Why More Online Entrepreneurs Love Affiliate Marketing (And You Should Too)

Affiliate marketing, a performance-based digital marketing model where you (the affiliate) promote select products of merchants and receive a commission for every sale, has been around for many years. It is a massive industry worth well over $12 billion worldwide, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), and it has been sporting a steady annual growth rate of 10%.
Leading experts project that the growth rate for affiliate marketing will remain at 10% for at least two more years.
However, it is affiliates who show the greatest confidence in affiliate marketing. 34% of affiliates with over 5,000 unique monthly website visitors think affiliate marketing is the best way to generate revenue on their website. 86% of them expect affiliate revenue to keep growing.
Reasons So Many People Put their Faith in Affiliate Marketing
It turns out there are many good reasons people looking to make money online choose affiliate marketing. Here, we’ll cover the top reasons affiliates love affiliate marketing.
The first reason is that affiliate marketing makes it easy for anyone to earn an income online. Statistics show 76% of people feel that the ease of monetizing is the top benefit of affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, you don’t have to worry about managing inventory, shipping, customer support, or anything else regarding selling products. You just need to direct users to the product owner’s sales page.
The second benefit is that affiliate marketing is free. Most affiliate networks let you join for free. You don’t even have to own your own website. As an affiliate, you can share affiliate links through other free platforms. This eliminates even the costs associated with website ownership.
An additional benefit is that affiliate links are unobstructive. If you use traditional, in-your-face banner ads, the best-case scenario is your ads gets ignored due to banner blindness or users use an ad blocker. Worst-case scenario—ads irritate and drive away users from your website. On mobile, this situation is particularly dire as over 70% of users express aversion toward ads.
Ad blockers hardly ever affect affiliate links. If you link out properly, links don’t prevent users from enjoying your content. Your affiliate link can become a supplement resource on your website, not an obstruction users have to get through like traditional, obtrusive banner ads.
Affiliate Marketing Stats You Should Know to Generate Passive Income Online - Infographic
If you’re looking for a simple way to generate passive income or you’re just interested in starting your first online business, affiliate marketing is a great option. What we’ve listed above are the top advantages of being an affiliate, but are not the only benefits.
If this sounds like something you’d enjoy, the following infographic is an awesome resource to start learning more about affiliate marketing and how to get started.
We know starting out in a new industry or field can be daunting, that’s why we created this neat infographic to help. Check it out below.