Affiliate Marketing Vs Blogging – And The Winner Is?

it’s about to be the end of another Amazing and Grateful year, and I’m more than delighted to be sitting right on my carpet floor on a late Thursday night 15 minutes before the clock strikes midnight…and the full moon comes out-It won’t be that kind of a story :)…

And it won’t be a story-tell at all, because I’m going to tell you all there is to know about affiliate marketing vs blogging.

A wise man(my dad) once told me- “If you can’t beat them joint them Mijo”. What My pops meant there was that when the competition becomes to thick, too thin, be as one. All my life I played as an underdog, a kid just growing up trying to learn the ropes of a game called soccer.  My early career got to a point where I had to make a HUGE decision…

Do I Join the stronger team or try to beat them? It was time to grow, and stay with the current trend If I wanted a greater exposure to become a professional soccer player like I later became. Why the HECK am I sharing about sports when I’m supposed to be mentioning words like:

• affiliate marketing
• blogging
• differences
• websites

I’m getting to that in a bit, but the purpose if for you to have a starting understanding that in the world of marketing, the world of blogging it’s all about trends. Which I teach more about trends in full depth here, make sure to give it a look. 

You’re probably a social media mastermind or not, but if you do any searches or comes across images, the latest post, or the most recent videos on a platform like YouTube, you’ll notice how these are the topic of the day. Affiliate marketing and blogging needs to stay with the pace, and growth of social media and everyone around you. 

“It’s not just about throwing up a website, calling yourself a blogger, or affiliate, rather it’s a process you fill yourself into.”

-Yours Truly

In this article, I’m going to show you what it means to do affiliate marketing vs blogging in such a unique way that by the end you’ll hopefully be leaning to one side. I’ll also be talking about:

1. What is affiliate marketing
2. What is blogging
3. Similarities and differences
4. How you can get started
5. My secret bonus tips

So let’s get cracking!

What Is Affiliate Marketing? Too Good To Be True?

There’s an idea forming in your head, one that is speaking out to you to get out there and find more answers. I get where you are, I was in the same boat a year ago, searching to find the middle and end to my thoughts about this whole affiliate marketing thing. It’s both your curiosity and already formed inner drive doing most of the talking right now.

Affiliate marketing is a way for people like you and I to make money by referring people to a service(usually owned by a third party) and in completing the transaction, you get a commission off of that.

Sounds great right?

It’s that simple!…PAUSE.REWIND. It’s that simple? That’s more like it. Many people have this assumption that affiliate is the answer to all their:

• Financial problems
• Passive income
• A jobless life

…And while this is DEFINITELY 100% possible, coming into it with that mindset while only hinder you. If your sole intention online is to make money, then you will be setting up a firecracker under your(INSERT____Here)

Affiliate marketing is a great opportunity to make a substantial amount of online income don’t get me wrong, but you shouldn’t approach it money first.

1. Be helpful first
2. Sell

The way to treat affiliate marketing is like thinking of it as a baby. You have to nurture him/her, learn from them, and then when they’re all grown up, you can ask for your money back in return 🙂

You see the point I’m getting across right? Don’t take my word for it, let me show you:

First, here’s a mentor of mine talking to me from starting at the plateau.

STEP 1:

And #2, understanding your customer to make a sale:

STEP 2:

Here’s the scoop on what its like to make a sale in the affiliate marketing space.

Now, there are two different ways of looking at affiliate marketing that I will be going over soon in my  “do I need a website for affiliate marketing article” coming soon, but as a brief overview, you can either start your affiliate marketing journey with or without one! 

Let’ s focus on the aspects of what makes affiliate marketing a logical solution for your situation by going deep down into the pros and cons.

Pros:

• Low startup cost. This has to be my favorite step of all the ones you’re about to see soon. Affiliate marketing takes little to no cost on your end. If you want to build a website for it, then yes, you’ll want to look into a domain, hosting, a possible affiliate program to get the most out of your training, and that’s about it to begin. Once you have this foundation set, it will BOOST you up the affiliate ladder fast.
• Earn money. Who doesn’t want to earn MULLAH? “Give me a piece of that Kit Kat bar” really made me think about getting a piece of the online cash. The ways in which you can earn money and make a living with affiliate marketing are astronomical, seriously! You’ll see it once you’re on the inside.
• Free affiliate programs. Did your head poke up and out? Well, when I hear the word free I do go bananas! And you thought nothing was free, HAHA. If you become an affiliate marketer, you’ll be able to sign up under an affiliate program and start earning money straight away without putting anything down! And the best part is that you can apply to as many as you’d like. About 95% of the programs are free, while some take you through awaiting and “pending” route.
• Choose your interest. The awesome thing about affiliate marketing is that you can choose a niche, based on your interest, a hobby, a passion, or just something you really want to research and educate yourself in that space for.
• Learn and Learn. WOW, I thought I knew it all, until today when I figured out a new way to market not only to my target audience but how to make money while I’m doing it. There are so many new ways to learn about affiliate marketing and even more things that you’ll learn from implementing it.

