An online survey of affiliates was taken at the end of 2006 by e-consultancy.com in association with affiliateprogramadvice.com
The survey was jam packed full of interesting information regarding affiliate demographics. For me, one of the most interesting facts the survey dug up was the fact that just 17% of UK affiliates are female. I knew from the various affiliate marketing events that I’ve attended that there aren’t as many women in the industry as men, but I found the low percentage intriguing.
So what is it about affiliate marketing that creates this demographic?
For comparative purposes, I’ve dug up some other statistics about women and employment.
- Women comprise more than a third of people who are self employed.
- In the computer and information management systems sector, 31% of self employed individuals are women.
- 49% of self employed advertising sales executives are women. Data from 2004, source: self-employmentkey.org
It could be suggested that part of the reason for low numbers of women affiliates has to do with female psychology. Women are less likely to take risks than men, therefore the potentially risk-rich field of affiliate marketing does not appeal to women. Also, perhaps women lack the skills or motivation to get into the industry in the same way as men.
Superficially the above theory sounds mildly plausible. However, this isn’t verified by the data above. There are a large number of self employed women with technical skills. There is also an even larger number of women employed in performance based sales roles. These statistics suggest that it may not be a case of the industry being unappealing to women for reasons of skills or risk.
Perhaps there could be a social reason for the smaller number of female affiliates. Women may prefer to work within a team environment and are therefore less likely to want to take up the often isolating work of the lone affiliate marketer. However, this theory is again thwarted by the fact that 16% of people doing affiliate marketing in their spare time are women, echoing the figure for full time female affiliate marketers. If there was merit to the social theory then surely women would comprise a higher percentage of people doing affiliate work part time.
There may simply be no quantifiable reason for the lower number of women. The word “perhaps” is running rampant through this piece, so we may have to put it down to serendipity.
Perhaps there will be an Affiliate Census 2007 to help us find out!
I started a discussion about this over at the A4UForum. Some very interesting replies from female affiliates about their views on this, and why / how they actually got into the mystic art of affiliate marketing!
