Is Affiliate Marketing Worth It For You? A Checklist

Most publishers evaluating affiliate marketing ask the same question: is the channel still worth the effort, or is it a saturated side hustle with diminishing returns? The data tells a different story than the skeptics suggest. Brands are still allocating budget. Search interest keeps climbing. And the operators we work with at Lasso are earning more from affiliate revenue than at any point in the past decade.

This post is a checklist. Use it to decide whether affiliate marketing fits your site, your niche, and your timeline. We’ll cover the industry numbers, realistic earnings, when the model makes sense, and when it does not.

Updated 2026.

1The Affiliate Marketing Industry By the Numbers

The affiliate marketing industry is worth over $17bn in 2023.

Unbiased data first. Here are the stats that explain why affiliate marketing remains a viable monetization channel for publishers.

Google Trends shows over a 300% search interest increase for the term “affiliate marketing” over the past five years:

Blogging is the main way affiliate marketers generate sales, with search engine optimization (SEO) being the number one traffic source. Paid ads are also a huge affiliate marketing source.

And here is the kicker.

81% of brands use affiliate marketing programs (Lasso included!), while 15% of total digital advertising comes from affiliates.

Businesses are still pouring money into affiliate marketing, which is good news for you.

2Can You Actually Make Money with Affiliate Marketing?

Yes, you can absolutely make money with affiliate marketing. For example, if you can drive 500 clicks to affiliate products per day, and earn $0.50 earning per click (EPC), then that is $250 per day in earnings.

At Lasso, our Founder, Andrew Fiebert, walked away from his 9-5, turning his online businesses into full-time incomes before starting Lasso. His personal finance site earned over $400k per year.

And using what he learned from his sites, now at Lasso we help affiliate marketers worldwide double or even triple their affiliate incomes with our eye-catching product displays (like this one below).

If you are still unsure, Google “blog income report.”

You will probably encounter stories from bloggers like Adam Enfroy who generated over $800,000 per year ($600K was strictly passive income from affiliate revenue).

We have personally helped website owners like Barron Cuadro create custom shopping displays for products focused on men’s style. Or Khris Steven, who educates marketers on the latest tools, trends, and strategies to scale revenue.

And our Head of Marketing, Jamie I.F., earned $452K from his affiliate sites in 2022, at an 88% profit margin.

Andrew has built two niche sites that have generated over $2.6M in just affiliate revenue since Jan 2018. That is an average of $51.4k/month for 4+ years. The thread he shared on Twitter walks through the approach in detail.

But it is not easy. Building a successful affiliate marketing business requires:

• Time

• Patience

• Hard work

The average affiliate marketer earns around $5,000 per year, and the top 10% of affiliate marketers make $50,000 per year. So if you want to make significant earnings, you will need to be in the top 10%.

Now, let us explore when affiliate marketing might be a good idea for you.

3When Should You Consider Affiliate Marketing?

Is affiliate marketing worth doing? Yes, if you are one (or more) of the following:

• You are passionate about the topic

• You are an expert

• You already have an audience or traffic

• You already sell a product, like a course, that you can bundle affiliate offers with

1. You Are Passionate About the Topic

Passion and curiosity about the niche will sustain you when others quit, and see you through until you start seeing big results.

At Lasso, we have customers in various industries, and the successful ones share a common trait: they care deeply about their niche.

The passion to find the less-known facts about something, or the new ways of doing things, make you the go-to source, and shows Google you are an expert, which will then drive traffic to your site. And with this traffic, you can convert affiliate sales.

2. You Are An Expert on the Topic

Selling is easier when you know what you are selling.

Perhaps it is a tool you use daily to run your business, or a hobby you pursue on the weekends.

Either way, you are familiar with the products.

As a result you will be able to make recommendations based on insights nobody else knows, building trust and helping your readers understand which products are really best for them. This makes them fans, and makes them convert, so you get the affiliate commissions.

Sidenote: You can also search our database of over 8,000 affiliate programs categorized by niche, to see the commission rates.

