Blog · 26 March 2026 · 1 min read
What does a "big affiliate" look like if you ignore traffic and look only at outbound affiliate links?
Promotion depth from outbound affiliate links tells a different story than traffic — same XS–XL logic, log-scale bands, long tail in the data.
affiliate marketing · outbound links · promotion depth · data · Breezy
What does a “big affiliate” look like if you ignore traffic and look only at outbound affiliate links?
Traffic shows reach. Outbound affiliate links show promotion depth.
We size channels by outbound links using the same XS to XL labels as visit size, because link counts also follow a long tail. A small number of players hold huge link volume, while most stay near zero. Linear thresholds would distort reality, so we use log scale breakpoints.
Among active promoters, most are XS with only a few hundred links. S, M, and L get rare quickly. XL is a tiny group, around a couple thousand channels, with top outliers above one million outbound links.
So when someone says “major affiliate”, ask a clearer question. How big is their outbound affiliate link tail?
That gives you a much cleaner signal than slide deck hype.