Compare the channel profitability of building an owned audience with SEO versus renting an audience through affiliate marketing.
Both SEO and affiliate marketing are powerful sales channels, but they operate on fundamentally different models. SEO is a strategy of "owning" your audience by building an asset (your website's authority) that attracts customers directly. Affiliate marketing is a strategy of "renting" an audience from partners who have already built that trust, and paying them a commission for each sale.
Absolutely. They can be highly synergistic. Many of your affiliates will be bloggers or content creators who are skilled at SEO. By providing them with high-quality assets and co-marketing support, you can help them rank for your target keywords. Their success is your success, and the backlinks they build to your product pages as part of their content will directly help your own SEO efforts.
Beyond the commissions, you need to account for: 1) Affiliate management software/platform fees (e.g., ShareASale, Impact). 2) The time cost of an affiliate manager to recruit, onboard, and support your partners. 3) The cost of creating marketing assets (banners, copy) for your affiliates. 4) The risk of affiliate fraud (e.g., cookie stuffing, trademark bidding).
Commission rates vary dramatically by industry. For physical products, rates are often between 5-30%. For digital products like software or courses, rates can be much higher, from 20% up to 70% or more, because the marginal cost of delivering the product is near zero.