The Advantages & Disadvantage of Affiliate Marketing

May 1, 2008

What are the advantages to merchants, customers and to marketers of affiliate marketing? There are a great many advantages to all of the above.

Merchant advantage: Affiliate marketing offers the merchant a larger market to sell their products and services. More websites will naturally provide a merchant with more customers and will create more sales. This is particularly true if the sites are in niche marketing. Merchants look for affiliate sites where their merchandise is a good fit and where their target customers usually visit. Another advantage that a merchant can get from affiliate marketing is that they can gain more and more customers without spending valuable time in searching out for them. The banner ads on an affiliate website might draw interest and drive the visitor to click on their website. Also, different consumers coming from various websites can provide the merchant a good idea regarding consumer trends and demands.

Merchant Disadvantage: Sometimes, the merchant don’t plan very well their marketing tactics and they end paying too much to their affiliates and go bankrupty. For example; the hosting industry. Most of them pay the marketer $100 per sale but many times customers just buy 1 month which cost from $6 to $9 USD and the merchant pays the affiliate $100 for that.

Customer Advantage: The benefit that a customer could get out of affiliate marketing is obvious – they get an answer to their problem that they may not have found without the help of the affiliate’s website. That’s if, and only if the merchandise or service gives what it says it will.

Customer Disadvantage: As a customer you may find a website that is owned by a marketer which is greedy and is not honest. They just want to sell the product or service and they make you believe that this is the right product for you.

Affiliate Marketer Advantage: This kind of business has proved to be an easy way to create additional income for their website. The marketing banners that they stuffed under content help in making their site look good. And these banners may create instant sales from which they can get a commission.

Affiliate Marketer Disadvantage: Some merchants will be so greedy & unprofessional that they will scam some marketers or even count few commissions that the affiliate makes. You have to be very carefully to choose which merchant you will promote.

Above all, the affiliate can have extra income from his or her website without investing something in making his own product and without worrying about customer support, book keeping, and ecommerce. In affiliate marketing, the merchant handles it all. The affiliate just needs to promote and resell the product. If you really want to succeed into affiliate marketing as a marketer I will recommend to start your blog and make it an authority site in your niche, there are thousands of bloggers out there earning thousands each month through affiliate marketing. Choose the right blog hosting and you will be safe.