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More Women Are in Affiliate Marketing Than Ever Before! (11)

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The term "sausage fest" was used to define industry ever since I joined 12 years ago.

Back in the days it was very rare to see women (who weren't promo girls) at affiliate marketing events, on affiliate forums etc.

Vegas 2010 spotting female attendees was like finding a needle in a haystack lol. I'm talking 1/25

Even at some of our early STM meetups it was 100% guys.

I can think of a few reasons why this was the case...

The average age back in the day was a lot younger than it is now. There was little professionalism. Forums like wickedfire were waving the flag for the industry.

It was a total boys club shit show...which probably made it extremely uninviting for women. Not to mention there were very few female role models/influencers/experts.

Fast forward till today and the ratio is closing in fast!

These are the most recent stats from Affiliate World Conferences:



Talk about improvement!

I believe these stats directly show the growing maturity of our industry.

Good stuff!

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Are the women 100% verified legit? I can tell you a lot of networks/advertisers just make fake Linkedin profiles with attractive women photo's who are "affiliate manager". Mostly they work from a certain region I am not going to name here (it's Tel Aviv).

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Haha, good point -- but these are the actual physical event attendees. They get checked-in and given badges by the staff, so I have a feeling we'd know if a lot of "Jessicas" turned up with beards.

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Haha yes, the ones in the statistics posted are legit.

Wouldn't have a clue about the Linkedin or FB "females".

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Awesome for the industry, all these dudes trying to market to the other half of the population... must be some weird ads out there.

I’d be interested to see it with a breakdown of females that actually identified as a affiliates, no vendors however.

I know of four in real life, but guess two would identify as gurus

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At AWE it should be easy to spot these "undercover" AMs, but in Bangkok, I wouldn't be so sure hehe

BTW: there is one more reason for the AM industry being mostly a male thing back then, large part, and I mean really large part of the biz used to be Adult and that's something that doesn't attract females all that much. Over the years, adult shrinked quite a bit and other niches/verticals boomed, so it naturally attracted more females too. I'm glad it's changing though, everything works better when there is a mix of both males and females.

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I'm sure the rise of e-commerce has played a big part.

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Yup, that one probably played the biggest role actually... all the fashion products like shoes, lingerie, dresses etc. gave the females something they can relate to very well. And platforms like facebook and instagram made it easy for them to gain following and sell in a natural way.

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I remember meeting two female affiliates from asia when Charles Ngo did his Vegas presentation/pitch a few years ago.

Recently I met an older mom at ECML Bangkok new to the industry just strolling around in a flower dress. It made me really happy to see that this industry is changing. Props for whoever came up with the idea to create SheCommerce.

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Also very fun to see how wakeboarder’s dad is growin business via online marketing now.


Sent from my iPhone using STM Forums mobile app

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I'm seeing this (more women in affiliate marketing) now, too - and there are myriad factors but the big two that come to mind:

1. Affiliate marketing is no longer dominated by scammy rebill offers and ringtones, which leads to the larger point that...
2. The industry itself has matured.

On pt #2

The industry has literally matured. The average age of an attendee to one of the after parties was just over 21 (if that) in the late 00s. The demographic is in their late 20s - mid 30s now.

The "superaffiliates" of 2008 - 2012 timeframe (and beyond) are now running some pretty massive companies. Brandon Adcock is crushing it with Adaptive Health. Josh Ziering is at the helm of a venture-backed bonafide startup success with Kittyhawk.io. And the STM founders, certainly, are in this category as well.

And everyone else who has stuck around the space has learned playing the short game is at your own peril. So it's gotten much more white hat - ex: teespring to ecom.

Affiliates have also, in many cases, learned that the skills that made them even a modest affiliate made gave them a massive advantage over conventional marketers. I remember Smaxor saying many, many times that "affiliate marketers are the best in the world" and I agree - they're multidisciplined and see the whole playing field at a level conventional marketers can't aspire to and so affiliates have taken those skills and beaten conventional marketers again, and again, and again in industry after industry.

FFWD to 2019 - Affiliate Marketing is legitimate because it's established, it's one piece of a larger distribution puzzle, and as its reputation continues to improve over time more people, gender inclusive, want to take advantage of its talents and opportunity.

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