About 26.3 percent – or 1 in 4 – affiliate marketers got started in affiliate marketing in just the last year or so.

According to AffStat’s survey of 1,150 affiliate marketers, affiliate marketers are a mix of both those with quite a few years of experience and those who are relatively new to the game.

Here’s AffStat’s breakdown of how many years affiliate marketers have been involved in affiliate marketing:

When it comes to kinds of promotional materials, affiliate marketers want banner ads and text ads from their merchants.

According to AffStat’s 2010 survey of 1,150 affiliates, 25.8 percent of affiliates prefer banners, whilst 24.5 percent prefer text ads. Other forms of creative are less popular.

Here are the percentages of affiliate marketers that prefer various kinds of creative from their merchants:

The best way to make affiliate marketers aware of – and then to join – your affiliate program is for you to include your program in an affiliate directory, according to research by AffStat.

AffStat’s recent 2010 survey of 1,150 affiliate marketers indicates that the largest contingent of affiliates find out about, and join, affiliate programs that are featured in an affiliate directory (cited by 18.3 percent of affiliates), whilst another significant group are enticed to join an affiliate program when an affiliate marketer contacts them directly (16.2 percent of affiliates).

The most important factor for affiliates in choosing a merchant is the payout amount (cited by 30.7 percent of affiliates), followed by consumer awareness of the merchant’s brand(s) (25.6 percent) and the earnings per 100 clicks or EPC (18.1 percent).

Surprisingly, only 0.5 percent of affiliates regard the provision of optimized promotional materials or ‘creatives’ (banner ads, text ads, emails, etc) and landing pages as important.

Despite the huge growth in online video usage among Internet marketers – from major brand marketers to Internet marketers in the ‘how-to’ Internet marketing niche – most affiliate marketers are NOT using online video in their affiliate marketing efforts.

According to AffStat’s 2010 survey of 1,150 affiliate marketers, fewer than 1 in 3 affiliate marketers (29.4 percent) are using online video in their affiliate marketing campaigns. The majority (70.6 percent) are not using video in their affiliate marketing activities.

Affiliate marketers have certainly embraced social media marketing, with 67.5 percent using social networking sites according to data from AffStat.

Which social networks are popular among affiliate marketers? According to AffStat’s 2010 survey of 1,150 affiliate marketers, Twitter and Facebook are, by far, the most popular social networks among affiliates, with LinkedIn a distant third.

Here is AffStat’s breakdown of what percentage of affiliate marketers use which social networks:

About 4 out of 10 affiliate marketers either disguise affiliate links with URL shorteners or use cloaking devices, such as CGI scripts, .htaccess rules, meta directs or otherwise.

It seems, however, that the remaining 6 out of 10 affiliates may do neither.

The idea of making millions online without a website may appeal, but the vast majority (99.2 percent) of affiliate marketers appear to use websites.

According to AffStat’s 2010 survey of 1,150 affiliate marketers, almost all affiliates own at least one domain name. In fact, the largest contingent of affiliate marketers – 31 percent – maintain 21 or more domains.

Most Internet marketers would probably agree: WordPress is the website platform of choice when it comes to building affiliate marketing sites.

The enormous popularity of WordPress related Internet marketing tools, plugins and information products suggests that most affiliate marketers use WordPress to create and maintain their sites.

Indeed, data from AffStat shows that 32 percent of affiliate marketers use WordPress plugins or widgets for affiliate marketing. The majority (68 percent) do not, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t run WordPress sites.

A recent survey of affiliate marketers reveals that just slightly more than half (51.5 percent) of affiliate marketers maintain an optin email list.

This finding from AffStat’s 2010 survey of 1,150 affiliate marketers indicates that a huge number of affiliate marketers are failing to capitalize on the opportunity presented by email marketing to cultivate leads, build relationships and convert leads into customers.

If only about half of affiliate marketers engage in email marketing, how many do pay-per-click (PPC) advertising or search engine marketing?