Taking the step to increase a company’s network.. Amazon!
Companies in the 21st century are taking advantage of Graph and Network theory. Some powerful developments, like the referral or associate systems allow large companies to increase their incomes by following Networking theories. For instance, the Amazon Associates program, which is a largely network based program, pays individuals for not only advertising
their website, but also for selling products themselves. However, not selling products directly, but by simply linking the url location of merchandise to potential buyers. The linker gets a % of the profit (usually small) that amazon usually makes off sales. While this may seem like a waste of money for Amazon at first glance, Amazon has not only been becoming more popular from this program, but also increasing its wealth. Which means, they’ve applied the necessary mathematics and graph theory in the system to ensure payoffs. The benefits of this to Amazon can be explained via graph theory. Without the associate or referral program, the graph, with perhaps millions of nodes where each node represents a buyer, wouldn’t be as distributed.
There are parts of the graph that are more concentrated than others. In fact, Amazon’s buyer graph will likely never reach remote regions of the Earth (3rd world countries, secluded villages, etc), even if they were to spend more on advertising since there will still be zero demand ( individuals of poor countries cannot afford such products). With the referral or associates program, people who already use amazon will be able to increase Amazon’s total buyers if they advertise to an individual new to Amazon. However total buyers isn’t the main focus. Rather, it’s the people that already know about amazon. The referral or associate users will be able to show them deals they likely would not have seen or heard about. Thus, nodes NEAR the heavily clustered areas start appearing, making the graph more and more uniform. Obviously, the company’s goal is to have everyone in the world purchasing from them. As we already explained, this is not possible, so the carrying capacity is of course those who are able to purchase from Amazon.
Around the web there are stories of individuals reaching over 6 figures from working with the associate program. While not everyone (or most people) can expect to reach such sums, maybe a nice watch or pair of shoes can come about.
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/operating/advertisingfees
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/main.html?ie=UTF8&pf_rd_i=assoc_footer_content_newlogin&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=&pf_rd_r=&pf_rd_s=assoc-center-1&pf_rd_t=501&ref_=amb_link_359035362_4