Difference between direct sales and affiliate marketing?

trustdnb · Feb 25, 2015

I'm getting confused what is the difference between direct sales and affiliate marketing?
could any one tell me how does it work?

Many thanks

Nytshade · Feb 25, 2015

Direct sales is when you sell your product or services direct/straight to the consumer. The consumer doesn't have to come to your physical store. You can deliver the product via a distributor or a sales rep. For a digital product, you just send the customer to a download page.

Affiliate marketing is when you allow other people to sell your product or service for a commission, the affiliate does all the marketing and promotion and when people buy your product through their link/phone number you give them a commission.

The difference is that, with direct selling you have to do all the promotion, advertising and get customers then you also have to pay the sales rep or distributor to deliver the product. If it's a digital product then you don't need anyone to deliver the product, the buyer just goes to a download page to get the product.

With affiliate marketing, the affiliate does all the marketing, promotion, get customers and advertising. You can still do the promotions yourself to maximize profits, that way you don't have to pay anyone a commission. If it's a physical product you still have to pay for delivery and pay the affiliate marketer.

The biggest advantage of using an affiliate marketer is that most of them already have a list of buyers.

oldnickb · May 7, 2015

Generally if people talk about direct selling they are talking about selling straight to the consumer at their home or business. Most direct sales people will be working mainly on commission. In most cases they will be working company supplied leads. eg double glazing salespeople. Although most will be self employed they will be portayed to the customer as company staff.

Confusingly many network marketing(mlm) companies call themselves direct sales companies because they are utilising a network of independent distributors, and I have seen adverts that suggest you are becoming an affiliate but that is not the case.

Affiliate marketing is selling a vendors products online and earning a commission for doing so. Effectively the affiliate is doing all the lead generation and is getting paid for doing so.

Again confusingly Amazon doesn't have affiliates, they have associates but that is just their choice of nomenclature

Just to further confuse you direct marketing is the use of direct response mediums to generate the order. That would be direct mail or direct response adverts in media publications.

From a vendors point of view affiliate marketing can be the most cost effective because you only pay anything out when a sale is made. As an affiliate you are absorbing the marketing cost and unless you know what you are doing it's easy to lose money.

10 years ago you could use adwords to drive traffic straight to an affiliate offer. Clicks were a couple of cents. Making a profit was relatively easy. That is no longer the case with clicks having soared in price.

Archana · May 28, 2015

Direct sales means to sell your products directly to your customers to earn huge benefit through it. But whereas affiliate marketing is a process where you can sell your products on others website to earn some profit or interest from it. Nowadays affiliate marketing is on demand as it gives the opportunity to many of the people to compare their desired products easily.

Difference between direct sales and affiliate marketing?

trustdnb

Member

Nytshade

Well-known member

oldnickb

Active member

Archana

Member

Latest posts New threads

Latest posts

New threads

Latest Hosting Offers New Reviews

Latest hosting offers

Popular Contributors - Past 30 Days

Sponsors

Tag Cloud