Affiliating vs. Promoting a Product

I would say the tactics remain the same. From a business standpoint I would say the work load is the same as well. Success comes only from hard work no matter what you do. I would think it comes down to a simple principle "risk vs reward" Affiliate marking only requires the risk of out-of-pocket marketing expenses but only offers the potential for a piece of the pie. In other words, you will never "risk" the capital costs of building a brick-and-mortar t-shirt business but you will never have the reward of the full profit potential on a t-shirt sale.

If you mean "promoting a business and product as a whole vs. affiliating online for others via ClickBank, etc" in the sense of setting up an affiliate marketing plan for others to promote your site/service/product then I would say:

It will drive up sales and visits to your site. There is, however a concern of monitoring the actions of your affiliates as they can damage the company brand quickly if unscrupulous.

If you promote your own product you have more control over your customer (assuming you are collecting email addresses)

As it is your own product, you can control what goes on your Thank you page, and your download page.

So you generally have more control.

More control over your download + Thank you page =>
=> more options to refine your funnel=>
=> More oppurtunity for you to make money.

With the affiliate approach you would let the vendor have control. But affiliate marketing is a good way to get started with.

Traffic methods? There are many,
-article marketing
-video marketing
-SEO
-blogging
-rss submissions
-the list goes on forever.....

Nice one i am totally agree with twoclaw as his opinions are very correct to these.