Most publishers treat “is affiliate marketing dead?” as a rhetorical question. The data tells a different story. Affiliate marketing has been around for decades, and brands keep putting more budget behind it, not less. Retailers spent an estimated $8.2 billion on affiliate programs in 2022. Eight out of ten brands now run one. That is not what a dying channel looks like.
I’ve been running affiliate sites for over nine years and building Lasso alongside that work. The market shifted when creators, influencers, and performance-focused brands started treating affiliate as infrastructure, not a side hustle. This post walks through the numbers, the common objections, and what operators should actually do if they want to compete.
Updated 2026.
1What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is performance marketing. A business pays affiliates for each visitor or customer the affiliate sends them. No conversion, no commission. That pay-for-results model is why retailers keep funding it even when other ad budgets shrink.
Buzzfeed is an excellent example of a successful affiliate marketer. You’ll see a lot of content on the site that looks like this:
When readers buy something through a link in one of those articles, Buzzfeed receives a cut, known as an affiliate commission.
You’ll notice the disclosure information too. That’s required for affiliate marketing content. For a full primer on how the model works, see our guide on what is affiliate marketing.
2Is Affiliate Marketing Dead?
No. Affiliate marketing is not dead. It has been steadily growing for at least the last twenty years.
According to Google Trends, interest in affiliate marketing is at an all time high. Retailers spent an estimated 8.2 billion dollars on affiliate marketing in 2022 because they know it works.
No matter how you look at it, affiliate marketing is alive and well.
Statista revealed a $3 billion boost in affiliate marketing spending since 2017. They reported that companies spent an estimated $8.2 billion in 2022. Eight out of ten brands run an affiliate marketing program (us included), while 15% of total digital advertising comes from affiliates.
Here’s what the data shows: the channel grew through platform changes, commission cuts, and algorithm updates. Operators who adapted kept earning. Operators who treated affiliate like a set-it-and-forget-it tactic fell behind.
Maybe you’re a new blogger. Maybe you already have a site with good traffic and you’re looking for ways to monetize it. Affiliate marketing remains one of the best ways to monetize content by recommending products to your target audience via blogging, product reviews, social media, YouTube channels, podcasts, and newsletters.
The implication is clear: the question isn’t whether affiliate marketing works. It’s whether your content and link infrastructure convert the traffic you already have.
3How Have Changes in Search Engine Algorithms Affected Affiliate Marketing?
Google updates and algorithm changes have affected every website on the internet, including affiliate marketing blogs. But it hasn’t all been negative.
Remember, for every site that loses rankings, another site gains rankings. If you have a proper content strategy, you can benefit from algorithm updates. We’ve seen this pattern across our own portfolio and across Lasso customers. Sites that publish buyer-intent content with clear product recommendations tend to recover faster than thin roundup pages built for clicks alone.
For operators, this means treating SEO as a long game. Build topical authority. Match search intent. Update posts when rankings slip. Algorithm shifts punish lazy publishing. They reward sites that actually help readers decide.
4How Have Social Media Influencers Affected Affiliate Marketing?
In recent years, we’ve seen a surge of influencers getting into the affiliate marketing game.
None of our sites have seen a dip in affiliate commissions due to this influencer surge, and I couldn’t find any data to show influencers are hurting affiliate marketing.
If anything, the influx of influencers has contributed to the industry’s growth. Creators brought new audiences, new formats, and new trust dynamics into a channel that used to be dominated by niche blogs. That expanded the pie. It didn’t shrink it.
Compare that to the old model: one blogger, one niche site, one traffic source. Today’s successful operators diversify across search, email, social, and video. Influencers didn’t kill affiliate marketing. They normalized it.
5Is Affiliate Marketing Worth It?
Affiliate marketing is worth it if you treat it like a business, not a lottery ticket. Top marketers make millions of dollars each year from affiliate marketing. Most operators won’t hit that tier. But the middle of the income ladder is still meaningful.
I have built two niche sites that have generated over $2.6 million in affiliate revenue since January 2018. That’s an average of $51.4k per month for 4+ years. The full breakdown of that portfolio, including what worked and what didn’t, is in our $2.6M affiliate marketing commissions case study.
For operators building at scale, the benchmark isn’t “Can I get rich?” It’s “Can I build a system where content, links, and conversion compound over time?” That system is absolutely still viable.
How Much Money Can You Make with Affiliate Marketing?
A lot. But context matters.
So-called super-affiliates, affiliates who generate a large percentage of an affiliate program’s profits single-handed, make six figures a month. Those are the Pat Flynns and Rae Hoffmans of the world. Most of us are not going to make that kind of money.
