OMG! Advantages And Disadvantages Of Affiliate Marketing

You’ve been hearing all the noise about affiliate marketing.

Suddenly you’re curious what the pros and cons are.

Today, you’ll learn the advantages and disadvantages of affiliate marketing. 

Let’s Dive in!

What Are The Advantages Of Affiliate Marketing?

Advantage #1 – Low Cost Entry

Unlike a brick and mortar business, it cost nearly nothing to get started with affiliate marketing. Therefore, you don’t need deep pockets to get started.

In some cases you don’t even need a website, and if you search well enough, you can find many free tools.

Either way, if you’re not camera shy, all you have to do is jump right on YouTube and start  sharing valuable information on your channel.

After that you’ll promote products within your niche that would be helpful to your audience. 

Advantage #2 – No Background Checks, Experience Or Interviews Required

Unlike a job where you may have to pass a credit check. Stress out over passing a background check. Sweat to death behind an interview. Or go into years worth of debt just to acquire a certain degree. 

Affiliate marketing doesn’t require any of the above.

Instead it can open plenty of opportunities for everyone. In fact it gives many people a chance to earn an income from home.

So, if you’ve ever struggled getting a job, or retaining a job.

Affiliate marketing is something that you could consider.

If fact, there are free affiliate marketing courses on YouTube that can help guide you.

Advantage #3 – Creating A Product Isn’t A Requirement

Instead of creating your own products, you can promote other people’s products while still earning money. 

By the way, this doesn’t mean that you can’t ever create your own product because, you certainly can if you’d like.

 It also means that if you never ever want to create your own product you do not have too.

Being an affiliate marketer or promoting other people’s products is all you ever have to ever do, if you choose too.  

Advantage #4 – Time, Boss, And Location Freedom

Instead of waking up every morning hitting the snooze button, you can call all the shots for everything. In fact, you work on your own terms.

There’s no certain time to report to a boss. You choose where you want to work.

You’ll be setting all the rules because you’ll be the one making your own work schedule.

If you want to take the day off, go ahead!

If you want to take a week or even a month off, you have that right too.

With affiliate marketing you’re considered self-employed so, you can choose what you want to work on, when you want to work on it, and how you would like to work on it because, you’re the boss.

Advantage #5 – Affiliate Marketing Can Be Passive

Did you know there’s a difference between active income and passive income? 

In simple terms, active income is where you’re trading your time for money. You show up, put the work in and get paid when the job is done. Rinse and repeat!

In fact, most people make an active income.

While Passive income is different. 

Let’s say that you start a blog, write tons of articles and months or even years later, those same articles start to generate you an income over and over again. 

For example, I’ve written an article almost 3 years ago. That article will still generate an income every now and then.

In other words, with active income you have to be present to earn an income.

While passive income you don’t. Regardless, if you worked that day or month, with passive income you’ll still get paid.

Advantage #6 – No Daycare Needed

For many mothers this is one of the biggest advantages. Affiliate marketing doesn’t require you to send your babies off to daycare. You can enjoy them, while you work because, you work on your own terms.

What do you think the biggest benefits of affiliate marketing is?

By the way, did you know some affiliate marketing programs, allow you to make money in their community.

What Are The Disadvantages Of Affiliate Marketing?

Disadvantage #1 – Affiliate Marketing Isn’t A Push Button System

You’ve probably come across Gurus who claim to be living the dotcom lifestyle, they’re working from their laptop on a beach, and driving fancy cars. 

They’ll make it seem like money is flowing right out of their computer and… right into their bank accounts.

That’s not entirely true!

Here me out...you can make a decent income with affiliate marketing. In fact, you can make a lot of money if you get really great at affiliate marketing but, it’s definitely not a push button system. 

Whether you run a blog, start a YouTube channel, or promote on social media.

It all requires a lot of hard work, refining,  and a ton of learning. 

Starting an affiliate blog is like a huge puzzle. Especially in the beginning. There’s so many pieces you must put together.

Such as finding low hanging keywords that’ll drive traffic to your blog. But before, you can find the keywords, you need to learn how to use a SEO tool.

Then you need to learn how to create engaging content, which takes hours to create in the first place.

Those same articles that you just created won’t be seen for months because you’ll be told that they’re Google sandboxed which hasn’t been 100% confirmed.

Disadvantage #2 – Self-Employment Can Be A Challenge For Some

If you’ve never worked for yourself, you’ll learn pretty quickly that Entrepreneurs work really hard. It takes a lot of adjusting and a ton of time. 

When you’re working for an employer, you show up, do the job and go home. In addition to this, all of your administrative work is planned and organized for you and not by you.

Your schedule automatically comes with work breaks.

You receive a paycheck on a set schedule or on a regular basis.

And if any training or development is needed, you are given coaching by your employer to help you improve in your career. 

However, with affiliate marketing it works totally differently.

You have to learn how to create your own schedule and stick with it. Plus, the majority of the time, there’s no real human interaction.

You’re the only human running the entire show, unless you learn to outsource.  

Furthermore, you’ll not only become the scheduler, you’re responsible for keeping track of your earnings, loss, and taxes. Therefore, you’re the director of payroll. 

And, in some cases when you learn to outsource, you’ll also have to learn how to hire and fire other people, which now means your Human Resources as well. 

Simply put, it’s a lot to learn on top of blogging, or whatever promotion channel you choose.

Disadvantage #3 – You Have No Control Over The Program Or Product

Since you don’t own the product, you won’t have control over it.

For example, if the creator changes the price of one of their products, you must go back and update every article that mentioned the old pricing which can be a huge pain.

Especially, if you mentioned the price of a product all over the place.

While, I’ve never experienced what I’m about to mention next but, I can only imagine if you have a YouTube channel or social media and the previous pricing was mentioned.

You’ll have to  update that information to reflect the proper information. In some cases, you may have to remove the entire video.

Another example of not having control is, the creator can forget to pay you commissions.

True story. I’ve had to remind a very successful creator to pay me for every single affiliate commission check that has been owed to me.

And, yes it sucks. At the same time, it could be worse because I at least get paid but, you may not be as lucky with all affiliate programs.

So, this could be a huge disadvantages of not owning your own product.

Last example of not having control is, I’ve seen many affiliate programs go away, get shut down by the government, or just simply go down hill.

In fact, a company called Success By Health was recently temporarily shut down by the FTC.

In many cases, people have lost money. I being one of them.

So, a good rule of them is to always promote products that have a great reputation and they have been around for a long time.

Frequently Asked Questions About The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Affiliate Marketing

Final Thought Of The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Affiliate Marketing

Today, many people are facing challenging situations. Some are losing their jobs, while others are swimming in debt.

Affiliate marketing does have some disadvantages but, I believe that the advantages outweigh the cons. 

You can set your own schedule, learn at your own pace, and it can help you pay down the overwhelming debt. You can set your own income limits.

The bottom line is, affiliate marketing can be a way to earn extra income.

I would recommend anyone to learn it, even if you have a career that you love because, it will help increase your bottom line.

What is holding you back from starting affiliate marketing? Let me know in the comments.