On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower sailed. It manifest included a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford.
The journey to the New World was a long and difficult trip. And when the Pilgrims landed on the New England cost in November, they found, according to Bradford’s detailed journal, a cold, barren, desolate land. He wrote that there were no friends to greet them. There were no houses or shelter. But the sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning.
During the first winter, half the Pilgrims – including Bradford’s own wife – died of either exposure, sickness, or starvation. When springtime arrived, local Indians freely shared their knowledge, teaching the settlers how to plant corn, fish the local waters, and skin beavers for coats. Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet prosper.
The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belong to the community as well. They were going to distribute it equally. Nobody owned or were personally invested in anything. They just had their common share.
Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, realized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken half their number. Bradford took bold decisive action. He assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace as each family was incentive’s for their own industriousness. Their own prosperity was now coupled with their own performance.
Bradford wrote about this, ‘The experience that we had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years…that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God,’ Bradford wrote. ‘For this community was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense…that was thought injustice.‘
Which also summarizes Performance Marketing and why being an Affiliate Marketer is so fulfilling. We all are working together with our own individual endeavors to advance ourselves. Our own ingenuity, hard work, accumulated knowledge combined with the sense of community this industry enjoys has allowed what began as nothing in the early 1990s to be a multi billion dollar industry today. Many of us make our entire living in Affiliate Marketing. A greater number are building their own business to sustain themselves or are involved to bring in a few extra dollars each month. All because the Performance Marketing industry as a whole has not had to learn about using incentives to motivate individual marketers to attain ever higher levels of performance and efficiency. We have never had to do a complete regroup and re engineering because the basic principles were already well known and practiced for three hundred plus years before Affiliate Marketing as we know it ever existed.
Bradford wrote of the Pilgrims new found prosperity, ‘This had very good success, for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.‘
We are all thankful for many things. For our families, our children, our friends, country, and that we are free to pursue our businesses as we see fit. That we are measured for our performance and rewarded in kind.
All rooted in the original example where the Pilgrims, led by William Bradford, reformed their system and got rid of the communal teet and started what was essentially free market capitalism, they produced more than they could possibly consume, and they invited the Indians to dinner, to show how their lessons were applied by the Pilgrims and producing enough for all to share as they gave thanks.
And so today we all give thanks for all we have. For our families. For our friends. For the unique opportunity we are privileged to enjoy as members of the Affiliate Marketing Community.
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