Affiliate Marketing Industry Expected to Reach $36.9 Billion in Revenue by 2030

There’s never been a better time to get into the affiliate marketing industry.

It might sound like a cliche, but it’s true. 

Why?

Well, one of the reasons is that a recent study by market research firm Astute Analytica forecasts that the global affiliate marketing platform market will reach $36,902,100,000 USD by 2030. 

To put this into context, in 2021 the global affiliate marketing platform market was $19.2 billion USD. 

That’s an annual compound increase of 7.7% or an overall growth of 92.2%.

And while it’s true this growth will likely increase the number of big publishers using these programs (with dictionaries even getting into the mix), it also means a bigger pie for smaller publishers to eat from.

Why is the Affiliate Marketing Platform Market Growing so Fast?

The ‘affiliate marketing platform’ market refers to those vendors responsible for onboarding, tracking and reporting sales and clicks, managing referrals, optimizing site traffic, and paying commissions. 

These are major platforms like:

Admitad, Affiliatly, Alibaba, Amazon, AWIN, Bluehost, CJ Affiliate, ClickBank, Converting Team, CrakRevenue, eBay, Everflow, iDev Affiliate, Leaddyno, Leadpages, Omnistar Affiliate, Post Affiliate Pro, ReferralCandy, Refersion, ShareASale, Shopify, Studiopress, and Tradedoubler.

These are platforms responsible for managing a variety of affiliate models including: 

• Cost per click
• Cost per action
• Cost per sale

Unsurprisingly though, cost per sale is expected to have the largest market share with this forecast. 

Following current trends, virtual products with their higher commission offers, are also expected to have the highest compound annual growth rate (CAGR). 

More Companies Are Expected to Join Affiliate Marketing Platforms

Despite current supply chain issues, eCommerce is also projected to explode in growth to meet the growing demands of online shoppers around the world. 

More and more companies, especially SMEs, are gravitating towards these platforms due to their convenience and low costs. An increasing number of companies are seeing the cost-benefits of ‘outsourcing’ the management of their affiliate programs. 

Who Benefits from this Growth?

The major affiliate marketing platforms of course will benefit.

But for affiliate bloggers like us, this means that more companies will be more readily available to promote through these popular affiliate platforms.

Plus it provides opportunities for crafty entrepreneurs to create tracking tools to keep an eye on these growing platforms. Like this recent poll on the Niche Pursuits Facebook Group:

Sources:

Affiliate Marketing to Be a $36.9 Billion Market by 2030 (destinationcrm.com)

Affiliate Marketing Platform Market Size Will Reach USD 36,902.1 Million by 2030 | CAGR: 7.7%: Astute Analytica (prnewswire.com)