Search “is affiliate marketing dead” in 2026 and you’ll find people arguing both sides in roughly equal numbers. One camp says Google’s algorithm updates have wiped out review site after review site. The other says the channel is still printing money. The more reliable answer than either camp is the real numbers from people still doing it, which Ahrefs just compiled in its 2026 report.
This article looks at what affiliate marketing actually is, how it works, who’s still making real money from it, and the risks small Thai businesses need to understand before adding this revenue channel to their marketing plan.
📌 Key Points
- Affiliate marketing isn’t dead, but it’s not as easy as it used to be — the market keeps growing, but the models that work have changed
- Earnings vary enormously by experience — beginners and affiliates with 3+ years of experience earn vastly different amounts
- Some major publishers are growing, others are shrinking — the key variable is how dependent they are on Google Search
- The biggest risk isn’t affiliate marketing itself — it’s relying on SEO as your only channel
- Small Thai businesses can start without building a massive review site, as long as they understand the structure from the start
What Is Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing means recommending someone else’s product or service and earning a commission when someone clicks your link and buys. You don’t make the product, hold inventory, or handle shipping or returns.
The system typically involves three to four players: the merchant (the product owner, like Amazon or Shopify), the affiliate (the person recommending the product), the customer (the one who clicks and buys), and sometimes an affiliate network like Awin, Impact, CJ, or Rakuten that handles tracking and payouts across multiple merchants on the merchant’s behalf.
The mechanism behind it is a cookie the merchant drops on the customer’s device after they click the link. According to an example from Ahrefs, Amazon’s cookie only lasts 24 hours — but if the customer adds something to their cart within that window, the window extends up to 90 days. Other programs offer cookie windows as long as 180 days from the start.
Payout structures also differ across programs. Some pay a percentage of the sale, like Amazon, which pays 1–10% depending on category. Some pay a flat fee per sale, like Bluehost, which pays $65 per hosting sale. Others pay recurring commissions, like HubSpot, which gives 30% of the subscription fee for up to a year.
One thing worth remembering: two things have to happen successfully before you get paid. First, someone has to click your link — that part you control. Second, they have to actually buy on the merchant’s site — that part you don’t control at all. This is why picking the right merchant and program matters just as much as driving traffic.
How Much Do Affiliates Actually Earn in 2026
Average figures sound exciting, but the details behind them matter more than the average itself. According to Authority Hacker’s 2023 survey of 2,270 affiliates, average monthly income was $8,038.
But broken down by experience, the numbers tell a very different story. Affiliates with less than a year of experience earned an average of just $636 a month. Those with 1–2 years’ experience jumped to $4,196 a month. And those with 3+ years of experience earned roughly 9x more than beginners. The average is pulled up by a small number of exceptionally successful affiliates — most people earn far less than that headline figure.
A concrete example is Random Olive, a craft blog that publishes its income every month. In August 2026, it earned $2,568 in commissions, mostly from TikTok Shop ($1,274) and Amazon ($1,218). By September 2026, that figure dropped to $1,915 — which reflects two important things: affiliate income usually comes from multiple programs at once, and month-to-month swings are completely normal.
Large publishers aren’t uniform either. Wirecutter, owned by the New York Times, saw affiliate referral revenue grow by $3.9 million year-over-year in the first half of 2026, according to the company’s Q2 10-Q filing. People Inc. (formerly Dotdash Meredith) reported performance marketing revenue up 13% in Q2 2026, driven by 11% growth in affiliate commerce. Condé Nast reported its commerce revenue grew 13% in 2025, per its CEO’s annual memo.
But not everyone is growing. Future plc, which owns sites like Tom’s Guide and TechRadar, saw affiliate revenue drop 24% in its most recent half-year, which it attributed to declining Search traffic. Ziff Davis also saw its tech and shopping divisions contract. The pattern is clear: publishers whose readers come directly because they recognize the brand keep growing, while those relying mainly on Google traffic are struggling.
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Is the Affiliate Marketing Market Still Growing in 2026
Overall, the market keeps growing. According to the PMA 2025 US Performance Marketing Study, US business spending on affiliate marketing rose from $9.1 billion in 2021 to $13.62 billion in 2024, and that spend drove roughly $113 billion in e-commerce sales.
But an industry-wide growth number doesn’t mean a beginner can throw up a review site and start earning tomorrow. Part of that spend flows to cashback sites, loyalty programs, large tech partnerships, and creators who already have an established audience. A growing market is good news overall, but it isn’t a personal income forecast for any one individual.
The key takeaway: market size only tells you that money is still flowing into this channel. How much of it you capture depends on how you execute — not on whether the channel is still “trending.”
The Biggest Risk: Over-Reliance on Google Search
Many people have probably heard about affiliate sites getting crushed by Google’s Helpful Content Update, nearly disappearing from search results entirely. This really happened — but plenty of sites have recovered, and some came back even bigger than before.
HouseFresh, an air purifier review site, lost about 95% of its Google traffic after the 2023 update, but by October 2025 it was back to pre-update levels, partly thanks to building out a supporting YouTube channel. That Fit Friend used to get around 100,000 monthly search visits, which collapsed to almost nothing by mid-2024, before recovering to higher than its original starting point. Treeline Review, an outdoor gear review site, now gets over 60% more search traffic than before the update. And iRunFar survived every Google update and has nearly tripled its search traffic since early 2023.
But this risk doesn’t just target small sites. Even major publishers got hit. In 2024, Google’s site reputation abuse policy penalized the affiliate sections of well-known brands including Forbes, CNN, and Wall Street Journal, for leveraging the parent site’s reputation to drive traffic without building genuine authority on the topic itself.
The reason Google keeps tightening the rules is that it doesn’t want to send traffic to sites that exist purely to intercept search queries and pass them to a merchant without adding any value beyond the product page itself. One question Google suggests asking yourself under its helpful content guidelines is whether the site already has an audience that seeks it out directly. If the answer is no, that’s a warning sign.
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How Should Small Thai Businesses Start With Affiliate Marketing
Based on everything above, there are three practical takeaways. First, choose programs that pay in a way that fits what you do. If your content covers software or services, recurring commission or flat-fee programs usually pay more per sale than percentage-based programs for physical goods.
Second, don’t rely on Google Search as your only channel. The businesses still growing are the ones with a direct audience already — through Email, LINE OA, or Social Media. That’s something good Content Marketing should be doing anyway, not just for affiliate marketing’s sake.
Third, don’t expect instant results. Authority Hacker’s numbers clearly show the income gap between beginners and 3-year veterans is as much as 9x. This is a channel that requires building credibility first — not one where you start today and get paid tomorrow.
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Summary: Affiliate Marketing in 2026
Affiliate marketing isn’t dead, but the models that worked five years ago don’t work the same way anymore. The numbers from Random Olive, Wirecutter, and Future plc all point in the same direction: the key variable isn’t whether the channel is “trending” or “dying,” but how large a direct audience the business already has.
For small Thai businesses that haven’t tried this yet, the starting point you can act on today is choosing a product or service you genuinely understand, picking a program that pays well for the content you produce, and investing in building your own audience at the same time — instead of relying on Google Search alone. That’s what separates the people still making money from this in 2026 from the ones who’ve already disappeared from the market.
