As lucrative as affiliate marketing can be for some publisher and product marketers, today’s release of AffiliateBenchmark’s Second Annual Affiliate Survey reveals a substantial influx of novices to a business that survives on exceedingly tight margins. For instance, nearly half of survey respondents reported joining the industry in just the past two years, and more than half of these consider it more of a hobby! Nearly half of the 3,500 affiliates surveyed said that less than five percent or none of their links generated a sale in the month before completing the survey this summer.

Ouch! But wait. There’s a clear correlation between what affiliates are willing to spend on PPC search and flash and video widgets, yet only 36 percent of survey respondents invest in paid search. Nearly half (46.9 percent) of survey respondents don’t collect data on their websites’ audiences; and 14.4 percent of those didn’t even know where this information comes from.

What’s clear is that not everyone who says they’re an affiliate is one, any more than anyone with a Web site is a publisher. The AB study is a worthy read, if only to discern where to find the affiliate networks that still harbor serious professionals. (One clue: more than half the $100K+ affiliate earners regularly attend conferences on the subject, so it might be well worth your while to show up at the more reputable ones to prospect partners.)

AffiliateBenchmarks, a subsidiary of NETexponent, at least offers some telling filters for marketers who don’t want something as potentially rewarding as affiliate marketing becoming a time sink. We’ve posted the full executive summary on DM2PRO.com to download free, and will make this offer. If you buy the report at AB’s $199 price tag, we’ll give you $100-off your attendance at our digiday:TARGET show. Just doing our part to clear out the riffraff.