In both cases you try to sell products to other people and you get a commission for each sale, so what’s the difference?
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Commissions are a very basic means of compensation for sales of all kinds… your question is like asking, “what the difference between being a doctor and a lawyer, they both get paychecks?”
Affiliate marketing is running ads or otherwise linking to products from your website, or partnering with complementary business to earn a commission for a referred sale. The most common form is now online, like if you have a video game review blog and then link over to Amazon or GameStop where somebody can buy the game — the link on your site is set up so that the retailer knows you (a member of their affiliate program) sent the customer to their site, so you get a tiny portion of the sale price (something like 3%). But a similar set-up might be in place in the real world. For example, a local sightseeing company might pay a local hotel for each guest they sign up to go on the tour at the hotel’s concierge desk.
MLM is primarily defined by earning commissions on other sellers sales who were brought into the fold by the earlier sellers. In addition to earning a commission on their own sales, they also get a smaller commission on sales other made. So you are an MLM salesperson and earn 20% commission on the make-up or energy drinks you directly sell. But you also get 5% of sales from your friend who you recruited and also now sells the products. And if that friend recruited somebody, they’d get 5% but you’d even get 2% of that persons sale. So if you recruited a few friends to sell, and they recruited a few friends to sell, you might be earning commissions off 20 people’s sales! That’s the key idea behind MLM — the multiple layers of commissions.
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