The following is what Daniel Schonfeld of PrimeQ had to say in response to the question, What is the Future of Affiliate Marketing?

As I wrote about in Adbumb this past month, the future of Affilate Marketing is in the hands of its sales staff.

Affiliate marketing is beoming ever so popular, but popular for what? A new way for an advertiser to reach the massees or for the Largest affiliate networks to branch out to smaller ones.

It seems as though new affiliate networks serve as individual super affiliates to a much larger source. Dont get me wrong, there is money to be made this way but how is it adding to our industry growth potential?

Just as the planets revolve around the sun so do smaller networks around the larger ones. The question is, at what point will the sun eclipse those planets and have no need for the smaller networks.

Zips and Email offers and several other usual suspects are 90% of up and coming networks and they certainly aren't exclusive or even competitive. If we all ascertain the same offers and have for the most part the same affiliate base it's only a matter of time before the affiliates smarten up and go with the larger networks.

So diversification, uniqueness and innovation among offers are the future of affiliate marketing.

The web is filled with over 1 million " Potential Advertisers" - why are we catering to the same 50? Lets get in gear, hire and train great salespeople and make affiliate marketing what it should be, the greatest marketing medium in the world.

How would you answer the question, What is the Future of Affiliate Marketing? There are no right or wrong answers.

The author of any response that is published at affiliatetip.com or affiliatesummit.com will receive their choice of one of the following:

• Size: small 'It's an affiliate thing, you wouldn't understand.' t-shirt
• Size: medium 'It's an affiliate thing, you wouldn't understand.' t-shirt
• Size: large 'It's an affiliate thing, you wouldn't understand.' t-shirt
• Affiliate Summit coffee mug
• Affiliate Summit optical mouse for a notebook computer

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