Distributing The Brief History of Affiliate Marketing

A Brief History of Affiliate Marketing

Revenue sharing, or paying a commission on business ideas and opportunities referred to a company, has been around for a very long time. In the case of the World Wide Web, affiliate marketing is a more recent phenomenon. In fact, it is widely accepted that one of the earliest cyber businesses to embrace commission based marketing was the on-line adult entertainment industry.



CDNOW became the first mainstream web entity to introduce an associate or affiliate program in 1994. The idea was that music or artist based web sites could give reviews, list current and back catalog records, and offer a link for readers to click through to CDNOW to purchase an album.



Amazon followed soon after and by 1996 was using banner ads for books on affiliate web sites to directly link with their home page. Although not the first to offer an associate program, Amazon’s marketing became well known and the gold standard within the industry. In fact, in 2000 Amazon actually patented the structure of its affiliate program. To this day, Amazon continues to be a leader in internet based sales.



The affiliate marketing model has undergone huge expansion since its modest beginning. The referring web site, once regarded as a small part of an overall advertising and sales campaign, has risen to take a very prominent place in many companies’ business plans and ideas. In some cases, affiliate driven traffic and sales far outstrip income derived by conventional advertising and marketing. As far back as 2006, it has been estimated that programs the world over profited 6.5 billion dollars in commissions.



Retail, gambling, and the adult entertainment industry are the most common businesses to employ associate marketing. However, the travel, personal finance and cell phone companies have been aggressively pursuing and designing affiliate web sites and are expected to be a major component of this form of e-commerce.



As the cost of doing business and traditional advertising keeps going up, affiliate based marketing will assume a more and more prominent role in the advertising strategies of a huge number of companies with a web presence. On the internet, exposure equals traffic which equals sales. And affiliate programs can guide people directly to your site to help promote your business ideas and opportunities.