Starting out...Should I Create Product or Promote and Affiliate?

You can start with either one. If creating your own product takes time then you can start promoting as an affiliate even if you have your own product. If you are promoting as an affiliate you will have many products. You can also try creating your product and promoting but it takes time though it is the best way.

Hi RoxanneKing
You can Make Money with both.But in my opinion you should go for your own product.It's not compulsory to create one.you can get tons of FREE PLR ,MRR and resale rights products for free.
Having your own products will give you a huge edge in the long run.This is how this whole system works:
1)You create(Or get) your product.
2)You drive traffic to your sales page.
3)you get JV partners and affiliates(You give them 100% commission on the front end product and make money on the One Time Offers).
4)They generate leads for you.
5)You make more money on back-ends by promoting your own or affiliate products to your list.

This model is much-much superior than only promoting affiliate products.

Just one second:
If you go for pure affiliate model.You can do that in two ways:
1)You send traffic to the merchant without collecting the leads:You can generate commission in this way but in the long run you have to suffer heavily because you don't have a list of your own and thus no permanent traffic source.

2)You collect the leads and then sell on the back-end:This model is better than the first one.Here you offer a freebie(Like a free report or free software) and send the traffic to your squeeze page than sending it directly to the merchant.Here you build a list and then sell on follow ups.

Though this model is clearly better than the previous one ,it severely lags behind the "Having your own product" model because you don't get the leverage of Joint Venture partners and Affiliates.That is the main point.By getting people leverage(JV partners and affiliates) you can build a list 10 times the size you build from your own efforts in the same time.

I have experienced this thing in my internet marketing career.When I started online,I used to send all the traffic directly to the merchant's sales letter.I did that for the first 5 months.Though I was able to make some sales here and there ,I was not able to generate any serious income.

Then I started collecting the e-mails.This model produced me better results than the first one but I had to do all the work myself.

About 4 months ago I created my first product and used the "100% commission on the front product model".This strategy worked like a charm and I was able to build lists of several hundreds in no time(Not only in "Internet Marketing" but in other niches like "dating" and "personal development" etc.)

So I would like to suggest that you go for "Having your own product" model.It will help you tremendously in the short as well as long run.

Creating your own products as well as Getting them for FREE is not difficult at all.Even a newbie can do it easily.For more information on this subject,you may want to take a look at the link in my signature.

you should promote products in different niches to test things out, then when you find the most profitable one then create a product to instantly double your profits.