At its core, affiliate marketing involves independent digital marketers creating partnerships with manufacturers and companies that make products, or sell services. In the past, manufacturers and producers had to rely solely upon their marketing teams in order to spread the word about offerings. Regardless of the huge sums of money that was often spent on marketing, companies didn’t care because of the ROI they’d generate on selling their products and services.
As the tech age took hold, companies realized that it was far less expensive to contract with independent marketers in order to gain prospects and covert those prospects into customers. It made sense to create platforms for independent marketers who were willing to front all of their own marketing costs, paying marketers a bounty fee for their efforts when any of their prospects converted into a customer.