Is diversification then the biggest lesson the affiliate industry learned in the last decade?
Absolutely. There’s been a lot of growing-up evolving from what was essentially easy money if you were into SEO at all a decade ago, to trying to learn how to really own the relationship with the customer. As an affiliate the ones that are going to be the most successful, in my opinion, are the ones who don’t rely on just search traffic and don’t have to deal with that advertising game. Affiliates who have their own unique brand; their own foundation; their own technology; with a real user base will be the most successful. That is where I’ve been trying to focus some of our affiliates’ attention on helping them realize it’s not good to put all your eggs in one basket so to speak. You need to diversify, although it’s a lot harder and more involved to build a business that way obliviously. But it’s going from just kind of having a side business where you do this “affiliate stuff” while you have your day job, to taking a model and growing it into an actual site that is it’s own business.