Cons:

Of course, with the good, there must be bad. While there is so much to love about becoming an affiliate, there are some things that have a downside.

• Growth income. Do you have the thought or has someone told you that this is a fast way to make money online? Well, whether that is a yes or no, I have an affirmative response…MEH. This answer varies depending on two things if you’re doing affiliate marketing and treating it as a business or are you going for the ad approach. Sometimes the ad approach doesn’t work out the way you think, and treating it like a business will take time for you to see money coming in consistently, but mark my words, once you get through the silver shinning, it’ll work!
• Competition. This is a double-sided coin, in the fact that competition could be great for affiliate marketing, but it can also hurt it. The reason I say this is that going into a market that is fully saturated with a small target audience can limit your potential growth. In other words, if you’re going to do it, it’s always best to go after a larger niche and narrow it down specifically.
• Fast dropout. It’s raining a whole flock of birds today, why today? Affiliate marketing can drop out a large group of people all at once never to see them come back, or continuously trying but they don’t see their goals being met. Affiliate marketing can get a bad rap for this, but let me tell you, these are the people who didn’t give it enough of a chance.
• Traffic. Getting traffic is the #1 way you will be able to identify with your selected niche and understand whether or not you can get enough traffic to support yourself with affiliate marketing. Everyone wants traffic, but the speed at which you not only get it but convert will start slow.

Related Post: Making A Living With Affiliate Marketing

As A side note, I haven’t lost you have I? If you need to leave me a comment at any time, please drop me a message below, and I’ll get back to you within the first 24 hours!

Back way before I got started I was searching for answers like these, and I wanted to know whether the pros would justify the cons, and at first(like you might be thinking) I was skeptical that it would:

1. Not work
2. It’s not for me

At the time I was going through a LARGE Breakup with the girl I was in love with, and UH, it yes broke my heart…

She was living for a while 2 hours and a half up north of Vancouver, WA, and it hurt that she didn’t know how to continue it really well after moving up there, and I knew it wasn’t easy, but I knew the type of person I was and knew to invest my time was worth every non-monetary value.

So the moral of the story before getting in-depth, is that it set a HUGE fire under my ass, and I said right now is the time I’m going to fight for what I want, A business, and to attain success.

I worked my butt off day in day out, night in, night in, and I almost wanted to give up on it at times, but I kept reminding myself of that person and how much I felt invincible, and how this was my time to sacrifice for myself.

What Is Blogging? A Bloggers World

By definition this is the legitimate answer:

By the way, I had to take a second to recollect my thoughts and keep that relationship compartment in another part of my brain, So I’m refocused and ready to flow with you right this second now!

Blogging is exactly what it states in the definition above, it’s a way for you as a writer to create updated content on your website on everything from:

• Recording your opinion
• Stories
• Photos
• Videos

This is an example blog post of how that can look like:

The latest crave in this millennial is Vlogging, and that’s where it’s the same as generating written words on your website but n this way, you’re posting up live videos, and uploading videos to places like YouTube. YouTube is supposed to hit triple figures…in the billions next year, and that’s because so many bloggers and affiliate marketers are hitting the ground running with educating people about what they know, and product reviews.

How do you start a blog?:

In a similar fashion, building a blog is in the same retrospect to affiliate marketing. You build a website and write, rather simply stated.  But with blogging, there are a few things to keep in mind. Here are the step-by-step check off you need to make in order to start blogging:

