Staying competitive in a world where everything has been digitized and almost every skill is available online requires exploring various ways to make money. By now, you must have heard of two popular online income-generating methods: Affiliate marketing and digital marketing. While both can be lucrative, they serve different purposes and appeal to different skills and interests.

In this article, we’ll explain what affiliate and digital marketing are, and their differences, and help you decide which one might fit you.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based strategy where individuals or businesses earn a commission by promoting other people’s products or services. Essentially, you act as a middleman, connecting potential customers with a product or service they need. When someone makes a purchase through your unique affiliate link, you earn a percentage of that sale.

This approach leverages your online presence—whether it’s a blog, social media platform, YouTube channel, or email list—to drive traffic to a product or service that aligns with your audience’s interests. It’s an excellent way to earn passive income without creating your own products or services.

For example, let’s say you run a blog focused on fitness and health. You could sign up as an affiliate with a company that sells workout gear or supplements. You then create content that educates or entertains your readers, incorporating your affiliate links naturally. Every time one of your readers clicks your link and makes a purchase, you earn a commission. It’s a win-win situation—you provide value to your audience, and the company gets sales without having to directly market to that customer.

What makes affiliate marketing especially rewarding for people looking to monetize their online presence is its scalability and flexibility. You don’t need to handle customer service, manage inventory, or worry about shipping logistics. Your focus is on creating valuable content and promoting products or services that align with your niche.

 Here are five strong benefits of affiliate marketing:

1. Affiliate marketing has low startup costs

You don’t need a lot of money to get started with affiliate marketing. Often, all you need is a website or social media account to begin promoting products. This makes it accessible to anyone eager to earn extra income without significant upfront investment.

2. Affiliate marketing allows for flexibility and freedom

Affiliate marketing allows you to work from anywhere and set your hours. Whether you’re a student, a full-time employee, or someone looking for a side hustle, you can fit it into your schedule.

3. Affiliate marketing has great passive income potential

Once you set up your affiliate links and promotional content, you can earn money even while you sleep. This means the more effective your marketing efforts are, the more passive income you can generate.

4. Affiliate marketing gives you diverse income streams

Affiliate marketing allows you to promote a variety of products and services, giving you multiple avenues to earn. You can choose to partner with brands that align with your interests or your audience’s needs.

5. Affiliate marketing gives you access to a global market

With the internet, your audience can be global. This means that your earning potential isn’t limited to just Nigeria; you can connect with customers worldwide.

Take Millicent Bundi, for example. She’s using Selar to teach Kenyan women how to make money online through affiliate marketing. By sharing her knowledge and linking to relevant products, she’s not only empowering others but also building a profitable business. You can read about her inspiring journey here.

Read Millicent Bundi Is Using Selar To Teach Kenyan Women How To Make Money Online

Read: How Millicent Bundi is Using Selar to Teach Kenyan Women How to Make Money Online

If you’re ready to start making money off promoting products for others, check out Selar’s Affiliate Network. For just ₦3,000, you can access a wide range of products and services, alongside high commission rates that can significantly boost your income.

Now what is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is an umbrella term for a range of strategies and techniques used to promote products or services through online channels. It’s all about using the internet to connect with your target audience, build brand awareness, and drive engagement or sales. 

Unlike affiliate marketing, where the focus is mainly on earning commissions by promoting other people’s products, digital marketing covers a wide array of promotional activities—allowing businesses to reach customers directly through various online methods.

Here’s a closer look at some key components of digital marketing:

1. Social media marketing

This involves using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok to promote products or services, engage with followers, and create brand awareness. Social media marketing often includes paid ads, organic posts, and influencer collaborations. It’s a powerful way to target specific audiences based on their interests, demographics, and behaviour.

2. Content marketing

Content marketing involves creating valuable and relevant content to attract and engage an audience. This can take the form of blog posts, videos, infographics, ebooks, podcasts, and more. The goal is to provide useful information that positions your brand as an authority in its field while building trust with potential customers. For example, a cooking website might post recipes, cooking tips, or instructional videos, which helps drive traffic and sales of their kitchen tools or ingredients.

