🗒️ Overview
- How much more experienced affiliate marketers earn than beginners
- Primary traffic sources for affiliate marketers
- The top 3 most profitable affiliate marketing niches and their monthly income
In this week’s episode, Mark and Gael and dive into various aspects of the affiliate marketing industry, comparing their own experiences with results from the Affiliate Marketing Survey.
How Much Money Do People Make?
On average, people in the affiliate marketing industry make around $8,038 per month. However, earnings can vary greatly depending on the niche:
- Travel: You might assume that this would be highly competitive niche with lower payouts, but with an average income of $13,847, affiliate marketers in the travel industry have shown it’s a profitable niche. As disposable income is often dedicated to travel and related expenses, there is potential for a variety of income streams such as booking commissions and gear sales.
- Education and E-learning: Seeing income levels at $15,551 per month, the education and e-learning category is a solid sector for affiliate marketers, particularly when promoting info products. With high commission rates – up to 100% – this niche presents great opportunities for growth and profit.
- Beauty and Skin Care: With an average monthly income of $12,476, the beauty and skincare niche proves to be highly profitable as well. With a wide range of sub-products and various categories to cover, knowledgeable affiliates can potentially upsell customers on multiple products, making this industry a lucrative option.
Primary Traffic Sources
SEO was by far the favored traffic source, coming in as a primary traffic source for 78.3% of affiliate marketers.
Next up was organic social media labeled and 35.5% of respondents, respectively. Organic methods tend to require less upfront investment with a higher ROI, and are generally more forgiving, so it’s not surprising that they’re the favourite.
The third-most popular traffic source is email, with 22.8% using it. That’s likely because email provides a much higher ROI than other traffic sources.
Paid advertising methods like SEM and paid social media ads were less popular, with only 20.2% of respondents using them.
The “Beginner’s Hump”
Across all experience levels, the average affiliate marketer earns just over $8,000 a monthly – over $96,000 per year. And the good news is, more experience = earning more money.
But there’s a massive gap in earnings between beginners and those with 3+ years of experience. Affiliate marketers with 3+ years of experience earn 9.45x more than beginners. Even excluding the most experienced respondents, those with 3-5 years of experience earn 4.46x more than newcomers, and marketers who have been in the game for 10+ years make approximately 6.31x more than everyone else.
That means there’s a two-year “beginner’s hump” that newcomers to affiliate marketing must overcome before their earning potential skyrockets.
Want all of the insights?
Click here to check out the full Affiliate Marketing Survey results.
