These days everyone associates affiliate marketing with online, but affiliate marketing existed before the world wide web was invented in 1989. It was as simple as your local shop owner giving you a discount for referring a friend or a family member.
Affiliate marketing as we know it kicked off with the dot-com bubble in the mid-’90s, with an explosion of e-commerce. Back in those days, everyone had an e-commerce idea, and it was only natural that affiliate marketing took off with e-commerce. Fast forward to the 2000s, and the rise of Bloggers just cemented its place on the web.
These days affiliate marketing is a lot more complex and mature, you could say it’s gone mainstream, and big brand retailers have jumped in with both feet. Therefore, it is only natural that Affiliate Marketing Agencies are inserting themselves and offering to manage all aspects of your affiliate program for you. And more importantly, it’s a market that continues to grow. According to a survey by Rakuten Marketing, US affiliate marketing spending will increase by a compound annual growth rate of 10% between 2015 and 2020, to $6.8 billion.
Irrespective of if you’re a Fortune 500 retailer or a Blogger generating all your revenue with Amazon Associates, affiliate marketing is a field with a lot of potential. And a well-planned affiliate marketing strategy can be the difference between catching a growth of opportunity or missing out.
