Is Affiliate Marketing And Blogging The Same? (Explained)

Affiliate marketing and blogging are just another way that you can earn a good income online.

Affiliate marketing is one of the best income sources for most bloggers and internet marketers. A lot of people are doing affiliate marketing with the help of a blog.

So – is affiliate marketing and blogging the same?

Affiliate marketing and blogging are completely different from each other. Though both are methods of making money online, they don’t work the same.

In comparison, Affiliate marketing involves promoting someone else’s product in exchange for a commission, while blogging involves writing or sharing your thoughts about a given subject or topic. The focus of a blog can be personal, informational, or even business-related.

How Affiliate Marketing And Blogging Are Different?

Affiliate marketing and blogging, both of them have their differences. 

The main difference between affiliate marketing and blogging is that affiliate marketing is a monetization medium or strategy.

In affiliate marketing, you recommend products or services as an affiliate through your blog or social media channels.

And when someone makes a purchase through your link, you earn a commission.

Blogging, on the other hand, is an online platform that is use to share articles, posts, or an opinion on a given topic, engage with an audience, or for promoting a product.

The primary purposes of blogging is to share your knowledge and experiences and build an online presence.

Affiliate Marketing Vs Blogging – What Are The Similarities?

Wondering what “blogging and affiliate marketing” have in common?

Affiliate marketing and blogging are two distinct marketing strategies but closely related concepts.

Let’s take a look at the similarities between the two.

• Affiliate marketing and blogging both are a method of making money online.
• Both work together – you can market your affiliate marketing with the help of a blog.
• Both of them have the potential of making you a good income when done right.
• Starting an affiliate marketing business and a blog is relatively easy.
• The skill set requires to work on both are mostly the same (creating content, driving traffic, marketing, etc).
• Both are operated through the Internet.

But apart from the above-mentioned, they differ from each other.

That said…

Let’s take a look at each of them and how they work.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a process, marketing method, or tactic that involves promoting a product or a service created by another person through a website or any online community and getting paid when people click and purchase the product through you.

Affiliate marketing allows one to earn significant income online by promoting other people’s products or services.

It is one of the best and most lucrative ways of earning an income online without naturally having to create your own product. 

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Well, the concept of how affiliate marketing works is simple:

1. Sellers create an affiliate program
2. You join as an affiliate marketer
3. As you join, you’re given a unique link that tracks and records any clicks and sales you generate for the company
4. Now, you promote that product via your chosen platform. Eg, social medial channels, a blog, emails, etc
5. And when your followers, subscribers, or audience clicks and buy the product through your link, you get a commission.
6. Affiliate marketing it’s a win-win situation for you and the product creator

P.S. I wrote another post where I go more into detail on what is affiliate marketing and how it works. Check it out.

Commission Model In Affiliate Marketing:

• Pay-Per-Sale: You get paid based on a percentage of the total sale of a product.
• Pay-Per-Lead: In this model, you get paid for generating leads (email addresses) for companies.
• Pay-Per-Click: Here, you get paid by a company whenever visitors click on their banner on your website and visit the company’s website.

P.S. You Can Learn More Here On: How Affiliates Get Paid

What Are The Benefits Of Affiliate Marketing?

There are so many benefits to affiliate marketing for both affiliate marketers and affiliate product creators.

Below are a few of them:

• It’s scalable
• Passive income
• No customer service and no shipping of the product
• Location freedom, you can work from the comfort of your own home
• You can make a lot of money from it
• Little or no initial start-up fee
• It’s low risk

What Are The Disadvantages Of Affiliate Marketing?

Just like any kind of business, affiliate marketing also has a downside. Below are a few of them:

• You don’t have control over the affiliate program you promote.
• You don’t have a say about the commission you should get paid.
• You can get scammed.
• No guarantee of revenue.

P.S. I wrote another post where I share with you how to make money off affiliate marketing the right way. Check it out!

With that being said, let’s take a look at what blogging is.

What Is Blogging?

Blogging is simply writing about a specific topic you’re knowledgeable about. It involves providing an answer to a query or question people are searching for online.

In order words!

It’s a place or platform where you express your knowledge about a given topic.

How Does Blogging Work?

