Affiliate Marketing vs Referral Marketing - Difference - Explanation

I explained about Affiliate Marketing in my previous post in detail and the confusion between Referral marketing and the Affiliate marketing was very well explained. In this article, I would like to give you more appropriate facts for clear understanding and the respective web links.

Referral marketing:

Driving traffic through conventional methods like placing an ad in your blog/website, referring your friends & circle to buy from the respective website is called Referral Marketing. To succeed here in this business, you may have to have large social circle which believes your recommendation and the quality of product you are recommending. The company believes you and your source of reference with the feedback on their products they sell

Though you refer customers to the Merchant website, the clicks/visits are monitored & filtered in order to validate the genuine customers and avoid fake clicks like automatic crawlers and multiple clicks from the same IP address.

Generally all E-commerce websites are giving opportunity for Referral marketing and they have various commission rates with respect to nature of products. Some of them are ebay, Flipkart, Amazon..etc I have given the links to respective website's affiliate programs on the website names. 

Known/established E-commerce websites will have direct marketing methods by the respective Merchant/Brand themselves through Televisions, Radio, Classifieds..etc in bigger way and millions of affiliates to drive traffic. It may take very long time to succeed as you should only rely on your website/blog/social website traffic.But if you have experience in all soft skills then winning chances are more.

Commission % will be marginal when you compare with Affiliate marketing. 

Affiliate Marketing:

This marketing is inclusive of referral marketing method & other wide range of methods available at your own cost for higher income. You advertise (either paid ad in your cost or FREE classified ads or referring somebody) for a product and drive traffic to the website and earn commission up to 10 to 72% of the product value. 

However, these commission rates are again based on the Merchant/Brand. If a Merchant/Brand wants to promote their website all over the world, they will give you multiple opportunity to earn through this internet affiliate program and they will provide you all the soft tools you required and a basic internet user can become an affiliate through training.

For example, an E-commerce website called Tripleclciks.com is offering affiliate program through customized website called SFI where you can get all training materials at FREE of cost and there are many forums for acquiring knowledge, sharing ideas, getting helps from fellow affiliates, seniors and the Man who implemented this business. 

Affiliate programs to be handled with more number of soft skills like blogging, promoting the E commerce website/products through various FREE or paid ads,  Social media advertisements like Facebook Ads, FREE SMS website which allows your banner at their website...etc. 

The affiliate programs will succeed in long run and will give you lifetime earnings through your referral customers in bigger way. People with patience & consistence are winning the Future here in this business.

In a nut shell, referral marketing will bring you less money/commission with your effort where as the Affiliate marketing will bring you more commission with respect to the Merchant/Brand. Disadvantage of any internet business is , it is subject to commission risks at any point of time by the Big Business Merchant, hence you have to keep on watching their change in terms and manage your business accordingly

But the option is yours based on your convenience/soft-skills/ patience/ contribution/ spare time availability.

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