Highs and Lows of E-Commerce Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing programs are always very handy to promote e-commerce businesses. Technically, affiliate marketing is a unique advertising model wherein independent marketers, also known as affiliates, earn a fixed commission every time someone makes a purchase using a unique link attached to the affiliate’s recommendation. It has become a lucrative business for content writers, bloggers, e-commerce store owners, advertising professionals and influencers, many of who earn passive income from the business as affiliates. Yes, affiliate marketing may be a very simple business model that is performance-based but it has its highs and lows as well as benefits and drawbacks.

Here are some Highs and Lows of e-commerce affiliate marketing you must passionately take into account if you want do well in the business.

Highs of E-Commerce Affiliate Marketing

Low Cost to Start and Minimal Investment to Operate

One of the major attractions of affiliate marketing is the considerable low cost involved in starting and running the business. Affiliate marketers are spared the huge costs of paying overhead expenses like rent and utilities as well as operating expenses, such as labor costs and machinery/equipment costs. They only need minimal costs to set up their affiliate websites and keep it running. It simply requires very low investment to get a stable internet connection, website hosting and domain, and subscription. This applies only to affiliate marketers who choose to have their own websites. Others who don’t want their own websites can simply join a reputable affiliate marketing program like Strong Future International, SFI for FREE and they’re in business using the free website allocated to them by the host affiliate SFI program.

Flexible and Convenient to Operate

Every business always aims to get more business, increase sales and profits. Affiliate marketing business is no exception. Affiliate marketers can directly increase sales on the products they are marketing by running multiple campaigns on various websites to promote their affiliate links. By doing this, they can always optimize the links that are performing well and discard those performing below par. That requires a lot of flexibility. That is why they can easily promote various products within a niche or even in related niches and without any limitations to any specific affiliate marketing program. The icing on the cake is that affiliate marketers can choose to work remotely, anywhere they like and at their own convenience to consistently promote products and earn good commissions. For so long as they have unlimited access to a laptop/smartphone and internet connectivity, they can work from home or anywhere else in the world. That’s ultimate business flexibility no doubt.

A Convenient Additional Income Stream

For people needing a side hustle or to simply explore a second income opportunity, affiliate marketing is it. Having more than one income stream has become a very smart survival strategy in today’s uncertain times. Affiliate marketing cannot stand in the way of your 9-5 job if you have one. At your convenience and outside your office hours, you can go online, promote products, source buyers, make sales and earn commissions while drinking coffee on your dining table at home. The more efforts you put into your promotional activities, the more sales you generate. That ultimately helps to enhance your commissions earning capability.

Lows of E-Commerce Affiliate Marketing

No Permanent Customer Base

Every business owner craves a solid and dependable customer base to grow their business, but not so with affiliate marketing business. Affiliates are always in search of customers; all without a guarantee these customers will be loyal customers who can be relied on to always buy using the affiliate links the affiliate marketer is promoting. Because of this, affiliates usually don’t have a permanent customer base. That is why affiliates must as a matter of business survival always strive to improve their marketing tactics. When they do, it helps them to boost website traffic and get more people to click their links. But, because buyers have the option of buying elsewhere including even from physical stores instead of using an affiliate link to make a purchase, the customer base becomes extremely fluid and unreliable.

Requires a Lot of Time, Efforts and Patience

Technically, affiliate marketing is a business model that requires affiliates to be very patient if they want to get good results. To be a successful affiliate marketer therefore, you must be ready to put in a lot of efforts and be prepared to accept that it might take a while before good results start coming in. It takes time, patience and enormous planning and experimentation to try out different strategies and tactics to know which ones work best for the type of products you are promoting. This allows you to fine tune your marketing techniques to know which are best to use to enable you to earn more commissions.

Affiliate Programs are Outside Your Control

You may be having a successful affiliate marketing business of your own but the affiliate program you work with largely controls the business. Reputable affiliate programs like Strong Future International, SFI simply require that affiliates join their programs FREE and start promoting products right away. Affiliates mainly promote products at their own pace while other business services like product handling, commission assessment and payment and customer care are handled and controlled by the affiliate program. If you sign up for SFI affiliate program as an affiliate, you’re expected to abide by all the rules of the program. Affiliates are therefore not very much in control of the business outside their promotional activities which are even regulated by the affiliate program. It is only the affiliate program that can decide on and implement changes in the program. These changes include how commissions are paid, percentages of commissions, and the frequency of commission payment and so on.

Last Line

If your affiliate marketing business gets off the ground, the commission can become a reliable second income stream. You can even have a dependable passive income from it in the long term. That is inspite of the foregoing lows of the business. If you are involved in affiliate marketing right now, instead of allowing the lows to slow you down, you can always find your way around them and allow the highs to keep you going. That is the way of successful affiliate marketing business.