The Pros and Cons of Affiliate Marketing

One of my favorite ways to earn an income online is Affiliate Marketing. The main reason I said this is because the start-up costs of starting in this business are relatively low and the rewards are great.

If you are looking to get into affiliate marketing, you should understand both the pros and cons of this business model.

In this article, we will discuss both, so that you can decide for yourself if affiliate marketing is for you or not.

The Pros of Affiliate Marketing

#1. The investment to start is very small
To get started with affiliate marketing you don’t need to invest much. You can start promoting products on YouTube or other social media platforms for free. For the cost of a domain name and hosting to build your website, you’re looking at just $100 to start your online business.

That’s way cheaper than any other business start-up cost I can think of. Plus, in this business don’t need employees, a location, utility bills, etc. All you need is your laptop and an internet connection.

#2. Easy To Set Up
After you decide what niche you want to get into and set up your website, you just have to sign up into one or more affiliate programs related to your niche, for example, Softwares or online courses. Then you simply have to grab your affiliate links and share them on your website, social media and other places of the internet. Of course, there is much more to this, tactics, hard work, mindset, knowledge, etc. But that is essentially all affiliate marketing is.

#3. Little to no Experience Required
You don’t need to be an expert programmer, copywriter and you don’t need tons of experience doing digital advertisement to do affiliate marketing. There are plenty of resources online to help you grow and learn.

You can learn by watching YouTube videos or you can also look for paid courses, which I recommend you to do, if you have the budget, mainly because inside online courses everything is more structured and they will help you achieve your goals faster. If you are familiar with a certain subject and can find an affiliate program for it, like for example tennis, then you can consider yourself an expert in that field.

You simply just talk about your niche and provide affiliate links for products that will help out your readers. If you provide value, the money will come.

#4. Passive Income
This is what I like the most about affiliate marketing. There is nothing like waking up in the morning and checking your phone to see how much money you have made in your sleep.

This is a long term game and as long as you keep maintaining your website or blog, your affiliate marketing site should pay off for years to come. Keep in mind some things trend, so whatever you are promoting could drop off but if you choose your niche and programs to promote wisely you could have passive income coming in for a long time.

#5. Flexibility
There are no limits to what you can promote. It can be anything from physical goods on Amazon to online education products. If there is a niche you are interested in and want to know if an affiliate product exists for it, just go in Google and type “Your Niche” + Affiliate Product.

#6 You Don’t Need to Create a Product
Creating your own product can take a lot of effort and investment of time and money. That’s why I love affiliate marketing because the product is done and tested in the market already. You just have to find the people that are interested in buying it.

#7 Scalable
When you find a product or products that are doing well, you can scale them successfully by incorporating other different advertising strategies. If you do it well it can blow up and you can make tons of sales!

The Cons of Affiliate Marketing

Here are some of the cons of affiliate marketing that you should be aware of.

#1. Loss of Control
Since you are not the owner or creator of the product, the affiliate can cancel the offer at any time. They could also change the commission structure or simply just go out of business. That’s why it is so important for you to build online assets like an email or a social media following for example. By doing this you can always find a substitute for that product and change your offer with another.

#2. Payment Delays
This factor depends on the company or product you are promoting. While some affiliates may pay you weekly, in some cases you’ll need to wait a month or more before you receive payment. This is because a lot of offers may have a 30-day money-back guarantee. This could be an inconvenience for some but, understandably, companies have this type of policy.

#3. Hard Work
If you don’t mind working hard, having a long term mindset and also getting out of your comfort zone, this should not be a problem for you. Your efforts will pay off sooner or later if you stick to your plan. Affiliate marketing although a simple concept does require you to put your time in for gaining the knowledge, research good products to promote and your plan of attack. After that, you will have to start executing and with time and experience things then become easier.

There you have it, those are the pros and cons of affiliate marketing. I hope you can now see and have a better understanding of how this business model works and also why it is especially great if you are planning to start your making money online journey!