Affiliate Marketing Vs Content Marketing? The Difference And The Pros And Cons

Wondering what’re the differences between affiliate marketing vs content marketing?

Affiliate marketing and content marketing work seamlessly together but in a different aspect. However, when it comes to digital marketing they both play a very demanding role.

Affiliate marketing is when you earn a commission for promoting someone else’s product or service. Whereas content marketing is when you share valuable piece information to drive engagement, build brand awareness and increase sales, etc.

Continue reading, the following article provides more in-depth info regarding your question and many more.

With that being said, let’s dive in!

Affiliate Marketing VS Content Marketing: The Differences

Affiliate marketing Explained:

Affiliate marketing is commission base marketing, where you promote a product or service created by another individual and you get paid a percentage of what you sell.

The great thing about affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to come out with your own product or service.

That has been taken care of by the company – your job is to just market the product either on your blog, YouTube channel, or social media.

And if your audience clicks on your affiliate link and purchases the product you get paid money which is termed as commission.

• PS: I have another post where I share with you more in detail what affiliate marketing is and how it works.

Content Marketing Explained:

Content marketing is a marketing strategy with the purpose of sharing your thought or opinion about a given topic, product, or service. 

This marketing strategy focuses more on creating and distributing helpful information.

The information is created simply to engage with a target audience and convince them to take a certain action.

Or simply to keep customers interested in your brand.

That said, the content can be in a form of:

• Blog articles
• Videos
• Podcast
• Infographics
• Ebooks, etc

• PS: To learn more about content marketing, I wrote this article on what’s content in affiliate marketing and how to create content for affiliate marketing.

Pros And Cons Of Affiliate Marketing And Content Marketing

Affiliate marketing and content marketing, both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Let’s begin with affiliate marketing.

Pros And Cons Of Affiliate Marketing

There are tons of pros and cons of affiliate marketing below are a few of them.

Pros Of Affiliate Marketing:

1. You Don’t Have To Create Your Own Product Or Service. One amazing thing about affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to go through the hassle of creating the product or service yourself in order to make money. You can find a product created by another individual and promote it as your own and still earn a significant income.

2. You Don’t Need Any Technical Skills To Get Into Affiliate Marketing. You don’t need a degree, certificate, or any extra skills to get into affiliate marketing. Any skills required to succeed in affiliate marketing are freely available on the internet (YouTube channels, Blogs, Forums, etc.).

3. Little or No Up-Front Investment. Getting into affiliate marketing is absolutely free, in fact, most of the affiliate programs are free to join. Except if you want to build a website for your affiliate marketing and also want to take things to the next level that you have to invest money.

4. Huge Potential Earnings. Affiliate marketing when done correctly can make you a healthy income in the long run.

5. No Location Restriction. Unlike other traditional businesses which have a geographical barrier, with affiliate marketing, you can set up and run your own affiliate business no matter which part of the world you live in as long as you have a computer and an internet connection.

6. No Customer Service. As an affiliate marketer of a certain program or service, your job is to just market the product. You don’t have to worry about customer support, refunds, and the shipping of the product. That are all been taken care of by the product creator.

7. Freedom. You can work on your affiliate marketing any time you like.

Con Of Affiliate Marketing:

These are not exactly the disadvantages of affiliate marketing.

1. Affiliate Marketing Is A Long-Term Business Model. Making money off of affiliate marketing takes a very long time and a lot of energy. It can take 2-3 years to see any meaningful results with affiliate marketing. However, results might vary depending on your working ethics. 

2. It Depends On the High Amount Of Traffic. No matter what product or the kind of content you have on your website. You need high, relevant, and targeted traffic in order to make any affiliate sales. If you don’t get traffic to your affiliate link, you won’t make any money.

3. You Don’t Have Control Over The Product. The affiliate product you’re promoting is not your own. You don’t have a say about how much you should get paid and also the product creator can discontinue the product without informing you.

4. It’s Not A Get-A-Rich Quick Scheme. Many people approach affiliate marketing as a quick way of making money online. They think throwing their affiliate link on social media groups is going to result in tons of sales. Well, it’s not. You need the right strategy and the right mindset to win in this game of affiliate marketing.

Pros And Cons Of Content Marketing

There are many numerous benefits of content marketing, and below I share with you some of them.

Pros Of Content Marketing:

1. Content marketing is very essential as it helps build brand awareness and visibility. 
2. Producing high-quality content helps build trust and relationships with readers.
3. Content allows you to reach or connect with your ideal customers and if you fulfill their needs, interest, or desires.
4. It helps influence conversion rates.
5. Content allows you to increase ROI from your marketing efforts.
6.  It positions you as an expert, authority, and a go-to-person for advice in your industry.
7. Quality content improved your SEO ranking.

Cons Of Content Marketing:

I can’t see any downside to content marketing, however, the only thing is that it takes either time or money to produce quality content.

What Is A Good Content Marketing Strategy For Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a broad and very competitive industry, creating random content about affiliate marketing.

Or creating content just to sell affiliate products is not going to help especially if you’re just starting out.

Ideally, you want to find a sub-niche under affiliate marketing that you’re interested in or passionate about and create content around topics related to your niche.

Creating content around a sub-niche under affiliate marketing can do really well if you target specific keywords within that niche.

Here Are Some Best Affiliate Marketing Strategies You Can Utilize:

1. Pick a niche you’re interested in, passionate about, or have a little knowledge about so that you can be able to write good content around it.

2. Research and pick an affiliate product you believe in or have used before. Make sure the product is of good quality and will help add value to your customers’ lives.

3. Build a website and start publishing content related to your niche and affiliate product. 

4. Capture your readers’ email addresses and build an email list. Within your content, you don’t want to send people to a direct affiliate link. Rather, you want to send them to a landing page to first capture their email addresses before sending them to the product sales page. 

5. Leverage the power of email marketing. Understand that only a small % will buy from you the first time of seeing your offer, a large % won’t. So, after capturing your visitor’s email, you want to follow up with them and remarket that same product to them over and over again until they’re ready to buy it.

What Content Strategy Works Best For Selling Affiliate Products

How-to type of articles works perfectly well for promoting an affiliate product. However, if you want to take things to the next level, there are four main types of posts you should leverage.

• Best List-Type Of Post
• Product Review Post
• Comparison Post
• Product Resource Page

Let’s take a look at each of them individually:

• Best List-Type Of Post: This type of post focuses on promoting a product. It includes a list of recommended products. In this type of post, you’ll see things like eg, “best email software, best website hosting platform, etc.

• Review Post: This type of article focuses on a single product, where the writer shares his or her knowledge or experience about a particular product. This article helps people to make a buying decision, whether to buy the product or not. With this type of article, if you can provide an honest and detailed review about the product, chances are that your readers will likely click on your affiliate link and buy the product through you.

• Comparison Type Of Articles: In this type of post, you simply compare two products against each and share the pro and cons. Eg, iPhone vs. Samsung.

• Product Resource Page: You can create a particular page on your website where you share products or services in your niche that you believe in or have used before.

Conclusion!

There you have it folks on the differences between affiliate marketing vs content marketing.

As an online marketer, if you can create great, consistent, relevant, high-quality, and valuable content.

You’re bound to attract some really good affiliate companies that’d want to partner with you, like becoming an affiliate of their product.

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