Affiliate marketing is a joint business partnership between the advertiser and publisher. Where the advertiser is the brand owner who owns the products or services and the publisher or the affiliate is the one who promotes the products on his/her website. In affiliate marketing, the moment a customer makes a purchase of goods or services, from the publisher’s website by clicking the affiliate link, a part of the profit generated from that particular transaction is credited to the publisher’s account as a commission.
Like any other business platform, in affiliate marketing also there are some disadvantages attached to it. In case, if the publisher will get into false and misleading advertising to earn the sales commission. These kinds of activities can damage the advertisers’ business and it’s brand reputation. Let’s discuss in detail some of the major drawbacks of affiliate marketing for advertisers.
High Competition
For most good products in affiliate marketing, there is huge competition in the market, so it is a difficult task to promote and to get success in this competitive marketplace. If the advertiser wants to promote any product thought the publisher, there is a high chance that there are many others who already are doing the same So, Your product or service needs to be either outstanding or unique as compared to all others out there to get it clicked. It’s a bit difficult task in this competitive market to achieve the attention of the people who are interested and who will buy.
Doesn’t Attract The Right Kind Of Traffic
In order to succeed and sustain in affiliate marketing, you need to drive the right kind of traffic to your website. It is important to bring the right kind of traffic from the people who are interested in your affiliate products. If affiliates attract the wrong kind of traffic, even the volume of visitors may be higher, but it doesn’t get converted into sales, so it’s not helpful. To get the right traffic to your site, you have to optimize and have to do proper research to ensure that you will only get traffic from people who are interested in the products and services that you are promoting.
Publishers Are Not Trust-Worthy
In affiliate marketing, many times you hire a bad publisher, who can misleading advertising. Some fraud publishers may make claims and promises regarding the product and service which are completely exaggerated. By such fraudulent activity, the advertisers can lose potential customers, and which can harm the advertiser’s business in the long run.
Time Taking
Affiliate marketing is time taking because, finding a trustable, good, experienced publisher is not an easy task you need to have a lot of patience and have to search for a good publisher for your brand. There are so many companies that might offer the same product that you offer. So, it is very tough and time taking task for the advertisers to stand out and make their customers understand that the products or service quality is superior.
Publishers Create Wrong Advertisements
Most of the time, publishers use wrong tactics and will get into some fraud activities, such as by creating false advertising, spamming email list, and market the advertiser’s product under a hollow or untrue pretense, which can negatively impact the advertiser’s brand name. Even though there are some guidelines for publishers that they must comply to become an affiliate, but there is always a risk that the publishers could harm the advertisers’ business and its reputation.
Inconsistent Results
For advertisers in affiliate marketing, the results or outcomes won’t be consistent all the time in terms of traffic or in terms of selling, and this will make it difficult to forecast the outcome of using affiliate marketing.
Final Key Takeaways
Even though affiliate marketing has its drawbacks, but at the end of the day, it will drive you with decent sales and visitors to your website in the long term. So, before getting started with affiliate marketing, study the platform properly before you approach it.
It’s good to read the above-mentioned points which will help you to understand the cons of affiliate marketing and apply it before you hire a publisher who will promote your product to increase sales. There are two sides of the same coin, in the same way, an affiliate program has also got some drawbacks for advertisers which can be minimized by paying attention and by following best practices.
