Advantages and Disadvantages of Affiliate Marketing

Hi,
Affiliate marketing has led to the emergence of several online companies and Internet marketers. Internet serves as the most effective platform for business promotion as it can target a large customer base. Merchants are not required to search for their customers. Rather, customers come searching for them!

An affiliate marketer does not require making huge investments. Moreover, he/she does not have to worry about customer support and record keeping. All, an affiliate marketer needs to do is work towards promoting and reselling the product.

The potential of creating income is another important advantage of affiliate marketing. Both business merchants and websites benefit from affiliate marketing, without any additional expenditure of time or money. In fact, implementing affiliate marketing strategies does not require any technical expertise. Adding more websites to an affiliate marketing program to cover a wider range of products and services can increase one's earning potential. As long as the consumers continue with online business transactions, there is no stopping for affiliate marketing.

One of the major disadvantages of affiliate marketing is that the affiliates may indulge in illegal and unethical Internet advertising practices. They may mislead the readers through false advertisements. An illegal use of brand names and company logos is common in affiliate marketing.

Spamming is another major disadvantage of affiliate marketing. Some affiliates tend to use email spam to promote their business. Others create webpages, which are aimed at manipulating the indexing strategies of search engines.

Affiliate marketing does not conform to industry standards and lacks central regulation. Affiliate marketing practices make use of social networking websites, online forums and other aspects of the Internet for advertising their products and services. As the Internet offers free access to users, it is difficult to implement any regulatory measures on its use. Currently, there are no training courses or certifications for affiliate marketing. Perhaps, there is a pressing need to standardize affiliate marketing strategies and practices.