Do your market research. From AFFTA: How Affiliate Marketing Cuts the Local Shop Out of the Deal. “Suddenly, media outlets realized they could make money not just from ads, but from every sale their content generated. If a reader clicks on a link in an article and buys a product, the outlet earns a commission. On the surface, it’s a smart, modern way for journalism to sustain itself. But buried in the mechanics is a harsh truth for specialty retailers: virtually every affiliate program sends customers straight to the brand’s direct-to-consumer site.” This, honestly, is completely misinformed–we send the vast majority of our Flylab affiliate traffic to fly shops. And this is a purposeful decision. The problem isn’t the DTC brands selling direct to consumers or being ‘further ahead’ in affiliate platform integration; it’s the fly shops’ general reluctance to engage with the same available affiliate platforms: AvantLink, Impact etc. Every brand is integrated with some form of affiliate marketing in 2026; if they’re not, that should tell you something about their marketing department. Why aren’t most of the fly shops flowing in affiliate traffic from media brands? They aren’t integrated.

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