What does 2026 look like for affiliate marketers? Let’s just say… it’s not business as usual. From AI taking over the grunt work to virtual influencers and voice-driven SEO, the landscape is changing fast. In this episode, I’m sharing 13 bold, research-backed predictions for where affiliate marketing is headed, and what you can do now to be ready. Spoiler: the future favors the prepared.
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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy
How Affiliates Can Make More Money This Holiday Season
The Affiliate Manager Holiday Survival Guide
Why Every Author Should Be Using Affiliate Marketing
Inside the Mind of a Strategic Affiliate Marketer
The Affiliate Book Launch Blueprint
The Future of Affiliate Marketing: 2026 Edition
What does 2026 look like for the affiliate marketing industry? Well, let’s just say that it’s not business as usual. From AI taking over the grunt work to virtual influencers, voice driven SEO, all of these things, the landscape is changing fast. And in this episode I am sharing some of my boldest 13, in fact some of my boldest predictions ever for where affiliate marketing is headed and what you can do now to be ready. Spoiler alert.
The future favors the prepared. So listen up. So here’s the deal. If you didn’t know already, things are moving fast in our industry. In the affiliate marketing industry, things are just moving so fast.
There are new AI tools every single day. I created four, actually five in 2025. three are on the market. We got Review Post Pro, which helps you write high, ranking product review posts. You can check that out.
I’ll put links, to all these in the show notes. We got Affiliate Email Pro, which helps you write emails to your affiliates like in seconds. And then we have the Affiliate Terms wizard that helps you create an affiliate agreement in seconds. And that’s just the three that we put on the market this year. I’ve actually got two more that I created for internal use that we’ll be releasing.
well, depending upon when this actually releases, maybe one of them will be in late 2025, but probably not till 2026. So they’re just, I mean they’re happening everywhere. I’ve created another 15 or 20 tools for other businesses, like and stuff that I’ll never release in the market. Just because they don’t, it doesn’t make sense for them. You know, for selling like AI tools are just popping up everywhere.
Short form video is becoming more and more dominant every single day. And the reality is that what worked this year might not even make a dent in 2026. That’s the craziest part about is things are changing so fast that you know, when I started doing these episodes in 2018, I was like, things are changing fast. What worked in 2015 might not work in 2019. Ha ha ha.
Now it’s like what worked in December of 2025 might not work in February of 2026. And affiliate, marketing has always been one of the most flexible. It’s been one of the most fast moving channels. But now it’s evolving at a pace that we’ve never seen before. The world is evolving at a pace we’ve never seen before.
I talk about this in my book, the book on affiliate management, where I talk about how in the 80s, I grew up watching the Berlin Wall fall live on TV. And then fast forward, you know, 14 years later, you had the Arab Spring and you had all these things happening on social media. And it was like, I watched the Berlin Wall fall, but I say live, but it was like, I watched it fall the day after, but it was less than 24 hours later. And then the Arab Spring, it was like, we watch governments topple live. So we went from overnight to live in 15 years.
If you go back, you know, 15, 20 years before that, it was like, oh, we found out that there was a coup last week. And then, you know, years before that was like, well, oh, there was a revolution in the colonies. Oh, that happened. Like, you know, did they win? Oh, no.
You know, they’re still fighting. It’s been going on for years. Oh, okay. You know, things like the way that we’re just moving so fast. Crazy.
We have to move fast. As affiliates and as people running affiliate programs. If you don’t stay ahead of the curve, you’re going to get left behind. Like, you can’t just be keeping up. You actually have to get ahead.
And like I said earlier, I’ve done this episode every year for seven years now, maybe eight, but I think seven. frankly, I have usually been right. You know, usually I’ll make between eight and 15 predictions. And, you know, if I make an average of 10 per year, I’m right on about eight or nine of them. They are based on research, they’re based on paying attention to the industry.
But this year I’m actually making some pretty bold predictions. Like, admittedly, a few of these are either so way out there, or perhaps they’re a few years ahead of their time. And I guess only time will tell on that. So that is my one thing is like I may be saying, here’s my prediction for 2026, and it doesn’t come true until the middle of 2027. And then you can just say I was a visionary.
