The Rise of the Affiliate Marketing Program

If you have ever paid someone a fee or a percentage for sending you business, you are already familiar with the core concept behind affiliate marketing, a form of online marketing that is, relatively speaking still in its infancy.
Today plaintiff's firms typically take 1/3 of 1/3 when referring a case to another firm that is better equipped to handle that particular type of case. Maybe there are minor deviations, but this is fairly standard practice in the industry today. This arrangement will likely be gone with the rise of the Internet, as will the standard 1/3 fee.

The Internet is giving considerable power to the consumer and things that we have come to expect as standards today will be obsolete tomorrow. You can call it a prophecy, lunacy, or just research enabled foresight. In any case, I will spare you the details of my Nostradamic prediction, just trust me that competition will increase, fees will be even more closely aligned with lawyer performance and the 1/3concept will be subject to added flexibility.

Speaking of alignment with performance - we have come full circle and returned to the topic of affiliate marketing - which does just that. With affiliate marketing, an organization pays a fee to one or more affiliates or partners for a customer, or for traffic generated by the affiliate's efforts. For a very comprehensive explanation of affiliate marketing you can go to the following Wikipedia listing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing

If you are currently using revenue sharing as part of your business strategy, or considering this as an alternative, it pays to conduct some additional research into the concept of online affiliate marketing, even if only for your own knowledge. Today, major online retailers, e-commerce companies, financial services companies, etc... are the major players in affiliate marketing. Interestingly enough Wiki's historical overview points to gaming and adult Web sites as being among the first movers in the world of affiliate marketing.

Affiliate programs are somewhat complex to manage and consequently may be less feasible for a smaller, non e-commerce business. However, with the Internet becoming more sophisticated, chances are strong that online affiliate marketing programs may be something your organization will want to educate itself on further - particularly if you are a vendor with a strong online lead presence, or in a larger law firm targeting online leads.

Marketing Tip: Be aware of any new trends in marketing that can help to give you a leg up on the competition.