Who are you? I really want to know. Anytime I can work in some lyrics by The Who or a headline with a nod to Family Feud, it’s a good day.

That said, it’s not easy to get a grip on this growing affiliate marketing community. There are only few concrete statistics and even those don’t always help paint a truly accurate picture of the overall affiliate marketplace. I think that’s why there’s been some buzz surrounding the AffStat 2005 Report Executive Summary, which came out earlier this week.

Affiliate marketing consultant Shawn Collins is the force behind the study, which surveyed more than 130 affiliate managers from a cross-section of the industry. These affiliate managers were probed on their overall statistics, as well as a number of issues about their affiliate marketing channels, such as staffing, recruiting, and management.

According to the findings, one of the biggest challenges in affiliate marketing is recruiting new affiliates. Twenty four percent of respondents named recruiting as their top challenge. Seventeen percent of those surveyed said activating affiliates was their major issue, followed by properly managing the affiliates or having too many affiliates to effectively manage (16 percent) and detecting fraud (14 percent).

About one in seven affiliate marketers, or 14 percent, reported that conversion rates on affiliate programs were greater than 5 percent, according to the study. An additional 10 percent reported rates of between 3.1 and 5 percent, while 13 percent reported conversion rates of 2.1 to 3 percent.

The report also revealed much about the structure of affiliate programs including how they paid commissions. Nearly three quarters of those surveyed said use pay per sale, 19 percent pay per lead, 3 percent pay per click and 2 percent used a flat-fee scheme to pay affiliates.

Other key conclusions included which networks and solution providers are being used, what percentage of each company’s total transactions was generated by affiliates and what types of rewards or incentives are being offered to affiliates. There are also lots of details on conversion rates, commissions and click-through. Get the full report for all the specifics.

There’s been a flood of research that crossed my desk recently. Here’s some other random research that grabbed my attention:

*In 2005, Virginia-based researcher Borrell Associates expects local Web sites to grow their advertising spend 46 percent to $3.9 billion, with the largest share continuing to go to local newspapers.

*In the last year, prices for ads placed on search results pages have risen about 25 percent, several research firms say.

*Microsoft’s share of the Internet search market has grown to 14.2 percent from 12.8 percent, according to recently released Nielsen/NetRatings figures.

*Bloggers amount to less than 2 percent of the adult US population, according to a recent study by Universal McCann and Media in Mind.

*One in ten people actually buy something as the result of getting a SPAM email, according to a recent study conducted by security firms Mirapoint and Radicati Group.

Be more than just a statistic; let me know more about your affiliate program.