Complete cookie

For marketing to a specific interest group, see Affinity marketing. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Affiliate marketing is a marketing arrangement in which affiliates receive a commission for each complete cookie, signup or sale they generate for a merchant.

The concept of revenue sharing—paying commission for referred business—predates affiliate marketing and the Internet. The concept of affiliate marketing on the Internet was conceived of, put into practice and patented by William J. Gifts remained on the service until 1996. 6 million per year on the Prodigy service.

Gifts on the Internet in cooperation with IBM, who owned half of Prodigy. Gifts had launched a commercial version of the website and had 2,600 affiliate marketing partners on the World Wide Web. CDNow had the idea that music-oriented websites could review or list albums on their pages that their visitors might be interested in purchasing. These websites could also offer a link that would take visitors directly to CDNow to purchase the albums. July 1996: Amazon associates could place banner or text links on their site for individual books, or link directly to the Amazon home page. When visitors clicked on the associate’s website to go to Amazon and purchase a book, the associate received a commission. Amazon was not the first merchant to offer an affiliate program, but its program was the first to become widely known and serve as a model for subsequent programs.