How Do They Do It

How does a company come up with the genius idea of affiliate revenue? More to the point, how can they afford to pay me more than what they are making off the affiliate? As I am thinking out loud, or more like typing while I think, I guess it would be because they have a great pool of affiliates that they are making money from. Using ClickBank for massive Affiliate Revenue has definitely been working for me but I am just amazed that someone found out how this could work in the first place, start the idea rolling and now look where it has gone.