As far as I know back to 1997 Affiliate Marketing and affiliate programs has started to flourish on the net but the longer they runs the worse US economy looks to be so why Affiliate Marketing could not help US economy compare to AliXXXX from China ?
Well, you could be right or you could be wrong. It must also be pointed that a lot of successful affiliates based outside of USA and just taking advantage of the USA market. Anyway, in the internet, it is an open market. What is that AliXXXX from China?
Sure affiliate marketing can help the USA economy. There are many affiliates making a lot of money & this will help drive the economy.
I believe most successful affiliate/super affiliates are from US just look to who gives the most frequent affiliates seminar and couching, all are from US but yes also some from Australia, Canada, GB. But it should be noted too that the affilliate merchants mostly comes from US though the products itself could be manufactured at China. I remembered once market Outpost.com Palm VII based from Linkshare but now Outpost dissapeared and Linkshare sold to Japanese firm. So see the longer Affiliate runs most of the affiliate merchants will dissapear or changing hands/owner. AliXXXX : replaced XXXX with baba, is the biggest China's portal for Ecommerce which dont have affiliate programs but help China's export economy a lot so which business model is better affiliate marketing or export portal like AliXXXX. Fact proves that affiliate marketing is not so successful and tend to downward spiralling just like some examples above.
The fact is that a great deal of affiliate marketing is geared towards pushing money making systems. In my estimate, 60% of all affilaiate marketing, maybe more is pushed towards this "niche" Simple fact - 60% of people on earth/continent/country/state/city/suberb cant make money This is why it will not drive an economy On a side note, aliXXXX only makes good money when there are foreign buyers out there, and them foreign buyers are running to their administrators at a huge rate per day. China can build better ?, cheaper and quicker than anyone else, but whats the point when theres no buyer?
Probably you are right, affiliate marketing will not drive an economy just like Amway MLM and other MLMer. 2 tier levels of marketing is not different than multi tiers like MLM. It is more like utopia or might be a hidden form of oursourcing salesmanship promoted by US merchants so no need to pay healthcare or insurance for sales employees. For the cheaper and quicker products from China, if US can no longer absorb their products, there are still many hungry price conscious consumers from other continents like Asia, Africa, Australia and Middle East.
- that is in fact the only way affiliates may help the economy, LOL! NO, it's not the solution, the problem lies deep into how your system is organized and until you solve that - you're screwed. (I refer to banking sector, they way the money are issued, government control and so called 'corporate america') But i had a good laugh hearing this.
This is a great topic and one that I have researched. What is missing from the affiliate marketing world is LOCALIZED Affiliate marketing. Sure, I can sign up for an affiliate program, but the program will be for a huge corporation that pits me, a person on the internet with a website, against an actual storeowner who is reselling that same corporations products. This pits local people against each other, anonymously, but it is not a fair fight because the business owner has a much higher overhead. Example, I set up an affiliate account for baseball products. People who buy from me are sent to a centralized business that may be halfway across the country. Meanwhile, without realizing it, I actually stole a sale from the baseball storeowner that is located three miles away from me. What business is it of me to actually compete with a local storeowner who actually has committed a physical space to storing products so people can touch and feel the product before they buy it? What about the knowledge and experience that baseball storeowner brings to their business. I would much rather be an affiliate for that storeowner, than for an anonymous walmart style of company located in another state. So I came up with a concept called Local Affiliate Marketing. The idea behind local affiliate marketing is that I don't directly compete with the local businesses, I actually work with them. One idea is I find 10 or 15 businesses that are in my area, that I know, have used, I like, and I trust. I get agreements with all of these businesses to be an affiliate with them. Any transactions through my website, and I get a commission. I may not even charge them to be on my website! The beauty of this system is I am not only an affiliate marketer, but I can put my name and my reputation on the line if I choose. Should a conflict arise on a transaction, I might actually investigate it because I know all the businesses personally. (what a concept!). I already had my local businesses lined up. However, when I pitched the local affiliate marketing idea to a couple of the worldwide affiliate marketing companies, they did not even respond to me. I then found out that my local affiliate marketing idea IS NOT OFFERED by anyone, anywhere! If we can't believe in, and support our local businesses while also watching out for the customers who purchase from these affiliate vendors, then we lower our standard of business practices, and become susceptible to corporate power that only cares about itself, and we actually create business practices diminish our local business environment. Ironically, my idea does not hurt the corporations of the world at all, since most of the vendors I have in mind actually use corporate products anyways.