Well, the short answer is NO – affiliate marketing is not a pyramid scheme.
First and foremost, let’s be clear on how affiliate marketing actually works and how pyramid marketing works.
In affiliate marketing, you’re helping a company, brand, or an individual sell their products or services from their website and you earn a commission on every purchase made through your marketing effort.
While, in a pyramid scheme or marketing, you make money by recruiting people into a company or business, and the more people that join the business through you, the more money you’ll earn.
So, affiliate marketing and a pyramid scheme don’t work the same.
Read on, to better understand your question.
Table of Contents
How Affiliate Marketing Different From A Pyramid Scheme
The main difference between affiliate marketing and pyramid marketing is that in affiliate marketing, there’s nothing like recruiting people to a company or business and earning commission on their sales. But rather you earn money simply by recommending real products or services to people.
But, in pyramid marketing, you only make money by referring people to join a certain business or company, and if they do join you earn money.
Most of the time, people that confuse affiliate marketing with pyramid scheme marketing, obviously know little or nothing about affiliate marketing, its benefits, and how it works.
What Affiliate Marketing And A Pyramid Scheme Have In Common
Wondering what are the similarities between affiliate marketing and pyramid marketing?
What affiliate marketing and pyramid scheme have in common is that they both require you to recruit someone for you to make money.
You can use the same marketing strategy to market anyone of them.
Also, in both marketing types, you’re promoting for others – you’re not the owner.
Why Affiliate Marketing Superior To Pyramid Marketing
Affiliate Marketing has a ton of benefits over pyramid marketing such as:
- You Earn Big Commission
- No Cost Of Joining Any Affiliate Programs
- No Stocking of inventory
- No need to recruit
- No Customer Services
- A wider selection of products. ETC.
Affiliate Marketing And How It Works
Affiliate Marketing
Here is a great definition I found online on what is affiliate marketing:
Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. Source
My definition:
Affiliate marketing is a process or a practice of marketing or selling other people’s products or services in exchange for a percentage of any sale that you make.
How Affiliate Marketing Works In A Simple Step.
This is how the whole concept of affiliate marketing works in 5 simple steps:
- You find a company and join.
- You select a product of your choice to promote.
- You’ll be given a unique link (the purpose of this link is to record and keep track of every customer you send and how many sales you have generated).
- You’ll then promote this link on your chosen platform (ideally, YouTube, blog, or social media).
- And when someone visits your link and makes a purchase, you get a percentage of the sale.
The reason why, nowadays, so many companies offer affiliate programs is that it’s less expensive than spending money on advertisement.
And the good side of affiliate marketing for people like you and I is that. We can make money with affiliate marketing without creating our own product.
You simply find other people’s products and promote them as your own.
Also, You don’t have to deal with customer support, refund, payment, and so on.
Finally, one exciting thing about affiliate marketing is that you can work anywhere around the world so far as you have a laptop and an internet connection.
- P.S. I wrote another article where I share with you in detail on what affiliate marketing is and how it works. Check it out!
Pyramid Marketing (scheme)And How It Works
What Is A Pyramid Scheme?
Here is a great definition I found online on what pyramid type of marketing is.
A pyramid scheme is a business model that recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying investments or sale of products. Source
My definition: A pyramid marketing or scheme is any type of business that goes on to expand as time goes on or as more people join and take the shape or structure of a triangle.
How Pyramid Marketing Works In A Nutshell.
The whole concept of pyramid marketing begins with one particular company or business and two people who want to make money online.
An offer is then made by the company to refer or get at least two people under you.
And for every successful member you refer into the system, there will be a commission earned.
And finally, for each additional person that your referral also brought into the system, that person gets to earn a commission.
And you also get a percentage of all the revenues they make as well.
Pros and Cons Of Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is proven to be one of the best and easiest ways of making money but it has ups and downs. And so do pyramid schemes as well.
No online business out there is guaranteed to be 100% perfect, they all have pros and cons. So, let’s take a look at some of them below.
Let’s start with…
Pros Of Affiliate Marketing?
- In affiliate marketing, the payment model is the same for everyone. No matter when you started, or who first introduced you to the business.
- You’re your own boss and every money you make belongs to you, even if you’re the last person to join the program.
- You have the potential to make as much income as you want as long as you know what you’re doing.
- Affiliate allows you to SCALE your income, without increasing the number of people within the company.
Cons Of Affiliate Marketing?
As affiliate marketing is rapidly growing, the competition level in the affiliate marketing industry is extremely high as more and more people are jumping into this industry.
There are hundreds and thousands of people promoting the same product as you, and it’s going to be very hard to succeed. The only way to win is to beat the competition.
Pros And Cons Of Pyramid Scheme Type Of Marketing
Pros Of Pyramid Marketing
- With a pyramid type of business, you only benefit if you have a lot of people under you.
Cons Of Pyramid Type Of Marketing
- Pyramid type of business is considered to be an illegal form of making money online and it costs money to start which you’ll probably not get back.
- A pyramid type of business has a ladder system where you only make more money if you’re the first person to join and recruit more members under you.
Which One Is Profitable? Affiliate Marketing Or Pyramid Marketing
Wondering, affiliate marketing vs pyramid scheme which one makes more money?
Definitely affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a real, legitimate online business that involves adding value to people’s life, selling products, and earning commission on every initial sale of a product.
You can make more money in affiliate marketing than in pyramid marketing.
One thing about a pyramid type of business is that a person who recruited you will probably earn more income than you.
However, affiliate marketing is a completely different thing altogether. In affiliate marketing, the affiliate (thus, the person promoting or marketing the product).
Get a full percentage of the sales of the product without sharing the profit with anybody.
Furthermore, in affiliate marketing, you can scale your income without increasing the number of people within the company or the business.