3. You Already Have Traffic / an Audience

Perhaps you have not considered affiliate marketing yet, but you already have a lot of followers on social media, a lot of organic traffic to your site, or a large email list.

Even better, if you already get traffic to product review content, you can seamlessly add affiliate links for these products and earn money.

When using Lasso, you can even connect to Google Analytics and see which product links on your site get the most clicks.

Based on this, you can prioritize adding affiliate links to those products, and tweak your content to better convert into sales.

If you have existing pages that already rank, run an Opportunities Scan before you publish anything new. Most operators find product mentions sitting unmonetized in content that already gets traffic. Fixing those placements is often the fastest path to higher earnings.

4. You Have Your Own Products That Complement Your Affiliate Recommendations

If you already have a product for sale on your site, bundling it with affiliate offers can make you even more money for the same number of sales and customers.

For example, at Listen Money Matters we use the turnkey platform, Roofstock, for locating rental properties.

We loved them so much that we became an affiliate.

Later, we created an online course about our rental property investing approach. It goes into great detail about how we use Roofstock’s platform to determine whether a rental will yield a positive cash flow.

The people who buy the course can then sign up with Roofstock, and if they do, we earn additional commissions from Roofstock, in addition to the course sale price.

4When Affiliate Marketing Is Not Worth It

Here are some situations where it is not worth it.

1. It Is a Poor Product or Cash Grab

Some companies try to lure you with high commission rates, despite having a horrible product.

Do not be swayed if you do not believe in the product, for two reasons:

• A high payout is not worth it. Your reputation is on the line.

• Often these still do not pay well, as conversion rates are low. Measure all programs using EPC (earning per click) rather than the commission rate.

Always lead with value. Always ask yourself this question: “Does this product bring value to my audience?”

The answer should always be a resounding “Yes!”

For more on product selection, read our guide on how to find affiliate products for any niche.

2. You Have ZERO Interest In the Niche

If you are only doing it for the money and you do not care about the topic, it will come through in your content.

You will not be motivated to find the information that really helps readers, or triggers them to buy.

And you will not succeed in affiliate marketing for two reasons:

• You will not convert sales well, as your content does not connect or add as much value

• Your content will not rank on Google, as it will not have the helpful information Google look for in their Review Guidelines

3. You Have No Patience

Success in affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme, and it requires patience and persistence.

Building traffic, gaining trust from readers, and generating sales can often be slow, and you might not see profits roll in overnight, or even in the first few months.

The key is to keep going, to remain patient, and to stay motivated. It is about nurturing your audience, building trust, and offering value. If you are willing to stick at it for a year, you are already in the top 10% of people who try affiliate marketing.

5Pros and Cons of Affiliate Marketing

Pros

With affiliate marketing, there is no inventory management, shipping logistics, or customer returns. Your only responsibility is to promote and sell the product or service.

While it is mostly passive, products can go out of stock and require action to prevent you from losing income. Though, there are tools such as our Lasso out-of-stock product detector that even manage this for you.

With affiliate marketing, you have no clients to manage or work for, and you are your own boss.

The only person you will likely interact with is the affiliate manager for the products you are promoting.

And you are on the same team with the brand’s affiliate manager anyway: you both want to make more sales and earn more money.

Affiliate marketing is a digital gig, and you can work from wherever there is an internet connection. You could be sipping a margarita on a beach in Bali or cozied up in your home office. The choice is yours.

In contrast to traditional business ventures, affiliate marketing requires no significant upfront investment. You have no product creation costs, and no office.

Your only costs are your laptop, hosting, domain name, and internet connection.

If you already have internet and a laptop, you can realistically pay:

• Hosting: starts at around $4/month for basic hosting, which includes WordPress

• Domain name: around $12-15 per year from registrars such as Namecheap

For more on starting for cheap, read our article on how to start affiliate marketing with no money.

When you have hit the jackpot with a winning product, affiliate marketing scales like a dream. The beauty of this model is that growth does not necessarily mean more work for you. More traffic equals more profit, creating a snowball effect that can rapidly scale your income.

