E-Commerce VS COD (Cash-On-Delivery): Why Affiliates Hate Doing Business. (5)

E-Commerce VS COD (Cash-on-Delivery): why affiliates hate doing business.



A good thing about e-commerce is having everything whitehat. I mean, you sell whatever you want, you control prices, products, ads, shipping and so on. It is believed that doing e-commerce grant you all the freedom of money making on the internet. They say that e-commerce is much more like a real business, and that’s the main advantage of it.

Now let us look and compare if a whitehat e-commerce is really better than COD or other Affiliate practice. Let us see.

The truth is the advantages of the e-commerce are the point of argue.


1. E-Commerce is absolutely whitehat.


But whitehat product never guarantees that you will not be banned. It is abuses what makes your account flagged. So if you try to sell some stuff from AliExpress that has a real price of $2.00 or $4.00 with your own price $19.99 – it seems that people will be abusing such shops on Facebook and one day you will be banned.

The second thing is that whitehat schemes usually do not give a 3 digit ROI. Having 40-50% is luck in E-Commerce, so it definitely loses in this very way.


2. You can run any product you like.


It gives you not only the choice but also troubles. So, AliExpress has millions of products you may try to promote. But you never know which one will do well. So you need to run it at your own risk.

As for the affiliate products (especially COD ones) – you always deal with the offers that have been tested by the affiliate network. COD-products are tested at first, then added to the interface.

If the product is not competitive enough – the network will stop it or will not be running at all. Of course, they can never guarantee that a product will be suitable for you personally, but at least they give you a tested product.


3. E-Commerce is a stable income.


It isn’t, in fact, because your income depends on a product you are trading. If purchases depend on seasons or other conditions – your total volumes will not be stable at all. By the way, you can never say “stable” about business.

They also say that if your online shop is a success – you can sell it for reasonable money and that will be additional income. Well, creating business for a future sale has nothing similar with media buying. I suppose it’s quite a different niche of business, so I can’t comment it.


4. You are creating a real business.


But in most ways, people hate doing “real business”. Affiliate Marketing is the way to make money without having all the troubles of real business. When doing E-commerce you have to work with supplies, shipping, finances, taxes, salaries, hiring employees and so on. This, in fact, is the coin of two sides. From the first sight, such skills are useful for the marketers. But most people deal with the affiliate marketing because it is easy to start. Having your own e-commerce product means to have LOTS of things under control while doing Affiliate Marketing is just an easier version of online business.

What is more, when you start doing E-commerce – you can’t give in. You cannot stop the process immediately. Otherwise, your loss will be high. As for the affiliate marketing – you may switch your traffic between the networks, split test, try more offers or just give it up in a moment. And you will not be losing money.


5. E-commerce is a marketing freedom.


Running an e-commerce project allows you to play your own game. So you set the price, create a landing page, pre-lander have everything under a total control. This is quite a good thing when you are well-experienced and your plan works. Of course, you may use an e-commerce platform to build your online shop for free, but there is no platform that will be creating angles for you. You will have to create angles on your own. You will have to compose pre-landers at your side and so on. The total responsibility about the traffic is yours. As for the affiliate marketing especially COD niche, you are given the most effective landers and creative materials, well-converting ones. At the same time, you are allowed to create any new angle at your side.

As for the products and prices you’re going to use: the price is economically tested by a network and the advertiser. I mean, you are given the terms which are the most suitable to meet both the demands of a network/advertiser and the affiliate’s. You do not need to test it on your own. Either you are provided with the effective creative materials and landers. The only thing you are in fact to do is just media-buying. And that’s it.

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To sum it up, I just want to specify that e-commerce is a hardcore level of CPA-marketing. It is quite a good way to do your business, but there is plenty of stuff you need to have under control beside media-buying. Running e-commerce cannot guarantee you any success. To be honest, running COD does not guarantee any success as well, but at least you will be using a proven method.

The market of Internet marketing is growing faster than we can imagine. There are tools for spying, advanced tracking tools, tools that construct landers and pre-landers. There are also services that combine everything within a single interface. Very soon the market will change and e-commerce niche will become even more popular and effective. But nevertheless, COD model for affiliate networks will remain effective just because of the advantages mentioned in this text.

