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Affiliate Sales vs. Network Marketing: Which Is Best For You?

Guest post by: Bruce Wood

Article Overview: Choices for making money online include affiliate marketing, network marketing and plain old direct marketing. At one point, I tried them all... and had to defend my choices.

Affiliate Sales vs. Network Marketing: Which Is Best For You?

When you first started looking online for ways to make money, what did you find? Was it ebay or some other direct marketing site where you could sell things and hopefully get a profit? Or did you find affiliate sales programs where you could sell someone else's product and get a commission? Or were you drawn to network marketing programs where you could build a sales team and get a piece of everyone's sales? My experience here may surprise you.

Before I even turned on my computer, I had made up my mind that the only thing out there was ebay-type sales. Mass-marketing. That style of direct sales was totally easy to understand. After all, I had been shopping all my life! I understood that the merchant's job was to find and stock products, and my job as a consumer was to buy them, and pay a higher price than the merchant did. The profit on the sale was a simple concept. So I spent hours and days and weeks trying to figure out what I could buy wholesale and sell online at a profit. That's when my search took a twist.

I felt stuck. Everything I found either had too much competition online already, or else I just couldn't see how I'd generate thousands of sales to make money on a product with only a tiny profit on each sale. So what was going to be the solution?

A friend of mine had started working with a network marketing company, and showed me how that industry worked. She was selling stuff that had high quality, some brand recognition, and didn't have a lot of competition. "So why aren't you rich?" I asked.

You should have seen the look on her face. I got an earful of how the markup on each sale she made was only a few dollars, but she'd soon be making money not only from her personal sales, but she'd get an override on the sales of every new salesperson she got working for the company. It made sense, until...

As you can guess, I signed up and tried it. Sales were a lot harder than I thought. Even though the company gave me a web site, it was really difficult to get new prospects to go to it. I soon found that the only sales I was making were to people I knew personally - not a single one from the internet! My hopes of an internet-based business were dashed. But there was a bright side.

All my efforts to sell online actually exposed me to a world of sales I never envisioned. I think it's comparable to being a "door-to-door" salesman (except the doors are all online.) To start in that industry I had to buy my "sales kit" but the investment was small. And when I made a sale, the profits were about a thousand times bigger than a sale in my network marketing company. Why?

This was the hook. Profits. And an endless supply of product to sell without me having to stock them and pay for them in advance. And no sales- teams to build. (I really liked that aspect). And because the profits weren't all being shared among a team, there was a whole lot more going to the one who made the sale. So who are they and how do they do it?

People who work in this industry were called "Affiliates" instead of "salespeople" and what they do is (duh) sell stuff for a company, and get commissions for doing it. They accomplished this amazing feat by a variety of straight-forward means, which mostly come under the heading of advertising. Advertising, as you know, is nowhere near as mysterious as marketing (which often seems like complex magic.) Affiliate sales were attractive for another reason, too.

Affiliate commissions can be HUGE. And the idea of not having to make thousands of sales, like in network marketing or mass-marketing (small profits) made immediate sense. At least it made sense to me...

When I told my network marketing sponsor (remember her?) about what I discovered, I thought she was going to blow up. Well, as I said, this made sense to me - but it didn't make any sense to her.

She reminded me about all the money we were going to make sometime in the future, and how network marketing would keep paying us on our team's efforts long after we stopped selling things ourselves. It would be sweet. Hmmm.

Well, so far I hadn't seen the "team" residual money she kept harping about. But what became obvious -- when she finally stopped quietly reading me the riot act -- was that we'd be parting ways. The lesson from all this is simply that no one form of online sales will meet everyone's needs and expectations. So here's what I found.

Mass marketing and eBay-style sales may be great if you can figure out how to get and sell tons of stuff. Network marketing might be for you if you can figure out how to get lots of people to sell along with you. And affiliate sales may be your ticket if, like me, you'd rather get bigger (up-front) profits for your marketing efforts, and not have to build a team.

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Article Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Direct Sales, make money online, Network Marketing



Related Forum Posts
Re: Affiliate Marketing - Open for Discussion - Carol, Mary and David - thanks for your great input and insight on Affiliate Marketing! This is the kind of discussion I was hoping for in this thread. There are pros and cons to Affiliate Marketing, just as there are to any business. As has been suggested, he best policy is to proceed with caution and do some research before jumping in. As Carol has recommended, this topic thread in the EvanCarmichael.com forum is the ideal place to ask questions and seek further input on available Affiliate Marketing programs. If a person is serious about building an online business and is interested in Affiliate Marketing plans, they should approach the process as they would any other form of business. Research, ask questions, compare opportunities, participate in forums on online business and Affiliate Marketing. GT :-]
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...
Re: Affiliate Marketing - Open for Discussion - Hi GT Affiliate Marketing is one of the easier ways to get started making money online, but it does take quite a bit of work before you see any great results as you have to keep promoting constantly. It does teach you one hell of a lot about all aspects of Internet Marketing though as you will need to learn how to write and submit articles, create and maintain a blog, social networking is a great help to affiliates too..the list goes on and on. In fact from what you learn from Affiliate Marketing you can apply to any niche and be sure to succeed, take care, Carol
Re: Affiliate Marketing - Open for Discussion - You made some very good points here Jeff and I agree with you, Affiliate Marketing should not be something that you concentrate all your efforts into. As i said earlier I have learned a lot with Affiliate Marketing and continue to do so, and it has helped me tremendously to understand what I am going to have to do in my chosen niche(s). I am also being coached by the same group of mentors as GT and we are all moving forward daily to achieve our ultimate goals. Take care, Carol


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