Right? kind of like the time I was lost. My best friend Hunter was, driving. actually his mom was driving. Sorry.
And I was like, yeah, you just take. You just keep going straight on this road over the hill. We get to the road where it t is at the hill, and they’re like, there’s no road here. You can’t just go straight here. There’s no road.
Three months later, they started building a road. And my joke was not that I was lost or, or didn’t know how to get to my own house, but that I was a visionary. So same kind of thing here. I’m going to walk you through 13 predictions for where I see this industry heading in 2026. Yeah, they’re bold.
Yeah, they’re possibly a little bit on the nutso side, but like I said, they’re also real data, informed predictions. You know, I’ve been tracking based on what I’m seeing from our clients, from our affiliates across the industry. So some of them might surprise you, some of them might scare you, but all of them are going to help you prepare. Because just because something scares you, like, you can’t just be like, well, that’s scary. I’m gonna just ignore it.
You know, we can’t just put our hands over our eyes and over our ears. You need four hands to do that. So I don’t know how that’s possible. But, you know, you can’t just be like, la, la, la, la, and pretend like reality is not happening. Like, here’s the deal.
If you don’t, I don’t like A. I. too bad. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s like saying that you don’t, you know, like cars like you. You need cars in today’s society and the world that we’ve lived in for the last hundred years.
You know, so let’s jump into These predictions for 2026, All right? Prediction number one is that AI becomes like, it becomes an employee for affiliates and affiliate managers. It becomes a co pilot. we are entering an era. Can you believe this?
It’s really only been three years. We’re entering an era where AI isn’t just a tool. It is. It’s a strategist, it’s an employee, it’s an assistant, it’s fill in the blank, it’s a copywriter, a graphic designer, all of these things. And where I see people succeeding with AI Is not just asking AI a question and getting an answer.
Not just asking AI to write this thing, but using it as a strategist. And in fact, my favorite prompt, you know, usually starts off with, I’d like you to act as my thought partner. You are blank. And I tell it what it is. You are a marketing strategist.
You are a Facebook marketing strategist. You are a whatever. You know, I get as granular as possible. So I’m writing a book right now, for instance, in my little spare time, I’m writing a book. It’s a fiction book.
for those of you who don’t know, I’ve been writing, with, you know, a friend of mine and business partner. We started a company writing children’s books, primarily targeting ages like 9 to 15, 16 years old. Or we take the classic books like Think and Grow Rich and How to Win Friends and Influence People, along with some other modern books. And we’re working with some great entrepreneurs, and we’re turning their books into narratives for children so they can learn these lessons. They can learn the lessons of how to win friends and influence people, for instance, and they breed them in their engaging stories.
Well, that’s a separate business. That’s not what I’m talking about there. But I’m writing a fiction book. It’s for adults, you know, teens and adults. And I’m, not going to talk about all it is, but I’m using AI as a thought partner because there’ll be a line where I’m like, gosh, that line.
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I. I just, I know it can be better. It’s not popping. And so I have a specific chat where I’ve said, you know, you are like, I don’t know exactly what I wrote, but you’re a literary genius. You know, you’re a writer, blah, blah, blah.
Can. Your job is I’m going to post sentences, and I’m going to give you the context for that sentence, and I want you to help me make it pop more. And so I use AI to help me brainstorm ideas. And that’s what affiliates are doing. You know, affiliates, everything from content angles, subject line testing.
I have an entire, chat with, this one’s with Claude specifically, where all I do is load split test results into it. Then it eventually gives me, you know, the data on what’s actually working. And then I can go, here’s an email. What are 10 suggested subject lines? And then I pick the two that I like the best, and then I tell it like, here’s the results.
And then it’ll say things like, well, when you do the resend, try these two that I suggested, because I feel like these are going to do better. And sure enough, you know, subject line D was the best of the four, and it learns and it’s I mean it’s become like my open rates are up almost 4% just in. From January 1st of 2025 through now, when I’m recording this in early December, they’re up over 4%. Like that’s a huge increase in open rates. My click through rates are up 0.
