The Pros and Cons of Affiliate Marketing

This article is about the pros and cons of affiliate marketing and should help you decide if affiliate marketing is right for you at this time in your online business.

Pros

Affiliate marketing is usually a good fit for those new to Internet Marketing because it doesn’t require you to have a website. You can market through various methods and make money without having a website.

Besides that, you don’t have to know how to:

create a product
turn it into a PDF
FTP the PDF to your website
write a sales page
use an autoresponder and send emails (although recommended)
create a squeeze page
start a list (although recommended)

Another thing to consider is you may not have to worry about how to promote the product as there may be affiliate tools such as blog posts, articles, product reviews, ad samples, keywords, banners, text links, and more available from the product owner.

In addition, you can start making money faster because you don’t spend your time on product creation.  It’s already been created and you can start marketing it immediately.

A big one for the pro list is affiliate marketing doesn’t require a lot of cash outlay.  You can even start with a free blog and do free article marketing to promote the product.
 

Cons

You have no control over what can be done with the product.  You do not own the product so you cannot offer it as a bonus to another product or bundle it together with other products.  It is not your virtual real estate to do with what you want.

You cannot control the price of the product.  If you created the product you could offer discounts or sales, but not if it’s an affiliate product.  Also, sometimes the feel the price is too high or too cheap but you can’t change it.

You also cannot change the product in any way.  This is bad news if you feel the product is good but could be great if such and such were done to it.  You’re itching to get your hands on it and add value, but you have to leave it as is.

Typically, you’d make more money if you created your own products.  They become your VRE and can be leveraged in a myriad of ways.  Your own product would also help you brand yourself as an expert in the field, which would help you go a long way in selling your current and future products.

If any of the cons bug you too much, you have two choices:  move on to another product and see if it’s a better fit for you, or create your own product so you can have carte blanche.  Otherwise, look at both the pros and cons and determine if you want to go after the affiliate bucks.