Why I Would not Begin Affiliate Advertising and marketing in 2025 (And What I might Do As a substitute)

Again within the day, I ran a few semi-successful affiliate web sites. I even as soon as ranked #1 for “finest protein powder.” This was a fairly profitable key phrase given its industrial intent and excessive search quantity.

Ever since then, the concept of beginning one other affiliate website and getting critical about it has at all times been at the back of my thoughts. I’ve simply by no means had the time because of my each day work at Ahrefs.

However at this time? I don’t assume I’d begin one even when I had the time. It simply isn’t price it.

Loads of different on-line entrepreneurs appear to be echoing this sentiment currently, too.

Beneath are 4 the explanation why I really feel like this and wouldn’t begin a pure affiliate website in 2025.

That is even the case with YMYL key phrases:

And the issue is simply getting worse…

When Google just lately penalized the affiliate directories of many massive publications like CNN Underscored, it overwhelmingly gave that visitors to Reddit—not unbiased publishers. I do know this as a result of we studied it.

How? We checked out 6,179 key phrases that declined or had been utterly misplaced for the directories beneath between November 18th and November twenty fifth:

• https://www.wsj.com/buyside/
• https://reviewed.usatoday.com/
• www.unbiased.co.uk/advisor
• www.thesun.co.uk/procuring/
• www.forbes.com/advisor/
• www.newsweek.com/vault/
• www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/

We then used the Visitors Share by Area report in Key phrases Explorer to see which internet sites get essentially the most visitors from these key phrases. Reddit was #1, taking 6% of visitors. 

On condition that 51% of Reddit threads rating for product assessment key phrases have spam as the highest remark (as per Glen Allsopp’s unbelievable analysis), this can be a fairly dire state of affairs. For many product assessment key phrases, there’s virtually at all times a distinct segment affiliate website extra deserving of rating than Reddit.

For instance, take a time period like “finest air air purifier for cigarette smoke.” Reddit ranks in place #2, however the thread is a complete spamfest.

The highest remark appears to be like straight from ChatGPT:

The second appears to be like like a disguised product pitch:

The third once more appears to be like like a ChatGPT particular:

Now you would argue that the majority affiliate websites aren’t any higher—and I’d agree. However there are additionally loads of area of interest website homeowners who make investments closely of their content material, spend numerous hours really testing merchandise, and truly need to rank.

For instance, take a website like HouseFresh which ranks #6 for a similar question.

The fellows behind this website totally check each product they advocate:

But when we take all of the key phrases this website ranks within the high 10 for, plug them into Ahrefs’ Key phrases Explorer and verify the Visitors Share by Area report, we see that Google remains to be sending Reddit extra visitors.

Given the deal Google just lately made with Reddit to make use of their content material to coach its AI fashions, this development most likely isn’t going to vary any time quickly.

Be actual: are you actually looking Google for product suggestions as of late? I hardly do. I simply go straight to YouTube…

Now clearly, we’re entrepreneurs. We all know that many of the high Google outcomes are sometimes spammy and shouldn’t be trusted. However what about everybody else?

I don’t have knowledge on this, however I’ve seen mainstream YouTubers speaking about it numerous occasions.

For instance, this video on why Google search is falling aside has 3.7 million views. In it, he talks about how looking for the most effective merchandise is pointless due to how horrible Google outcomes are for product searches.

It’s bought to a stage now the place looking for the most effective of mainly something is pointless. Nearly each single article is a high 10 of merchandise not chosen based mostly on their benefit however in truth simply whether or not or not they’ll get a kickback if you purchase them. […] I assure that a big slice of those articles are written with the author not really having purchased and examined all 10 merchandise themselves.

I feel there are three fundamental the explanation why the outcomes are so dangerous:

1. The inflow of AI spam. Ever since ChatGPT and generative AI got here on the scene, it’s change into tremendous straightforward and low-cost to create affiliate content material. Google appears to be struggling to filter out this spam at scale.
2. Parasite search engine optimization. That is the place entrepreneurs benefit from the authority of a longtime web site to rank for aggressive key phrases. It’s why we’ve been seeing websites like Forbes, CNN, and WSJ outranking unbiased websites for issues they’ve completely no experience in, like “finest monetary advisors.”
3. Google rating Reddit. Most of those threads are spamfests as I discussed above.

For my part, these three causes are additionally interconnected…

Google handled the inflow of AI spam by boosting the search presence of huge manufacturers that it thought it may belief. These manufacturers then took benefit of Google’s favouritism to rank for phrases the place they’d no experience. Google then responded to criticism concerning the lack of variety in search outcomes (largely from the search engine optimization {industry}) by selling user-generated content material on Reddit.

In fact, it’s nonetheless doable to advertise affiliate hyperlinks elsewhere like TikTok or YouTube—however that’s a complete completely different kettle of fish.