25% which is, you know, it doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s, you know, that’s an extra. Some quick math, you know, an extra whatever hundred seventy five to one hundred clicks a day, every day for a year. That’s pretty freaking awesome. This is where we’re headed, you know, this is what, this is where we’re headed. So if you’re still guessing at what copy works, what bonuses convert, you are behind, you should, you should be loading all of this data into AI Create projects like Bonus Brainstorming Project.
Load bonuses that you’ve used in the past, load all the, all the bonuses you have that are available and how they’ve converted and then use it to brainstorm, you know, future bonuses. I talked about that in previous episodes where AI can help you to brainstorm bonuses. It can help you from scratch, but it’s even better if you actually load some information in there. It helps you identify trends. I highly recommend Grok and Gemini for anything that’s more recent.
In fact, Grok I found is the most recent of all of them. So trends and things like that. I’ve used Grok. you know, if it doesn’t need to be up to date within the past few months, GPT is great. You know, cloud is great, anthropic, you know, Gemini are all great.
The difference between average and elite affiliates in 2026 is going to be how well they use AI. It’s going to be your edge. It’s either going to be your edge or your downfall. It doesn’t matter if you’re a solopreneur, you’re managing a team. AI is going to be that co pilot in 2026.
number two is AI will also be your co affiliate manager. those of you who know me long enough know that I’ve typically had a co affiliate manager and I still do. I still actually have a human being who helps me with a lot of these things. But I have had a co affiliate manager that does a lot more of the data analysis and more of the a lot of the grunt work, you know, like making sure that I can have information there so I can be at my creative best. The thing is that AI can take on that role you know, it’s not just affiliates using AI.
Affiliate managers should be using it too. So automated onboarding sequences that you can like. If you want to create onboarding sequences for affiliates that are customized, personalized to, you know, the affiliate AI is a great way to do that because you don’t have to rewrite every single message. You know, tools like Affiliate Email Pro, they help to do that. I want to write a welcome message to this affiliate.
Here’s my basic welcome message. Help me tweak this for, you know, and Health and Wellness Influencer. Here’s her last, you know, here’s her Instagram profile. Analyze this and help me write a welcome message. Like that’s a great use of AI.
Review Post Pro is helping this where, you know, yeah, you can basically RPP Review Post Pro helps you write the review posts that then rank high and actually convert into affiliate sales. You still have to pick the products, you still need to know about the product. It’s going to ask you questions that you need to answer. But it takes what is normally a 6 to 12 hour process to write and create this review post. And it turns the text generation part into about 10 to 12 minutes.
Then you use AI to create a few images and you can have a whole post done in about 45 minutes. So 8 hours, 10 hours down to 45 minutes, pretty big win. You’re still operating at your highest level, which is using your brain to determine like review, Post Pro will not tell you what are the best three features about this program and why it won’t do that. You will tell it that you will make those decisions, but then it will help you write it. So that’s an affiliate marketing side.
On the affiliate management side, it really just comes down to multiplying your effectiveness and allowing you to operate at the highest level. It handles AI, handles the repetitive stuff, frees you up for actual leadership, frees you up for actual relationship building. And we’re going to see that multiply by probably a factor of five to 10 as people learn how to use AI in 2026 and not just like, you know, asking AI like, hey, you know, what’s the, you know, what, what’s the capital of something? Or you know, weird questions and things like that, right? It’s really going to become a thought partner and an assistant in 2026.
Big prediction. This is number three, total big one here. affiliate marketing in the US will hit $15 billion in 2026. That is a 20% jump. We were like 12 and a half million I believe like 12.
6 maybe is what they’re projecting for 2025. We are going to make a huge jump, 20% plus in 2026. It’ll be the biggest non pandemic year jump in the history of affiliate marketing, at least in the past 25 years. And here’s the reason. It is one of the only ad channels with a clear roi.