Think of a person who is searching for how to lose weight. So, if you know about that. You can write a complete article about how to lose weight.

And when someone searches for that, your blog can show up.

Here’s how blogging works in a simple step:

1. Choose your blog niche and a domain name
2. Get your web host
3. Start creating your blog with WordPress
4. Pick a clean and simple theme and design your blog
5. Research and figure out what people are searching for that’s related to your niche
6. Write compelling content related to what people are searching

P.S. To learn more about blogging and also how to start a successful blog that earns money, check out this tutorial on how to start a blog.

How Do Blogs Make Money?

There are several ways that you can make money blogging such as:

• Ads
• Affiliate marketing
• Sponsored posts, etc

P.S. I wrote another article where I go into more detail on How blogs make money. Check it out!

What Are The Benefits Of Starting A Blog?

There are several benefits of starting a blog, below are a few of them:

• It gives you an online presence
• You get a chance to help people
• It helps you increase your income
• You build reputation
• It helps your business attract more audience, leads, and sales
• Blogging helps you build a personal brand and established yourself as an authority figure or expert in your chosen niche
• With blogging, you have full control over the content you produce and published on your blog

What Are The Disadvantages Of Blogging?

• It takes time to grow
• Blogging is time-consuming. It takes a ton of time and effort to create quality content
• You need to be consistent if you want to take your blog to the next level
• It’s not easy, it requires hard work and effort
• There’s no guarantee that your blog will succeed
• You have to learn a lot in order to grow your blog

Which One Is Better, Affiliate Marketing Or Blogging?

Well, affiliate marketing and blogging, both have their own benefits.

If you’re someone who is very good at writing quality and helpful content, well, I’d highly recommend you start a blog.

And as your blog is ready, you can place links to affiliate marketing products within your content.

And when your readers or visitors click on your affiliate links and buy the product, you get a commission.

You can also run advertisements on your blog. But blogging is a long-term strategy.

And you need to have high-quality and enough articles on your blog in order to make a handsome income from a blog.

But if you’re just looking for some quick cash then you should definitely start affiliate marketing.

With affiliate marketing, you can make money in a short period by running paid advertisements.

But whichever way, you want to pick one that you’re okay and passionate about.

That said, if you ask for my opinion, I’d recommend you start both.

• Recommended Reading: How To Write Money Making Affiliate Blog Post

Which Is Easier To Start, Affiliate Marketing Or Blogging?

Well, to be honest with you, both affiliate marketing and blogging are not easy. Both require time, hard work, and consistent effort in order to succeed at them.

However, if you’re willing to put in the necessary work, then I’d suggest you start both.

After trying both, you can decide which one best suits your effort.

IMPORTANT: When entering into any of them, take time to learn the process. Find someone who’s already successful with it and learn from them.

Which Is Best For A Beginner: Affiliate Marketing Or Blogging

Well, if you’re just starting out online, I’d recommend you should start affiliate marketing.

Why?

Because with affiliate marketing, you can make money in a short period, unlike blogging, which takes a lot of time and effort.

You can research affiliate programs related to your niche and choose a product that you think is going to help meet the needs of your audience.

And then use social media platforms like YouTube or Facebook, etc to promote it.

Or if you have the fund, you can make money with affiliate marketing in a short period of time by investing in paid advertising.

Running a paid advertising campaign is one of the best methods if you want to make money with affiliate marketing fast.

And in return, you can get targeted and high-quality traffic to your affiliate link and increase your affiliate sales.

But a blog is worth having if you’re trying to build a long-term online business with affiliate marketing.

Is Blogging A Lucrative Way To Generate Affiliate Sales

Well, the simple answer to that is yes.

Blogging is a great and effective way to do affiliate marketing because in affiliate marketing you need to drive potential customers to your link in order to make sales and a blog has the potential to attract high-quality traffic to your affiliate link.

Which can be converted into buyers over time especially if your blog provides relevant and helpful content and affiliate products.

That said.

To get the most out of affiliate marketing using a blog you need the following:

• Craft compelling content and place your affiliate in the part of your content that makes sense. 
• Don’t spam your audience with too many affiliate links
• Analysis what type of content your competitors are providing and try to add something unique and better to what they’re offering
• Genuinely help your audience by providing tons and tons of helpful content for free to build trust with them 

Also.

