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For the last seven years, AffStat has delivered annual affiliate marketing benchmarks that are crucial to the development of any affiliate marketing software. The 2010 Affiliate Summit AffStat report is no exception. Over eleven hundred and fifty affiliates were surveyed for the 8th Annual Edition, on their methods, preferences, and strategies based on their experience in the industry.

The research has been designed to increase awareness and foster best-practices in the online affiliate marketing industry.

Of the affiliates that were surveyed, only 44.5% promote their affiliate links in PPC search engines and 51.5% maintain an opt-in e-mail list for their sites. Most have only been an affiliate in recent years, mostly from 2005, with 2009 taking the lead with 16.7% and 1996 far behind with merely 2.6% of affiliate sign ups.

47.4% prefer affiliate programs that are networked compared to independent programs and those who have no preference. Most affiliates actively promote between two and five programs or between six and ten programs. 21% of affiliates actively promote 51 or more programs. 31% own 31 or more domains and 24.6% only own between two and four.

Most affiliates found out about the programs they have joined through Google, Affiliate Directory, Affiliate Manager contacting them and through conferences. The preferred method of finding out information from an Affiliate manager is via merchant email and network internal email. The amount of information managers should make available to affiliates is 40.4% through phone, IM and email, with email taking up 35.2% of that amount.

The preferred industry/merchant type to promote is computers and electronics, health and beauty, office and business, sports and recreation and books, movies and music. The most important factor in choosing a merchant is payout amount and brand awareness and the preferred link type is banners and text.

40.4% of affiliates use URL shortening services in their marketing efforts. Most use bit.ly and ow.ly. 67.5% of affiliates market on social networking sites. Most prefer Twitter and Facebook. Only 29.4% of affiliates integrate video in their marketing plan and only 32% are using Wordpress plugins and widgets. Amazon reloaded for Wordpress and ShareASale make a Widget are currently the most used.

The following is an uncensored view into the opinions of affiliates on a variety of other subjects.

Affiliates were asked to share any complaints, ideas, suggestions or opinions they have regarding affiliate marketing.

“Affiliate managers need to take a more public stance on industry issues; many are all too silent on critical issues including parasites, toolbars, and merchant good standards and practices. I also believe that the affiliate -merchant TOS needs to become more balanced and protect affiliates more.”

“Why aren't more marketers offering PayPal as a choice for payment?”

“Not all of us have programming capability, so programs or networks that provide me the ability to display multiple products in one place with minimal effort are preferable to me - SAS has this and” “AvantLink also, with options to create product displays in HTML or JAVA - programs that only have banners are just too hard to promote these days. More tools, more communication, more ideas shared help.”

“I believe before a company can reverse a commission they should give a specific reason why not only to prevent it from happening in the future but also as a courtesy to the affiliate so that we know what is going on.”

“I would like to hear from my affiliate managers if they discontinue or change an item. This could be a monthly email newsletter.”

“Need more apps for bloggers”

“I don't have TIME to be replacing offers all the time. I have a content site. Ads are secondary. I need the ads to take care of themselves.”

“I understand the need to have minimum payment thresholds, but if I never make the threshold, then I should still get my money that I earned from below the minimum.”

“Some companies need to make their image links easier to use -- some of the images appear extremely small or extremely large on a website. In addition there are times that you can click on the same image two different times and each time it takes you to a different landing page -- e.g. one time it goes to a landing page for the product. The next time it goes to the home page for the company”