What Is Affiliate Marketing: Benefits And Disadvantages

If you’ve asked yourself, ” what is affiliate marketing “? In this article, we will talk about affiliate programs and, more specifically, Amazon and eBay. Affiliate marketing benefits both consumers and sellers. Consumers confidently buy goods and products recommended by a publisher, who enjoys their trust and shows them the messages dictated by the advertiser interested in converting them into loyal customers.

For the service provided, the publisher is recognized as a percentage of sales within a revenue-sharing relationship (sharing of revenues) or a commission on user actions, such as subscribing to newsletters or downloading a document, which will serve to convert the user at a later time. Different affiliate strategies and remuneration are based on the company’s business objective.

Two are distinguished:

Pay Per Conversion, if the goal is to convert the visitor into a paying customer, with direct conversion/transaction;
Pay Per Lead, when the publisher is still paid for bringing users to the seller’s site, with no commitment to convert them into direct customers.

Table of Contents

What Is Affiliate Marketing? Here Are The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Amazon And eBay

Let’s consider the advantages/disadvantages of selling on eBay. Once you have learned the pros and cons of selling items on eBay, you can decide whether to use the platform for online sales or look for an alternative more suited to those needs. Selling using a large platform such as eBay provides sellers (sellers) with a set of advantages; the main ones for sale on eBay are the following:

Access To A Large Number Of Users/Customers

eBay users or visitors go to the platform to view the products they have in mind, compare them, make offers or buy them directly. It is a platform with many connected users from all over the world, people with clear ideas intending to buy. Those who go to eBay to sell take advantage of excellent access opportunities to many users who use the platform to make their purchases online.

When a product is uploaded to the eBay platform, it is viewed and receives visits from buyers looking for that product or a similar one; it is easier to have good sales success than an e-commerce or other platform guy. These high-level platforms, therefore, allow sellers to enter a vast market without geographical limits and international-ranking businesses.

Selling Items Of Any Kind

The type of products on the eBay platform is almost unlimited; it is possible to sell everything. The platform offers its users brand-new or used products, physical or digital, and eBay admits any product category or class of item (excluding illegal products, firearms, dangerous materials, pornographic products, etc.).

Ease Of Selling On eBay

To take advantage of the sales potential offered by eBay, it is sufficient to create a virtual shop on the web portal and start displaying products for sale, entering information such as the title, product description, images, asking price and payment and shipping method. It takes just a few minutes to configure everything and start displaying the items for sale on the platform on the web.

Lower Investment In Digital Marketing

The views that generate traffic on eBay are guaranteed. The need to make significant investments in digital marketing to apply SEO / SEM strategies or strategic promotional campaigns to drive traffic to the products is optional.

eBay: Affiliate Marketing What It Is And What Are Its Drawbacks

As mentioned above, the advantages of selling on eBay are many and exciting, but there are also weaknesses that sellers must properly consider; they are the following:

Commissions or fees payable on sales paid to eBay are higher than to other online selling platforms.
If the auction model is used, you need to continuously monitor the items for sale and reactivate them if they remain without bids at the end of the sale time.
The eBay platform does not promote any relationship between seller and customer.
Any customization of the product lists is restricted to the graphic settings defined by eBay, prohibiting the creation of one or more product sheets capable of adding value to the customer.

Amazon Marketplace: Advantages And Disadvantages Of Selling

Amazon, a well-known platform that is the world’s largest marketplace, is the perfect place to sell any product over the internet. Some advantages that Amazon offers make this platform the favorite of many sellers; even for Amazon, it is good to know the pros and cons of selling before starting to offer products.

The Advantages Of Selling On The Amazon Platform And How Your Affiliate Marketing Plan Works

The advantages are similar to those expressed for eBay: access to many customers interested in purchasing products, a more limited investment in digital marketing, the ease of starting to sell and the possibility of offering and selling almost all kinds of items.

Further advantages of selling on Amazon are:

There is no need to have a warehouse; Amazon uses over 100 storage centers all over the planet earth. Users can use the services that Amazon offers to delegate the storage of products, therefore, without the need for the seller to have their warehouse for storage and sorting operations.
Logistics delegated to Amazon.It’s just a significant advantage that Amazon offers to sellers who don’t have to worry about logistics.

In fact, after making a sale, it is precisely Amazon’s logistics that take care of all the follow-up, starting from the preparation of the packaging to the shipment of the product and even to the after-sales service and also the management of returned products.

The seller does not incur costs for logistics and transport and can therefore pay more attention to developing his promotional work and seeking to obtain a higher sales volume. Amazon, for these services, retains a commission for each sale, and the user receives the sum relating to the sale directly into his bank account.

The Drawbacks Of Selling On Amazon

Depending on the type of product, the commissions due to Amazon are variable and can also be very high. Amazon focuses on products for which it takes work for the seller to build a relationship with customers to bind and obtain loyal buyers.