Affiliate marketing is one of the driving forces behind e-commerce. In theory, it allows for various parties on the internet to profit from it in some way.
Also, it encourages more people to get involved in the world of e-commerce, because starting and maintaining a business centered on affiliate marketing isn’t necessarily costly; though, doing it does require a substantial investment of time and/or money to be seen as an expert in your niche which is essential to maintain traffic and sales as an affiliate.
Does Affiliate Marketing Really Benefit The Consumer?
While this type of affiliate marketing program can benefit the end consumer, the question is whether or not it really does. The jury is still out on this one and likely will be for some time.
The big problem is that it does benefit the consumer, but only in some situations. In other situations the consumer is actually hurt, in however a small sort of way.
What affiliate marketing does is allow third-party companies to act as middlemen between another company’s product or service and its potential customers. They do this by advertising on behalf of that company’s product by directly or indirectly pushing it on their own website.
In exchange they receive a commission or flat fee for any transaction made through their affiliate links. Oftentimes they will be paid out even when no transaction is completed. This usually happens when you are involved in CPA marketing.
How Can This Help The Consumer
First let’s look at how this helps the consumer. It does so by providing more ways for people to discover products and services that are relevant to their needs and wants. If they visit a website to get information on a specific topic for instance, that website may suggest a book they were previously unaware of.
The person can then visit the page where the book is being offered for sale and choose to buy it.
In that example the consumer was helped. They had a problem, which was the need for information. They visited a website for information and along with it they got a book to help them even more.
Another example would have a person visiting a website because they wanted to use the site’s service. The service may be a forum, a social network, a gambling site, marketing blog or pretty much anything else. They will then be offered links to products associated with that service.
In the gambling example they will likely see links to poker accessories that they can order online. Again, this can easily be seen as a benefit as it brings the e-commerce world closer together.
However There Can Be A Downside For Consumers
The downside to this though is that there is so much money available to be made from affiliate marketing, that it’s becoming an overly saturated field. This means thousands or even millions of web pages are competing for visitors solely in the hopes of getting those visitors to follow a link that will make the web page money.
The result is that it can actually be harder for consumers to find what they are really looking for because their internet searches are being steered towards pages that don’t actually offer any benefits at all.
The person wanting information, as in the first example, won’t get it as easily because so many pages aren’t truly a valid source for information at all and only serve to confuse and frustrate the consumer usually into not buying the product they were looking for.
Does this downside outweigh the upside for consumers? Opinions will differ that’s for sure.
Which way will things lead in the future? Only time will tell.
To be truly effective today in affiliate marketing it is a very wise choice to opt for a WordPress blog and create as much relevant content on that site as you can, making you the leading authority on the subject. This has two main benefits it will give your consumers the trust factor and the search engines will look on your site more favorably in the rankings.
Once these two elements come together the traffic will come and the money will flow.
That is very important indeed. It is the people who do not take advantage of that who are the ones who normally do not succeed. If you stick with it and learn the ways, this industry can earn you a lot of money!! Good article, nice work.
~Sam~
(G.O.R)
I sincerely believe that affiliate marketing will greatly benefit consumers as well as bloggers, affiliate marketers and merchants because sharp affiliates will make what consumers search for easier to find and provide them with more information.
This will be especially true when more affiliates focus on promoting valuable products and services for small local and online businesses. Affiliates who use blogs will be able to provide more interaction than some merchants currently do and that will benefit buyers and merchants alike.
Many businesses are too small or do not have the resources to hire professional marketers or optimization experts to improve usablity on their sites. For those, expert affiliate marketers can be a huge advantage and may make the difference between their being successful or closing!
I think that there are two really important ways that affiliate marketing helps consumers that were not brought up. First, affiliates can help negotiate deals for consumers that they would not otherwise be able to get. For example, I can use the volume of my membership and the promise of publicity to get a 10% coupon from a merchant that does not usually give out coupons. In doing so, my visitors are saving 10%. Secondly, I can help the consumer get a resolution to a problem with the merchant. I don’t always step in when one of my visitors complains about a transaction but there have been many times where one of my visitors made a purchase with a merchant on my site and then something went wrong. The visitor tried to resolve it with the merchant but didn’t get anywhere. I was able to use my contacts through my affiliate marketing relationship with that merchant to help my visitor get a resolution.
Very interesting article! I bet if you asked most people not involved in affiliate marketing whether affiliate marketing benefits them, they would assume that it does not.
