Affiliate Marketing vs Amazon FBA: Which One Is Best In 2024?
In this digital era, most people are looking forward to making money online. Affiliate marketing has become one of the crucial things that can make you earn an income. Amazon FBA is also one of those online platforms that can help you earn money. The only thing you need to have is the knowledge and know-how to handle them.
You will understand the advantages and disadvantages of both platforms. This will, in turn, help you gauge which platforms you would wish to use. Affiliate marketing vs Amazon FBA: Which is better? Let’s find out…
Disclaimer: This article may contain affiliate links where I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you if you decide to purchase a paid plan. For more information read my Disclosure.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
This is one of the many online businesses that one can do to gain profit. It not only becomes a full-time job but has great earnings too. It gives you the flexibility you require, no waking up early, no walking long distances to work. It gives you the freedom you need in life. However, making this your long-term investment, you must have an idea of what it is and have the right system. The first thing is that once you get into affiliate marketing, you have to treat it like any other business. Let your customers come first no matter what.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
This involves selling other companies products so that you can earn yourself some commissions. With this, you do not need to do anything else apart from selling. This means that you do not have to manufacture, deliver goods to clients, or work out at the customer support center. Most companies now have an affiliate program. You, however, need to be patient with this since nothing comes easy. In the long run, it creates a win-win situation. This means that the company makes sales, you get your commission and the client as well get the goods they ordered.
You might also like: 7 Major Benefits Of Affiliate Marketing
How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing
1. Find Your Target Audience
Getting the right audience for this platform would be the first winning process. If you don’t know how to get the right audience, it would be hard for you to make any sales. Know how to get that dream customer. This means that get the right thing for that client you know or think has always dreamt of having such an item. Understand your niche and the people that surround you. Are they willing to buy from online platforms? After getting all of this straight, then you just might have found your way into making sales. After getting the dream customer, do some research and get to know where they are located online. Without this, you might have a hard time making sales. Also, know the right places to get these clients, are on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all that. Having done all that, it would now be progressing to the next step.
2. Set Sale Goals
Setting this goal as per the sales you want to make or, as per the earnings you want to have, will give you the drive to work even harder. Be realistic so as not to set impossible goals. False expectations will always bring you down. You cannot sleep and wake up a millionaire tomorrow without any hard work. For you to earn through affiliate marketing, you have to be patient and walk your journey slowly to the top. The rates are not similar, and therefore, as you make sales, you need to note the rates. So that you know what effort to put in. For example, a commission rate of 20 percent requires you to sell over $300,000 worth of products. This will earn you a total of $60,000 per year. Which is a full-time income for most people.
3. Setup a Profitable Marketing System
Get the right way of marketing your goods. Do not place your links anywhere online. This will not work. Look for a good system that will make it easier for you to earn through affiliate marketing.
For example, you can create a website that will help you generate a lot of traffic. Send the traffic to your affiliate link, and you have hit the right spot. You can as well try email marketing that has an automatically generated response for your clients. You can set this email up so that it can send promotional emails to your clients. Once you have the right clients and a well-built affiliate system, then the chances of earning good money are real.
If you need help setting up an automated affiliate marketing system like this, then I highly recommend you go and check out the Affiliate Bootcamp.
Pros of Affiliate Marketing
1. Merchants can gain a bigger customer market to sell their goods. Therefore they generate more sales (for free).
2. Searching for clients is easy. You don’t waste a lot of time looking for clients for your goods.
3. A seller can keep track of various customer behaviors. Some programs have been built specifically for this.
4. You do not require a lot of capital or investment to start selling through an affiliate platform.
5. The clients do not have to go to the shop to get their items since they can be delivered to wherever they are.
Cons of Affiliate Marketing
1. Affiliates can use misleading information to gain clients and commissions. The exaggeration might frustrate clients who have shopped with them or potential clients.
2. Merchants can easily lie to affiliates to get a lot of affiliates. They do this and then drop the commission rates after a week or two. This greatly inconveniences the affiliates.
What Is Amazon FBA?
Amazon FBA has become another easy way of earning money online. It is said that there are over 95 million people on Amazon, just in the US. FBA is meant fulfillment by Amazon. This is because the merchant sends the goods over to Amazon. Amazon stores these goods in their storage warehouses. If a client orders a particular item, they take it and delivers the good to them. They also handle the returns and refunds. Due to the many people that are using Amazon, one can generate income fast online. Let’s look at how Amazon FBA works.
How Does Amazon FBA Work?
1. Send The Products To Amazon.
It has over 100 warehouses in the United States. These warehouses are massive, some of which can fit up to a million square feet. You, as the merchant, are given priority to choose which warehouse you want your goods stored in. Also, inform them of the products you will be sent to their warehouses.
