The idea of one person selling products on behalf of someone else, and receiving a commission in return is nothing new. As a marketing method it has been around for probably thousands of years. The idea of affiliate marketing took a little longer to make it onto the Internet though. The World Wide Web as we know it came into existence in 1990, but it was not until 1994 that the first company applied affiliate marketing methods to its sales strategy. That company was in the adult industry, which often seems to be at the forefront of marketing innovation. However, soon after that the online music store CDNow began to operate what is generally considered to be the first non-adult affiliate program. A couple of years later, in 1996, Amazon launched their Associates Program and affiliate marketing really took off. Affiliate marketing is an alluringly simple idea: you show an offer from a third party company to your website visitors or newsletter readers and if they click through …
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