Do you know who William J. Tobin is?

bysmartketeer

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Updated 6 years ago

In these days the term “affiliate marketing” is used almost exclusively in an online context. The truth is, that offline word-to-mouth affiliate marketing existed long before the World Wide Web has been invented by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. Most likely almost every small business owner tried sometimes to offer incentives to existing customers in exchange for referring new customers. And that’s nothing else, but affiliate marketing.

If i’ll tell you that the whole huge affiliate marketing industry started in 1988 with a company named PC Flowers, you may think I am joking. Well, I am serious as a beaver. Mr. Tobin – who was named the “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Inc Magazine in 2011 – basically patented the whole concept. His company, PC Flowers & Gifts was the very first company that offered an affiliate marketing program.

In the early nineties the original concept has been transferred into the online environment by other venturesome companies. KB Toys – an american company with mall-based toy stores -, and AutoWeb are considered to be the true pioneers of the online affiliate marketing business.

With these first steps a new sort of golden goose has been bred, giving birth to an unstoppable phenomenon, which – apparently – still haven’t reached it’s full potential. Amazon – founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos – was the first big dog among the largest internet-based retailers who embraced the concept. In 1996 they launched Amazon Associates, one of the very first online affiliate marketing platforms and only two years later in San Diego (California) Tim and Eileen Barber founded the very first affiliate network, ClickBank.

Due to the the unimaginable success the original concept very soon has been accepted as a viable, worth-to-follow business model. In 2000 the FTC ( the United State’s Federal Trade Commission) published the first set of guidelines for the new industry sector, consolidating even more the legitimacy of the online affiliate marketing world.

Due to the technological developments that occurred since Tim Berners-Lee has irretrievably changed our world and our lifes in 1989, the internet also has been revolutionized. The unbelievably popular social platforms, the ongoing boom of the blogging phenomenon and the powerful tracking opportunities are just examples for all those solutions, trends and new marketing concepts (for example, sales funnel) that can – and will – make the online affiliate marketing even more popular and successful.

Obviously, the tremendous global popularity of the online affiliate marketing has unavoidably created a set of quite dangerous myths and misconceptions too.

The most common and most dangerous misconception that can poison your mind, is the the over-night success. As I said, is the most common – and probably the most dangerous – lie. Usually is the very first and most efficient motivational factor used to get you hooked. So, I will say it again … The over-night success in affiliate marketing is not just a myth. It’s a lie!

The truth is much more disappointing. No doubt, affiliate marketing is a solid, legitimate opportunity to build a fair income stream, but if you want to succeed, you need to prepare yourself for the worst. The markets are literally over saturated. The competition is extremely tough. The needed skills can be easily learned for free, but – as you’ll see following me along this tutorial – there is a lot to learn. If you want to do it right, you’ll have to learn how to find a profitable niche, how to choose and use the perfect keywords, how to craft a marketing copy that sells, how to create an outstanding website and how to leverage the most efficient promotional methods to get the needed exposure for your business.

Also, you need to be devoted and persistent. You need to invest a lot of time. You must be prepared for inevitable mistakes and failures. In affiliate marketing takes time and effort to see the very first fragile results, takes more time and effort to build a fair income source, and you’ll have to work even more to create and sustain steady multiple income streams. And believe me, you will struggle quite often along that road.

If you are looking for get-rich-quick solutions forget affiliate marketing. Best case scenario: your success will be directly proportional to your efforts.