The new study results from a 2006 survey by PartnerCentric shows that affiliates didn’t always go for bigger commissions. Other more important factors for merchants to consider include more content and availability of datafeeds and coupons.

For those who assume banners have met their graves, think again. Banners are the second most popular way affiliate publishers use to promote merchants’ programs, just a little below text links (18.80 and 19.88 percent, respectively).

Content, search engine optimization, email, pay-per-click, coupons, datafeed, advertising, newsletter/ blog, website links and incentives follow. Some methods overlap with others, but these data give us ideas on how the affiliate industry was dominated by focused niche content.

The study also shows that niche/ content site is still the main source of affiliate commission income for publishers. Coupon/ discount shopping site and PPC advertisers follow on the second and third spots.

On the 10th rank is blog/ ezine, which probably shows that blogging slowly becomes a way publishers use to drive traffic and earn income in the form of affiliate commission. I doubt the accuracy of this though, because on this spot, blog shares the same rank with ezine.

This comes to my surprise because even a research company still think blog is tightly related to ezine or electronic newsletter. For me, I would be confused to choose a blog or a content/ niche site because I use a blog software to create lots of content sites.

Source: MarketingSherpa.