Maybe I’m biased because I work in affiliate marketing, but the way I see it, affiliate built the incentive for publishers and creators to make a huge amount of commercial content.
Think reviews, comparison sites, buying guides, product recommendations, tutorials — all of the things people create based on actually using, researching, or caring about something.
Take the money out and I don’t think that content disappears. People love writing about the things they buy, their hobbies, and their experiences. But I do think, without the incentive, it would have happened a lot slower.
Affiliate didn’t create that content as much as it set the pace for it to be created.
It fueled and gave life to something that might have just smoldered along slowly on its own.
And then AI shows up.
Suddenly, there’s this massive library of years and years of reviews, recommendations, comparisons, forums, articles, videos, and niche expertise for these models to learn from and draw on.
For the most part, it’s all content AI didn’t create. And in most cases it’s content it isn’t paying for.
So what happens when the people creating that information decide that exchange doesn’t work for them anymore?
Lately I’ve been seeing more publishers talk about blocking AI crawlers or putting content behind paywalls. And really, it’s not just talk anymore.
Cloudflare already lets website owners block AI crawlers or actually set a price for them to access their content.
Others are going the licensing route instead — essentially saying: you can use our content, but you need an agreement with us and you need to pay for it.
So, I don’t think this means affiliate goes away — I actually think it’s more important than ever now. I also don’t necessarily think there’s going to be one new model that suddenly replaces it.
I think we’re watching the value exchange around content change in real time.
What I keep coming back to is the incentive.
I’m on both sides of this. I work in affiliate marketing, and I’m also building with AI constantly.
But somebody still has to create the information that makes it useful.
If publishers and creators are being asked to keep producing that information while getting less traffic, fewer clicks, and potentially less money back from it, at some point you have to ask:
What keeps the incentive going?