Hi Tricia
Yes these are things that can help your consumers especially when you do have a big client base of subscribers. When you talk about helping your consumers with any problems is another area where you can stand out from the crowd with your affiliate marketing.
Many affiliates today will simply take the money and run leaving the consumer to their own devices to deal with the vendor, which is a reason why many affiliates have a bad name and why many people do not like to go through an affiliate link, another reason is that people seem to think that they will be paying more for a product if a affiliate commission has to be paid.
Again Tricia thanks for the comments…
I guess affiliate marketing do “sometimes” hurt consumers, knowing that most of the digital products these days have money back guarantee, but some publishers are mischievous about these risk-free offerings. The point of having thousands of affiliates competing for a niche (with millions of pre-sell pages) also adds to that problem, in which online seekers will not really benefit from what they’ll be purchasing aside from the negative idea that they’ll come to realize that Internet products are mostly scams. Definitely not good for the industry. Search engines may have to act in replenishing their ranking algorithms to support consumers’ welfare, specifically with relevance and authority of pre-sell pages. That will be harder for us all.
Hi Jason…
I would have to agree with you when it comes to pre-sell pages i really dislike them and have ever since first seeing them. If i want information about a product I expect to go to a page that gives me that information not a hyped up offer or video that then requires me to enter an email address to get further information.
I do disagree with you on one thing Jason and that is that the search engines may have to support consumer welfare, to me this sounds like we are giving up the freedom to view and research what we want and that is what will happen if you give the search engines the power to make decisions for us.
Simply put if you are looking at getting involved with any programs online make sure you do your own due diligence and find out the good the bad and the ugly before you purchase. Also make sure you use a third party payment processor such as Paypal or even Clickbank to process your payments as if there is a problem and I have had many these two companies seem to be able to refund your money.
Interesting thoughts. I haven’t thought about the impact on consumers. I guess it couldn’t hurt them that much. I think it is useful because they will find products related to the article they are reading (for example). It could be harmful for consumer if low quality product are promoted just for commissions.
Hi Bob..
The only time this would have an impact on consumers is when you have some affiliates using misleading information to try and attract a sale.
I think affiliate marketing is beneficial to consumers through the product reviews that affiliate marketers wrote. The downside would be affiliate marketers writing dishonest reviews just to sell the products and make money.
Hi Raymund
Yes you are right about the dishonest part, to many affiliates just write reveiw after review on products and services that they have never used. This is not something that we encourage or do as any product or service we write about has been used by some one in our team.
Dishonest affiliate reviews have been around since day one..
Luckily, for the honest affiliate marketer consumers are now starting to develop a keen eye for dishonest review type sites and can see right passed dishonesty.
In my own opinion, any review site should provide evidence they have actually received or paid for the product they are reviewing…
Personally, I never review products I have had no access too.
Hi Steve…
Yes you are right the days of writing a review to simply deceive the consumer and make a sale as an affiliate are coming to an end. With so many more avenues for assistance in retrieving your money you would be foolish now to write such reviews. However there are always those that are very slow in learning this and will pay a heavy price when they are caught.
I believe that it does benefit consumers who are in “researching”, “comparing” and “buying” mode. But I think real product reviews with customer testimonials (written, oral or in video) are one reasons that benefits them, and they have no doubt to buy the product under your affiliate links, because you give them what they are looking for.
Just remember, always give value to your consumers first before they decide to buy the product from your affiliate link (but hey, don’t tell him that you’re an affiliate, ok?).
Cheers!
Dan Lew
Affiliate marketing is indeed helpful if you know ways to make it work. For starters, it might be difficult and commissions might be scarce. But if you get a balance of affiliates from other websites too, this then will help you generate more income for yourself. This might be how this works.
Thanks for sharing excellent demonstration of affiliate marketing. I’m impressed by knowing the benefits to consumers. I’m planning to start affiliate marketing soon.
Good food for thought Ron.
On the surface having so many affiliates vying for sales might seem like a problem for the consumer but affiliates can actually benefit the consumer by getting special coupon deals and bundling bonuses if a purchase is made.
But a good affiliate can also help the consumer make the buying decision with truly useful product comparisons and comprehensive personal reviews. This is really where the onus is on the affiliate to provide the consumer with information they believe and trust.
Liz 🙂
A lot of affiliate marketer prefer using wordpress as the best tool for their marketing programs. And end consumers look like they are also familiar to use wordpress websites. That’s the succeed of wordpress so far.