Read: The Difference Between Social Media And Content Marketing

3. Email marketing

Email marketing is a highly effective way to nurture relationships with existing customers and attract new ones. It involves sending out newsletters, product updates, promotions, or personalized recommendations directly to a list of subscribers. The goal is to keep your audience engaged and encourage repeat purchases or conversions. Email marketing has one of the highest returns on investment (ROI) of all digital marketing methods.

Read: 10 Best Email Marketing Practices For Creators

4. Search engine optimization (SEO)

SEO focuses on improving a website’s visibility on search engines like Google. The idea is to optimize your content so that it ranks higher in search results when people are looking for information, products, or services related to your business. By strategically using relevant keywords and creating high-quality content, SEO can drive organic traffic to your site without the need for paid advertising.

Read: 10 Best SEO Practices For Creators In 2024

5. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

PPC is a paid digital marketing strategy where advertisers pay each time someone clicks on their ad. These ads can appear on search engines like Google (Google Ads) or social media platforms like Facebook. PPC allows businesses to target specific keywords or demographics and place their ads directly in front of potential customers. It’s a fast way to generate traffic and leads, though it requires ongoing management and budget control.

6. Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing involves partnering with individuals who have a large or engaged following on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. These influencers promote your products or services to their audience, creating brand awareness and driving sales. It’s a highly personalized way to reach potential customers because it leverages the trust that influencers have built with their followers.

7. Web analytics and data analysis

Digital marketing also involves tracking and analyzing data to measure the success of your campaigns. Tools like Google Analytics help marketers understand how users interact with their websites, what content performs well, and where improvements can be made. This data-driven approach ensures that marketing efforts are continually optimized for better results.

A perfect example of how digital marketing works effectively is Fareedah Abdulsalaam, who blends content marketing and social media strategies to build her brand. She engages her audience through delicious recipes and promotes her business through targeted digital campaigns. Her story showcases how, with the right digital marketing strategy, creators can turn their passion into a profitable venture. You can read more about her journey here.

Read: Combining Digital Strategies and Delicious Recipes: Fareedah Abdulsalaam’s Creator Journey

Digital marketing provides a well-rounded approach to reaching customers across multiple platforms, making it a versatile and powerful tool for businesses of all sizes. Whether you’re trying to build an online presence, grow your customer base, or drive sales, digital marketing offers countless opportunities to achieve your goals.

7 solid differences between affiliate marketing and digital marketing

Understanding the differences between affiliate marketing and digital marketing can help you determine which path aligns with your goals. Here are seven key distinctions:

1. Focus and objective

Affiliate marketing is laser-focused on driving sales for other businesses in exchange for a commission. Your primary goal is to persuade people to buy a product or service through your unique affiliate link. It’s all about results—no sales, no commission. Success in affiliate marketing is purely tied to performance, making it highly rewarding for those who excel at driving traffic and conversions.

Digital marketing, on the other hand, has a broader range of objectives beyond just sales. It focuses on building brand awareness, engaging target audiences, driving traffic, generating leads, and improving conversions. The overarching goal is to support a brand’s marketing strategy across different channels—whether that’s social media, email, SEO, or paid advertising. Success in digital marketing isn’t just measured by sales but also by how well you execute campaigns to achieve business goals like customer acquisition, engagement, and retention.

2. Business model

Affiliate marketing is entirely performance-based. You only get paid when someone makes a purchase through your affiliate link, which means your income directly depends on your ability to generate sales. You’re working for yourself and can scale your income based on how much traffic and conversions you drive. If you’re successful at affiliate marketing, it can become a lucrative source of passive income. You choose the companies you want to work with and promote their products on your platform, earning a commission for every sale you facilitate.

Digital marketing offers more flexibility in terms of income models. If you work for a company, you can earn a fixed salary, or if you’re freelancing, you might get paid per project or campaign. In some cases, digital marketing roles might be performance-based, but generally, the scope of work is broader, and earnings can include a combination of salary, freelance rates, or bonuses tied to specific marketing KPIs. Digital marketing covers different strategies, so you may earn money through consulting, managing campaigns, or even creating content for clients.

3. Level of control

Affiliate marketing offers more control over what you choose to promote. You get to decide which products or services align with your brand and your audience. This freedom allows you to maintain authenticity and trust with your followers since you can curate products that you genuinely support and believe will provide value. You can choose whether to focus on a niche product category or experiment with different industries.

