Affiliate Marketing Basics

There are pros and cons for both the affiliate marketer and the merchant
as would be expected of any shared success arrangement. Generally Pros for
the affiliate are cons for the merchant and visa versa.
This site looks at
the Pros and cons from the online affiliate perspective.

Pros

The pros of affiliate marketing are numerous for the affiliate.

Remember it is the merchant who deals with the customer, holds the stock
and ships the goods. Any queries, problems, refunds etc are handled by the
merchant.

As the affiliate you don't need to produce any product so there are no
production costs. There is also no inventory so no need for warehousing
facilities. You also don't need order processing facilities or a merchant
account for your site, or inventory control and accounting software.

There is no shipping or customer support so staff is not essential and best
of all you don't need to deal with returns, customer complaints etc.

Because you're on the web there are no geographical boundaries or time
constraints to your trading which will occur automatically all day every day
with or without your presence.

Because of the abundance of products available to affiliates and the ease of
becoming an affiliate you can mix and match products to suit and change your
products at will. There is no constraint on the number of products, the product
mix, or the length of time you need to promote any product its entirely up to
you.

Cons

Obviously you are at the discretion of the merchant who always has the final
say in terms of how much traffic, sales returns etc you generated.  With
good programs this is not really an issue and if you feel unfairly treated its
pretty simple to change programs.

Similarly the merchant controls commission structures and can change them at
will or simply close down without paying commissions both of which are unlikely
with good affiliate programs.

The marketing costs are your responsibility but they should be more than
adequately covered by commission payments.