In honor of my 10 year anniversary of being an affiliate online, I thought it would be fun to look back and see how things have changed over the years.

If you’ve been in affiliate marketing and/or had a website as long as I have (or longer), no doubt you remember some of these facts about websites and affiliate marketing from 1998.

(Gosh, that seems like eons ago.)

If you got started later, hopefully you’ll enjoy seeing how much has changed over the years.

$30 Domains Were a Steal

I bought my first domain name in 1998 for $35/year at Networks Solutions.  I remember feeling like I missed out on a deal because I later found out that Register.com sold theirs for $30.  :)

Google Who?

In 2008, it’s hard to imagine the Net without Google but in 1998, Google was a mere infant and not many people knew about it.  At the time, the top engines were Infoseek, Webcrawler, Excite, Lycos, HotBot and AltaVista.

Believe it or not, I created a page that ranked #1 for the keyword phrase “home employment” in Infoseek (yes, a page — not a site).  That one ranking earned me about $9,000 in a few short months.  As a poor college student, I thought I’d struck a gold mine.

(sigh)  If only those days were still here. ;)

Doorway Pages Were Respected (Briefly)

Speaking of that #1 ranking, I managed to achieve it by creating what Webmasters called a “doorway page”.

This was one page loaded with the keywords you wanted to target and it linked to your affiliate site.  You could create one of these pages and have it ranked on the first page of the engines in one or two days.  There were also companies selling doorway page creation software.

It amazes me that people still try to use this method to gain search engine traffic.

The 63-Character Domain Rush

When I first registered my domain in 1998, you were limited to 32 characters.  Later InterNic started allowing 63-character domains.  People began snatching up thousands of “good domains” with the intention of selling them.

I grabbed a few myself, but quickly realized selling domains is not as easy as I thought it would be.  So it ended up being a big waste of time and money.

Web Hosts Were Stingy With Disk Space

For my very first domain name, I paid $19.99/month for 25 MB of space.  Yup, you read it right… 25 megabytes.  I think I just uploaded a graphic yesterday that was bigger than that!

Of course back then, sites were simple.  People used plain HTML and very few graphics so there was no need for 3,000 gigabytes of space.

Amazon Had One of The First Affiliate Programs

Amazon may not pay their affiliates a lot compared to other programs, but they are one of the pioneers in the affiliate game.  I remember when creating an affiliate link for one of their products required an MBA.  :) It’s still a bit complex, but they’ve gotten much better over the years.

Search Engine Submission Software Was Hot

I probably spent over $300 in 1998 on various submission software and tools that supposedly blasted your site or ad to thousands of search engines, free sites and directories all at once.

The only thing these services resulted in was a truckload of spam and confirmation emails.  What a waste.

Free for All Links Pages

A free for all links page is exactly what the title suggests.  It was a page that was often broken up into categories of links.  You would complete a form that would add your site to the top of the list in the category you chose.

The problem was, so many Webmasters were using automated systems to add their sites, it only took about a minute (literally) for your site to get pushed off the page.

It didn’t take long to realize that the only people visiting these pages were the people submitting their sites — not people searching for anything.

I’m ashamed to admit this was a part of my marketing plan at one time.  Yikes!

Lots of People Actually Used Microsoft FrontPage

OK, I should be the last person to make fun of anyone using FrontPage because I used it waaaay longer than I should have.  However in 1998, this software was actually a decent option for developing a website.

Now that I know more about web programming, I understand why so many programmers hated it, but it did the job for me at the time.

Anyway, Microsoft FrontPage has since been replaced with Expression Web.  I haven’t heard about many people using it though.  Imagine that?  I think FrontPage left a bad taste in people’s mouths.

Can you say Dreamweaver? :)

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Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed my little stroll down memory lane.  Feel free to share your memories of this era.  I’d love to learn about your experiences back in the day.

Even if you didn’t have a site back in 1998, I’m sure you have noticed a big change in the Web just in the past few years.

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