• You want to ask yourself what would make visitors read your content after stumbling on your blog.
• How much value will they get after consuming your content?
• How is your content going to help them solve their problem after reading it?

Focusing on what the readers’ intent is and addressing their problem.

Getting clicks on your affiliate will become easy and natural.

• PRO TIP:

It take a lot of time and hard work to get organic traffic to your blog so, be patient and focus more on creating helpful cintent which is SEO optimize.

Make your blog look like a real business, not just any normal blog. (have a nice and clean design on your blog, make your blog load fast, have an about me page, etc.

Also…

If your blog attracts a good number of visitors you’ll want to build an email list of those audiences by offering them free items on your blog.

And when you get them into your email list, now, you can market the product they’re interested in using email marketing over and over again until they’re ready to buy.

• Recommended Reading: Affiliate Marketing For Bloggers

Does Blogging Help Affiliate Marketing?

Certianly Yes, blogging help you drive traffic to your affiliate product and generate sales.

The thing is more than 90% of people, when they’re about to make a purchase decision, often run research online.

And this way, they’ll be searching for a review (blog posts) or some valuable answer about the affiliate product before taking any further steps.

And if you could help them by providing that answer in a blog post you could get them to click and buy the product through you.

So…

Blogging kind of helps you generate affiliate sales.

And more importantly, if your blog provides exactly what they want (honest review):

• They’ll probably buy the product through you
• They might share the blog with their friends who are in need of that

IMPORTANT: Walk them through step by step so they could make a purchase decision.

Does Blogging Make More Money Than Affiliate Marketing?

Well, in my opinion, if you want to make a significant income online both play a major role.

Blogging and affiliate marketing are combinations. A lot of bloggers actually make the most of their income through affiliate marketing.

However, if your goal is to make money through your blog without affiliate marketing (and thus through a displayed ads), you’ll need to get good traffic on your blog before you can earn a handsome income.

But with affiliate marketing, you don’t need millions of traffic to make a lot of money especially if you promote high-ticket affiliate products.

So, typically, you’ll make more money with affiliate marketing than a blog with ads on it.

• Recommended Reading: Is Affiliate Marketing Still Profitable For Bloggers

Is It Possible To Do Affiliate Marketing With A Free Blog?

Yes it is possible do affiliate marketing with a new blog but the downside of doing affiliate marketing on a free blog is people will not trust your blog so much.

And some free blog sites are not very keen on Affiliate marketing so you could work very hard and then your blog is deleted and you lose your revenue.

I think the best way to do affiliate marketing if you are serious about it, is to have your own domain and hosting. 

That way you are in control of your business and you can scale your business to the highest level.

I will also mention that some advertisers prefer websites that are self-hosted so you could lose out on business if you are working with a free blog.

Domains are not expensive anyway, it will cost roughly $10-20 a year, and hosting is $3 a month with Bluehost.

Source: Rose Mwandishi.

Do I Need A Blog To Do Affiliate Marketing?

The short answer is – no!

You don’t necessarily need a blog to do affiliate marketing or promote affiliate products or services.

You can set up a social media account or forum and promote your affiliate product there.

You can create a YouTube channel and create videos related to your niche or affiliate product and place your affiliate links in the description box below the video.

You can also run paid ads through Facebook ads or Google Adwords to promote your product (but only if you have the funds and have very good knowledge about it).

Why a very good knowledge?

Well, in order to run paid ads successfully requires good knowledge. Without that, you’re going to lose tons and tons of money.

NB: The above is the best way to do affiliate marketing if you don’t want to go through the hassle of writing blog articles.

But remember, you’re still going to write content before you can get affiliate sales. Take note of that!

• P.S. I wrote another article where I share with you some of the best ways to do affiliate marketing without a blog or website. Check it out

FAQs!

That’s It, Folks!

Wrapping it up: Affiliate marketing and blogging are different things altogether. However, if you’re a very good writer and know a little bit about marketing, I’d highly suggest you start affiliate marketing and blogging and earn with both.

Both have the power to earn you sustainable income in the long haul. 

Set up a blog and promote affiliate marketing products on it.

P.S. You can start your blog here. Within less than 30 minutes your blog will be up & running.

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