The Death Of Affiliate Marketing? Gimme a Break…

by Alok Jain

Time and again, I find a blog post or a forum discussion or a heated teleseminar predicting the death of Affiliate Marketing. Now, this is not a new phenomenon. People have been writing about the ‘Death of Affiliate Marketing’ for years now, and they continue to do so.
Whenever I see such a piece, all I do is smile, roll a shoulder and wonder at the naivety of some earthly creatures. Well, they do have their reasons to believe that Affiliate Marketing will die soon. But I am not convinced with any of their reasoning. I just fail to see the logic in their arguments.
Here’s my take on it - Affiliate Marketing is here to stay.. for a long long time! And I do have strong reasons to make such a statement. I will get into that in just a bit.
But first, let’s see how Wikipedia defines Affiliate Marketing..
“Affiliate Marketing is a web-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts”
When we read this, we see that their are 4 groups involved in Affiliate Marketing:
1) The Business (normally referred to as ‘Merchants’ in the Industry)
2) The Affiliates
3) The Customers
4) The Web
Let’s look at each group one by one. Merchants are companies that sell their products and/or services on the Internet. They run a website that serves as a medium to accomplish this. Long back, when e-commerce was just born, these websites had to rely on self-generated traffic to make these online sales. This often cost the merchants a lot of money.
And then came Affiliate Marketing. A concept that, almost overnight, gave these online merchants a large number of sales people. That’s what affiliates are, right? A sales force for the merchants they choose to promote. And what could be better for the merchants? They paid these sales people only if they performed (made sales, generated leads, whatever). This was like a dream come true for them. And it still is.
What’s my point? The point is that merchants just love affiliates and Affiliate Marketing. They can never be part of a conspiracy that leads to the ‘Death of Affiliate Marketing’. Agreed, some affiliate practices piss them off. But that doesn’t mean they will suddenly pull the plug on affiliates. Like I said, they just love affiliates and will continue to do so.
The second group are the affiliates themselves. This group has been highly rewarded from the concept called Affiliate Marketing. It has enabled them to work for themselves and yet earn more than a regular job. Some affiliates have even created multi million dollar companies - these are the guys who run the comparison sites, the cash back and the coupon sites, etc. This is one group that will never endorse the ‘Kill Affiliates’ campaign.
How about customers? Well, for a large part, the customers are not even aware of something called Affiliate Marketing. But, even unknowingly, they are the most rewarded group. How is that? Think about it - it’s because of affiliate marketing that the customers enjoy comparison shopping, discount coupons and cash backs. Its affiliates who bring these wonderful goodies to the prospective customers. I am sure this group has nothing to complain about either.
Which brings me to the last group - The Web. Well, it’s not really a group.. rather a medium. But this medium is, by and large, controlled by a group of Web giants like Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and now the hugely popular Web 2.0 websites, etc etc. This group of giants, amongst themselves, enjoy bulk of the Web share.
So what’s their take on Affiliate Marketing? Barring certain wrong practices, this group enjoys the benefits of Affiliate Marketing too. It adds a whole lot to their bottom line. The search engine majors have a large number of affiliates paying for their sponsored ads, which accounts for a large part of their revenue. Agreed Google and other companies impose restrictions every now and then. They have their own reasons for that, but they are not shunning affiliates altogether.
And hey, PPC is just one of the many media for affiliates. So even if that goes out, their are other ways for them to reach customers. With the growing popularity of Web 2.0 companies, their is a whole new medium awaiting affiliates. Companies like Facebook, etc have just opened the doors to Social Marketing - which is poised to become a giant in the years ahead. And they are vying for the affiliate pie.
The point is - affiliates contribute a large amount to the Internet Advertising space. So if one web giant shuts their doors to affiliates, others will jump on to the opportunity and gladly embrace us affiliates. We have seen this happen before, and it will continue to happen. Affiliates will never run out of advertising choices, because these Web giants are fighting for a piece of their business.
To sum up… 3 out of the 4 parties involved in Affiliate Marketing are more than happy with the concept. And the 4th group (The Web), which serves as a medium for affiliates to find customers, have a lot at stake if they decide otherwise.
In fact, I will go a step further to say that the 4th group (the medium, the web) is the only changing factor in the entire equation. The merchants, the customers and the affiliates are the stable factors. Only the medium will change over time.
Bottom line… Affiliate Marketing is here to stay. The ‘Death Of Affiliate Marketing’ is, in fact, a dead argument.

Reprinted with permission from Alok Jain
http://alokjain.in/the-death-of-affiliate-marketing-gimme-a-break/