What are the alternatives to affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular business models online. But it’s not for everyone. There’s many other ways of earning an income online. So here’s a breakdown of a few other methods and strategies you can use to generate an income online.
Some of these will require more investment in time and or money than others. But most of them do require at least an initial investment of your time.
Alternatives To Affiliate Marketing: Content Marketing
Content marketing is a large part of affiliate marketing but it’s not only affiliates who make money from their content. Content uploaded to video or on a blog can generate a passive income over time from advertising. Google Adsense is one of the most popular advertising platforms for content creators.
Anyone can join Google Adsense or one of the many other advertising platforms you can use to monetise content:
- Media.net
- AdThrive.com
- Mediavine.com
- PropellerAds.com
- BuySellAds.com
- Skimlinks.com – technically affiliate marketing but works in the same way as ads.
- InfoLinks.com
Most ad platforms allow you to place advertising banners on your content which are automatically populated with relevant content according to what you have on your site. The hard part is building enough content to maintain a steady flow of free traffic, which can take a long time and a lot of work initially. But once you’ve done this, you can earn passively from advertising revenue. You need to devote a lot of time to creating and uploading written content on a blog or video content to YouTube.
Pros: easy to place banners
Cons: you need a lot of free traffic for this to work and hence a lot of content.
Alternatives To Affiliate Marketing: Freelancing
Freelancing is a good alternative to affiliate marketing and although you don’t have the long term outcome of a passive income from freelancing, income can be more immediate. You’ll still need to set yourself up as a freelancer and find suitable jobs. This can be the biggest challenge when you’re up against very cheap competition who are more established already. Two freelancing sites are Upwork.com and Fiverr.com.
To get started you’ll need to register a profile on a site and promote yourself in a particular area of expertise.
It can take some time to build up your presence and secure a job. Plus you might need to work very cheaply at the start to build up your reputation and rating. But if you have some kind of online skill you can sell, this might be an answer.
Pros: Little investment except your time
Cons: Competition and finding work in your skillset
Alternatives To Affiliate Marketing: eBay
There’s many ways you can buy and sell online to make money on the difference. You can buy from a wholesalers such as Alibaba.com and resell on eBay through a single listing. This will require upfront investment and the more stock you can purchase at once, the cheaper it generally is per item. Once you have chosen an item to resell on eBay, you can create a listing and sell an item at a time.
There’s a lot of competition for this tactic though so it’s worth doing your homework before choosing something to sell. Some sellers are importing directly from China to keep their costs down as this means it can be difficult to do the same thing with a smaller investment of a wholesale purchase.
Pros: Simple strategy & convenient when set up
Cons: Risk and capital needed, competitive
There’s other angles you can take with eBay. Some sellers buy up stock which is damaged or broken and repair the item, adding their costs and a profit to the sale price. Another strategy is to find miss spelled items on eBay.
Miss spelled items often sell for less than they are worth because they don’t get enough people bidding on them (since they’re not visible). You can take advantage of this with a miss spell search tool and through using an auction sniper software to “snipe” auctions to get them for the lowest price!
The re-sell the item with a better listing, more pictures and of course correct spelling! Read more about this tactic here.
Pros: low cost
Cons: time consuming and not scalable
Alternatives To Affiliate Marketing: Forex Marketing
With Forex marketing you take positions on the Foreign Exchange markets with the aim of making money from small market shifts. This can take some time to learn and it’s worth investing in a trading course to give yourself the best chance of success.
A huge amount of novice traders completely blow their trading account within the first few months of trading. So it’s worth getting help and support and starting out with a demo account for at least a few months before risking real cash.
You’ll need a trading “bank” which you can ultimately use to make trades with and you’ll need to follow strict rules in order to be successful. Most traders never trade more than 1-3% of their trading capital on any one trade and not even the best traders win every trade. Patience is key for trading as is a good understanding of the numbers. You’ll need to understand risk:reward ratios and stick to a strict trading plan.
Pros: Leverage and large earning potential
Cons: Takes time to learn (2 years) and investment needed
Alternatives To Affiliate Marketing: Drop Shipping
Drop shipping is similar to affiliate marketing in that you are using someone else’s business model and selling someone else’s products. Unlike affiliate marketing though you are taking orders from customers directly and arranging shipment of goods to them. In some ways drop shipping is a little more complicated than affiliate marketing in that you’re the “shop front” where customers buy from. Whereas with affiliate marketing you only refer customers directly to the sales page of the product owner.
