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Affiliate Marketer Population (8)

04-06-2016 09:38 PM #1 avantall (Member)
Affiliate Marketer Population

Hello,

Just curious, how many affiliate marketers there are in the world? I failed to find a good source with an answer. If you could, please point me in the right direction to find out.

Thank you in advance!

04-07-2016 08:11 AM #2 affiliaxeilana (Member)

Hi !

That's definitely an interesting question! I think this so dynamic and new affiliates marketers are constantly joining the ride that it makes it difficult to know a given total number.

04-08-2016 02:00 AM #3 johnaff (AMC Alumnus)

My guess is there are about 10k people who make a significant fulltime income, and/or own aff mktg companies with media buyers n whatnot.

So if you include people who work for those companies doing actual mktg or media buying work im guessing the number jumps to 100k.

Id also guess that the number of people 'trying' to make it as aff mkters is around 1mm, but again, this is extremely hard to measure since each individuals effort varies so greatly its insane.

04-08-2016 02:14 AM #4 johnaff (AMC Alumnus)

Btw, i am figuring that the average 'affilate marketer' company aka 'small business, does 250k in revenues a year (the us average) and that affiliate mktg is a 5billion/year industry

04-08-2016 02:11 PM #5 avantall (Member)

Thank you for the feedback! I was curious as there are a lot of demographic studies on the AM industry, but I didn't find any that included an estimation on the overall AM population.

04-08-2016 02:38 PM #6 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Quote Originally Posted by johnaff View Post
My guess is there are about 10k people who make a significant fulltime income, and/or own aff mktg companies with media buyers n whatnot.

So if you include people who work for those companies doing actual mktg or media buying work im guessing the number jumps to 100k.

Id also guess that the number of people 'trying' to make it as aff mkters is around 1mm, but again, this is extremely hard to measure since each individuals effort varies so greatly its insane.
I think 10k is a way too low number, but you are right it also depends on what we consider "significant" amount of income.

The only real data I ever got was related to adult industry. I dont remember the year, but it was around 2005-6 - I got a list of all paid sites that 2 biggest billing companies processed payments for. The total number was close to 10.000 paid sites. There were companies with multiple ones, but those usually had their own processing so those on the list were usually one-site-operations. So lets say it was like 3-5000 people running those sites, plus a few 100s more with their own processing. And thats just "product owners", then there was an army of affiliates pushing traffic to those paysites. That was many 1000s of smaller affiliates. And remember Im talking just about adult sites.

Its hard to make an estimate, but Im pretty sure its way more than 10 000.

04-08-2016 04:39 PM #7 avantall (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by matuloo View Post
I think 10k is a way too low number, but you are right it also depends on what we consider "significant" amount of income.

The only real data I ever got was related to adult industry. I dont remember the year, but it was around 2005-6 - I got a list of all paid sites that 2 biggest billing companies processed payments for. The total number was close to 10.000 paid sites. There were companies with multiple ones, but those usually had their own processing so those on the list were usually one-site-operations. So lets say it was like 3-5000 people running those sites, plus a few 100s more with their own processing. And thats just "product owners", then there was an army of affiliates pushing traffic to those paysites. That was many 1000s of smaller affiliates. And remember Im talking just about adult sites.

Its hard to make an estimate, but Im pretty sure its way more than 10 000.
Makes sense. I was just curious as I've come across multiple sources that state 3-5% of affiliate marketers make it in the industry. Naturally I wondered how many affiliate marketers are out there and what constitutes "making it".

Secondly I wondered what the difference is between the 3-5% and the rest. What do they do differently? Where can one go to learn and work at doing the same? Is there capacity for more to join that elite group? Ultimately, if there is a means and capacity, how can I work to get there?

Hence my search for the answers to these questions lead me to STM (to be fair it led me to Charles Ngo's blog and then to STM).

Answers I've found so far:
Total affiliate marketer population is still relatively unknown.
"Making it" can mean anything from running a single, profitable campaign to running a full time AM business. Depends on the individual (for me it's doing AM full time)
The difference between the 3-5% and the rest is comprised of mindset, work ethic and information. This could translate to motivation, obtaining new skills and developing a network with industry leaders (need to stay on top of upcoming trends in the market).
Plenty of resource are available to learn such as STM forum, The Mobile Cookbook, AMC, Ngo's Affcelerator and Newbie Fast Track, prominent blogs in the industry, etc.
Capacity - maybe. I've learned from some there is plenty of money and opportunities to go around but I've also learned from others that AM is getting saturated (for better or worse).

Again, thanks for your input as I continue my research!

04-09-2016 04:25 AM #8 johnaff (AMC Alumnus)

Quote Originally Posted by matuloo View Post
I think 10k is a way too low number, but you are right it also depends on what we consider "significant" amount of income.

The only real data I ever got was related to adult industry. I dont remember the year, but it was around 2005-6 - I got a list of all paid sites that 2 biggest billing companies processed payments for. The total number was close to 10.000 paid sites. There were companies with multiple ones, but those usually had their own processing so those on the list were usually one-site-operations. So lets say it was like 3-5000 people running those sites, plus a few 100s more with their own processing. And thats just "product owners", then there was an army of affiliates pushing traffic to those paysites. That was many 1000s of smaller affiliates. And remember Im talking just about adult sites.

Its hard to make an estimate, but Im pretty sure its way more than 10 000.
I agree that the main thing to define here is what level of income constitutes a real 'small business'.

I think it also varies greatly bc someone could be making 1000/month from an seo site in ghana and thats considered a small business.

Who knows! I know a number of the big networks generally have between 30-50k people in their database, and only a small fraction of those (1%) are ever sending traffic at any one time...thats kinda where i rolled my numbers from.

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