The Advantages and Disadvantages of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a great business to start earning money online. This is a mutually beneficial partnership between merchants and website publishers where the publishers promote the merchants’ products and get commission. The amount earned may be based on per click (pay per click), per registration (pay per lead) or per sale (pay per sale). But, just like any other business, affiliate marketing has it’s own advantages and disadvantages.

The following are some advantages of affiliate marketing:

1. Through affiliate marketing, the merchants can sell their products to a larger number of customers. They do not have to spend time in searching for new prospects. It helps the merchants to open up new marketing channels.
2. For the merchants, affiliate marketing offers a very cost effective way to market their products and services. They have to pay the affiliates only when there is a sale or when a lead has been generated.
3. Affiliate marketing offers the website owners and publishers an easy way to earn money from their sites. All they have to do is to put some banners advertising the merchants’ products/ services, on their sites. They can earn a commission whenever somebody purchases something from there. So the only thing which the website owner has to do for earning money, is to drive traffic to his/her site.
4. Affiliate marketing business can be started with a very little investment. You have to spend money only for domain and hosting. At the beginning, you can use different free methods to promote your website. After you start earning money, different paid methods of advertising (such as PPC) may be used.
5. The affiliate marketer does not have to keep stock of goods or to worry about customer support, accounting or other e commerce related activities. These are all handled by the merchant. The affiliate only works as a commission agent.
6. Anybody having a computer with internet connection can work as an affiliate marketer. The affiliate marketer can either work part time ( and maintain his day job) or may work full time and become his own boss. He can work from his home.
7. You can earn money from affiliate marketing 24/7. Your affiliate website works for you even when you are sleeping.

The following are some disadvantages of affiliate marketing:

1. Sometimes link hijackers can hijack affiliate links and steal affiliate commissions.
2. Some dishonest merchants may promise to pay high commissions but subsequently reduce the commission rates. Sometimes they may even close down their programs without paying the affiliates.
3. To attract new customers, dishonest affiliates may make false and misleading claims about the products. In such cases, the merchant loses potential customers.

Now as you can see advantages of affiliate marketing are more important and the advantages, why don’t you think about starting to learn and enter the affiliate marketing world? If you are already an affiliate marketer, do you have any other advantage or disadvantages that you can share with us?

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