Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants

From the Book: Foreword By, James L. Marciano The affiliate marketing space has matured quite a bit since 1994, when' the Olim brothers began their first affiliate program at CDnow. The 'buyweb" program revolutionized advertising and marketing on.the Internet by shifting the "burden of response" from advertisers to content producers. 1996 saw the birth of affiliate solution providers - the software needed to track sales by Webmasters - with the introduction of LinkShare and Be Free. That same year, Amazon launched their affiliate ("associates") program, which became a prototype for others in the pay-for-performance industry to follow. I'd consider myself one of the early adopters of affiliate marketing, and I didn't join my first affiliate program until mid-1997, when I was looking for incremental revenue for TheSquare. com, an executive recruiting firm that serves as the "talent agent" for a network of more than 50,000 alumni and students from the Ivy League and other top schools. As I scoured industry publications and search engines for details on affiliate programs, the information wasn't always easy to find. What was needed was a search engine for affiliate programs, with ratings and details. I launched Refer-it.com in late 1997. Other affiliate directories quickly followed, including AssociatePrograms.com, CashPile.com, and ReveNews.com. In early 1999, I held the first Affiliate Solutions conference in NYC, where over 200 e-commerce managers, software companies, and Webmasters gathered to share best practices in the emerging affiliate industry. By mid-1999, affiliate marketing emerged as the most cost effective way for marketing managers to acquire new customers. And by 2000, over three thousand companies and a 'million Webmasters had jumped on the affiliate bandwagon. As companies got focused on profitability, affiliate programs began to play a central role in their overall marketing strategy. Pay-for-performance marketing was no longer a cocktail party catchphrase, but a gateway on the "path to profitability." As with any marketing program, affiliate programs don't run on autopilot. The successful merchants in affiliate marketing not only launch a program with best-in-class member agreements, commissions, and tracking software, but also manage and support their best performing affiliates for optimal results. Shawn Collins and Frank Fiore have done a tremendous job of packaging the industry's best practices so that you too can succeed in affiliate marketing.