A Short History of Affiliate Programs
Affiliate Marketing – History of Affiliate Marketing
As the internet continues to grow at searing speed, so do the opportunities to get involved in online commerce. Affiliate marketing has become one of the most popular business models, for everyone from the new marketer coming to internet commerce for the first time, to multi national companies and household names of retail. This is largely due to the win win nature of affiliate deals.
The merchants have no advertising expenses, or staff to pay, in order to sell their products, while the affiliates can set up in business for no other expenses than a computer and internet connection.
It is widely believed that the massive online retailer Amazon was the first company to use affiliate marketing on the internet. That is not strictly true. The honor really belongs to a music retailer called CDNow. Their affiliate program, known as ‘buyweb’, was started as far back as the fall of 1994.
They first invented the concept of having potential buyers click through to their site from other site, on which other people would put reviews of the music. These independent websites would then be paid a commission. It was through association with Geffen Records that this system was started. Geffen wanted to sell their own artists’ CDs but did not want to do their own order fulfilment.
Amazon’s affiliate program was, however, one of the first to be seen, and remains one of the most popular to this day. Legend has it that it all started at a party, when the founder of Amazon was talking to an author who wanted to sell books from an independent website.
The Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, came up with the idea of having the independent site linked to theirs, so that the referrer should earn a commission. The system became known as the Amazon Associate Program, the name by which it is still known today. Amazon’s program remains extremely popular, although it has acquired many imitators in the intervening years.
From these beginnings affiliate marketing has continued to grow at a phenomenal pace. It has been estimated that in 2006 the total earnings of world affiliates was over $6 billion. This is a near doubling of the figures for the previous year. The revenues have come from all different sectors of commerce.
Originally, the e-commerce website was not taken seriously as a viable commercial store front. Now, things could not be more different. Virtually every large business not only has its own website, but they sell every kind of good through it. A very large number of these businesses take advantage of the affiliate model, often through the affiliate networks.
Affiliate marketing has also grown hugely amongst sellers of digital products. Networks that allow potential affiliates to sign up for free, and promote a whole range of digitally downloadable ebooks and audio files, have allowed people to set up their own businesses with very little expense, and be paid a commission on every product that they sell. Getting in to the exciting world of affiliate marketing has never been easier.
Want to get involved with affiliate programs and offers today? Click the link below for more info:
The Best Affiliate Offers Online Today!
Tags: affiliate programs, affiliate offers, cost per action, affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing programs
Popularity: 16% [?]
Stumble it!
