Affiliate Marketing is a very prosperous field but it to has its own concerns that are to be addressed properly before beginning your journey. In this post I have made a list of all the advantages(pros.) and disadvantages(cons.) that are associated with Affiliate Marketing. So go through them and determine for yourself if Affiliate Marketing is your kind of game or not.
FIRST THE PROS. (ADVANTAGES)
1. No Start-UP Costs – There is absolutely no start-up costs required in starting affiliate marketing – not even a penny. At least I and most other affiliate marketers have done it that way – no investment at all. Read my post – Make Money Promoting Affiliate Products Online to get further details.
2. Wide Range Of Products – You have a wide variety of products to choose from – physical or digital or services. In fact you have products to promote as affiliates virtually in any niche or category you can dream or think of. Normally you as an affiliate can earn commission when the person whom you have referred buys a product or service. But its interesting to note that you can also earn commission just for referring people to a site for free sign-ups or free downloads. The choice is really endless.
3. Many Networks and Companies – You can choose affiliate products from affiliate networks after signing up for free or you can choose to promote a particular company or its products by signing up directly as an affiliate with the company. There are hundreds of reputed affiliate networks like Clickbank, ShareASale, LinkShare, Commission Junction, Amazon, Ebay to name a few – to choose from. And there are thousands of companies who are eager to let you join as an affiliate. The bottom line is – no fear of losing job and can change networks, products and companies at will – complete freedom.
4. No Product Handling Headache – You as an affiliate is only required to presell (to create a good impression so that the deal converts) the product or service and refer the prospect to the merchant site – your work ends here. Shipping, product handling, collecting payments and everything else after this is either done by the affiliate networks or the companies. You just collect your commission when your prospect converts.
5. No Fixed Working Hours – You can work as little or as much as you want – you can even take breaks at will. You can also work at any time in 24hrs according to your convenience.Unlike the regular day jobs which runs on a fixed schedule. This is what I like the most.
6. No Fixed Work Place – You can do your work from anywhere provided you have an Internet connection and a computer – the whole world is your work place.
7. Part Time Work – You can take affiliate marketing as a part-time work also. This will let you keep your day job if you wish. Many online affiliate marketers work on a part-time basis till they start getting a decent income and then they quit their day job.
8. Record Maintenance – No need of maintaining any record from your side. All records like number of sells, commission earned, conversion rate, date of sell, source of reference, which keywords are sending traffic and etc are maintained by the affiliate network or company. After you sign up with a network or company as an affiliate a separate page is created for you which can be accessed anytime by signing in with your username and password to get all the details. So you are entitled to only promotion of the affiliate links and nothing else.
9. Multiple Sources – There is no restrictions on number and type of networks and companies that you can work with so giving you multiple sources of income streams.
10. Long Term Earnings – It does take time to set up promotion but once you set up a promotion campaign it is there to stay and give you long term benefits – earning revenue for you round the clock. This is normally true for most types of promotion campaigns set up but a few are of course time specific and expires after a particular time. Read – Make Money Online Promoting Affiliate Products to get details of the different ways used to promote affiliate products.
11. Prospects – Affiliate marketing is the single most preferred online source of income and has produced many millionaires till date. There is huge prospects of earning revenue if you can do it in the right way. Remarkably high commissions can be earned depending on the products or services that you choose to promote. Normally digital products can earn you a commission percentage of above 60% and in some cases even 80% – that amounts to $25 to $100 per sell or even more. Physical products have a low commission percentage but they have a high price so this compensates and they also earn you high commissions.
12. No Fuel Costs – There are absolutely no spending on conveyance because you can do affiliate marketing from the comforts of your home. Your Internet connection takes you to the prospects the world over to whom your are going to promote your products. So no greenhouse gases produced and no environmental pollution – this is for those who are concerned about global warming (even I am).
There are many other benefits or advantages or prospects or —– whatever you say but I have highlighted those which are the most important.
CONS. (DISADVANTAGES)
1. Hard Work – Yes! you really need very hard work to do. Fully depends upon your effort – the more effort you put in the right direction the more you earn and zero effort will give you absolutely zero earnings – no fixed salary or incentive. This is specially true in the starting as afterwards you also start getting benefits from your previous efforts.
2. Tough Competition – There is really tough competition in this field. It is quiet obvious that you are going to face tough or rather fierce competition from the affiliate marketers who are promoting the same products or even same or similar type of products. This is where your marketing skills will come into play – the more sharp or targeted your marketing skills are the more are your chances of winning the game. This is a field where everyone is on a level ground and nobody will even leave an inch of ground to his opponents – and no kind of reference whatsoever works over here.
3. Slow Start-up – Affiliate marketing takes time to get going and so is rather slow in start-up. This is because normally you will commit a lot of mistakes in your early starting days and will slowly learn from your mistakes and gradually refine your marketing skills which will let you get better response in course of time. But the fact is that most who come to this field expect success overnight which is not possible – so they quit. This is a field where persistence, patience and perseverance is required at the highest level – you can only succeed if you can hold on.
4. Fraud – You can be deprived of your hard earned commission also by the affiliate networks, companies or hackers. But this can be checked if before joining any affiliate networks or company you do a through investigation about them and go only with the reputed and old ones. Hackers can be kept away by selecting a difficult alphanumeric password and username. You must also check if the page you are entering your details has an address beginning with “https://” and also if the URL is OK to avoid fraud by hackers.
5. AdWords Expenses – Adwords can really cut your pocket wide open without giving you any results if not implemented properly. To avoid this go with free methods in the early stages and then slowly start off with AdWords with a limited budget in the beginning and gradually expand as you learn from your mistakes. Do proper keyword research and if possible buy some good ebooks on AdWords and learn before you apply. Read – Promote Affiliate Products With Adwords to get a bit more insight into the matter.
These are the concerns of affiliate marketing that are to be addressed properly.
Final Words – So you see that the advantages outweighs the disadvantages by a huge margin. The disadvantages that are there are just quiet normal as in all other businesses, online or offline. More importantly the negative aspects can be overcome with a preplanned approach. And ultimately if you can hang on and learn the tricks (which you can obviously learn with time) you will only stand to gain and nothing to lose in this field of affiliate marketing – testified as a proven system by the affiliate marketers who have become millionaires in this field.