And you do this simply by selling different products to the same person over and over again as long as you have them on your email list and they are interested in the product.
But in a pyramid scheme, you can’t scale your income unless you recruit more and more people under you.
And the people under you also have to recruit more people under them before you can think of making any substantial income.
Also, another amazing thing about affiliate marketing is that most of the affiliate programs out there offer monthly recurring commissions.
Meaning, you simply refer a customer into the system and if they purchase the product or service.
You get paid a one-time commission and then a monthly recurring commission as long as your referral remains a paid member in the system.
But in other ways round. Thus, in a pyramid scheme, there is nothing like a recurring commission.
If you stop referring new members to the system, you income stope growing.
To Continue…
Another cool thing also about affiliate marketing is that – it can put you in a position where you get to earn money passively without putting in any active work.
How possible is that? Great question!
Typically affiliate marketing is done via blogs and YouTube.
These two platforms are search engines and people are constantly running searches on these platforms for information and product to buy.
You can create and post valuable content once and years later that content can keep generating tons of traffic into your business and offer.
And as you start to get those traffic on your content and offer, over time, you’ll probably start to generate sales on auto-pilot
(Only if you set up things correctly).
But in pyramid marketing, there’s nothing like that… Instead of them teaching you to do value-based marketing (content marketing).
And how to attract quality prospects.
They teach you to go and talk to your friends and family and get them to join you.
And for some, they teach you to join Facebook groups and start posting your opportunity link there, and someone might accidentally join you.
This sort of marketing technique puts a lot of people in a position whereby they struggle really hard to make it in a recruiting type of business.
Affiliate Marketing Vs Multi-Level-Marketing (MLM) The Same?
Affiliate marketing and MLM is also another argument that often takes place in this inustry.
To put it simply- affiliate marketing and MLM are not the same. The only connection between these two is that they both pay commissions for selling products and services.
In MLM you have to build a team or network because it involves direct selling but in affiliate marketing, there’s nothing like building a team or network because you only promote a product through an online platform, ideally YouTube, blogging, social media”
And you earn a commission whenever someone clicks on your link and purchases the product.
If you’re in the MLM business, a network is extremely important for your success. But in affiliate marketing, it is not necessary.
But, here’s my point, whether it is affiliate marketing or multi-level marketing, networking with other people is extremely important.
Why?
Because connecting with other people can literally help you grow your business and influence which will eventually help you make a bigger income in your business.
TAKE NOTE!..
“If you’re in any business and you’re not connecting with other people in your industry to see what’s working and what’s not working for them, you cannot achieve your desired goals, influence, and success”.
Wrapping up… In my opinion, I think both of these business models are amazing, however, it all depends on the one you want to go for.
But between these two I’ll recommend you go in for affiliate marketing.
Why?
Affiliate marketing beats all forms of online business models.
Because…
It’s a legitimate way to earn money online, it’s scalable and it can filthy make you rich if you put in the work, and time, and commit to learning all you can about it.
To learn more about affiliate marketing and how to build a profitable online business leveraging the power of affiliate marketing… Check out my Resource Page for my #1 recommended program.
Is Affiliate Marketing Legal?
“To put it simply – yes, affiliate marketing is absolutely 100% legal and a safe business model, that’s why almost every big company in the world offer affiliate programs. Companies like Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Apple, and so on have affiliate programs”.
Most of these companies use affiliate marketing to attract new potential customers and sell into their businesses.
And as an affiliate of these companies.
You’re then compensated by the company for selling their product, however, how you market the product would make a big difference in the eyes of people.
Whether affiliate marketing is legal or illegal.
That said, to avoid all that simply be real and don’t spam people with your affiliate link.
Try to be helpful by solving people’s problems and pain and at the cost of that you can then recommend them to your product.
Taking this approach is far better than spamming your link all across the internet… Online nobody wants to be sold to.
So, again be mindful of how you market your product.
FAQs!
Is It Hard To Make Money In Affiliate Marketing?
Yes, making money with affiliate marketing is really hard nowadays especially when you’re just starting out. There are so many people getting into affiliate marketing which makes it very saturated, however, that does not mean it is impossible to make money from it. If you’re willing to put in the necessary work and be patient, you’ll succeed.
Can You Become A Millionaire From Affiliate Marketing?
Yes, you can absolutely become a millionaire doing affiliate marketing but first and foremost, you need to understand it isn’t easy and takes time, effort, persistence, and a whole lot of sacrifice in the beginning (stern). And also, you need to focus on methods like SEO, content marketing, email marketing, influencer marketing, and some sort of paid advertisement.
Why Do Affiliate Marketers Fail?
“There are so many reasons why many people fail with affiliate marketing, one of the main reasons is that they focus on selling rather than providing value. In contrast, affiliate marketing is a value game in order to succeed at it you need to provide value. Another reason is that they approach affiliate marketing with the wrong mindset. They think getting into affiliate marketing, they’re going to make money overnight.
CONCLUSION!
So, to wrap up, is affiliate marketing a pyramid scheme?, the answer is A BIG NO, affiliate marketing is not a pyramid scheme nor is it a scam.
A lot of people don’t have any idea about affiliate marketing and they get confused and call it a pyramid scheme.
For some, they don’t know what it actually takes to succeed with affiliate marketing and when they’re not making any sales, they get frustrated and call it a scam.
Though there are a lot of scam programs out there, affiliate marketing still remains the best way to make money for anyone getting started online.
However, there’s more to affiliate marketing. “To be successful with affiliate marketing, you need to educate yourself and learn some skills such as content writing, email marketing, etc”.
Don’t just jump into it without first understanding the whole concept (what it is about, how it works, pros and cons, do’s and don’t, etc).
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