should i create a new product or be an affiliate

If you believe you can create a better product, or a product that adds a new twist on something, and market it better, then creating your own product is always better.

If you have your website built then and have targeted traffic visiting it now I would be an affiliate for the other product straight away. If you have targeted traffic you are leaving $$$$ on the table while you are deciding.

I'd set up an affiliate link and then go to work on your own product.

Once you have your own product the possibilities are endless buddy.

Hope that helps you a little

Peace,
Sean

If you could make the product unique and different with other popular products, you should create it. The return is higher.

It's good to create a product that have been well-known, because it means there's a market for the product.

Rule of thumb is a product is better than an affiliate. I was always taught the more times you pitch to someone the more times you can make a sale. If you send someone to an affiliate page, your giving them the lead, if you get the sale then its your lead and you can resell over and over.

Definitely creating a product will have more edge than promoting someone else's product as an affiliate.It will have more edge and if possible you yourself can have an affiliate program attached to your product at later stage to make it more successful

If you can create your own product, well create it. For other affiliate product still you can get income if you are offering on your list as a back end products.

Both. Use affiliate products until you can create a great product.

thanks everybody for sharing your opinion, but i would stress on the point that there is already well known products with authors whose their names became a popular search keyword, and i am new and afraid that my book will be missed and forgotten among those giants, and so all my efforts would have gone in vain..yes i have something new to offer but i am not sure if it would appeal to the targeted customer or they would prefer a well known author with a lot of testimonials!!

this is what you do

start out as an affiliate to start building your list and making some sales and profits, then begin surveying that list then create a product tailored to it.

Then keep driving traffic and promote your offer instead of the affiliate link instead. I show my clients how to do this and it isn't long before they are making more than $2,000 a week in profits

It's better to have a product, mainly for the branding. Being an affiliate takes away from customer loyalty to your service.

First I would say that success has nothing to do with the product but who has the better marketing. If you feel that your marketing skills are not up to par than I would say be a affiliate of the competitors products and see how they market their stuff. Get on their lists and be a student. Find the wholes and whats missing and create a product thats fill that need. Or better yet, ask real people who are buyers what the want to buy!

Think about how fast you intend to make money with your marketing.

Creating your product requires a lot more time for planning, writing the eBook and doing market.

You can market your eBook through the follow marketing techniques:

-Affiliate networks
-Forums
-Lists
-PPC
-Social media
-Organic SEO
-Your blog
-Affiliates
-Other referrals

In order to build two really strong legs here you need to put in hard working hours as well as some money.

Plan, implement, and review.

Actually....

BOTH!

There are some major benefits to selling your own product, via affiliates.

Increased reach - by leveraging the lists of your affiliates, your sales message will be delivered to many more prospective customers (i.e. the cumulative lists of all of your affiliates), than if you are only marketing to your own list. Depending on the number of affiliates you can recruit, and the size/quality of their lists, you will benefit from 10X (or more) sales.

The value of search engine rankings become negligible with direct response marketing. Although the natural backlinks produced by any web marketing that affiliates do (banners, articles, etc.) will help increase your rankings, their email marketing efforts will bring you significant traffic, without depending on any search engine.

But...It's unlikely that any one product is going to provide you with a long term, full-time income.

If your product is complementary to other products in the marketplace (rather than a competing product), you can upsell your new customers with affiliate offers for one or more of those products, on the backend.

Those product owners, most likely, would love to find a complementary product to promote to their own customer lists, as well. Not only can you promote their products to your customers, they can sell your product to their customers, as well. They are ideal candidates for your affiliate program.

Hope this helps,

If you opt to create your own new product, there are many things to consider, like testing the product itself, marketing and promoting it (remember you will start from scratch here so you have to create market awareness for your product ), and all the pains you have to go through in developing a new product. One advantage though, is you can keep all the profit for yourself as you are the sole owner of your own product. Being an affiliate on the other hand gives you minimum risks for your effort and capital, but will only bring you a portion of the product sales.
My advice is to weigh down the pros and cons and think whichever works best for you.

This is a classic example of microeconomics.

When there's a market leader/oligopoly in the
market, people are going to jump aboard to
try and suck away the supernormal profits.

The market size is normally always increasing,
if you're talking about very healthy markets
like weight loss, etc.

What you need to do, is not emulate the market
leader. Instead, find a market gap inside the
market. Find something that customers want,
but are not provided.

Find "incomplete" pieces of the puzzle, and then
sell that piece of the customer.

