MLM vs Affiliate Marketing – Which’s Easier To Make Money?

Mlm vs affiliate marketing, which is easier or more profitable to make money?

These are the questions that I have been asked again and again over the years.

I have been doing both mlm and affiliate marketing. I can tell you that I am making money with both businesses.

I am much more successful with affiliate marketing than mlm. This, however, doesn’t mean affiliate marketing is better.

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MLM vs Affiliate Marketing

I am successful with mlm because I use affiliate marketing to build my mlm business.

I am successful in the affiliate marketing business because I use mlm to build an audience for my Blog.

You will be very successful if you learn how to use both mlm and affiliate marketing to build your business.

My ‘Guide To Make Money Online’ will offer a full picture of my business. You can use this guide to achieve your own financial success.

When comparing mlm vs affiliate marketing, you must understand the key difference between these two.

  • Mlm is considered a ‘Push Marketing’ techniques, but
  • Affiliate marketing is ‘Pull Marketing’ techniques.

This might be the first time you heard of the term ‘Push and Pull Marketing’.

Most bloggers online refer to mlm and affiliate marketing as two different businesses. The reality is that they are not businesses.

Affiliate marketing and mlm are marketing techniques that businesses use to promote and sell products or services.

If you understand the benefits of each marketing technique, you don’t need to wonder: ‘affiliate marketing vs mlm, what is better?

What Does MLM Mean?

Many of us recognize MLM to mean Multilevel Marketing. Network Marketing, referral marketing, or pyramid marketing.

It doesn’t matter which term you use to describe mlm, they all contain the word ‘Marketing’.

To me, mlm simply means a Face-To-Face marketing method that businesses use to create an independent sales team to sell products or services.

These sales teams are structured similarly to a pyramid or a network.

When I say this is a marketing technique or method, the natural question would be

How does mlm marketing work?

Mlm is a marketing strategy where a company compensates its sales force two ways:

  • Commissions on the sales of products, and
  • Commission on the sales of products that other salespeople, the downline, generated.

The key distinction between an mlm and a pyramid scheme, according to the FTC Guideline, is mlm always involving the sale of actual products or services. Where a pyramid scheme is a sale of membership in the organization.

To meet the legal requirement above, every mlm requires distributors to purchase a minimum amount of products every month to stay active or to receive commissions from downline.

This minimum monthly product purchase requirement is the bulk of the mlm company sales revenue. It also generates the most income for their distributors. I’ll explain more detail later.

In mlm marketing, the customers are given the opportunity to become a distributor. Often the startup costs are the costs to purchase products or services.

Now you have a basic understanding of mlm marketing, let talk about the process.

  • The process of mlm marketing starts with a meeting with the company’s distributor, sometimes referred to as the sponsor.
  • The distributor job is to sell you the products, as well as recruiting you to become a new distributor.
  • Recruiting you to join the mlm business is the primary objective of the sponsor.
  • Once you become a distributor, you must purchase the products regularly to stay active. This is ‘Push Marketing’ because customers/distributors are forced to purchase. Even if you don’t want or need the products.

This is how mlm marketing works.

What Does Affiliate Marketing Mean?

Affiliate marketing means using a marketing strategy where a business willing to pay a third-party, ‘an affiliate’, commissions for promoting or selling the business products or services.

Affiliate marketing involves two parties:

  • The businesses (advertisers) offer the commissions, and
  • The affiliates (publishers) agree to promote business products or services

So, how exactly does affiliate marketing work?

  • The affiliate marketing process begins with the advertiser desires to promote or sell products through an affiliate program.
  • The advertiser creates an affiliate program or hires a marketing agency to create and manage the affiliate marketing program on behalf of the merchant.
  • The agency announces the new affiliate program and invites affiliates (publishers) to promote the merchant products for commissions.
  • The affiliates registered to join the affiliate program and receive a unique affiliate code or link to promote the products.
  • The affiliates add the affiliate link into their marketing content to introduce the merchant’s products to their visitors or readers.
  • When someone clicks on the affiliate link to visit the merchant’s online store, that affiliate receives a commission for the referral. If the affiliate program requires the visitor to make a purchase, that affiliate will not receive a commission unless the visitor buys the products.

For the merchants, affiliate marketing is considered as a ‘performance-based marketing’, because the advertisers don’t have to pay unless certain action or condition occurs, like a sale of the product.

For affiliates, this is considered as a ‘Pull Marketing’, because the customers click on the affiliate link and make a purchase themselves without the affiliates having to get involved with the transaction.

