Women in Affiliate Marketing: The Stats
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The Internet, and especially affiliate marketing, has always been seen a male dominated business. It’s true that the male demographic represents a lion’s share of web users but this has begun to take a momentous shift toward the other gender, females. In affiliate marketing, as surveyed by Affiliate Summit as an Affstat Report, female employees, business owners, and affiliate marketers have begun to take center stage.
In this article, we’ll be breaking down the figures and answering the big question: “what does this mean?” for the world of business and affiliate marketing.
An Overview Look at the Stats
A glance at the report by AffStat reveals that women compromise a rather large percentage of all major industries of small, medium, and large businesses along with affiliate marketing ventures.
The report surveyed the following industries and businesses within each:
- General Businesses
- Affiliate Networks
- CPA Networks
- Technology Providers
- And ‘Other’
In general, businesses that have less than five positions almost always have at least one female present while businesses that grow beyond 10 or more employees see upwards of 38% of business roles going to women.
Each of the separate industries takes on a similar data set which is quite equal across the board with the exception of Technology Providers where women have a smaller representation within the industry but this is sure to grow when comparing to the growth from similar industries.
In business ownership, 31% reported they are completely female owned while 25% were partially owned between the two genders; just 44% of the businesses surveyed were male owned. Can it be concluded that women are actually the main entrepreneurs? The numbers don’t lie; it certainly shows that businesses are being readily formed by females which may be attributed to easy access to the web, training, and low-overhead in budgets.
The Big Question
The numbers don’t lie but many individuals’ gut intuition leads them to see the world of affiliate marketing (and business in general) to be similar to a fraternity where your customers and business associates happen to be of the male gender.
What does this mean that there is a major shift with females represented in nearly every industry? Simply put, it changes the marketing game.
Understanding that affiliate marketing comprises a split between the genders means your marketing efforts should no longer focus around the keywords, images, and copywriting which may have been intended solely for male readers. Your mental image of your customer avatar may need a 180. In fact, your main customer may not be a middle-aged businessman but a female professional holding any number of roles in a company or within their own business.
What we’re seeing is an equalization of the playing field. The closing gap in affiliate marketing, between genders, now gives our businesses and networking a greater chance of opportunity as each side will have equal say in feedback, design, and implementation along with the increased customer potential.
Keep that in mind next time you’re working on a marketing campaign.
Do these stats change your perception of affiliate marketing? How so? Share a comment below.