Affiliate Marketing VS Network Marketing – Is Network Or Affiliate Marketing Better?
Almost everyone at some point in their life is looking to earn more money, and most people crave that even more today because of the new digital age. Therefore, we are happy to explain the difference between affiliate marketing VS network marketing.
Over the years, both of theses industries have created many millionaires, catapulting some of the largest companies in the world into the spotlight. This is why you might turn to affiliate marketing or network marketing to do the same.
Because we have spent the last couple years going through a major epidemic, more than ever, people are turning to the internet for solutions to their money problems.
We have many years of experience, working within the affiliate marketing and network marketing niche.
Our advice should help you decide which area will work best for you!
Difference Between Affiliate Marketing And Network Marketing
Although affiliate marketing and network marketing are both based on referring sales to other businesses, there are core differences between affiliate marketing vs network marketing.
Many people get confused between network marketing and affiliate marketing.
Like people who are promoting business opportunities online, think they are doing affiliate marketing, but in reality they are doing network marketing, because they are recruiting people to join a biz opp.
So it is important for you to weigh the pros and cons of each industry, so you can make an informed decision on which model would be best for you.
We’re going to review these differences throughout the rest of this article so you can see the ways both of these marketing endeavors can make you money.
Affiliate Marketing Relies On Digital Advertising Methods
You’ll find that affiliate marketing uses the normal forms of digital advertising that are commonly practiced by all online businesses.
Because of this, you are in competition with other affiliate marketers and other businesses that do their own advertising.
There are marketing resources such as courses, software and tools that will aide you greatly in the sales process to help you stand out from the crowd. (each affiliate marketing program below is good to use)
In fact affiliates who use these resources always come out on top, compared to those who do not.
Some Common Resources Used In Affiliate Marketing are:
- ActiveCampaign is a complete CRM – This software allows you to automate much of the marketing and advertising process, including email marketing.
- YT Marketer is a YouTube course – Your going to need a way to generate traffic to the offers you are promoting, so you can generate leads and make sales.
- You could also buy quality traffic from a source like we use – Traffic Authority, or you could start a blog and go after organic search engine traffic.
- And of course you need products or services to sell to earn money from. You will need to find and join affiliate programs like the ones listed here.
- Learn and get access to 200+ hours of marketing courses through Marketing Mastery Elite.
There are proven ways to generate leads and make sales online, you can choose to do it your own way or do what works, it really is up to you.
Once you have some resources put together, you can start building an affiliate marketing business and generating income for yourself..
Regardless of industry or niche, the affiliate marketing resources we listed above will be exceedingly valuable to you.
Network Marketing Relies On Your Personal Network
You’ll find that with most network marketers, their business is grown differently than with affiliate marketing.
With network marketing, you’ll be depending on your personal network to refer people to invest in different products and services you’re offering.
Depending on how comfortable you are with selling your offer to people you personally know or are connected to – this could be something you may or may not be comfortable with.
This inconvenience is one of the main reasons why many entrepreneurs switch from network marketing (MLM) to affiliate marketing.
Often network marketers run out of any valuable network referrals (Warm Leads -People you know) who have interest in what they’re offering.
These network marketers then realize they need to use other digital marketing methods in order to attract more customers and refer more clients to the company they are associated with.
However, many large sized extremely profitable companies have been formed and grown through network marketing.
Companies like Herbalife, Amway, Avon, and others – depended entirely on network marketing for their growth and expansion into their marketplaces.
Many have grown into multi-billion dollar enterprises because of network marketing and are still thriving today.
What Is It Like Being An Affiliate?
Affiliate marketing is the ability to refer other companies customers, in return for a portion of the total sales generated, which is called a commission.
Affiliate marketing is based solely off of sales you generate for a company, not on recruiting people.
Affiliate marketing has been in existence and mainstream for well over 2 decades online.
Walmart, Amazon, Shopify, and thousands of smaller companies have even adopted the affiliate marketing model in order to expand their customer base of loyal buyers.
Almost every business online now has an affiliate program of some kind.
As the digital age keeps unfolding, more companies are turning to affiliate marketing, as having an army of affiliates promoting their products and services reduces their total advertising cost.
Companies using the affiliate marketing model, only pay once a sale has been referred to them, this has proven to be much more cost effective.
What Attracts People To Become An Affiliate Marketer?
Entrepreneurs, businesses, and more – like affiliate marketing for a few important reasons.
Here’s what sets affiliate marketing apart from other forms of marketing and business building:
- You don’t have to manage customer support
- You don’t to have handle shipping
- You don’t have to manage merchandise
- You don’t have to manage brand credibility
- You don’t have to manage the website
- Most affiliate programs are free to join
Because as an affiliate, your sole responsibility is learningto sell and market online, so you can generates affiliate sales on a daily basis. And that’s it!
Once you have a sales process in place, ads running traffic to that sales process, and you follow up with your leads that are generated…
That’s all there is to the affiliate marketing game! It’s a simple process that anyone can follow and learn.
How Does It Work?
The process of doing affiliate marketing and how it works is very simple.
- You find and locate affiliate programs you would like to join.
- Once you join a few you are interested in, log into the back office you will be provided.
- Then locate your marketing material and specialized links.
- Affiliate programs will provide you with some marketing material such as banners, text ads, social media post, etc. You also will be provided specialized links that will be tracked and coded to you.
- You will then devise a marketing strategy and use these links in the process. When you attract visitors to these links and they click on them and make a purchase through your links, you will make commissions.
You have affiliate offers that you simply drive people toin order to generate commissions.
