Affiliate Marketing and freelancing are 2 common ways of earning money online with minimum efforts and investment requirements. With an almost unlimited earning potential, affiliate marketing and freelancing sound like a great way to life your life. However, freelancing and affiliate marketing remain 2 distinct niches, and its important for you to make the right decision.
Affiliate Marketing vs Freelancing
As an expert freelancer and marketer, I have tried both. Here are some of the benefits of affiliate marketing and freelancing according to me:
- Flexible Working Hours
- Unlimited earning potential
- Complete independence
- Low investment, qualifications, or skills needed
- Completely Remote Work
But, its always tough to choose between freelancing and affiliate marketing. That’s why I have created this guide to help you take the right decision.
For now, let’s first understand what is Affiliate Marketing.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
In Affiliate Marketing, you promote products/services for other companies, upon successful sale, you are awarded with a fixed amount or percentage commission per sale. You can become an affiliate for wide range of companies and products. As an affiliate you will get a unique product link for yourself.
All purchases made through that link would result in you being awarded a percentage commission or fixed amount. Some of the best affiliate programs can make you have earnings as high as $100 per sale. In order to generate sales, you can utilize your social media platforms, personal outreach, email marketing, and many other methods.
In comparison of Affiliate Marketing vs Freelancing, if you are an influencer or have a website/YouTube channel or any form of realistic social presence, you can leverage to make a lot of sales.
Some of the most popular affiliate programs include Amazon Affiliate, which can be used to promote any existing amazon products to your audience and generate a lot of sales.
What is Freelancing?
Freelancing involves providing your services to another person/business on a contract or per-assignment basis. As a freelancer, you would work as an off-role employee for the company. Unlike conventional job, you can work with multiple companies and clients at the same time with no issues.
Freelancing could include providing services like content writing, marketing, data entry, video editing, SEO, legal/financial advising, and more. Based on your skills you can provide the most relevant services to a wide range of clients.
As a freelancer, you have to find clients, pitch your services, close deal, deliver the promised work, and more, by yourself. In order to become a freelancer you can refer to some of the best platforms for finding jobs such as Freelancer and UpWork.
The Pros and Cons of Affiliate Marketing?
In order to help you make better decisions, here are some Pros/Cons of Affilaite Marketing.
| Pros of Affiliate Marketing | Cons of Affiliate Marketing |
| If done right, it can build regular income with minimal fluctuations. | Sales and revenue can take a lot of time to build up if you don’t have preexisting digital presence. |
| Requires no past experience of any kind. You can get started whenever you want. | Payments often happen about 30-60 days after the sale. Varies contract to contract. |
| Wide range of affiliate programs from companies like Amazon, ShareASale, and more, means you are not dependent on anyone. |
Pros and Cons of Freelancing?
Some of the major pros and cons of freelancing are:
| Pros of Freelancing | Cons of Freelancing |
| Allows you to decide your own pricing, rates, and terms. | Usually requires some past experience or skills to secure good jobs initially. |
| Maintains excitement and gives you opportunity to work in new projects for various new clients | Necessitates the need to have proper communication and negotiation skills. |
| Endless opportunities from businesses searching for quality work from freelancers. | |
| Allows you to easily scale up and grow your freelancing work into a service business in future |
Comparison Between Affiliate Marketing vs Freelancing
Till now, I tried to explain affiliate marketing and freelancing along with their major pros and cons. Now, let’s talk about the key differences between these 2 on some key parameters, allowing you to get a bird’s eye view of all the major differences.
Let’s start the Affiliate Marketing v/s Freelancing Comparison:
| Category | Affiliate Marketing | Freelancing |
| Money Earning Potential | Very High | Extremely High |
| Ease of Getting Started | Very Easy | Easy |
| Freedom of Working | Extremely Good | Good |
| Skill Building/Resume Building | Very Good | Very Good |
| Scalability | Good | Very Good |
| Requires pre-existing experience/skills? | No | Yes |
| Can be pursued as a side-hustle? | Yes | No |
| Is It Easy To Get the First Sale? | Yes | No |
| Helps build skillset that is valuable in industry | No | Yes |
That’s everything you need to know when comparing Freelancing and affiliate marketing. If even this doesn’t help you make a decision, don’t worry, you are not alone. Being confused in such a decision is always very natural.
Worry not, based on expertise as a marketer and freelancer, I will help you make better decisions.
Why is Affiliate Marketing Best For You?
Affiliate marketing is the ideal choice for you in case:
- You don’t want to perform negotiations and work in team with other people
- You want complete freedom of time with no one putting pressure on you to work at any given movement.
Why is Freelancing Best For You?
Affiliate marketing is the ideal choice for you in case:
- You already possess a valuable skill and/or have experience in using that skill professionally
- You want to grow your self-employed work as a small business in future.
- You want to become independent and make your own decisions.
Conclusion: Affiliate Marketing vs Freelancing
So, what’s best Freelancing or Affiliate Marketing?
Personally, I prefer freelancing over affiliate marketing, but that doesn’t make one better than the other. Ultimately it depends on what you want, and what are your priorities.
We’ve discussed all aspects, pros and cons of affiliate marketing and freelancing with you. Along with that our comparisons between the freelancing and affiliate marketing will help you make informed decisions.
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