Why Affiliate Marketing is Better than MLM (Multi-level marketing)

I’m not going to sugarcoat it, this post will likely upset some people. While I will admit that people have found success in both industries, I find more people find success in Affiliate Marketing and I will outline why.

MLM has a limited audience. When promoting a MLM program, you need to find other people who are interested in MLM, it’s very difficult to promote and successfully close a MLM sale on someone who isn’t interested in MLM. Affiliate Marketing has an almost infinite number of difference niches, you can pretty much target almost any audience with the right offer and you have the potential to make money, this increases your chances of success dramatically.

A challenge with MLM is everyone is promoting their own program, so when approaching a potential lead you have a high chance that they are going to pitch you their program which gives you little chance on closing/selling them on your program. With Affiliate Marketing, you can promote to almost any niche and anyone within reach, when you try to sell to someone, it is very unlikely they will turn around and try to sell you on something. The other side of this is there are hundreds (if not thousands, or even more) of different affiliate programs, you don’t need to just rely on one company. For example, I promote Aff Playbook, while I totally believe in their program as they have a proven track record. If someone joins Aff Playbook – they do not need to promote them, they teach you how to promote several different niches. You aren’t trapped or stuck with one offer or company and the same can be said for the entire Affiliate Marketing industry, there are so many options.

Let’s face the cold hard truth that is going to upset many and lead to much denial. MLM programs are designed to make the owner/creator lots of money. Yes, as a member you can make money, but they are making much more. With Affiliate Marketing, there are sometimes middlemen, but the whole process distributes the profit between everyone involved much better. Often the affiliate can make 50-80% commission off of a product or a lead.

What value does MLM offer? It’s a circle designed to make money off you, then have you go out and get more people to join that makes the people above you more money, then the people you bring in are stuck in the same cycle. There is very little value. Yes, you can make money, but how are you helping anyone else? They are just put into the circle/system to keep promoting a program that just promotes itself. You could argue that some Affiliate Marketing offers do not offer value to an audience, but at the end of the day some do. As stated above, there are so many programs out there, many can help people.

With MLM, everyone is divided into teams, each team operates individually and with little cross collaboration. With Affiliate Marketing, you can decide how you want to work. If you want to work by yourself, then go ahead. If you want to work with others, then start or join a mastermind and collaborate with as many people as you want, you can be as part of as many as you want. If you’re not familiar with what a mastermind is, to sum it up, it’s a team of people working together to help each other to help everyone. When you’re a team with MLM, guess who it helps more – you or the leader of your team?