Affiliate Marketing: An Ever Changing Industry

Change. Its been a big buzz word over the last year and many people have mixed emotions over it. Whether you’re an advocate for change or you wish things would just stay the way they are, one things for sure…the world is changing.

With that said, the affiliate marketing industry is no different. People (and businesses) are constantly trying to adapt in this environment and equip themselves with the right tools and knowledge for success.

One question I get asked a lot, as an Affiliate Manager, is “What type of marketing is going to make me (or my offer) the most successful? Email? Search? Display?” While I would love to give this question a definitive answer, unfortunately, there isn’t one. It all depends. As we have seen it do over the past 10 years, the affiliate marketing industry is constantly growing and changing and no one solution, will always be the right solution.

Change has occurred in almost every marketing vertical there is. In the past, we saw organic search go through a huge growth spurt. SEO managers became an extremely hot commodity and were being hired left and right to get businesses top search engine rankings.

Then came the email marketing boom, which grew the industry from small newsletter type lists, to now having large list management companies maintaining lists for many of the world’s largest companies. The PPC marketers then joined in and started buying even more traffic to their sites or to on-site banners and media buyers as well.

Throughout the years, we have also seen many changes from laws like CAN SPAM, search engines rules/rankings (which change almost daily), and the economy going from boom to bust. All of these factors have contributed to the future of affiliate marketing and how it will continue to grow and evolve.

As long as publishers and affiliates continue to keep themselves informed, by researching and learning all of the changes occurring on the type of traffic they are focusing on, they will continue to make money in that vertical. Search is not better than email and email is not better than on-site. They are all different and different approaches and techniques should be used for each of them.

For instance, here are some questions I ask each type of publisher:

These questions should give you an idea (on a basic level) how each type of traffic is different and what works well for each. However, all of them are still very profitable as long as you focus on them. Affiliate marketing will continue to evolve and change, but none of it is dying. The key is learning how to change with it.