1. Decide on what you want to blog about. What are you interested in? My mom does this in her spare time, and my little brother is sort of getting the idea, but essentially you want to get into something you like and you can see yourself writing about for a year and after. My judgment is that if you lose interest after 6 months, that’s where you start to find out whether your selection was a bulls-eye or carp-just flopping through. 
2. Choose a blogging platform. This entails WordPress, Square Space, Wix, and various others. Any page building software will ensure you have a place to blog and blog for years to come.
3. Find A hosting service. You can’t start to blog unless you have a hosting provider, and there are so many on the online space it’s not surprising to get lost. I’ll talk about hosting services more in-depth in a later article, but for now, I’ll briefly state some names.
   1. Hostgator, GoDaddy, Bluehost, Wealthy Affiliate, Dreamcast
4. Pick your domain name. This is where branding and reputation will reveal itself in a matter of months. Picking a domain will allow you to own your own piece of “real estate”. Think of it is a house…you’ll want to build on the foundation, so then later the fruit of your loins will pay you back in return.
5. Get Started with your blogging platform. The most popular writing platform is going to be WordPress(although there are others). With WordPress, you get the flexibility to set up your site the way you want and is the most versatile as the years go by. I use it in my day to day life, and I wouldn’t change it for anything else. See: Setting up a WordPress Blog The RIGHT Way
6. Design your website and blog! This last step is all about setting up the layout of your home page, post, pages, plugins, and giving it that appeal to your audience. Oh And, don’t forget to fill that white space with words!

Related Post: Unique 30 day One Blog Post Away Challenge

Pros:

There are many pros that come with blogging, and many that I find hard to shy away from:

• You. The real attraction to becoming a blogger is yourself. Believe it or not, you’re the reason why people will want to read your blog, you’re the reason why you get returning visitors to read your content and interact with you. Blogging takes less making money online, and more effort to put a brand on who you are as a person coming up int world of it.
• Ad management. Anybody ever tell you that bloggers don’t make money online? PRO-POST-EROUS. A blogger can make their money through Advertisements, CPC, PPC. And even though most bloggers start off this way, it’s not the only way.
• Affiliate. That’s right, bloggers can earn affiliate commissions. That’s like seeing a car turn into a robotic machine(hence transformers), it’s amazing to see, and then it just becomes the norm. In A similar way like affiliate marketing, bloggers can create a WordPress based site and put affiliate links on their blog, in the hope to make a small commission. And although “solely blogging” is not centered around commissions, they are more than welcomed to join the party.
• Passive time. If you’re anything like me, you’d like to spend your off time doing the things you love, with the people you love too. Writing about your favorite topic can help you relieve stress, and create a way for you to share your knowledge and expertise with the people around you.
• You never know who’s looking. When I first started blogging I ad no attention the first few months, and then all of a sudden I had content collaborations with huge companies like HVMN. So keep working at it, and you’ll breakthrough!

Cons:

Yep, we’re back to the cons, EXIT WARNING AHEAD…That’s almost what it feels like, but stick to your seat for a minute and leave me in disgust later.

• No money. Times are changing where bloggers can be considered affiliates, but for those who are solely blogging, there is no money to be made. And there is nothing wrong with that, but wouldn’t you like to earn a commission in the process for all your hard work?
• Regular updates. If you’re producing a great blog, it will require your attention over and over.you’ll be updating new plugins, checking in on your old and new content, cycling through information to see where you can put things better
• Can bring out a darker you. Blogging is a place of personal space, and sometimes the writing can get very personal, to the point of where you’re cussing out and saying bad things about something or someone
• No halfway. Putting up a blog post is not about writing one thing and not coming back to it, you should regularly come back to it and almost look at it as a business, and make it as professional as you can.

Blogging VS Affiliate Marketing, And The Winner Is?

Up to this point, we’ve been tugging away the tug of rope back and forth across the centerline, and right about this point, both have an equal advantage, at least to everyone except the referee.

Affiliate marketing and blogging are like an up and down the road, you’ll reach your peaks, hit your valleys, run into a bump or two, come back up, and then stay right there. Not exactly, in that limited sequence…is it time for results that may vary?

Here’s a table on the similarities and differences between them:

Affiliate Marketing

Blogging

Higher Commissions focus Commission structure Lower commission focus Niche focused
Arrange of niches Marketing focused
Personal use Customer focused Customer focused Customer and personal focus

And the winner is…NEITHER. Did you come here looking to find a Definite yes? Let me tell you there is no right or wrong, it all comes down to what your goals are, and what you feel is best for yourself and your future.

For me, I’d always pick affiliate marketing, because I am intrigued by not only helping people, but how I can help other business grow and make money from too. Plus, there is always something new that you will learn. You’ll be like a weasel popping its head out from its hole every once in awhile to see what is changing, and what you can do better.

If it’s affiliate marketing that you are interested in doing, but you are not sure, you can check out this article about affiliate marketing and its competitiveness to get you started. Get out there, and ROCK IT!