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Back in 1999 I founded affiliates4u to facilitate relationships between members of the affiliate marketing community.  A community which helped shape the industry in a positive light.

Starting like many affiliates at home, by building a vast array of websites in sectors including gaming, finance and retail, I partnered with a number of freelancers which help to build value –add websites, often working through the night whilst juggling jobs, ranging from customer service at Orange to the local abattoir!

My work included organically listed SEO driven websites which were listed well within both Google and MSN search engines. We were once listed no.1 for the terms ‘shopping’ ‘loans’ ‘flights’ ‘computers’ and ‘finance’.

Through partnerships with those who complemented my skills we also developed in-house paid search technology to facilitate automated  Google Adwords activity way before the Google API was established.

After dabbling with consultancy for start-ups in Affiliate Marketing, where I helped establish the first dedicated telephone tracking solution to stop leakage in 2002 and driving affiliates sales for one business to over 70% I founded Existem Ltd in early 2003. By the end of that year we moved into serviced offices in central Bristol.

Here we developed more technology driven websites within the loyalty sector and have steadily and organically grown the team to eight in our Bristol office.

In 2006 we established our affiliate marketing agency, Existem Affiliate Management.  Later that year we partnered with Mark Russell and Bruce Clayton and still hold a good investment and involvement.

In 2007 we invested a six figure sum in the launch of a4uexpo.com,  Europes very own Affiliate Marketing Conference & Exhibition.  We still organise local networking events across the UK and Europe for the community, and look forward to exapnding these to Europe and possibly further afield.

As an entrepreneur and Managing Director I look after the talented team at existem who continue to develop value add websites, and are currently expanding our social networking sites across many niche verticals. 

Company: Existem Ltd

Matthew Wood has written 61 articles