And the more and more we see third party cookies disappear, companies become desperate for performance based customer acquisition. And affiliates are really the only one that delivers in a clear cut way. So they’re going to shift more of their budget to affiliate marketing. They’re going to be willing to pay slightly higher commissions. They are going to pay more to affiliate managers.
They are going to hire an additional affiliate manager. Maybe they have an affiliate team of, you know, if it’s a big company, they have a, you know, two person affiliate manager team, they’re going to hire a third or they’re going to spend a little bit more on AI, you know, and so that’s good news. It also means the competition will rise. So as your competitors increase their commissions and they hire affiliate managers and they use AI better and they run better affiliate contests, you got to step up your game. So it’s good news.
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You’re going to be, you know, let’s say you’re currently doing, you know, five million dollars a year out of a twelve and a half million dollar pool. You know, that’s a pretty big fish actually. Well, the, the pond’s getting bigger. So if you want to get bigger, you got to play bigger. Prediction number four.
So for context, right now less than 90% of e com brands have affiliate programs. I am projecting that by the end of 2026 we are at 95%. Nearly every online retailer will have an affiliate program again because of what I just mentioned. So that’s the other factor by the way, that contributes to getting to 15 billion is we’re going to have thousands of new affiliate programs. Thousands of new legit affiliate programs.
Like thousands of new million dollar affiliate programs. Thousands of new, you know, affiliate programs that are coming in hot, paying high commissions, hiring, you know, used to be like, you kind of start off small and blah, blah, blah, right? No, they’re going to be hiring Rockstar affiliate managers. They’re going to be bringing on teams and they’re going to be investing, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars into their affiliate program on day one. And they’re going to change the industry again because it’s the lowest risk Highest reward acquisition channel out there.
And so as ads get more expensive and as they become more restrictive with what you can say, especially in industries like supplements and health and wellness, where it’s like, oh my gosh, can you even say this vitamin will help you be healthier? No, you can’t say that. Well, it’s pretty true, you know. And so as it becomes more restrictive and harder and more expensive and lower return, people are going to turn more towards affiliates. Here’s the catch again.
As more brands offer affiliate opportunities, affiliates will need to be and should be pickier. There might only be eight competitors of yours in the industry today and, and by mid-2026 there’s 10. And like I said, one of them is spending big. One of them hired a rock star affiliate manager, one is beating your commissions. And they just started.
So now you have nine, like really legit competitors. And so saturation becomes a big deal. It means that the affiliates who succeed will need to be the ones who really specialize, who are own a niche, who speak directly to their loyal tribe and they avoid the temptation. Again, this is for affiliates. They avoid the temptation to promote every single new shiny offer.
And so if you’re in an underserved vertical like sustainable goods or family wellness, there’s huge opportunity here. So again, the prediction here now, 95% of E commerce brands will have an affiliate program by the end of the year. It’s a pretty big increase. Prediction number five talked about $15 billion. I believe that 10% of that $1.
5 billion in 2026 will come from live stream sales. Live stream sales right now we’re, last I saw we were in the low, 6%, high 5% range. So we’ll just call it 6%. It’s pretty big increase, in 2026. Basically I’m looking at it doubling in 2026.
and so not the percentage, but the actual revenue, it’s about looking about 750 million this year. I believe it’s going to be 1. 5 billion in 2026. I mean if you remember QVC back in the day, right, the Home Shopping Network. Just if you don’t know what livestream sales are, just imagine QVC on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Live.
Except that the hosts are affiliates. And so, you know, Gen Z, especially Gen Z shoppers tend to be more likely to make impulse buys in real time. It’s the candy aisle or not the candy aisle, it’s the checkout line at the store that Gen Z is not going to. It’s that impulse buy. And so it’s, it’s.
The other thing about it is, from an affiliate perspective, you don’t need to have polished scripts. This isn’t about knowing all the sales levers to pull and all that. It’s just like, energy. You know, affiliates who can connect on video, who can answer live questions. Answering questions is addressing objections.