It's with a heavy heart that I share the following e-mail that I received yesterday:

First, let us thank you for your affiliation with the OneandOnlyNetwork. We regret to inform you that the OneandOnlyNetwork will be ceasing operations on December 30, 2005.

Beginning January 2, 2006, we will begin processing all final commission payouts due through December 30, 2005. Please allow 4 – 6 weeks for final payments to be made to you.

As an affiliate, you will continue to have access to the OneandOnlyNetwork member login until February 5, 2006.

We encourage you to join our Match.com affiliate program found at http://affiliates.match.com. Please feel free to contact us at affiliatemail@oneandonly.com if you have any questions.

Best Regards,
OneandOnlyNetwork Staff

Back in the 90's, the OneandOnlyNetwork was a trailblazer in affiliate marketing. I'm not sure if they were the originators, but they were the first affiliate program on my radar to do things such as sharing the commission amounts of their top ten affiliates, creating an affiliate resource site, and offerring customer testimonials as affiliate creative.

The OneandOnlyNetwork also enabled affiliates to set up co-branded sites that featured the affiliate's name and logo, and they had an attractive two-tier program.

Back in the day, there was an OneandOnlyNetwork affiliate named Jeff Belton who was a fixture at affiliate marketing conferences.

He would regale the conference attendees with his success story as an affiliate of the OneandOnlyNetwork. He'd tell how he dabbled in SEO and built a company called American Web Ventures Network Inc..

He would work in tandem with the OneandOnlyNetwork and recruit second tier affiliates, train them, and provide tools and resources to succeed as part of his network of sites that promoted the OneandOnlyNetwork.

They were a pioneer in affiliate marketing since May 1997 and they'll be missed. Affiliate managers could learn a lot from the way they did things.