Here’s a really neat infographic I came across on the Get Ambassador blog, it clearly shows the difference between affiliates and referrals, and why they are both important. I hadn’t really thought of the ‘referral’ concept before, and always categorized any type of recommendation into the ‘affiliate’ box.
Affiliates vs Referrals
GetAmbassador is a Referral software, so its kinda biased article per se. Even though they bought Zferral which is a affiliate plataform. Zferreal is not taking any new customers but them seem to be keeping the pre acquisition ones
Very good infographic. One point the author should have mentioned is which type of businesses should use affiliates and which type of businesses should use referrals. Affiliates are good for end user low cost businesses, such as hosting, website development etc. Though if you are selling an expensive software package or a service to large corporations, definitely referrals is the way to go.
Unfortunately affiliates do not work well with men in ties.
That’s a good point Robert, and I agree with you. Thanks for joining the conversation.
Nice post Jean.
It was interesting to read that the top job for 2012 according to MSNBC is affiliate marketing. But after Googling this, it seems that the article itself was unfortunately a scam.
Good news really, since there is enough competition in affiliate marketing already 😉
All the best,
Tim
Thanks for clearing that up Tim, I was quite surprised to see affiliate marketing being nominated as the top job by a big organisation. Although in reality it definitely ain’t a bad job at all.
My first thought was a bit similar to yours, I immediately visualised another throng of wannabe affiliate marketers rushing to publish a slew of low-quality sites in the hopes of hitting the jackpot.
Of course, real affiliate marketing is a tough job, but also very rewarding. It’s just that affiliate marketing conjures up some bad images sometimes.
Thanks again for stopping by Tim.