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Affiliate Marketing became a common term to every online marketer when Amazon.com decided to come out with the first professional affiliate program, I would say, back in 1996.

But before affiliate marketing could really dominate the online market like now, the first generation of affiliate marketing came in the form of the "Get Paid To" programs, or commonly known as GPT industry.

The GPT industry comprises of programs like Get Paid To Read, Get Paid To Be Online, Get Paid To Join, Get Paid To Sign Up and many others. You can safely say that as long as there's any activity that can be done online, it can be part of the GPT industry.

The "Get Paid To" Programs are very straightforward programs and most of the time you just need to concentrate on signing up more new members and you can get paid on a percentage off their participation or advertising purchase.

As the years go by, many of these affiliate marketers started to find out the loopholes of these programs and participated and recruited mainly because of the overriding commissions and did not contributed much to the advertising. This leave much for the Program Owner to find revenues to return back to these members.

The nature of the program itself turns out to be non-lucrative as well. There was not much return of investment for the advertisers as many of these affiliate members are in there for unproductive participation.

This caused a ripple effect and many of these programs eventually ceased their operations.

While these were still ongoing, the giant online bookstore, Amazon.com, came upon this concept and professionalized the world of affiliate marketing. With real products (physical products and info-products), advertising and marketing resources to support the program, affiliate program is becoming effective and lucrative. Since then, we have companies like ClickBank.com that promotes info-products and Commission Junction to promote the sale of physical products, just to name a few popular ones.

Now in 2008, it's hard not to have an online product with no affiliate program attached to it. You just need to type any keywords of your niche together with the word "affiliate program" - you would be sure to find a site that gives you the chance to participate in their affiliate program.

The future of affiliate marketing seems to be rosy for many newcomers and experienced marketers. With many successful Internet marketers claiming affiliate marketing as the #1 source of making money online, it will not be wrong and too late to join in. You can join in to be part of the history of affiliate marketing.

Learn more about this author, Dexter Damien Chan.
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