The fun ways one discovers affiliate marketing

My discovery of affiliate marketing was by mistake.

It was a day that will go down in history. The date was November 2005, right in the middle of the Christmas electronic crisis, and like the rest of the free world, I was thinking of buying an Xbox 360 through an auction website. They certainly weren’t available at retail… (stupid Micro$oft!) Anyway, I did a Google search, and on the right hand side of the results page there was an ad “Get a free Xbox 360! “. My first thought was ‘sweet’, then turned to ‘Hmmm…what’s the catch?’ I clicked on the link and found the requirements to fill out some forms, sign up for some free stuff, get a credit card, and the like. It sounded pretty doable for a free Xbox 360.

First, I started by registering on a free game site. (Who doesn’t love free games???) I then went ahead and fulfilled the terms of a couple more offers, but after signing up for a free month of efax, I realized I’d have to sign for satellite television and a subscription to harlequin romance novels. I had no real interest in any of those services, so I stopped and counted my losses, which, in fact, were none. I hadn’t spent any money and continued on eBay in my search for a game console unaffordable in retail stores. A couple of months later, I found out that someone had probably made around $100 by signing up for the free trials. Hundred dollars!

Most of the population is oblivious to internet marketing. They don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes and often don’t want to know.

The very small percentage that engage in affiliate marketing is right now ahead of the times. It hasn’t reached its peak yet. If you go and look in the entrepreneur section of any major bookstore, you will see many products under “Make Money on EBay.” However, there is none on internet marketing through adsense, clickbank, amazon and other major companies.

Now is the time for affiliate marketing. Get involved, the outside world will surely discover our little secret soon enough.