The Difference Between Affiliate Marketing And Multi-Level Marketing

by Wesley Anderson You Are Not Allowed To Be Scammed

Affiliate marketing has been around for as long as the internet pretty much and you can believe that it will not go anywhere anytime soon. I think affiliate marketing is one off the most efficient ways to make money on the internet. You don't have to pay anything to join the programs and you can maximize on your profits by either paying for advertising or using free methods of advertising on the internet to reach the market the program is catered to.

Sometimes people do get affiliate marketing mixed up with network marketing because the similarities are pretty close. Now the biggest difference with affiliate marketing is the method of payment. You are getting paid by some sort of transaction whether it be per sale or per action.

You don't have to sign up people to the program necessarily to get paid, but you may be able to sign up people into the program and get paid when they make a transaction. Now the closest thing that maybe related to Multi-Level Marketing is the affiliate sign up matrix. Some programs may only have a two-tier sign up program and others may enable you sign up and maximize on more people you sign up to the program. In addition to this, there are programs that don't have an affiliate sign up feature, only sales. That's rare though. You might see something like this with companies like Wal-Mart or Amazon.

Affiliate Marketing is a great way to make money. It's best that you set up a website and/or a blog to feature the product, or industry category the affiliate site is under.

Multi-Level Marketing or Network Marketing has been around for God knows how long. Before the internet and Network Marketing was the Affiliate Marketing of the offline world. All you had to do was get approached by a family member or a friend, invite you to a meeting or a presentation at your house and then just sign up and do the same thing for your friends and family.

Now as far as its differences, there are plenty. First you have the compensation. You have so much more leverage of making money with Affiliate Marketing because you are selling a product and you can sign people up as well. With Network Marketing, your main source of income is the amount of people you can sign up in order for you to make passive income.

It's rare that you find Network Marketing programs that enable you to sell products to make some money. Typically you have to sign up people in order to make the big bucks or a buck period.

Most people refer Network Marketing as a pyramid scheme and they are very accurate about that. The success of the program is derived upon the fact that people are paying to join these programs regardless if its case autoship or if they tell you that you have to pay for the "application" fee to join in. Either way you are paying and you are contributing to someone else's commissions but I digress.

Of course you will need to make a determination of whether or not you are best fit as an affiliate marketer or as a downline in an MLM program. You would need to make a decision on preference and what you are comfortable and familiar with.