When we look at the full scope of the affiliate marketer’s income scale, it looks something like this:
- Total newbies: Losing money
- Low-level: Up to $300 per day
- Intermediate affiliates: $300 to $3,000
- High-level affiliates: Over $3,000 per day
- Super-affiliates: More than $10,000 per day
Even on the ladder’s second rung, you’re not doing too bad.
Making consistent money through affiliate networks doesn’t happen overnight. It can take a year of hard work to start breaking even. But once you start making money, things can improve quickly. If you’re early in that curve, our post on whether affiliate marketing is hard walks through the realistic timeline.
What Are The Benefits of Affiliate Marketing?
When you’re wondering if affiliate marketing is dead, you might think there’s no point in going further. But the model still has real advantages for operators who want to build without massive upfront capital.
- Low start-up costs: You won’t need a small business or a personal loan to enter the affiliate marketing industry. You can start a blog for about $100 a year.
- Work from home: You don’t need a brick-and-mortar space to run an affiliate marketing blog. You can do everything that needs to be done from home or anywhere else with a reliable internet connection. That makes affiliate marketing ideal for stay-at-home parents or those with limited mobility.
- It’s part-time: Starting and maintaining a blog isn’t super labor-intensive. It’s hard work in its own way, and the more time you can put into it in the beginning, the faster it will grow. But you can start an affiliate marketing business and grow it around other responsibilities like your regular job, hobbies, friends, and family.
- You don’t have to be an expert: There is a ton to learn about creating a successful marketing strategy for your blog: best SEO practices, best tools, best plugins, best affiliate offers, and a ton more. But you can learn it all as you go. Most of it is free.
- Compounding returns: You write an evergreen article on “10 Classic Pieces Every Woman Should Own” on your lifestyle blog and add your affiliate link to each piece. Each time a reader buys an item on the list using your link, you earn an affiliate commission, but you only have to write the blog once. The asset keeps working.
The shift happened when operators stopped chasing one-off commissions and started building libraries of monetized content. That’s the play that still works.
How Can Businesses Adapt Their Affiliate Marketing Strategies to Stay Relevant and Successful?
Retailers should devote more time and resources to educating their affiliates about their products so they can be successful advocates.
Publishers need to do a better job of being marketers instead of just publishing content.
First, recommend products that are relevant and helpful to your audience.
Second, create better offers. Create better product displays, use images and comparison tables, and list the pros and cons of each product. The more information you can convey visually, the better.
At Lasso, we built the product around this exact problem. Operators don’t lose because affiliate marketing died. They lose because a product mention buried in paragraph four doesn’t convert the way a structured display or comparison table does. Better presentation is still one of the highest-leverage changes you can make on existing traffic.
6Affiliate Marketing FAQs
Is Affiliate Marketing Still a Thing?
Yes, affiliate marketing is still a thing. In fact, it’s more of a thing than ever. These days YouTubers and influencers have joined bloggers in using affiliate marketing to monetize their content.
Is Affiliate Marketing the Future?
This is a question I get from time to time about the future of online advertising. One of the major benefits of affiliate marketing for retailers is they only pay for conversions. Clicks and impressions cost them nothing. In the face of an uncertain market, I’d say that yes, affiliate marketing is the future of online marketing.
Performance budgets follow accountability. Affiliate delivers that. Display and awareness spend gets cut first when CFOs tighten belts. Conversion-based partnerships survive because the math is obvious.
Why Do People Think Affiliate Marketing is Dead?
People started thinking affiliate marketing was dying in April of 2020 when Amazon cut its affiliate commission rates. Plenty of bloggers saw this as a signal that the industry was failing.
However, Amazon was doing whatever it could to make more money, and the wider affiliate marketing industry has steadily grown since those commission rates were cut.
The market shifted when operators diversified away from single-program dependence. Amazon still matters. It isn’t the whole industry. Brands that spread offers across relevant programs and optimize how those links appear on page kept growing through the commission cuts.
7Long Live Affiliate Marketing
Is affiliate marketing dead? No, and the statistics prove it.
If you’re thinking of starting a niche site, affiliate marketing can be a great way to make money online and from home. But affiliate marketing is no longer a secret.
There’s a lot of competition in this industry. It’s really difficult to outrank other blogs and build a dedicated audience.
So if you want to be a successful affiliate marketer, you’ll have to work harder, diversify, and above all, always create compelling content that provides value to your readers.
Looking forward, the operators who win won’t be the ones asking whether the channel is alive. They’ll be the ones fixing under-monetized pages they already rank for. If you have published content getting traffic, start there. Run an Opportunities Scan on your site and see where product mentions sit without the display and link treatment those URLs deserve. That’s often the fastest path to higher revenue without writing a single new article.
Jamie I.F.
Jamie heads up marketing at Lasso, runs a portfolio of niche sites, and tweets a lot about affiliate marketing and SEO.