Other that that they are both pretty similar business models. You’ll need to learn some form of marketing in order to attract people to your website and make sales. Here’s a few drop shipping suppliers you can use:
- AliExpress
- Alibaba
- SaleHoo
- Worldwide Brands
- Doba
- Sunrise Wholesale
- Wholesale2b
- Megagoods
- Modalyst
- Wholesale Central
- Spocket
- CJDropshipping
- CROV
Pros: Scalable business model with large profit potential
Cons: Requires investment and time to learn
See also affiliate marketing vs drop shipping.
Alternatives To Affiliate Marketing: Self Publishing
If you’ve ever thought about writing something, why not try Amazon’s self publishing service? This is a low cost option which lets anyone publish a book to Amazon for free and earn money through your own sales or the Kindle Direct Publishing Select global fund.
Once you have written your book you can upload it directly to the Kindle Self Publishing site here: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/
Pros: Easy and free, potential passive income
Cons: No guarantees of income, sporadic income
Redbubble: Sell Your Art
Another alternative to affiliate marketing is RedBubble.com. On Redbubble, you can earn income from the sale of clothing and other items on which your imagery has been used.
So if you’re artistic or like creating images, just upload them to the site and earn royalties from sales that are made. Items are created on demand and you get paid when an item with your logo on it sells.
Pros: Easy and free to do
Cons: You’ll need to upload a lot of images to earn consistently, sporadic income
Sell Images & Videos
You can do the same thing with sites such as Shutterstock.com which pay you for downloads of your images and videos. So if you’re a budding photographer, or video creator you can upload your work and make money from it through royalties. Again, like with Redbubble, you’ll need to upload a lot of work to make this pay consistently. But the good thing is this income can become passive if you have enough images which are selling.
Other image sharing sites are:
- Alamy.com
- IstockPhoto.com
- Photoshelter
- Adobe Stock
- SmugMug
- Can Stock Photo
- 123RF
- Dreamstime
- FineArtAmerica
Pros: Cheap and easy to do
Cons: Sporadic income unless you have a lot of uploaded content
Print On Demand
This is similar to the Redbubble concept above only you’ll be generating the traffic you need to your own website and selling customer made printed products with your design on.
One of the most important benefits of a print on demand business is that you can sell products without the need to invest in a large inventory. This kind of business can be a small side hustle or a large earner making tens of thousands of dollars a month. It has huge potential for growth and is easy and cheap to get into, similar to affiliate marketing.
You can create an online store using a platform such as Shopify. Learn how to market your website and generate sales. Since the hardest part of such a business is marketing, it is very similar to affiliate marketing and drop shipping; only with the added hassle of being the middle man for customers and taking orders yourself. You’ll also need to find customers yourself through advertising your website.
Here’s some print on demand companies: Printful, Printify, and Gooten.
Pros: Cheap and easy to start
Cons: Self promotion is key to success, slower delivery of products
Start An Amazon Buisness
Amazon is well known for its affiliate program where you can link to products on the site and earn commissions. But you can also become a seller on Amazon by opening an Amazon seller partner account. With the fulfilment by Amazon option you can ship your inventory to Amazon. Amazon’s fulfils product listing and sale, and you get paid every 2 weeks. Amazon’s customer service team answers questions and deals with customers.
If you choose you can store and ship products yourself, using Amazon as the sales mechanism for doing the selling.
An Amazon selling partner account is £25 / $30 per month + selling fees.
Third party sales account for around 60% of physical product sales on Amazon and those sales are growing faster than Amazon’s own retail sales. So if you’re interested in becoming one of them you can learn more here.
Pros: Amazon is a trusted online brand and people are happy purchasing from them
Cons: Competition for product sales
Sell On Etsy
Etsy is a growing online marketplace where you can open your own store and start selling your own handcrafted goods. If you’re a small business or craftsperson who wants to sell their products online, Etsy might be an ideal way to gain visibility and reach markets that might otherwise be difficult to access.
The Etsy transaction fee is 5% of a total sale’s value, and each listing costs a flat fee of $0.20.
Pros: Cheaper than some other online marketplaces
Cons: Competition and costs, you need to promote your products/shop to find customers
