Advantages and Disadvantages of Affiliate Marketing

There are a lot of advantages to promoting affiliate programs. But there can also be some disadvantages. Let's look at a few of the benefits of affiliate marketing first:

1. It's easy and cheap to get started. It is free to sign up for most affiliate programs. (If it's not, take a much closer look at it). You don't have to have a website at the very beginning of your business, but the sooner you create one, the more successful you will be. Begin by rewriting the ads the program provides and submit them to related -subject newsletters.

2. It takes less time to market affiliate programs. When you are creating and selling your own product, there are many additional tasks you have to do in addition to advertising. There's product creation, setting up payment options, product delivery, customer service and setting up your own affiliate program. When you're promoting other people's products, that time can all be used for promotion tasks.

3. Starting your online business by promoting affiliate programs is a good way to learn about Internet marketing in general. Once you learn how to advertise affiliate

programs, you have a better idea of how to better advertise your own.

Now, I don't want to scare you with a lot of disadvantages to affiliate marketing, but there are some things you need to be aware of.

1. You make less money than if you sell your own product. You will never get 100% of the sales price of an ebook when you "sell" one. Some affiliate programs will only give you 5% commission. Not good! Look for affiliate programs that offer a commission of at least 25% - more if you can find them.

2. Long URLs. Unless you "mask" the URL that you are provided, you wil (not could - but will) lose some of your commissions. Sometimes that link will be broken when an email is sent out; other times, your commission will be "stolen" when someone replaces your affiliate ID with his/her own. Find some way to mask your links.

3. You must be more careful when writing or rewriting ads. Some affiliate program managers require you to submit your ads to them for approval.

4. There are affiliate companies that will cheat you. You make sales of their product and they take all the profits and close up shop - no forwarding address.

5. You have to wait for your money. More than likely you will have to wait a month, or even two, to get paid. Read your affiliate agreement so you aren't surprised when you're counting on a big affiliate check.

6. And last, but not least - you won't have your own list of subscribers. Unless you have your own website and newsletter, you won't achieve your true earning potential.

If you're going to depend on only affiliate marketing in your online business, you'll need to find creative ways to overcome the obstacles. Once you've found those, you'll be well on your way to success.