For example, in the Law of Attraction market, I
observed the ways the market moved on the
Internet. It went something like this:

- Positive affirmations / Prayers...
- The "Secret" / Law Of Attraction
- Why LOA is not working, clean away limiting
beliefs
- The MISSING Keys of the Law of Attraction
- "The Law of Attraction does not work" angle
- etc

You can see that marketers are constantly adding
to the original promise.

If you're really good at the niche, then start off
from where the prospects are. Find out what they
want, instead of what you want to sell.

Selling without research is a one-way-road off
the cliff.

Winston Tian

It would not be smart to take someone else's affiliate program and promote for them when you can actually create your own program and have tens and hundreds of affiliates all working to promote your offer.

You can create one with Clickbank and it is not hard at all.

affiliate marketing is a good way to "test the water" and find out if u have a good traffic and conversions. if u do, scale it and build a product or even few products.

I see a pattern in in everone's answer.
Yes product is the very secret to making more serious money.

This has struck a chord with me, as I am a new upcoming vendor
nipping at the heels of the other PLR greats you know well.

I have just created a minisite with my own product in the swipe file
niche and this has new stuff never seen. It turned out awsome.

I am already about half way through my 2nd ministe and product which
is going to make warriors faint. It is in the Facebook timline cover niche

It is going to be version 1 and the graphics are super high end so you
don't want to miss this one when I launch it in warrior special offers.

I can also promote both of these sites with clickbank and make even
more money, with the forum.. that's 2 sources of income alone.

This is a personal example of why being a vendor is better than being an affiliate. Affiliate is good if you know how to get a lot of traffic.

I really delighted in all the warriors answers, great advice from all.

I kinda agree with elzafonv - I'm sure it is different for everyone, but from my experience it is better to be an affilliate when you are starting out and create a product to promote to your list afterwards.

This way your list feels like they know you and will be very responsive to it. And you can also promote through clickbank etc too

Why not ? Create a product will add more options for the buyers. Your product probably could sell well.

Starting as affiliate to the popular product is good, but you don't really have the full knowledge of the product.I think It is easier to start with new product in competitive niche.

I would do both till you get your niche going. That way you can earn affiliate income while working out all the details of your niche. If the niche is that popular then work on making it better than what is currently available. Put a new twist on it, offer something or try something new that is currently not being offered in your popular niche.

If you have good knowledge on the niche you want, is better to create your own product and promote it, your earnings will be much more. Since you can sell something you own, is useless to work as an affiliate for someone else and promote his/her product. You will do the same job in order to generate sales, why not to generate sales on your product?

When you create your own product, you have complete control over how you can use it. You will also build a brand and make a name for youself.

However, proper planning is needed to create a product. Set youself apart from the the things all of the other product creators in your niche have done.

Identify a demand that is unfulfilled and then create the product to fill this gap. Also exercise some creativity and figure out how to uniquely position your product.

Hope this helps.

Would your product be different to this product? For example, could a buyer benefit from both products if they bought both?

You could create your own product and then promote this other product as an affiliate afterwards to your buyers.

If you can create something in a saturated niche that offers something different to what is already out there then go for it. Just be prepared to buy traffic or pay to build your list.

Good luck.

Create a product of your own.

After 3 month's developing a product. I'd vote to take AFFILIATE. There is still ways to build your list and not deal with all the headache of launching a product. We have 5 plus figures invested in this product launch that any affiliate can make profit at up to 100% commission from the start with out having to do all that leg work it took us to develop the product, software and adviser team for this new stock trading e-course.

Be an affiliate first & get your feet wet in marketing online & making
some commissions first.
Once you have the experience knowledge and maybe some cash from
your commissions, reinvest that into creating your product.
But seriously, just focus on 1 first for now & I recommend affiliate
marketing first.

I Think that be an affiliate is much easier for a good products SPeically that there are many offers with 100% commissions

It depends on your mindset.

The great thing about creating products is that you can recruit affiliates, and have them do the marketing for you. Depending on how great your product is, you could have an endless number of affliates helping you earn money.

Not to mention, if you prove to have a talent for creating products, you can eventually brand yourself. In addition, when you e-mail your list, you'll make a ton of money if your product converts.

On the other hand, being an affilate you have to do more leg work. You will always have to promote your product to make money because you do not have someone doing it for you.

It depends on you.

Do you want to make money for yourself and have others make money for you OR do you want to make money for others?

Own product = you make money and other make money for you...

Affiliate product = you make other people money...

-Matt