Affiliate Marketing For Beginners: Pros And Cons

Affiliate marketing, is a great way to make some money online if you’re a beginner, there is no doubt about it. But just like with everthing else, there are pros and cons.

Sorry guys, unicorns don’t exist ? . 

In this article, i’ll discuss some of the pros and cons to affiliate marketing i found, from a beginners stand point without getting into too much detail though. 

PROS

1- You can start with ZERO dollars (or…close to zero dollars). 

Product review using youtube, influencer marketing on instagram, recommending products in facebook groups…there are a myriad of different options that cost literal zero dollars, to start your affiliate marketing endevours.

It should come to no surprise…it’s “helluva lot easier” than building your own physical store, hiring employees, paying for upkeep costs, inventory, distribution, rent…and the likes.

As a result of this, it’s super low risk! You can get started for as little as “nothing”. 😉

If you want to start a brick and mortar business, something as simple as doing incorrect market research, could potentially put you out of business pronto!

But with affiliate marketing, what’s the worst that can happen? You’ll probably be Down A Few Hundred Bucks, and that’s it. Worth the go! 

2- You’re Just The Middleman (Or Woman).

This is HUGE.

This means: You don’t have to create products, ship them, handle customer service and returns or questions, deal with refunds and angry customers (although, those do hurt a bit)…none of that mumbo jumbo.

As an affiliate marketer you don’t HAVE to even touch the product…although usually you do get extra points if you showcase the product. Heck, good affiliates even get them for free (aka influencers).

3- It’s Passive

If you’re doing things right, and thinking long-term, affiliate marketing can become passive by creating digital assets, like an online brand, a following and audience, a customer email list, websites and even youtube channels could be considered “passive”.

The idea here, is that affiliate marketing, correctly done, is like “fishing with a net” instead of fishing with a fishing rod.  

4- Them Skillz Tho…

The absurd amount of crazy cool, highly valuable and most importantly highly sought after skills you’ll develop and learn…are well worth the effort.

From content creation, website development, paid traffic, funnel building, email marketing, lead generation…(and the list clearly goes on and on), you’ll learn some kickass skillz AND you’ll up your market value. You’ll learn more and be more valuable to businesses.  

They’ll be DESPERATELY looking for you!

“The Best Investment You Can Make, Is In Yourself. The More You Learn, The More You Earn” – Warren Buffett

5- Anybody Can Do It

The icing on the cake: Anybody can do it! 

We were born without knowing how to walk or tie our shoes…or anything for that matter.

We had to learn it.

Same is true for affiliate marketing. As a beginner, affiliate marketing can feel complex to grasp. Learn as much as possible and apply. Rinse and repeat! 

Take me, for example. I had NO clue what i was doing in the beginning, learned the hard way and followed on the footsteps of some people that did know something.

CONS

1- Anybody can do it

Wait. What? How can it be a CON if it was a PRO?

Think again… ANYBODY can do it.

This means that competition is cutthroat fierce, scams and ponzi schemes are commonplace and spam runs rampant (this might even have been it’s birthplace!). 

This really complicates things for people starting out, because there is a lot of misinformation in the mix.

2- It’s simple, not easy.

The idea “tageted traffic over to an offer” is simple. The problem is’s the execution of it. How? What product, what platform, what vehicle, to whom, and when? And those are just, some of the questions, yikes!

If you think you’ll get by, by just sending paid ads to a high ticket offer think again. If you think you’ll get by, by just spaming all the social media channels with your link, once again, think again.

It takes a LOT of work to test these methods out until you find a winning combo that you can eventually “scale” and that you’re comfortable with, but it’s not easy at all if you’re starting out…but then again, most things aren’t.

3- You’re “giving customers away” to the merchant…so to speak.

Essentially, you’re sending a customer over to a brand, and, apart from getting a little one-time commission (some do offer lifetime commissions however), your job is done and now the customer is part of the brand and it’s “ecosystem”.

Your job now…is to do it again and again with more customers.

Unless you have a way to do the same thing a bunch of times with less effort or money, or can automate the process…it basically becomes a job.

This is where building assets comes in handy 🙂 

4- Having To Sell Something That You Might Not Believe In 

Okay, let’s make things clear here…you never “have” to sell anything you don’t like. But you might end up doing so. You might end up selling something you kinda don’t really like and it will suck.  Heck… you might even be promoting an absolute crap product without noticing it! 

This is probably the worst aspect of affiliate marketing in my mind, by far. 

People selling stuff they don’t believe in, wouldn’t use themselves or haven’t tried out. Even worse: selling things that don’t even work to begin with!

I see this happening, all the time, and it gives the model a bad rap. 

To give you an example, there was a software that launched a while back in the marketplace…and the thing just DIDN’T work.  

Not that it didn’t do what it was meant to do (many don’t), it just flat out didn’t run.

There was no way it could work. Period.

Of course, affiliates still said it was amazing, that it worked, and that they had tried it and it was working for them. You don’t say…

Bottom line: The product or service has to be good, if it’s not, everyone will have a bad time.

5- You’ll Probably Not Make Any Money. Sorry 🙁 

The fact is, 90 something percent of beginners who start affiliate marketing, won’t make a single cent. Ever. So you should statistically speaking…not even bother.

Hey don’t get mad at me! I didn’t make the rules. 90% of people can’t tickle themselves or sneeze with their eyes open either!

It’ll take money, time, dedication…but probably all three of them combined.

So if you give up easily, think this is all a scam, don’t want to invest, thought it would be easier, wanted a “quick money solution” or don’t want to put in the work…then this is probably not for you. 

Here’s a video from Rachel S. Lee. She’s has a similar position to mine when it comes to affiliate marketing, check it out!

So there you have it everyone, that was my affiliate marketing for beginners: Pros and Cons guide/text/post.

I hope that you enjoyed, and hopefully this last part of the post pissed you off enough to start, if you haven’t 🙂 . Let me know in the comments below if you’re going to start or not. Go make it happen!