Some people do want to make a real business that can be valued at a multiple of revenue, profit, etc. and is not dependent on a) black/gray hat methods b) time spent into it by the founder (founder employee instead of business owner), and c) detached from the bad-reputation of affiliate marketing.

Not saying this is for everyone, far from it. My thoughts on your points.

Ad 1) Yes, it's only as whitehat as you make it really. I can imagine some people do it with the same methods as other campaigns, no point hiding it. That said, it's a much lower entry point to a mainstream, legitimate business. Not easier than CPA marketing overall but that's the point - it has a different goal.

Ad 2) Absolutely, Ali is huge so you will always have a tough time deciding what to sell from there if you just want to sell anything. If someone gets into ecomm they need a strategy to tell which type of products have potential, that's for sure. I think seeing top offers from affiliate networks is hard to replace - which is why CPA still is the main entry point to media buying and will be for a long time imo.

Ad 3) I keep saying this so often, stable and business is kind of like an oxymoron. You need to calculate it over the long term, yet affiliates are stuck in thinking in profit per DAY! That said, both CPA and ecomm are swingy, for different reasons and different factors affect them. I've actually written about this in an article when comparing affiliate marketing to poker: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...dard-Deviation It's hard to make such calculations for a business but not impossible.

Ad 4) Yes, some, even most hate a real business, or what people like to define as a real business But affiliates like money, so they will follow the trail usually. I'm excited to see what skilled affiliates manage in a mainstream business. They have skills that are not easy to find out there, and to me at least, it's always exciting to see people grow their companies and go mainstream.

Ad 5) Prob not complete marketing freedom - you have to follow some rules based on the feedback you get from your traffic source(s) and your customers.

I think ecomm and CPA are complementary and one won't replace the other. One does not have only pros or only cons against the other, it's always a tradeoff, which is why I think they complement each other well. The pros of one are cons to the other generally. The main thing I disagree with in this post is that you start with the assumption that everyone says ecommerce is easy - I generally hear it's NOT easy but that there are valuable rewards when you do succeed.

I'll make sure to read.

Originally Posted by manu_adefy

Some people do want to make a real business that can be valued at a multiple of revenue, profit, etc. and is not dependent on a) black/gray hat methods b) time spent into it by the founder (founder employee instead of business owner), and c) detached from the bad-reputation of affiliate marketing.

Not saying this is for everyone, far from it. My thoughts on your points.

Ad 1) Yes, it's only as whitehat as you make it really. I can imagine some people do it with the same methods as other campaigns, no point hiding it. That said, it's a much lower entry point to a mainstream, legitimate business. Not easier than CPA marketing overall but that's the point - it has a different goal.

Ad 2) Absolutely, Ali is huge so you will always have a tough time deciding what to sell from there if you just want to sell anything. If someone gets into ecomm they need a strategy to tell which type of products have potential, that's for sure. I think seeing top offers from affiliate networks is hard to replace - which is why CPA still is the main entry point to media buying and will be for a long time imo.

Ad 3) I keep saying this so often, stable and business is kind of like an oxymoron. You need to calculate it over the long term, yet affiliates are stuck in thinking in profit per DAY! That said, both CPA and ecomm are swingy, for different reasons and different factors affect them. I've actually written about this in an article when comparing affiliate marketing to poker: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...dard-Deviation It's hard to make such calculations for a business but not impossible.

Ad 4) Yes, some, even most hate a real business, or what people like to define as a real business But affiliates like money, so they will follow the trail usually. I'm excited to see what skilled affiliates manage in a mainstream business. They have skills that are not easy to find out there, and to me at least, it's always exciting to see people grow their companies and go mainstream.

Ad 5) Prob not complete marketing freedom - you have to follow some rules based on the feedback you get from your traffic source(s) and your customers.

I think ecomm and CPA are complementary and one won't replace the other. One does not have only pros or only cons against the other, it's always a tradeoff, which is why I think they complement each other well. The pros of one are cons to the other generally. The main thing I disagree with in this post is that you start with the assumption that everyone says ecommerce is easy - I generally hear it's NOT easy but that there are valuable rewards when you do succeed.

An interesting perspective! And I agree that ecommerce definitely comes with more moving parts than regular AM - indeed, for me, that's one of the reasons that I loved AM when I first discovered it, having spent many years running more conventional businesses.

Affiliate marketing has a simplicity to it that's not to be underestimated.

I do somewhat disagree with this part, though: