ProFlowers
What is affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing works similar to offline sales. Whenever a person makes a sale on any product or service they earn a commission on that sale. The same concept works for websites. For example, if an individual places a link on their web site (like the one below) and then a customer places an order through that link, the owner of the website gets a commission on the sale.
One Dozen Long Stemmed Roses for ONLY $29.99 + FedEx
I've been involved in affiliate marketing since 1999. ProFlowers.com hired me to maintain the technical aspects of their affiliate program through BeFree. It was great. LinkShare and Commission Junction didn't even exist and the industry was not even a year old. Affiliates had all kinds of fascinating ways to manipulate the search engines, and merchants for that matter. No one really knew what they were doing. Search engines didn't realize what a commodity they had and merchants had no idea that affiliate marketing would become so powerful, let alone so profitable.
As time passed I continued to establish and grow the ProFlowers.com affiliate program. Writing all the content for the affiliate program as well as growing the team were my crowning achievements. As the team grew I trained and managed each new member of the program, ensuring that forecast numbers were met and budget numbers remained within limits.
In addition to growing and maintaining the ProFlowers.com affiliate program, I also established the affiliate program for Flowerfarm.com, the international sister site of ProFlowers.com. Instead of using Befree, Flowerfarm.com used the third party affiliate solution provider, Commission Junction. It was an exciting time, learning a new third party affiliate solution provider and again growing a new program and a new team.