Dear Affiliate Marketing,
After 15 years strong, I LOVE YOU. Happy Valentine’s Day Sweetheart.
Do you remember in 1999 when we first started dating? It was such a fun time that we had to learn about each other, but it was alot of phone calls and many different partners until we found the right ones. I spent late nights after college talking about you, sometimes sleeping over at the office just to be close to you. We learned together though, and we grew. We watched our friends like Commission Junction and Todd Crawford tell everyone that they shouldn’t agree to being exclusive, and we watched Linkshare who only wanted to be exclusively in a relationship. BeFree and Commission Junction hooked up, and it was like watching two of our friends find a love connection. PepperJam started to date our friend Commission Junction years later, but decided to go out on their own and build their own friend network. ShareASale popped onto the scene as we were just getting hot and heavy. Brian Littleton was so convincing with his backpack and piano playing skills, that many fell in love with him too. But I always loved you Affiliate Marketing, I always have. You have been the performance to my marketing, the metrics to my campaign, and the variables on my URL.
As I look back on our life together, I think about our insertion orders, our firing pixels, and our backend development and I think…..oh you are so hot. You aren’t a fraud and I appreciate when you use your toolbars in the right way, and don’t spoof my pixels.
Back in the day, and even now, Shawn Collins wanted to give us tips, and Missy Ward joined him and wanted to create a place where we could meet other people. I don’t know how many love connections they have made through the Affiliate Summit, but they are now like the Chuck Barris of the Dating Game. Uncle Pace Lattin, oh that crazy uncle, gave us color and laughter and alot of moments that we could always look to for comic relief and alot of information we wouldn’t have known otherwise.
Oh my the things we have seen in during our 15 year relationship! Theresa and Todd Farmer made a splash, Kowabunga! and made it attractive to be an affiliate marketer, and Jim Lillig just made it fun (like that friend we all have). We did alot of people-watching at our old hangout ABestWeb, and sometimes trolled WickedFire to figure out who wasn’t acting right. We always stayed true to each other though.
For a little while,there was that experimentation where we tried other types of marketing, but we always came back to each other. I really fell in love with you, Affiliate Marketing, when I saw how much we could build together. DirectTrack gave us a reason to build a family together, and we came out with ROIRocket. Many other companies discovered DirectTrack too, and off spawned many cousins (like 200 of them) in the CPA World. Yes, a close cousin that CPA Industry, but not YOU Affiliate Marketing. It’s like the cousin in the family we all need and love, but sometimes we have to guide it with love and patience.
Why did Google even try to come into our space? They weren’t long lived like you and I are. eBay is shortly behind them, but maybe they know something Google didn’t.
Oh Affiliate Marketing you have always been there, supporting our family, building a lifestyle together, and helping me achieve all the dreams I had for my life and hopefully you have achieved your own. Without you I never could have opened myself to internet marketing, and I could never have learned so much about myself. Without you, I could never have ridden in James Martell’s Cobra during the Affiliate Bootcamp in White Rock, BC, nor could I have gotten to go to the concerts with you to see Nelly, Tone Loc, SugarHill Gang, or any other old skool rappers. Without you, I would not have seen New York, Las Vegas, or San Francisco as often as we have, and I certainly would never have gotten the chance to create SmarterChaos.
So on this Valentines Day, I say I Love You Affiliate Marketing. I’m ready to settle down, and live my life with you. I’d like to commit, I’d like to get married, but I do have to tell you that you are going to have to change your name now to Performance Marketing. Deal with it.
XOXOXO
The Chief of Chaos
Matt
www.smarterchaos.com
Your Loving Performance Marketing Agency