The ultimate debate that can finally be settled. Is affiliate marketing or freelancing better? After we’ve done freelancing successfully for a 10 years, and have done affiliate marketing for multiple decades, it’s safe to say our opinion on this is backed with experience. The affiliate marketing vs freelancing battle will end today with a clear winner.
After doing both at a 6 and 7 figure level, there are a variety of important factors that stand out about both. Let’s highlight these important details together and see which form of marketing and business model will come out ahead.
Affiliate Marketing VS Freelancing; Which Is Better?
Overall, affiliate marketing is both more enjoyable to do and more profitable. Why is this? Because with affiliate marketing you have a consistent flow of work, progress, and results being generated.
Whether you’re doing organic or paid lead generation, you have very defined metrics you’re working with. While as a freelancer, you have an inconsistent deal flow, more manual work that occurs when you work directly with clients, and uncertainty in many other regards.
As a freelancer you have much more manual time spent on every project. This time as an affiliate marketer could be spent gathering more leads, creating more content, or doing some other result producing activity.
Being an affiliate has a lot benefits over doing freelancing.
What Makes Affiliate Marketing Better Then Freelancing?
Here’s a full list of facts about affiliate marketing and how it works that shows why it’s much better to do as an entrepreneur then freelancing…
- Affiliate marketing is easer to do and requires less qualifications then freelancing.
- Affiliate marketing requires less manual work in most cases. Because as a freelancer you’re directly performing a variety of manually services for clients.
- Freelancing requires a more diverse skillset. Anyone can do affiliate marketing with no prior experience, vs freelancing requires an advanced skillset in order for it to be done right.
- Freelancing most of the time can’t be automated or done at scale. Affiliate marketing can, and it can be done easily.
- You have more influence over a larger audience as an affiliate marketer.
What Does Freelancing Do Well?
Being an entrepreneur that does freelancing is a great way to earn an income. You’re able to generate high ticket sales and have great customer retention. Many people turn to freelancing since you can do it part time, and it can offer a great income.
You’ll find that freelancing offers these important benefits .vs. affiliate marketing…
- Freelancing has higher customer retention
- Generally, freelancing is a higher ticket business practice with larger profit margins
- With freelancing, you keep 100% of every sale. With affiliate marketing, you only keep a percentage of the total sale generated
This makes freelancing a great business practice to do, however is just doesn’t compare to the ease of doing affiliate marketing at scale. Nor is it as profitable in the long term!
Final Verdict: Affiliate Marketing Wins!
Both types of businesses and entrepreneurship are great. But, affiliate marketing wins and has more aspects that make it stand out as a better choice. Whatever you end up doing, make sure to put your whole heart into the choice. Because neither affiliate marketing or influencer marketing will perform well for you to if you aren’t giving them your all.
The additional network effect that affiliate marketing has also pulls it ahead.
Thank you so much for reading through this article, you are very much appreciated! Please feel free to share this with others if you found value in it.
With our kindest regards,
Jon Weberg
Richard Weberg