What makes people so hinged to Affiliate Marketing?

What makes people so hinged to Affiliate Marketing?  Money is the single most highly motivating factor for most human beings these days. Okay, for those who disagree with this statement, let us not talk about morality or spirituality right now, because when your stomach cramps, your sense of morality and spirituality will not feed you. When you feel sick, the idea of morality will not pay your hospital bills, not even purchase a cheap over-the-counter medicine. It will not pay your light and water bills, it will definitely not pay your rent or mortgage, nor send your kids to school, but money can provide for you for these every time. We can always romanticize the idea of togetherness as the most important thing in life, but togetherness will not bring harmony if we are hungry. So let us forget about it and talk about business innovation and invention.

“Necessity is the mother of invention” by Richard Franck (1658)

When faced with challenges and certain difficulties, it is our second nature as human beings to improvise. I guess this is the very reason we are enjoying the facilities, technology, and lifestyle we have today because probably our forefathers thought we deserved a convenient life, or maybe they were simply making their lives easier back then and we are just lucky to inherit what they have worked hard for, so thanks to the past inventors and innovators! One invention we are lucky enough to witness is the creation of Affiliate Marketing. If you will notice in social media, people keep on posting images, websites, blogs, pages, and businesses connected to Affiliate Marketing. But how much do we know about this industry?

What is Affiliate Marketing and when was it invented?

Gifts,We believe affiliate Marketing to be one of the most lucrative sources of income more than you can fathom. William Tobin invented it in 1989, the founder of PC Flowers and Gifts, who took his marketing efforts to the internet and used the network of Prodigy to market his business. To be honest, I don’t have any idea about Prodigy, first; I came from Asia, and second, it was 1991 when I first laid my hands on the computer, so let us just leave it at that. To continue, in 1994 CDNow launched their BuyWeb Program, CDNow.com was an online store where you can buy music and movies. Do you remember back in the days before the CDs, VCDs, DVDs became a sensation? I do, there was a Betamax then VHS before Compact Discs (CD), well this has nothing to do with affiliate marketing. This is me just remembering. Let’s go back to business. Before Affiliate marketing, the way people advertise their products were by using billboards, newspapers, posters, or pamphlets that we find in our favorite shops. There were even television shows earlier where there is a live marketing program. Affiliate marketing existed even before the internet, it was referral programs. The idea was the same, though. Business owners ask their satisfied customers to recommend their services or products to their contacts and associates. Like for instance, a person went to a cafe, if their customers liked the service and food, the business owner can ask for referral/recommendations from the customer, the customer can distribute the cafe’s pamphlets to their friends, this is how they used to advertise before the internet.  

History of Affiliate Marketing

When the internet came, business owners used online network to advertise and sell their products and services, and with the development of Web 2.0 and cookies, it became possible to track the performance of online marketing. After Amazon’s launch of Associates Program in 1996, the term Affiliate Marketing started the same reason many people mistaken Amazon as the inventor of Affiliate Marketing, but Amazon joined a little late, but because of Amazon’s popularity, the marketing technique has garnered enough attention from the global market. Over the years, Affiliate marketing has evolved, and they developed many innovations and far more advanced techniques to make it easier and more productive.

How does it work?

To simply say it, Affiliate Marketing is selling someone else’s products through the use of an affiliate network and gets a commission out of it. If you are a manufacturer/business owner and you are having your products to sell, you can offer marketers, bloggers, and advertisers to promote and sell your products online in exchange for some profit or commission, a certain percentage for every item sold.

It involves how many parties in Affiliate Marketing?

Like earlier business dealings when companies used to advertise their products using traditional media, there were three parties involved, seller, advertiser or promoter, and the target customer or end-user. The same concept applies to Affiliate Marketing, the process is now digital but the same.

Three parties of Affiliate Marketing

Why Everything wants to connect with Affiliate Marketing these days?

The internet and all social media platforms are full of Affiliate Marketing, as in everything! People can’t seem to get enough of it. Others call it Performance Marketing, which means hiring people to bring in customers for a commission, If you are the advertiser or the business owner, you will only have to pay when your product you make a sale. There is another type of marketing that is sometimes being mistaken as part of affiliate marketing, is Influencer Marketing wherein advertisers are using social media influencers, bloggers, vloggers, and popular celebrities to reach out to their followers for product endorsements and product awareness. Many new influencers are even leveling up their convincing strategies, others may even shed some clothes or make a monkey out of themselves with their ridiculous dancing style and seductive looks for some clicks and hopefully get some conversion out of it, although this type it does not rely on commission but a sort of advertising contract, they call it advertising partner on social media platforms. 

So why are people so hinged on Affiliate Marketing again?

Simple, they say it to be a $15Billion industry, yes it’s a Big B, that is how huge the global Affiliate Marketing Industry is, and there is nothing more to say, who wouldn’t want their hands on it?

Please let me know what you think about this article, Write your comment/s below and if you liked this blog, please hit follow to read my future posts!