Are affiliate marketers making the most of the Internet?

"The affiliate industry is growing and evolving rapidly, and it is essential for new affiliates joining the game to quickly come up to speed on the latest trends and strategies if they want to compete in this lively marketplace," said Peter Figueredo, CEO of NETexponent. "The AffiliateBenchmarks report can be a great getting-started guide for these newcomers as well as a tool to help seasoned marketers improve results."

Researchers found that only about one-third (36%) of affiliate marketers are using pay per click ads, almost 40% aren't staying up to date with the industry and trends by reading blogs and more than 45% aren't collecting consumer data through their websites.

How can this be? Most likely these failures are coming from the fact that becoming an affiliate is relatively simple. Most affiliates simply need to purchase an affiliate license and are then left to figure out marketing on their own. This, of course, does not serve the affiliate and also does not serve the main business. How to change this?

Businesses offering affiliate memberships should also consider offering regular emails or even newsletters with marketing tips, best practices information and tips from other affiliates. Not only does the benefit the affiliate but the business can include ads for related products or sell ad-space to firms who can also help the affiliate. Although this doesn't guarantee that the affiliates will read or even act on such an outlay, it does put the information out there. If even five affiliates take the information and improve their sales, that benefits the company as a whole.

Tags: affiliate, Affiliate Benchmarks, affiliate marketing, affiliate sales, NET exponent