2. Storage
At this point amazon stores your goods at the warehouse. They will take care of any losses or damages that will occur at the warehouse. The goods are safely stored in these warehouses. Once the clients buy the products you are selling; amazon delivers the product to the client. They pick payments but ensure that the inventory of that particular good is up to date.
3. They Take Care of Customer Service
After the deliveries have been done, they follow up with the client to query the goods. Queries about the shipment and how satisfied they are with the items delivered to them. In case of anything, they handle returns for you and get to answer any questions that a customer might have. The ratings on your products or the listing and the feedbacks given are all upon you to take action about it.
Payments
After every two weeks, Amazon does a total of your sales. They deduct the seller fees, and they deposit the whole profits to your bank account. They only give you the exact amount that suits you no less no more.
What You As The Seller Are Responsible For on Amazon FBA:
Choosing What to Sell
You are the seller, and you are not limited to any products. However, for you to avoid an accumulation of storage fees, ensure that the products you choose to sell, sell out quickly.
Keep Knventories of Your Stock
As much as Amazon FBA checks the inventory for you from their side, you are also required to check the inventory on your side as well. This is important as you will stay up to date with what levels your products are.
Marketing
You need to market the goods you are selling. It is your work to search for clients online and showcasing your products to them. If you are selling high-ranked brands, it is unlikely for you to market them. Marketing your products on amazon is for those that have custom-made products and would want to let their clients know about them.
How To Sell Quickly On Amazon FBA
1. Research your competitors on the brand. This will help you range how profitable the products are. You can use websites like Unicorn to get feedback on the products. That is how they sell per month, their profitability, the competition, among others.
 2. Be smart with the products you are selling. The high-ranking products tend to sell faster, but then the competition becomes high. The longer your products take at the warehouse, the longer the storage fees. The lower-selling goods tend to sell slowly but easier since the competition is down.
3. Start small. Starting with smaller products will bring you into the limelight of how the market is and what your chances are. Once you are sure about this, you can then add more products as you grow your customer line.
4. Build your brand. This means that for you to be among the top-ranked sellers on amazon, you require to have your unique brand. This, therefore, brings you to more understanding of your customers, the brand, and how to maintain consistency of the products in the market. You can start small by using unique packaging for your goods. This will sell out more information about you to your clients. This is a good start to making money online.
 5. Have an in-depth product description for your goods and attend to clients’ queries. Let your products sell themselves by providing videos, and more pictures of the products. Let the clients see the real picture of what they are going to buy. Always answer the questions that your clients might have about the question. Always be available to answer any of these questions whether the client has purchased the products or not. Rather than waiting for clients to bring questions, you can have the first question yourself. This will open and Q&A session with your clients.
Pros of Amazon FBA
Easy management
With Amazon, you do not have to do a lot of work. This is because the deliveries are done for you. Doing all of this can be time-consuming. But with Amazon, you use this time to market your products.
Discounted shipping rates
Amazon delivers its goods to clients at a lot of discounted prices. This is one of the reasons why people love shopping with amazon. They sometimes even offer free shipping for the products. The deliveries they make as well as quick no matter where the client is.
Customer service management
Amazon is known to have excellent customer service. The burden of having to deal with your clients directly is taken off you.
Cons of Amazon FBA
Amazon FBA costs money.
This is the storage fee, as well as the fulfillment fee. This is why you should get easy-selling products that will still earn you profit even after these deductions.
You may see more returns
Clients are likely to return your goods more due to the easy return procedure that amazon has. It does not have ways to cut out test buyers.
Tracking inventory can be difficult
It is difficult to track something that you cannot see. Selling out of view requires strategies that will help you sell out your goods easily.
Pooling products is at times tricky
Amazon has come up with a way of pooling similar products from different buyers to increase efficiency. If all goes well, then you enjoy long term benefits. However, some sellers might bring in similar counterfeit products. This will add negative reviews to your page. With the detailed information given above, you can now range yourself on what platform favors you most. What best way to make money online, then using the above means
Conclusion
So which is better, affiliate marketing or Amazon FBA? Well, I personally think affiliate marketing is the superior business model, but that’s only my opinion. There are pros and cons to both of them.
Affiliate marketing can turn into a real passive income source if done the correct way. And there are really no limitations to how much you can earn. If you’re interested in trying affiliate marketing I want to recommend a training I’ve used myself. It’s called The Affiliate Bootcamp.
When it comes to Amazon FBA your chances of making money are also quite high. Unlike affiliate marketing, you could make more money faster with Amazon FBA. Something to mention is that you need some capital to start with. You need to buy the products you want to sell and ship them to an Amazon warehouse before you’ve gotten any sales. So keep that in mind. If you’re interested in learning more about the Amazon FBA business model then I highly recommend you watch Kevin Davids FREE training on the topic. He has made several hundred-thousand dollars himself doing Amazon FBA. Click the link above to access the free Amazon FBA training.