Affiliate marketing is much easier compared to mlm because the affiliates don’t need to do a lot of selling. The customers read the product review, product information, or the affiliate recommendation and decide to purchase the products (pull the item) themselves.

That’s how affiliate marketing works.

How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing?

Traditionally, the method to make money with affiliate marketing is by offering coupons, discounts, or free samples to get customers to click on affiliate links.

Websites that use the traditional method are Ebates, Swagbucks, InboxDollars, just to name a few. These are mostly cashback and coupon sites.

As the industry grows, bloggers start to use affiliate marketing to make money online. A blog has become the most effective tool to make money with affiliate marketing.

Bloggers become so successful in this business because they are able to turn a blog into a marketing tool, which we refer to as ‘content marketing’.

Content marketing is a technique of using words to convince or influence people decision-making process. This gives birth to the new online star status, an ‘Influencer’.

For those of you thinking of using affiliate marketing as a way to make passive income online, you need to look at creating a blog site.

The benefits of using a blog site to build an affiliate marketing are:

  • Inexpensive to start, you can create a blog site for free
  • Anyone can write, can become a blogger
  • There is no age requirement to start a blog and make money with affiliate marketing.
  • You can get free training in blogging and affiliate marketing. Here are 10 Free Affiliate Marketing Lessons for you to check out.
  • Make passive income online, earn money while you sleep
  • No need to pressure friends and families to buy anything. You invite them to visit your blog, and they decide what they want to purchase.
  • You can start a blog on any topic, anything that you love, to start making money today.
  • You are the owner of this online business and decide what to promote and what not.

The benefits of using a blog to make money with affiliate marketing are endless. The blog is a preferred tool to make money with affiliate marketing.

That is how you make money with affiliate marketing.

How To Make Money With MLM?

Mlm is not a passive option to make money. You must be active, which means you have to conduct do face-to-face selling.

You will not make a lot of money in mlm by selling products, because you will have to do the hard sell for the rest of your life.

The best way to make money with mlm is recruiting people into the business, turning them into a lifetime customers.

With mlm, everyone is a business prospect. There is no such thing as a friend.

If you are comfortable with your friends and families hate you, then you can make a lot of money with mlm.

Mlm requires a face-to-face meeting to make a sale. Many mlm marketers have to travel around the country, conducting weekends and late-night meetings, to promote and build their business.

This is a ‘Push Marketing’ strategy.

To become successful with mlm, you have to push the customer to purchase the products.

The easiest way to achieve this is to recruit them into your organization.

Now the customers are required to purchase the product from you every month.

Mlm is much harder to achieve financial success than affiliate marketing. Less than 1% achieve financial freedom with mlm.

If you are thinking of starting a home-based business with an mlm company, I suggest you learn affiliate marketing as well.

Because if you are struggling with face-to-face selling, affiliate marketing is the best tool to help you recruit downline and build your mlm business.

MLM Affiliate Marketing

Ever heard of mlm affiliate marketing?

Mlm marketing is combining the mlm model affiliate marketing.

  • As I have stated earlier, affiliate marketing is using content to promote products or services.
  • Instead of promoting products, you can use affiliate marketing to promote your mlm business. This is mlm affiliate marketing.

Are you struggling to make money with mlm? Listen, learn affiliate marketing to help you build your mlm business.

You can use affiliate marketing to promote your mlm business and reach people around the world.

There is no need to travel and meet with prospects. You can instruct them to visit your blog site to learn about the mlm business opportunity.

Here’s how mlm affiliate marketing works:

  • You create a blog site to introduce your mlm business.
  • You invite people to visit your blog to learn more about your business.
  • You use a series of blog articles to convert visitors into customers or business partners.

Mlm affiliate marketing is a much simpler way to promote your mlm business.

I cannot teach you everything about mlm affiliate marketing in this one article.

I am simply introducing you to this new marketing concept.

If you are interested, you can start learning affiliate marketing with a free affiliate marketing training program.

I suggest you start with a free program because it is a good way to start building the foundation.

I am not saying you will be an expert with these free programs, but why pays when you can get them for free. Save the money for advanced lessons.

I start my affiliate marketing business with these 10 Free Affiliate Marketing Lessons before taking on more challenging techniques.

I like to invite you to try the free lessons by following the link above.

There is no need to compare mlm vs affiliate marketing, which is easier to make money.

You can use both to help you make money. Mlm affiliate marketing is always better.

Learn affiliate marketing, then use it to promote and build your mlm business.

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