You can hire writers and scale for certain affiliate offers when you have skills in a particular niche. Or, if you are good with paid ads, you can scale PPC ads to your affiliate offer pages and make even more money.

Cons

Affiliate marketing SEO has become more and more competitive, with so many big brands starting to do more affiliate marketing content, and all vying for the top spot in search rankings. In certain niches, securing that coveted #1 position can seem near impossible.

Big publishing houses like Hearst, Red Ventures, Future PLC, and Dotdash Meredith own dozens of the biggest online publishers such as TechRadar, CNET, Bankrate, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and many others.

For the biggest, most competitive terms, you will often see 7 or 8 or the top 10 rankings be taken by these monopolies.

So, you will often need to find less competitive keywords to try to rank for.

As a beginner affiliate marketer, you are like a one-man band, juggling several tasks at once. You are a copywriter, an SEO specialist, a WordPress genius, and a buyer psychology guru, all rolled into one. All these skills take time to learn.

There is also the “Google Sandbox” for ranking content for SEO. It can often take 3-6 months before your content starts earning good rankings on Google, so this requires patience.

6How Does the Affiliate Marketing Business Model Work?

With affiliate marketing, you make money from promoting other people’s products or services. When they buy using your affiliate link, you earn a commission.

But it does not always have to happen on your website. You can promote products wherever your target audience hangs out.

This could also include:

• Webinars

• Newsletters

• YouTube video content

• PPC (pay-per-click) ads

• Email marketing campaigns

• Social media posts and influencer partnerships

7FAQs

Here are the most common questions we encounter regarding affiliate marketing.

Is affiliate marketing worth it for beginners?

Affiliate marketing can be worth it for beginners, but you should not expect to get rich quick. For writing product reviews, these take time to get traffic from SEO, and for buying paid ads, this takes time to master and scale profitably. So, if you are a beginner, you should understand that this takes time.

For a structured starting point, read our affiliate marketing for beginners guide.

How much money do affiliate marketers make?

Your earnings can range from a few dollars to thousands, depending on your niche, products, commission rate, and skills. Well-known affiliate marketers who have published their earnings include Andrew Fiebert who earned over $400K per year from affiliate marketing on a personal finance blog, and Jamie I.F. who made $452K in 2022 from his affiliate sites.

Why Do Affiliate Marketers Fail?

There are a variety of reasons why some fail while others do not. Here is a short list:

• You give up or burn out.

• Suffer from lack of focus (aka shiny object syndrome)

• Write things nobody cares about because you do not perform keyword research.

Simply showing up weekly puts you light years ahead of most affiliate marketers.

How Long Does It Take to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing?

That depends on your business model.

If you are running ads to affiliate links, you can start getting data and making money almost immediately. But if you are creating content to rank on Google, it can take 6-12 months before you get the traffic needed to reach $1,000 in monthly affiliate income.

Building an engaged audience takes time, and creating a full-time income stream that lets you walk away from your 9 to 5 can take years.

Matt Giovanisci put it plainly on Twitter: building a real online business takes at least 4 years of consistent output. Think of it like getting a college degree. Show up, put in the work, and graduate.

8How to Start Affiliate Marketing

You now know affiliate marketing can produce real revenue, and you have a checklist for whether it fits your situation.

The operators who win treat affiliate marketing as infrastructure, not a one-off tactic. They pick programs based on EPC, not headline commission rates. They optimize pages that already get traffic before chasing new keywords. And they use tools that surface monetization gaps instead of guessing where revenue is leaking.

If you have published content that already ranks, start there. Run an Opportunities Scan and see where product mentions sit without the link and display treatment those URLs deserve.

At Lasso, we built the link infrastructure layer so you can focus on content instead of chasing broken URLs and missed monetization. See how Lasso fits your stack. Get started with Lasso and run an Opportunities Scan on the content you already have ranking.

Sean Brison

Lasso Team

Sean Brison is a dad, writer, business owner, and Content Lead at Lasso. He's spent the past several years in cahoots with Lasso's founder, Andrew, creating awesome things for people. He's also addicted to perfectly-balanced cocktails, the outdoors, and John…