In this post, I will share the top 6 Affiliate Marketing Trends for 2023.
Affiliate Marketing is a multi-billion dollar industry and it is expected to grow at a rate of 10% per year. Affiliate Marketing is so popular that 81% of brands utilise Affiliate Marketing to increase sales and revenue.
According to Uniquodo & Fetch Profits, 16% of global e-commerce sales are driven by Affiliate Marketing, making it the second most profitable channel for driving sales.
So if you are thinking of becoming an Affiliate Marketer or are Affiliate Marketer, the trends that I am going to share will help you realise the potential of the industry.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
If you are new to the concept of Affiliate Marketing, here’s what is it and how it works.
According to this post, “Affiliate Marketing is the process of promoting someone else’s products and if you generate sales, you will make a commission.”
Let’s say, you are promoting a product worth ₹2,000.
Suppose, the commission rate for each sale is 25%.
Then, for each sale as an Affiliate, you will earn 25% of ₹2,000, which is ₹500.
If you’d like to learn Affiliate Marketing with a simple example, you may watch this video:
Advantages Of Affiliate Marketing
The flexibility of working from anywhere is the biggest advantage of doing Affiliate Marketing.
The other advantages include:
- Low cost of entry
- Affiliate Marketing is a billion-dollar industry
- No expertise is needed
- Passive income
- Flexibility
- No glass ceiling on income
- Earn through various methods
- Diversity
- You can do what you love the most
If you’d like to know about the above benefits in detail, you may read this post.
Affiliate Marketing Trends 2023
Until now, you have learned what Affiliate Marketing is with a simple example and the benefits of Affiliate Marketing.
Now, let’s take a look at the trends to understand where the Affiliate Marketing industry is headed.
(1) Influencer Marketing Will Rise
According to this post, social media is a powerful medium for traffic generation as it has a user base of 4.7 billion global users. If used right, it can be an efficient and affordable medium to drive traffic to your affiliate website, links, or products.
About 90% of online marketers reported that social media generated a large amount of traffic and spread awareness to their platforms at little to no cost!
Social media is now a major part of marketing and traffic generation and it is so powerful that any Affiliate Marketer not utilising this cost-efficient medium is missing out on a great marketing opportunity.
According to studies, popular brands are expected to spend as much as $32.5 billion on influencer marketing in 2023. This is 18% more than last year.
If you’d like to learn how influencer marketing will help you skyrocket traffic and commissions, you can read this post.
And, if you’d like to get started with influencer marketing right away, you can visit this platform and get started.
(2) Third-Party Cookies Will Be Discarded
The rising trend of data protection and privacy has impacted Affiliate Marketing, too.
The online audience is concerned about companies tracking their activities, hence, the demand for introducing laws to hide their information has soared.
But how do companies know what their audiences do?
Companies track their audience’s online activities through cookies.
Uhmm… What is a cookie?
The formal definition of a cookie is, “cookies are data files that are stored on users’ browsers when they visit a website. The purpose of cookies is to store users’ data and their preferences.”
Companies use cookies to track your activity when you visit their websites.
For example, if you visit a multilingual website and select Hindi as the content’s language, the browser will save this information in a data file called a cookie. So, when you visit the same website again, it would read the cookie which was saved on your previous visit and the content will be displayed in the language that you selected.
A more popular term that caused this demand is ‘third-party cookies’. Third-party cookies include platforms such as analytics tools, advertising platforms, etc. that share data among them.
Due to the demand for data protection and privacy, the future of the third-party cookie is unsure.
Google is planning to eliminate third-party cookies altogether from Chrome and Apple has given the control of data sharing to its consumers.
Since affiliate links work on cookies, this will cause a major roadblock to Affiliate Marketers.
How do cookies affect Affiliate Marketers?
Simply put, third-party cookies help Affiliate Marketers track the clicks on their affiliate links, visits to their platforms, conversions, and commissions.
With the elimination of cookies, there is a need to develop newer strategies to track performance.
According to experts, you can depend on your website analytics, customer surveys, polls, and 1-on-1 interaction to gain insights.
(3) Affiliate Marketers Will Be Paid Quicker
Many affiliate programs pay a commission after 90 days or even more.
Imagine working at a job that pays you a salary after 3 months!
According to studies, in 2023, Affiliate Marketers will be paid more quickly. The proposed payment cycles will range from real-time to weekly.
This, if activated, will help both Affiliate Marketers and companies, improving cash flow and accurate tracking of affiliate performance and commissions. This proposed system will encourage Affiliate Marketers to put in more effort and companies could offer them bonuses and incentives for driving high sales.
(4) Voice Search Will Continue To Grow
According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, “approximately seven out of ten consumers (71%) prefer to use voice searches to conduct a query over the traditional method of typing.”
This indicates that the days of typing to find information are nearly over!
Now you can search for information using voice search. Moreover, with assistants like Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri, Cortana, and Amazon Echo, you can search for anything without having to type a single word.
But why is voice search on the rise?
According to my experience, it is extremely convenient and simple to use. You simply say, “Okay, Google!” or “Hey, Siri!” and they are ready to serve you!
In short, users love voice searches because the response to their queries is super quick!
For Affiliate Marketers, you’d have to optimize your content for voice search on search engines.
You can optimize your website for voice searches through the below steps:
- Add the voice search plugin (if you built your website on WordPress).
- Add questions or keywords that prepare your content for voice search.
I’d also like to add that although there is uncertainty around voice search in Affiliate Marketing, you can still take advantage of it and stay a step ahead! 😉
(5) More And More Affiliates Will Start Recording Videos To Promote Products
According to Hootsuite, “with over 14 billion monthly visits, YouTube clocks in as one of the internet’s heaviest hitters, right after its parent company, Google.”
“YouTube” also happens to be the third most popular search term on Google.
Per my experience, videos are the most engaging and easy-to-understand form of content. Videos have better engagement and hold audiences’ attention for longer than any other media.
If you promote your affiliate products through videos, you can present them from all angles for your viewers to see.
More and more Affiliate Marketers understand that people watch videos more than read blog posts, and have started creating more video content on YouTube and Instagram in the form of Reels.
If you’d like to know how to do Affiliate Marketing on YouTube, you would love this video.
(6) Affiliates Will Utilise AI-Powered Tools For Maximum Impact
Artificial Intelligence is transforming the world like never before! Coupled with automation, Artificial Intelligence can help improve efficiency in any domain.
As per studies, Artificial Intelligence processes queries faster and more efficiently. Nowadays, chatbots understand human language and respond to queries perfectly. This faster processing saves time and money and increases customer satisfaction.
Thanks to the Machine Learning algorithms that are a part of Artificial Intelligence, you can predict future queries and events based on your visitors’ current and past behaviour. These algorithms will help you make better business decisions, target the correct audience, and track performance.
Conclusion
In this post, I shared the top 6 trends for Affiliate Marketing in 2023.
Let’s go through them one by one:
- Influencer Marketing Will Rise
- Third-Party Cookies Will Be Discarded
- Affiliate Marketers Will Be Paid Quicker
- Voice Search Will Continue To Grow
- More And More Affiliates Will Start Recording Videos To Promote Products
- Affiliates Will Utilise AI-Powered Tools For Maximum Impact
Which one of the above trends blew your mind?
Is it:
“Third-Party Cookies Will Be Discarded”
Or
“Voice Search Will Continue To Grow”
Either way, let me know in the comments box below.
As a bonus, I would love to give you my premium Affiliate Marketing course worth ₹4,999 for absolutely FREE!
Click the below button and enrol on the free course, now!