You’ll find that it has many pros that running a traditional business doesn’t have.
Such as: you do not have to deal with the managing of employees, shipping, merchandise, customer service, you name it.
You now are just an affiliate, and you simply need to drive people to your links.
Some affiliate marketers do build out advertising, follow up, and sales process campaigns – but others simply drive organic traffic through Social media or YouTube to their affiliate links.
Affiliate marketing in essence, is the “lazy mans” marketing method.
What Is Network Marketing?
Network marketing or MLM, is the promotion of products or services through reaching out to your personal network in order to recruit others, the building of a team under you. It also is referred to as multi-level marketing.
Network marketing allows you to get paid on multiple levels of your teams sales. Each network marketing company has their own unique multi-tiered compensation plan.
Originally network marketing was done offline. The structure for recruiting people to invest in a product or service happened in person, and often in groups.
By having larger networked groups (an MLM), your ability to influence grows immensely.
Network marketing has been extremely successful for building large organizations and expanding customers bases quickly.
The biggest issues that come from network marketing, is the ability to keep recruiting others to continue your team’s growth.
Once you’ve gone through your own personal network (Warm Contacts), it’s difficult to expand and reach into others since they’re aren’t familiar with you.
The most successful network marketers are great at building rapport with complete strangers. (no, it’s not a pyramid scheme, it’s just an MLM)
How Does It Work?
- Getting started with Network marketing usually involves buying a membership, distributorship or starter kit of some kind. In this kit included is usually the product.
- Just like in joining a business opportunity online, usually there is an upfront fee to getting started, and in what you are buying to get started is the product.
- Then you simply start networking – reaching out to others to join you.
Network marketing works by having people reach out to their personal network to recruit and sell. ( Multi-level marketing (mlm)
Network marketing groups and organizations, grow as people in a compounding way, that continue reaching into the networks of others. This is the network marketing difference.
There is potential for exponential growth within what is really a multi-level marketing atmosphere, but it can be stagnated by people in the networks that don’t have much influence or contacts.
Lets imagine you have a personal network of 20 potential people who would be interested in your product line. Once you go through that network, where do you go next?
Who do you contact next? In this situation, you’ll need to be creative and start reaching out to each of those 20 people’s own networks, to continue expanding your team.
Often, people attempt to get their personal customers to become a distributor or seller of the product. This is called being a network marketing affiliate.
How Did It Get Started?
It all started with direct sales that eventually morphed into network marketing or multi-level marketing.
The direct sales industry has been around over 100 years, and truly got its start with the California Perfume Company that later on became Avon. They had 10,000 sales women in 1906.
In 1945, the California Vitamin Corporation known as Nutrilite created the first documented compensation plan that paid on more than one level.
The two top sellers for Nutrilite eventually decided to create their own network marketing company in 1959, called Amway.
This is the largest network marketing company still running today.
What Attracts People To This Kind Of Business?
There are some main factors that attract people to MLM or network marketing.
- Leverage through an MLM structure
- Residual income from a team
- Growth not dependent on you, because you built a team
- Multiple ways to earn commissions
- Lower entry cost than starting a traditional business
These highlights are really enticing for anyone wanting to have their own business and grow their income.
It can be very lucrative especially if you have a high influence, as this can grow your business very fast. (network marketing or mlm)
Can You Get Rich From Multi Level Marketing?
Absolutely, but not without hard work, dedication and personal growth.
You need to learn how to heavily influence and lead people, if you do not already possess these skills. Often, hand network marketing is done 1 on 1 so it takes commitment.
For some people this may take years just to develop right mindset and personality.
This is the main differences between those who are super successful with network marketing and those who barely earn anything.
You have to become a people person, and really enjoy working with and helping others in any multi-level marketing program.
Both affiliate marketing and MLM have created many millionaires and continue to do so..
Which Form Of Marketing Is Better?
After we’ve done both affiliate marketing and network marketing successfully for over 2 decades, we’ve made a decision on which form of marketing is more profitable for us.
Affiliate marketing seems to be the better business model to follow and use.
Affiliate marketing is more profitable, has a larger range of open opportunities, and it teaches you more of the business fundamentals that are necessary for scaling any business of any kind.
As well, affiliate marketing has less stigma around it.
Because often network marketing is associated with Multi-Level-Marketing, and the general public still doesn’t really understand what MLM is or how it actually works.
Because many people got burnt by the MLM industry and some companies that held bad practices – MLM and Network Marketing gets a bad reputation on some occasions. (Not that those forms of marketing deserve that bad reputation, because they don’t)
And hey, we are not bashing network marketing, because we still do it as well, and get paid every month from doing it.
We are just more focused now on affiliate marketing, and makes better sense for us.
Maybe you really are drawn to network marketing, either way you can be a success with either, as long as you do what it takes.
Final Verdict On Affiliate Marketing VS Network Marketing
It’s been a hard decision to make, but we find that affiliate marketing is often an easier, more profitable, and much more manageable business to thrive in. Network marketing does have its own benefits, but it just can’t compete with the usability and more popular affiliate marketing industry.
Home affiliate marketing has become a mainstream and a necessary building block that many businesses rely on to be mastered.
We recommend that before you start actively doing affiliate marketing (or even network marketing), that you learn more about how affiliate marketing works and discover if affiliate marketing is right for you.
We really hoped this article gave you some insights, and explained the difference between affiliate marketing and network marketing.
As always, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to post them in the comments section below or just say hello.
Sincerely,
Your Friends And Partners
Richard And John Weberg
