Marketing and working as agents for people’s businesses has essentially been going on around the world since business began, but historically there has been much more manual labour involved to make a success of it. Affiliate marketing was born when internet businesses became of age. The concept is to promote business via related or indeed sometimes totally unrelated websites and drive traffic to the key businesses website, generating clicks and sales which an affiliate can the benefit financially from.
If you were to discuss with any adult industry insider you would find an overwhelming consensus that Cybererotica was largely responsible and one of the pioneers of affiliate marketing with a pay per click programme.
In 1994 CDNOW launched a BuyWeb programme making it one of the first non adult sites to become involved in the affiliate concept. It realised that there were many sites promoting music to the World Wide Web and that sales could be improved if those sites provided direct links to their CDNOW site to boost their sales. Geffen records were at the forefront of this arrangement. Geffen had realised that they themselves could generate large amounts of business due to their own promotion efforts but did not want any additional involvement with the logistical side of the business.
Amazon became involved with their own affiliate system in 1996, when they realized the benefits of promoting individual books on banner style advertising, which could in turn click through to and individual author’s website.
| |
StarReviews Top 3
Affiliate Programs |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Wikipedia suggest that sales derived from affiliate marketing back in 2006 in the UK alone amounted to a staggering £2.16 Billion ($3.54 Billion at today’s exchange rates).
Site affiliation has grown substantially since the days of Amazon and CDNOW and has long extended past the adult industry. Whilst all the above are still major players in the affiliate world, affiliate programs now can be commonly found in sites such as;
- Shopping Directories
- Coupon and Rebate sites
- CRM (Cause related marketing) sites offering charitable donations
- Email list affiliates
- Comparison Shopping sites
- Search Affiliates (such as pay per click and google adsense)
- Niche marketing sites, including product review sites
- Loyalty websites
The above is not an exhaustive range, but illustrates scope of the growth since affiliation was born.
In terms of who can affiliate? This market is open and whilst I would suggest in the early days it was a concept deriving from big industry players, all and sundry have the ability to become affiliate marketers so long as they have means to have their wares viewed and clicked through by an internet user.
There are currently no industry standards enforced for becoming an affiliate marketer, but you may find web sites and businesses that rely on their reputations and/or high levels of morality for continued business, and they may screen applicants to ensure their involvement within their own affiliate programme is desirable.
Amazon, a highly respected name on the www were one of the leaders in the field of affiliate marketing programs, but as the programmes became more successful and possibly due to the lack of regulation and control, the less scrupulous affiliates would sometimes try and over inflate response rates to both increase their own revenue and/or encourage others into their programmes. This is still an issue in many areas; however, with the progression of technology organisations such as google have to a large extent overcome the fraudulent results which arise from the spamming of sites.
If you are considering becoming an affiliate marketer it is well worth exploring the programmes which are related to topics and discussion within your own site or blog. It remains a vibrant market and whilst opportunities as seen in the early days may to some extent have passed us by, be assured there always seems to be something around the next corner for those inclined to devoting a reasonable amount of effort and time to gaining a beneficial result.
Tags:
marketing,
internet