Digital marketing, however, often requires you to work within the brand or client’s guidelines. Whether you’re running ads, managing social media, or creating content, you have to align with the company’s overall strategy and branding. Your creative freedom can be limited since the final say usually comes from the brand or the client, but you can still bring innovation and strategic thinking to the table to achieve the set marketing goals.

4. Skill set required

Affiliate marketing requires specific skills in areas like content creation, social media engagement, and understanding your audience’s preferences. You need to be able to craft persuasive messages, create engaging content, and build a strong presence on platforms that resonate with your target audience. Knowledge of how to drive traffic and use affiliate tools is also key to maximizing your earnings.

Digital marketing demands a more diverse set of skills. You need to be comfortable with data analytics, SEO, paid advertising, email marketing, content creation, and more. Digital marketers often use tools like Google Analytics, social media schedulers, and ad platforms like Google Ads or Facebook Ads to manage campaigns. This field requires both creative and analytical thinking, as you’ll often be measuring and optimizing campaigns for better results.

5. Time investment

Affiliate marketing can be highly flexible in terms of time investment. Once your promotional content is set up—such as blogs, social media posts, or videos—you can start earning passive income as long as people are clicking on your links and making purchases. The time you spend upfront on content creation is where most of the effort goes, but after that, the ongoing maintenance is minimal unless you choose to scale up.

Digital marketing typically requires more ongoing effort. Since it involves continuous campaign management, content updates, and data analysis, the time investment is more consistent. You’ll often need to monitor trends, adjust strategies, and actively manage various channels to keep campaigns optimized. For example, a social media campaign might require daily posts and interaction with followers, while SEO or email campaigns may need constant tweaking to stay effective.

6. Cost structure

Affiliate marketing usually has a low-cost barrier to entry. You don’t need to invest in product creation, inventory, or even customer service. Your main focus is promoting the product or service through your chosen platform, which could be your website, blog, or social media channels. The primary costs involved are those related to your content creation tools (like a blog hosting service) or paid traffic sources (like social media ads), but these can be kept relatively low compared to other business models.

Digital marketing can have a more complex cost structure depending on the tools and strategies used. Paid advertising (like PPC), SEO tools, content creation software, and email marketing services can all add up. While some aspects of digital marketing can be done for free, the most effective campaigns often require investment in paid tools or services to reach a broader audience and generate better results. Companies might also hire experts to manage their digital strategies, which adds to the cost.

7. Potential earnings

Affiliate marketing earnings can vary significantly depending on the products you promote, your audience size, and your marketing efforts. Commissions can range from a few per cent to over 50% depending on the product or service. For instance, Selar’s affiliate network offers high commission rates on a variety of digital products and services, making it an attractive option for affiliates in Nigeria looking to earn substantial income from their online presence. If done right, affiliate marketing can generate passive income streams that grow over time as your content gains more traction.

Digital marketing offers steady income opportunities, especially for those working with established brands or agencies. Salaries in digital marketing roles can vary based on your experience, skills, and the company you work for. Freelancers can also set their own rates based on the complexity of the campaigns they manage. While the potential for passive income is lower compared to affiliate marketing, digital marketing offers a stable and sometimes higher earning potential, especially for seasoned professionals in the field.

How do I know which one is right for me?

Choosing between affiliate marketing and digital marketing ultimately comes down to your interests, skills, and financial goals. Here are three questions to consider:

1. What are your strengths?: If you enjoy creating content and have a knack for social media, affiliate marketing might be a good fit. However, if you’re skilled in analytics and enjoy strategic planning, digital marketing could be the way to go.
2. What is your financial goal?: If you’re looking for a side hustle with low startup costs and the potential for passive income, affiliate marketing might be the right choice. If you’re seeking a more stable income through a career in marketing, consider digital marketing.
3. How much time can you invest?: If you’re looking for something flexible that you can manage alongside other commitments, affiliate marketing could be ideal. On the other hand, if you can dedicate time to a full-time role, digital marketing offers broader opportunities.

In conclusion, both affiliate marketing and digital marketing present unique opportunities for making money online in 2024. The choice between them depends on your skills, interests, and financial goals. If you’re leaning towards affiliate marketing, I encourage you to explore Selar’s Affiliate Network. With a variety of products and services to promote, plus high commission rates for just ₦3,000, you have the chance to start your journey toward financial independence.