There is no Dummies Guide to Affiliate Marketing. I know this because I frantically searched the Internet for one after my first day as an intern at CAKE. What was I getting myself into? My expectations for my experience this summer were to run a few social media projects and file papers at a marketing company that did something involving tracking internet ads. Instead, I was thrown headfirst into the fast-paced, exciting world of CAKE.

My first week, I realized that my Java skills from an intro computer science class were no match for the technical wizards who work here. Everyone quickly responds to even the most nitty-gritty of technical questions with confident ease and comfort with strings of acronyms and industry terms. They seemed to speak in a foreign language that they all understood and I didn’t. This was why I sought out the Dummies guide, in hopes that I would learn the difference between affiliates and advertisers, or what CPA, CPC, and CP-something-something all stood for.

Hands down, the best thing about CAKE is the laid-back environment created by the young, fun crowd here. Everyone has been really helpful in teaching me about this industry. They let me help with outreach calls, listen to demos, work on internal data management, get cupcakes delivered as birthday gifts, and much more. It’s a fun process, and I learn more and more every day with the help of my coworkers.

After a month of working here, I’ve gotten a lot better at understanding the CAKE software platform, and the industry talk feels less like a foreign language. I think a reason that no Dummies Guide to Affiliate Marketing exists is because it is far more rewarding to learn for yourself through experience and practice than to read all of the key words from a book. Working at CAKE is so much more meaningful than filing papers and making up witty tweets, and I am happy to be a part of it.