Comments on: Affiliate Marketing Report 2008 – not a great year for Affiliate Marketing

By: Bob

Bob — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 17:41:53 +0000

Logically it doesn’t seem sensible that affiliate marketing budgets have dropped given what we know about the measurability of campaigns.

However, I think this may be more a reflection of who holds the purse strings and the level of understanding that person has of the affiliate channel. Plus how much ‘lobbying’ is done at the budget setting level and by who. Marketing directors have lunches with agency heads. Do they discuss TV brand advert campaigns or the ins and outs of affiliate websites ?

By: Niche Traffic Guide

Niche Traffic Guide — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 22:23:17 +0000

Thanks for this report
I have noticed a decrease in my adwords ads clicks as well and was a little worried that something was wrong with my account

With regard to item 5 above, i don’t think that it is a new occurence that a small handfull of afiliates are the ones that make the majority of the sales. I think the concept of the superaffiliate has been around for a while.

What would be interesting to know is what proportion of the elite few are affiliate marketing newbies

By: Blog Posts On Affiliate Marketing, Money Making And Movies

Blog Posts On Affiliate Marketing, Money Making And Movies — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 09:42:06 +0000

[...] the world of affiliate marketing, Kieron at here.org.uk posted about a report by E-Consultancy on the worrying downturn in the UK market. If you�re an [...]

By: Keith

Keith — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:35:11 +0000

I think there are some questions which unfortunately the survey does not answer though:

The proportion of the cake spent on affiliate marketing has gone down but is the cake smaller or bigger? – i.e. a smaller slice of a bigger cake could still be a bigger spend overall in fiscal terms

Also I think we would all recognise that in the last 12 months a) merchants have got ‘better’ at attributing sales to different channels, so is it just that some sales that last year were attributed to affiliate marketing are now being ‘correctly’ attributed to other channels.
b) in some sectors, particularly financial services there has been a readjustment of commissions to lower, more commercially sustainable levels – and long term this is actually probably a good thing for the industry as a whole.

And I agree with you Kieron that many of us have long suspected that for most programmes the overwhelming majority of sales come via a handful of affiliates.

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 10:59:10 +0000

Useful post thanks Kieron.

Point 5 flipped is useful too – if a very few affiliates are making almost all of the sales, then a very few affiliates are making almost all of the commission too. (In fact even more disproportionately so as they will have the leverage to negotiate increased commissions over the masses).

So while the average earnings/affiliate may look attractive from the outside, I’ll bet the vast majority earn very little.

Hey it’s tough at the top but it’s tougher at the bottom!

Fraser I’m surprised it’s as high as 26%.

- m

ps what’s an ‘affinity’site?

By: AffiliateLaunch.co.uk

AffiliateLaunch.co.uk — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 10:29:15 +0000

A very interesting read. Suprised that the budget allocated to affiliate marketing has dropped overall given the current economic situation, it really is very cost effective for merchants.

Interesting also that only 26% of merchants regard loyalty/cashback sites as the most valuable

By: gadget

gadget — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 08:12:53 +0000

Thanks for posting this, I wasn’t aware of the report. Are we to conclude that as online retail is continuing to increase at 30% pa that merchants are getting better at driving their own traffic and improving their conversion rates if the affiliate industry is as poor as they are suggesting in this report? Me thinks not.

By: Hannah Swift

Hannah Swift — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 07:59:54 +0000

This makes for great reading. I read it last night and it kept me up until 3am thinking! yikes! It is great to see research like this, it really helps both merchants and affiliates and agencies alike to understand the moving market and create a more economical working relationship!

Hannah

By: Wei

Wei — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 02:57:57 +0000

Hi Kieron,

Nice to read your article here. My name is Wei and I am working as an affiliate marketing specialist in a Chinese online B2B trading company. I studied in the UK before. I think we can share some ideas maybe. My blog on Blogger has just started. Looking for your visit soon.