When Glen Allsopp analyzed 10,000 product assessment search outcomes, he discovered that solely 4 of the highest 100 rating domains have been unbiased websites. The remainder have been a part of information organisations, public firms or giant website networks.

Even worse, 36 of the highest 100 rating domains have been owned by simply three completely different firms: Hearst, Dotdash Meredith, and Future.

I don’t assume that is going to get higher anytime quickly both…

Wanting extra intently at our analysis on affiliate publication drops, the websites reaping the largest rewards alongside Reddit have been all additionally massive names, like Amazon, Enterprise Insider, and CNET.

And lots of the unbiased publishers who noticed their visitors decimated by Google updates nonetheless haven’t recovered…

Check out Retrododo, for instance:

Positive, they’ve recovered a bit—however their visitors remains to be a shadow of its former self.

Housefresh is about the one website I’ve seen make a near-full restoration, and I can’t assist however really feel which may have one thing to do with the quantity of fuss they (fairly rightly) kicked up about being penalized.

However this uncertainty is exactly the issue…

Perhaps I’m misremembering, however I’m certain that issues didn’t was once this manner. Again within the day, when you put a ton of effort into creating a high quality area of interest website, you would be fairly certain that Google would reward you. You wouldn’t be fearful of the time, effort and cash you invested being taken away at any given second by a Google penalty and your visitors handed to massive manufacturers (or Reddit) with mediocre content material—not less than to not the identical extent as at this time.

This doesn’t imply that the entire thing is Google’s fault. It additionally appears to be taking place as a result of the search engine optimization methods of huge manufacturers are getting extra refined.

For instance, this publish from HouseFresh talks a few technique referred to as key phrase swarming allegedly utilized by Dotdash Meredith to push down smaller websites within the SERPs:

“Swarming is about drowning out a competitor,” mentioned the one that reached out. The target is to “swarm a smaller website’s foothold on one or two articles by basically publishing 10 articles [on the topic] and beefing up [Dotdash Meredith sites’] authority.”

Bottomline? I simply wouldn’t have the boldness as of late to take a position considerably in an affiliate website. Even when I created industry-leading content material, I wouldn’t have religion that Google would really rank it above massive websites.

Okay, this one is extra of a predication… however I feel there’s a really actual risk of it taking place.

Affiliate websites have labored effectively traditionally due to how folks search. If you wish to discover the most effective air air purifier, you go to Google, seek for “finest air air purifier,” click on a listicle within the search outcomes, click on one among their affiliate hyperlinks, and… BINGO, the positioning makes cash.

However what if Google provides AI overviews with product suggestions to affiliate searches?

I feel this has the potential to chop out affiliate entrepreneurs altogether.

For instance, when you sort “finest air air purifier” into Gemini or ChatGPT proper now, you get an inventory of suggestions:

It’s fairly straightforward to then analysis these suggestions your self on YouTube or TikTok.

If Google provides these sorts of AI overviews to product assessment searches, folks wouldn’t really want to click on on a search consequence anymore. They may simply analysis the merchandise AI recommends themselves.

In fact, they might nonetheless select to analysis these merchandise in Google, so affiliate entrepreneurs may nonetheless generate profits from product opinions. However I feel it’s extra doubtless that they head to YouTube or TikTok for the explanations I discussed earlier.

As for why Google would trouble, it’s arguably a greater consumer expertise—however they may additionally monetize these AI overviews with PPC advertisements. 

For instance, Google already exhibits sponsored outcomes if you seek for most merchandise:

Google may simply simply cost these manufacturers for clicks when the product is beneficial in AI overviews.

I feel Matt Diggity has the best thought: swap to ecommerce.

When you learn my takeaways from interviewing Ash Younger of CarMats.co.uk, you’ll know that ecommerce could be extraordinarily profitable—even in boring niches. Ash is on monitor to do £10M in complete gross sales in below 5 years.

There’s a easy option to discover ecommerce niches in Ahrefs, too:

1. Run a clean search in Key phrases Explorer
2. Filter for non-local and non-branded key phrases with transactional intent
3. Filter for low problem key phrases, KD <= 10
4. Filter for key phrases with low DR websites rating, DR <= 40

It’s then merely a case of in search of attention-grabbing niches within the outcomes…

For instance, there are 33K estimated month-to-month searches for “leg heaters” within the US, and loads of pages from low DR web sites rating with few or no backlinks.

If we plug “leg heaters” into Key phrases Explorer as our seed key phrase, go to the Matching phrases report, apply the identical filters, after which cluster by Dad or mum Subject, we now have a low-competition ecommerce area of interest just about able to go.

I’m certain you wouldn’t want to maneuver mountains to rank for many of those phrases. It will most likely simply take some fundamental search engine optimization.

If you wish to study extra, learn our information to ecommerce search engine optimization.

Bought questions? Ping me on LinkedIn or X.