception and hyper-competitive people with far fewer scruples than you. I chose to leave the field after making my pile and build the tools I always wanted when I was in it - a much better business overall.