Online Affiliate Marketing Origin

Online affiliate marketing originated from affiliate marketing programs that are commonly used on the Internet. Affiliate marketing is simply a form of internet marketing where a company rewards one or more affiliates per visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts. Affiliates, who perform well, can command a high commission check each month, or even per sale. If a particular affiliate generates enough sales to cover his operating costs, he gets paid a set amount. In turn, this payment to affiliates helps the companies that employ them to perform the necessary tasks on the Internet.

It would be incorrect to say that affiliate marketing began online only. Before the proliferation of the World Wide Web, affiliate marketing was already prevalent in print advertising, where advertisers would pay publishers for the space given to their ads. For example, magazines, newspapers, and books all contain advertisements by advertisers. Publishers or owners of such media are willing to allocate space for such advertising because they earn from the advertisement cost. There is no denying that print publications and radio and TV shows have expanded their target markets to include many more people than before. And, advertisers are willing to shell out more money to reach a broader audience because of this increased competition.

But it was the appearance of the web as a potential vehicle for advertising that really triggered the interest of advertisers. Online advertising programs such as Google AdSense, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Microsoft ad Center all appeared and quickly became very popular. As these companies made it easy for website owners to display their ads on the web, affiliate marketing took off. The rapid growth of search engine marketing and contextual advertising caused a massive spike in the number of clicks performed by users searching for particular items, services, and products.

When website owners started utilizing advertising programs such as Google AdSense or Yahoo Search Marketing, they were not making money per action, but rather per click. This meant that they only earned a few cents per click and only paid when a visitor actually made a purchase. Affiliate marketers soon discovered that the revenue sharing model also allowed them to earn revenue even faster than before. With the popularity and rapid expansion of online advertising, affiliate marketing quickly became a lucrative business for individuals who know how to drive visitors to their sites and the companies who offer their services.

Many of the same principles that are applied to affiliate marketing today are still in place in the early days of the industry. For example, back then, it was very difficult for publishers to attract and keep traffic for their websites. Internet users were simply not interested in reading e-books or downloading software. But as the popularity of websites like Amazon grew, companies like Amazon and Borders began offering their own in-house e-bookstores, which quickly gained popularity among both readers and advertisers.

Another important aspect of the early days of affiliate marketing is that most merchants did not pay affiliates until they began to see a profit. Because of this, most affiliates began providing adware and malware protection to their publishers, which helped to ensure that all of the advertising that the merchants desired was shown on publishers' websites. But even though many merchants started requiring affiliates to pay for this service in the early days, the trend has greatly diminished as publishers have become more accustomed to the fact that they do not need to pay for additional advertising in order to be successful.

File-hosting websites also experienced a sudden surge in popularity during the early days of affiliate marketing. At the start of the trend, these file-hosting sites provided free hosting to all websites, but as soon as affiliates began publishing their own content and providing file-hosting for others' content, the file-hosting sites began to receive more traffic and advertisers began to realize that they could advertise on these websites without spending money on actual advertising. Because of this surge in popularity, affiliate marketing programs began to replace file-hosting websites in many affiliate marketing niches.

Many people are unfamiliar with the term "referral marketing," and might have a hard time associating it with affiliate marketing. However, although the concept of referral marketing may not be familiar to most people, the method is actually quite easy to understand. Referral marketing simply involves an affiliate promoting products for which they have received a reward, or credited to a customer for using their product. If they have received a good review from a reputable source, many advertisers will credit the customer with a good review.