Affiliate marketing predictions for 2025: disruption alert

Author

John Wright
January 02, 2025

I kinda hate top of funnel content which this article just that and at best maybe middle of funnel.

I hate it because Google kinda hates it too and these types of articles end up in the sea of sameness.

Google and Search GPT are going to give you the answers based on articles written by many others. Aka aggregated content! 

Shoutout to newsletter sponsors StatsDrone and FTDx 

I’m writing this article not because the world needs another affiliate marketing trends and predictions 2025 article but to give a warning of what I see changing in affiliate marketing.  I wrote about some of this in the past newsletter: are affiliate content sites dead?

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. 

I think 2025 is going to be a year of optimization. Companies will have to work a bit harder for that edge but it will be worth it. Other companies and affiliates are going to either fade or end up exiting their business. 

Here are the canary in the coal mine warnings I think everyone in affiliate marketing should pay attention to:

I don’t think a lot of the other affiliate marketing predictions 2025 articles are articulating the warnings as much. They are highlighting the changes but in a more upbeat kinda way. 

Here’s a tl;dr from 3 articles ranking well from the following sites:

  • Post Affiliate Pro by Viktor Zeman

  • Outbrain by Phil Burns

  • RichAds by Dmitry Makarov

Post Affiliate Pro (you can read up on their software here) talks about the rise in AI in affiliate marketing ✅, importance of influencer partnerships ✅, shifts in attribution models ✅. See our list of affiliate programs by Post Affiliate Pro.

Outbrain talks about influencer marketing increasing ✅, AI in affiliate marketing ✅, a more customer centric approach ✅, Overall is a great article but more targeting the person wanting to get into affiliate marketing, not the one dealing with the rough seas.

RichAds did have a great article by asking a lot of affiliate programs and a few affiliate software platforms for their take. They said less individuals and more people joining forces as teams ✅, more use of brand ambassadors ✅

I think these articles are very on point but it comes from the optimistic point of view and not with any warnings.

The disruption has already happened and there are quite a few people calling out these warnings. 

Authority Hacker shuts down flagship affiliate content courses

Just 2 weeks ago, Gael Breton, co-founder of Authority Hacker, posted on LinkedIn that they are closing their flagship courses.

He said the affiliate content game has changed and it isn’t easy anymore to build and rank SEO focused sites. 

Actually this is what he said:

But in 2024 and going forward? That model is broken for most people. I've been to countless SEO events recently where everyone keeps a straight face and pretends everything is fine. I won't do that (and we've called Google out all year in our news videos). The Google updates, AI content tsunami, and dramatic SERP changes have fundamentally altered the game. And unlike previous updates where we could adapt and overcome, this time is different. So we're doing something that feels scary but right: We're closing TASS and AH Pro, our main courses that generated 8 figures in revenue. Why? Because I refuse to sell courses teaching strategies that no longer work reliably for most people. What's next for Authority Hacker? Honestly? We don't know yet. But we've always been about finding what actually works in digital marketing and sharing it with brutal honesty. That won't change. The podcast will continue. The free content will flow (but expect some changes in direction next year). And when we find the next big opportunity, you'll be the first to know. To everyone who's been part of this journey since 2014: Thank you.

StatsDrone loses a few affiliates because of SEO

In 2024, I’ve had a few customers that have either downgraded or cancelled their subscription because their sites got hammered by Google. 

I know this is their answer because when they show me their sites and I check them on Ahrefs, it is showing they indeed did get hammered. 

I’ve had a lot of people ask me in 2024 if affiliates are suffering and it is hard for me to answer because our situation:

  1. We cannot see the data of our affiliates

  2. We’ve had record growth in 2024

People still assume we see all our customer data but we don’t. It is both an active decision and we’ve built our app for data privacy for affiliates. 

The only way we could know if any affiliates are suffering is if they ask to downgrade or cancel a subscription because Google slapped their sites around.

Getting more subscriptions to StatsDrone doesn’t mean SEO is growing. It just means we are doing our marketing as we are not the only game in town. We have Voonix, Routy and a lot of legacy Nifty Stats users in the mix.

We are getting some people that haven’t used any stats app previously and we still encounter people that never knew affiliate stats apps are a thing.

The growth we have seen this year has been in affiliate networks, streamers and PPC affiliates. 

Affiliate marketing is dead on Ahrefs blog

Joshua Hardwick, head of content at Ahrefs, published an excellent post on Dec 31st titled 'Why I wouldn't Start Affiliate Marketing in 2025 (And What I'd Do Instead).

It is an excellent takedown of why affiliate marketing is fully disrupted especially from a search first perspective.

Here's the tl;dr nuggets for you:

  1. Google would rather rank Reddit over your site

  2. YouTube and other places are where people are doing more searching

  3. Bigger affiliates are getting rewarded

  4. Consider ecom or products or productize your sites

iGaming affiliate sites are getting smashed

So which sites are rising and which ones are getting annihilated?

I don’t quite want to call out the ones getting blasted because some of these people are my friend’s sites.

I’ll start with Casinomeister which was announced as acquired by Gentoo Media. 

Sure enough, they are smashing it.

Why is Casinomeister doing well and why did Gentoo want to acquire this site?

Casinomeister isn’t just an established affiliate site, it is a product: forum content + complaints.

Not every site can just setup a forum and not all of them can easily do complaints. 

Now here’s a few well known iGaming affiliate sites that are wrecked. 

I won’t list them but it is bad and I could easily find a lot more. 

Optimize your affiliate business

I think for any affiliate to have success in 2025, it will involve optimization and beyond … search engine optimization.

Don’t have a newsletter? Add one

Have a newsletter? Optimize it

Have search traffic? Diversify your traffic

Have an old website design? Redesign it

There is no shortage of things to work on. The game isn’t just working harder, although I believe a lot of iGaming affiliates haven’t been working as hard in the first place, but you gotta work smarter. 

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