In
the next six days, I want to take you through a course title “Affiliate Program
Management.” It is a course that will give you a quick start guide to affiliate
marketing. Answers to the questions that could be bugging your mind, how to use
it and profit from it. So if you are ready, let's dive on.
An affiliate is quite similar to an
online sales agent. The duty of an
affiliate is to promote and sell
products from
vendors. Affiliates get paid
in commissions from each of the sale
made. It’s a low-cost business
that could bring big profit when done
the right way.
One of the many wonders of the
Internet business is that it allows
everyone to have the same opportunity
to succeed. Affiliate marketing is
one of those businesses. What sets a
successful online entrepreneur
apart from the rest is creativity and
skills.
This book will teach you how to
achieve success. It will explore
comprehensively on techniques that
you can add to your marketing
arsenal. You will be exposed to new
perspectives of this business and
you will learn what others had taken
years and bad experiences have
learned.
Anyone can be an affiliate. All you
need is just a computer with a decent
Internet connection, a little bit of
knowledge on IT, and you’re good to
go. But, of course, you’d want to
take this to the next level with this
course.
The Pros and Cons of Affiliate
Marketing
For those who are still
skeptical on affiliate marketing whether it’s still significant and
in demand or not, the
answer is yes.
It has gone through a lot
of changes the past few years, and it has gone through ups
and downs. Some methods and
some websites are now obsolete, consumed by time.
Essentially, it has
evolved. It will continue to evolve and it will continue to be
significant. It has proven
itself to be a big part of online marketing’s advancement.
Let’s address those doubts
that a newbie might still have for affiliate business here.
Affiliate marketing is
proven to be beneficial for all sides of all transactions. Here are
the pros and cons, for your
consideration.
Pros
For The Product Vendor
If you look at affiliate
marketing from the product vendor’s point of view, you’d see
that affiliate marketing is one fine deal. A vendor doesn’t have to pay any fees upfront
for the affiliates to start
promoting their product and also, the affiliates are paid based
on their performance.
So, a vendor doesn’t have
to worry about loss investment because if the affiliate
doesn’t perform, the vendor
doesn’t have to pay. As mentioned, the affiliate business
is commission-based.
And for little risk and
almost no expenditure, the affiliates are sent out to promote the
product. They work very hard at it, too, for
their own benefits.
For The Customer
The customer will get,
through an affiliate, a product that they’ve been searching for.
Remember, an affiliate will
go out of his way to sell a product, so they would usually
provide details on a
product for the customer’s benefits.
What successful affiliates
usually do is they provide a product review on their own
website to be read by the
customers. Here, all the functions, features, and also
weaknesses of the products
are addressed. This, of course, makes it easier for the
customer to know whether
this particular product is for them or not.
Some affiliates also
provide bonuses for the customer to purchase through them.
These bonuses are not an
intrinsic part of an affiliate business but those affiliates who
want to make big sales,
would do this. And, again, the customers get benefits from
this.
For The Affiliate
What the affiliate gains
from this business is, as mentioned, extra income for doing
something easy. And if it
were done right, affiliates would gain a lot more than just
‘extra income’. They could
run a profitable business by being an affiliate.
If the affiliate truly is
serious about the online business and they dedicate themselves
to it, they could learn to
maybe one day become product vendors themselves. This is
up to them, of course. They
could just remain an affiliate and just grow their own
reach if they choose to.
Cons
For The Product Vendor
Some affiliates, driven
solely by making sales, would use false advertising to sell their
products. They would sell
the product more than what it actually is or maybe they
promise things that the product can’t
deliver.
This is something that the
vendor doesn’t have full control of especially for products
or promotions where a large number of affiliates are involved. They can monitor the
advertising habits of the
affiliates but not all, unfortunately, as that would require a
large amount of energy.
When a customer is not
happy with the product that doesn’t deliver what it is falsely
promised, they would ask
for refunds. Having a lot of refunds will truly hurt the
business.
The damage done by false
advertising is much more menacing than just giving
refunds. The credibility of
the vendor will be impaired. Their name will be tainted and
they’ll be seen as
swindlers.
For The Affiliate
The swindling game can go
both ways. If an unfortunate affiliate were to take part in
a program with a dishonest
vendor, they will suffer losses.
These vendors would usually
start an affiliate program and send out affiliates to make
promotions and sales. Then,
after all is done, they close down their business leaving
the affiliates with no
commission for all the sales that were made.
It’s hard to identify these
dishonest vendors. It would require experience to know
them. This business must be
done with attentiveness and cautiousness to avoid this
kind of vendors.
Summary
There are pros and cons in
everything. And there will be dishonest people who take
advantages of a lucrative
and significant business such as the affiliate business.
These are the challenges
that we must face (or avoid, in the case of swindlers) to
achieve success. Even
though it’s a great way to gain extra income, it still is
hazardous. But for the
potential of this particular business, all the efforts are going to
be worth it. Look out for part 2 tomorrow,
don’t miss, have a good day…