Until late 2009, Groupon was considered a massive failure. If you looked at their Alexa rankings before 2010, you would notice they had very little traffic.
Groupon owes a huge debt to affiliates.
And one important part of their strategy was to cut out the middle men, affiliate networks like Commission Junction and the Google Affiliate Network, which took huge cuts from the revenues generated.
Instead, Groupon focused on creating relationships directly with affiliates.
That’s why Groupon took off.
Great article, definitely tough to believe Groupon made it because of their affiliate program but it is possibly one of the strongest viral growth strategy used by Groupon.