The problem

A well-known enterprise ecommerce brand had a monster guide on affiliate marketing — which makes total sense as lots of people use their stores for affiliate products.

However, they wanted a way to help their guide stand out against the millions of other affiliate marketing guides online as it’s growth was slow-going.

The Solution

Enter: Me. The brand commissioned me to develop original insights on affiliate marketing program average commission rates and conversion rates.

To get this data, I gathered 20 affiliate programs across 10 different industries (200 total programs) using an affiliate network. I used a seven-day measurement period and calculated the average commission and conversion rate per industry.

Results

Prior to the content refresh that included our research, the guide was getting between 10–15k in monthly traffic:

Then, after publishing the updated blog, traffic surged up between 40–50K per month for several months, with an estimated $56.1K traffic value (how much the traffic would have cost using paid ads):

It’s unfortunate that the 2023 Google update impacted the traffic significantly. However, the guide is still within the top five results for the valuable keyword “affiliate marketing.”

Importantly, over the period of one year after the update that included my research, the guide received over 39K ‘follow’ backlinks:

Of course, I’m not saying my research is the only reason behind these amazing results — the site is a huge and well-trusted name in the e-commerce industry. Brands that are lesser known would struggle to replicate the numbers in this case study. However, improvement is always possible.