Advantages and Disadvantages of Affiliate Marketing Today lots of people are interested in starting their affiliate marketing business. Most of these people are either unemployed, tired of current stressing job or would like to be their own boss with this new business. Most of the people find a great business in affiliate marketing and vouch for the fact that this is really a life changing experience for them. However, as with any other business, there are few advantages and disadvantages of affiliate marketing. We are taking a close look at them below.
First let us start with key advantages of affiliate marketing:
1. No requirement of a website – Most of the affiliates simply send the generated traffic to the website of merchant for generating sales.
2. No need for a big money –In case you decide to make use of free methods for driving the traffic the affiliate website then you are starting without investing anything. You are not spending any money on making your sales page or for the creation of products. As merchant is handling the sales or customer support, so you need not worry on that count.
3. Minimal commitment- As there is no headache of packaging, shipping or delivering the products, you overall commitment is just minimal. Aside from this, there in no requirement for you to track the sales, hit on the websites and associated conversions.
4. Power to choose- You can choose the products you would want to promote for generating your commissions.
5. Affiliate programs are free – There is no sign up fee to join such affiliate programs so your start up cost is nil.
6. Own business- You own a business without investment. You are in fact your own boss with nobody to report to every day.
All this sound really great. Isn’t it? Well, let’s be realistic, as with any other business, there are few disadvantages of affiliate marketing as well. We are listing few of them.
1. Traffic generation – When you are in affiliate marketing, you will have to drive traffic to your affiliate web site for earning commissions. Now achieving this by using free methods is cumbersome and will take too much of your time. If you don’t have money to invest in your website, then you will have to invest your time to succeed.
2. Sharing your commission – In affiliate marketing, you will not get 100 % commission. This can be worrisome for many as they are putting in lots of efforts to get customers but will not get full benefits from the sale.
3. Fly by night operators – Sometimes few unworthy affiliate marketing companies close down their operations without taking affiliates into confidence or paying them commissions. As a result you will not earn any commissions from your work.
