"Where Have All the Flowers Gone" is still a catchy tune, but we might need to modernize the lyrics for today's times:
"Where have all the affiliates gone?
2257, everyone!
When will they ever earn..."
While that is melodic, and 2257 is partly, but not completely, responsible, for the dwindling numbers in the cyber salesmen army that once was the engine that powered an affiliate program's sales, it remains not so much a question, but an observation, in the minds of today's adult online entrepreneur - where indeed have all the affiliates gone?
It was in 1994 that CDNow introduced the concept of an affiliate program where commissions to online resellers were tracked by click-through purchasing. Of course, the roots of affiliate marketing would not be complete without a nod to cyberspace's biggest urban legend - but, no, Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon.com) did not conjure up the notion of an online referral commissions system after a woman he met at a cocktail party served as his inspired muse. Amazon.com did launch their affiliate program in July 1996, however, and the idea of online commerce went mainstream - and adult - at the same time.
With the mainstream becoming more tolerable of the mother lode of traffic known as adult for its own, very non-adult reasons, there you will find an increasingly growing segment of online industry professionals whose idea of an affiliate is a but a quaint notion of the cyber-equivalent of the milk man from days gone by. They do not wonder where the affiliates are gone, they got here after they left.....
Though many Internet marketing industry professionals today would rather sweep this under the rug, and perhaps some of us along with it, from the earliest days of the web, adult sites - followed by gaming sites - pioneered the affiliate marketing business model by developing the software that powered the programs and putting a banking mechanism in place to process the transactions to pay the average Joe webmaster, someone we are seeing less and less of these days.
I remember making my very first site, "Leather Bear Luke," with free content on a free host and thinking, Hey, this is not a bad way to make a living.
That was seven years ago. Could a complete newbie today start out by himself, as I did, making galleries and AVS sites, and be able to earn enough within a reasonable timeframe to be able to support himself?
The days of the one-man band are over unless you are a whiz in marketing, design, content, IT and business. Today you need to partner with those whose strengths and weaknesses complement yours. Or you could opt for a place that has already completed that process and grown from it. In other words, go work for a company.
I remember clearly being in our booth the last time we had space on one of our industry's show room floors, spending the day fending off the drive-by attacks of new billers and commission hungry-sex hungry gawkers trying to sell us stuff we did not want in a space we paid for. Who we really wanted to be talking business with was standing three rows back in their booths, just as annoyed as we were at the unproductive traffic. As we were in our own worlds during the day, the only option for talking business was to scream over the music at a party at night and flutter some business cards at each other in the airport, hoping something would stick.
So we got smart. We stopped having booths and started having meetings during the day, connecting with people, many of whom started out just like us, as an independent affiliate, but worked for companies now, instead of themselves.
We respect and treasure every affiliate out there who has had the tenacity to prevail against visa regulations, 2257's veil of uncertainty, iBill, John Ashcroft and almost two full George Bush administrations. We love and value, and frankly say it with a check twice a month, how much we appreciate each and every sale they make. But what of the non-independent webmasters? What role do they play?
A major one.
While the tone of the conversation may switch when talking B2B, mano a mano, with another serious professional associated with a respected organization in our field as opposed to a one-person organization, the topics remain unchanged: What can we do to generate more business between us with the basics - payment made for traffic sent - and what needs to be done to make that happen?
Indeed the affiliate pool is drying up, but there are plenty left - except they work for companies and we call them "strategic partners" now. So where have all of the affiliates gone? Look on your monitor now to your right, they are already on your ICQ.
Harlan B. Yaffe is a co-owner of PrideBucks.com.
