As someone who has a lot of experience with both affiliate marketing and digital marketing, I thought I’d write a blog post on the subject of affiliate marketing vs digital marketing.
Of course, I’m going to assume that you already know the difference: “Affiliate marketing” is where you affiliate yourself with another business and you promote them via an affiliate link whereby you are paid commissions whenever someone makes a purchase through your link (performance based marketing for both parties). And “digital marketing” is simply marketing your own business online.
Now, I realize that some may think of “digital marketing” as the act of marketing digital products (like courses) but I’m going to keep this article about the traditional sense of the term “digital marketing” (as marketing your own business that you either own or represent as a marketing consultant). As a side note, I believe that no one should be marketing courses anyway. The whole point of the internet is to give the world access to free information (IT: Information Technology). I agree it can be ad-supported on websites and apps but should never be sold. Who would spend that money anyway? I never would!
My Online Marketing Background
What Makes Me Knowledgable About This Anyway…
I’ve had websites since 1999:
- Websites for bands I was in.
- Websites for TV shows I produced.
- Websites for businesses I’ve owned (like a digital marketing agency).
- Websites for affiliate marketing purposes (side money).
I’ve also done a lot of digital marketing online (both for myself and for clients):
- Search engine optimization (SEO).
- Search engine marketing (off-page SEO).
- Google Ads campaigns.
- Bing Ads campaigns.
- Facebook/Instagram/Reddit/Snapchat/Twitter campaigns.
- YouTube ads and YouTube video campaigns (video SEO).
- Alternative ad networks like native ad networks, push ads, and display ad networks.
- Local business/maps optimization.
- Video production and all kinds of advertising creative.
My Affiliate Marketing Experience
Like I mentioned above, the affiliate marketing projects I had were more of a side hustle. The way that I found I could make any money at all doing it was by creating a website around a specific niche and then getting the site to rank in Google for a specific keyword phrase. For example, my best site was a review site on different explainer video software programs. I bought, tried, and thoroughly reviewed these software programs (and, of course, included my affiliate links in the articles).
I had to do keyword research to make sure that enough people actually searched for “explainer video software” and that the keyword phrase wasn’t too competitive to rank for in Google and other search engines.
At the time, that keyword phrase was still untapped. So the conditions were right to make that project work. But it only made me an extra $100 a month (which is not bad for passive income). I thought I could maybe duplicate the process and end up having lots of websites that do the same thing. But opportunities like that were/are hard to come by (so that’s quite a negative for affiliate marketing vs digital marketing).
Also, by now, explainer video software is no longer an in-demand thing. Everyone has a camera and video editing software on their phone so there are easier ways to make a sales video your business’s website. You can even have AI do it for you!
Affiliate Marketing Has No Future
In my opinion, affiliate marketing is dying. Review sites like the explainer video software one I had and ones that I own today don’t work as well anymore. And that is thanks to AI (I think). Nowadays, when people want to research a product they just ask ChatGPT (which completely bypasses any webpages) or they use Google which now shows an AI snippet at the top of the page (so people don’t even need to click on any websites anymore)…
I’ve already noticed a major drop in search activity since the arrival of AI.
Technology is Working Against Affiliates
Another negative for affiliate marketing as opposed to digital marketing is that the tracking technology behind your affiliate links are getting less and less able to track your clicks and sales. With more and more users opting for web browsers made by major corporations like Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari, that means link tracking is getting blocked more and more. These corporations, of course, are out for themselves. They don’t care about your ability to track and make sales. Now, I do agree that some of the blocking is for good reason. There is a lot of unscrupulous tracking activity out there too. Unfortunately, that doesn’t bode well for affiliate marketers.
I even had a situation once where I texted my affiliate link to someone who wanted to buy from me specifically and wanted to make sure I got my commission. They made their purchase through my link but the sale never got tracked to me. This is probably because of their web browser on their phone (probably Chrome or Safari). Who knows how many other sales I should have gotten from my websites where the clicks were just never tracked.
Low Commissions
Another problem that many people find with affiliate marketing is the low commission rates. Most opportunities only pay 6-8%. I actually avoided all those. I only joined programs that payed 50% to 35% at the lowest. Of course, those were hard to come by.
Digital Marketing is Better
Because of that major problem we see now with affiliate marketing, I believe that good old digital marketing is the way to go now and in the future. When you own your own business (or do digital marketing for a business) you are actually providing more of a benefit to society. Plus, there is a whole side of marketing that you get with digital marketing (and you don’t with affiliate) and that’s branding.
With affiliate marketing, whenever you post about the company (and you’re not hiding the company name) they are getting all the benefit! You only get paid if someone clicks on your link. But if they already know the company name (even if they learned it from you), they have no reason to go through your link unless they are trying to help you out specifically or you offer a special incentive that they only get with your link. But when you own the business, you get the benefit whenever the business name is mentioned. That’s the power of branding!
Combining Affiliate Marketing With Digital Marketing
I realize you’re attracted to affiliate marketing because anyone can do it. You don’t have to own a business. As long as you have a computer (or even just a phone) and internet access, you’re an affiliate marketer. So instead of trying to decipher the differences between affiliate marketing vs digital marketing, what if there was a way to combine the two concepts.
I own my own websites which are not necessarily review sites but sites that provide some kind of need. And that need can be as simple as information. So, these are websites that are informational but ad-supported. So in essence, they are businesses (or brands) that I own. And the best part is that they actually provide a service in society and help to make the world a better place (unlike review sites and other affiliate-motived sites that have really just added a lot of trash to the internet).
Hosting & Domains
Both affiliate marketing and digital marketing are going to require website hosting and domain name registrations. I personally use a company called NameCheap (for both) but I know GoDaddy is popular so I wrote up a post on GoDaddy vs NameCheap.
