How I Got Started in Affiliate Marketing

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I had a fun chat with Deb Carney on her AffiliateABCs podcast the other day about my early days in affiliate marketing.

This discussion came out of a link I Tweeted recently for an article I wrote in 2000 on the history of affiliate marketing.

We touched on the origins of the industry, as well as my start as an affiliate and an affiliate manager in 1997 at Medsite.com.

Back when I started as an affiliate, I joined the Amazon.com affiliate program and created a horrible site on AOL, which was a shoddy guide to New York City. I got my first domain, velocitynyc.com, on August 25, 1998.

This was an online version of a zine, Velocity NYC, that I was publishing offline for a few years.

“The writing was on the wall for Shawn Collins when he named his year-and-a-half-old quarterly zine, Velocity N.Y.C. Walking past a stairway, Collins noticed graffiti spelling out the title of his soon-to-be zine. Like the graffiti, Velocity N.Y.C. is a spontaneous expression of one life in the urban jungle. Collins ruminates on bachelor parties, stuff in his mailbox and the zine’s most reprinted feature, movies that affected his life.” – FOLIO

“A wonderfully sophisticated zine that captures the energy and style of New York City life. Shawn has done a lot, experiences a lot, and has a lot to say. He doesn’t come off as preachy or pretentious, just genuinely friendly.” – Factsheet 5

This domain is now used for the Velocity NYC Press, a book publishing imprint from Affiliate Summit.

My second domain, babylounge.com, was registered on July 19, 1999, and the initial purpose was to manually create online birth announcements, after lots of friends and family enjoyed the one I created for my first daughter months before.

These online birth announcements were available in a free version (with affiliate ads) or a few paid versions.

As of today, I’ve got 152 domains, and I couldn’t even tell you how many have been affiliate sites, or are currently affiliate sites. Plus, there are many domains that I grabbed for a year or two for projects and let go.

Anyhow, the podcast also gets into my experiences in the early days as an affiliate manager and it’s a fun trip down memory lane for the resources and such from back then. Have a listen to episode 19 of Affiliate ABCs to hear how things used to be in affiliate marketing.

Audio: Affiliate ABCs #19 History of Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins