Honestly, I've found it best to create my own products. There is just no comparison. You have full control, make more profit per sale usually, and can have affiliates work for YOU.

Plus, with your own product, the income cycle usually lasts longer. Affiliate products can stop and then you are left with all that hard work in promotion for nothing.

the best affiliate marketers arent spouting their views on internet marketing forums there putting them into practice

if your releasing your own products you want publicity hence you talk about it

I have nowhere near the knowledge and expertise that some of the warriors have, and thus cant give you all of the information that they will.

However, I can say from personal experience that anyone just starting up should get into affiliate marketing first. This is due to the fact that it takes very little income to get started with affiliate marketing, and the fact that you can make mistakes, learn along the way, and gather success like a snowball down a hill.

Marketing and becoming successful takes a lot of trial and error, a wealth of knowledge and support, and a lot of extra income, which can all be gathered by wading in the pond of affiliate marketing FIRST.

If someone starts affiliate marketing and cannot get the hang of it, all they have lost is time in reality. However, launching a product can lead to financial losses without the right backing. IMO

Hi Tyson,

Yes, having your own product(s) puts you in a better position to make more money.
However, running a business as a merchant is more complex than running a business as an affiliate. It requires the same skills as an affiliate PLUS many more.

Therefore, your best bet would be to start out as an affiliate where the initial investment and risk are minimal. Learn the skills you need for being a good marketer. Gain the knowledge and master the techniques. One more important point - while doing the affiliate marketing thing, build your brand and make a name for yourself. It will make your starting position as a product owner a better one.

Once you have the basics covered, you can expend and tackle the more complex tasks facing a merchant. However, do not abandon the affiliate work. Once you master it, it will be your safety net, with a steady income source to back you up.

All I know is that it sure would suck if you made your first product, spent months on it, and find out that no one wanted it in the first place.

By starting out as affiliate, you can understand what people want...what niches are hot, what people spend money on, buyer keywords, etc.

You don't have that luxury as a product creator, unless of course you have an affiliate marketing back ground...

I am both a affiliate marketer and a product creator. You can definitely make money in both.

I always start a market as an affiliate marketer. After I get the traffic and see the potential, I always create a product that is better then the one I have promoted in the past. Many people either fear creating a product because they feel they don't have the knowledge or don't have the experience.

Here's the thing though guys and girls, you don't have to be an expert to create a product. We have all had to do research papers in school years ago. This is all product creation takes. You don't have to be an expert. You don't have to really know the subject. You just have to know how to find the information.

Buy the actual product that you are promoting. Buy all the products that do well in your niche. Now, take that information and rehash it into something better then what each of those provide. You can easily do this by just adding something extra or relating it better to the audience. It's not hard in anyway to create a quality product as long as you put the time into researching.

I will ALWAYS create a product for markets that do well for me. Why? Because now the ball is in my court instead of the product creators. I can now promote my product at sale prices. I can make special promotions and offers that you won't be able to when you are an affiliate And best of all, you can start building an army of affiliates to sell the product for you. Get 10 good affiliates on your team, and you have an income stream that is effortless.

Even though, I will never say don't try affiliate marketing, never underestimate your ability to create a better product.

In any situation where I feel the product seller is an absolute expert in there field, I go out and find an equal or greater expert to help give advice or even better provide videos and interviews for the buyer.

Product creation is addictive. I have created over 20 products in the past 5 months and glad I started with my first $1 WSO. From that point, I now have a huge market where I'm not the affiliate anymore, but others are my affiliates.

Travis

My opinion is this:

There are four levels of products.

Your Own: The first one typically takes months of hard work to produce (Don't tell me about the exceptions). You must produce the product, product graphics, sales pages, etc.

Personalized PLR: This is a shortcut method to your own product. It reduces production time, but you still must produce graphics, sales pages, etc. You can trade a little (or a lot) of cash for the time savings.

Resell Rights Products: These ready-made products generally come complete with sales letters, products, and often instructions. Like PLR, you trade cash for time savings.

Affiliate products: Many, if not most, come with all the graphics and information you need to promote the product. In most cases, it can be marketed with the least amount of up-front costs.

Teaching someone to begin with affiliate marketing has two benefits. First, it opens the door for your customer to start earning income quickly, thus wanting more of your services. Secondly, if I tell someone how to get started in affiliate marketing -- and i know that affiliates can market my product -- it makes sense to also offer affiliate marketing of my product as an option so I can also gain.

I suspect that affiliate marketing is the best beginner's path because in just a few hours, a new comer can start marketing several different products at little or no cost.

Ideally, beginning marketers should star where they can honorably earn fast money, but should build on their education and practices so they eventually produce their own products and multiple streams of residual income that does not depend on someone else's continued support.

FWIW

[DELETED]

Internet marketers as both have been important if the products are good for both the need for long-term business..


_______________________________________

You create a prduct.
You create a sales page
You maybe create some affiliate tools
You get it listed on CB $50

Even with no sales, you will be able to get $600+ for a product in a popular niche even with no sales. Get a few sales, sell it for $1000+.

Everyone needs a product but at the same time everyone needs to show results as proof. So first I think affiliate marketing would be step 1 and product creation would be step 2.

I'd rather create my own products, which I'll soon be doing. You get to brand yourself, most likely make more money, and get a team of people working for you rather than working for someone else. Plus, it's enjoyable, if you make a product you are actually interested in. Additionally, if you are a copywriter like myself, you can make your own sales page and hone your skills.

Hi,

IMO: I don't think it matters which route you choose i.e. affiliate marketing or product creation as long as you stick to it and see it through to a conclusion...

So many new marketers suffer wheel spin because, they become distracted, they try affiliate marketing, the last hot tip they read in a forum etc.. if they don't have instant success then, they move to something new thus, spending money and not making it.

Yet, they know there are people raking in thousands from affiliate marketing because, in the scheme of things a lot of the hard work has been done for you and your job is to drive quality targeted traffic, also fine as long as you use a squeeze page and at least capture emails. I doubt if serious affiliate marketers see it as a bit of extra pocket money.

Creating products, yes, great idea if, you create what people need and want! Just create a plan for yourself and stay focused, prevent the wheels from spinning and move forward.

Do one thing and do it well! = success

Selling own products really make more money than affiliate marketing.. However there are lots of things to consider before you create a product. If the product created didn't sell like a hot cake,, then you might can't get maximum profit with it..

well affiliate marketing is a good way for newbies , after a while when could make more sales then start to make our products with more experience.

Affiliate marekting is where the big money is. Own product you have to create it and support it. When it ends you are left going back to square one. Affil. marekting you can promote dozens at the same time NO customer support.

CPA is another form of affiliate marketing...... I mean are you a marketer or a product reator (with all those time sucking headaches?)

Tyson,

Almost all the big affiliates have their own products and thus customer lists. Customer lists means you can sell more stuff as an affiliate.

Just my observation from experience and looking at others.

Cheers,

Brad

No, because when you first start out, your products are going to suck.

The single most critical thing about selling products is not to sell stuff that sucks.

So if your own products are going to suck, you'd better sell something else until your products don't suck anymore.

It's all about your goals.


NONE of the successful guys that anyone here knows about does just 1 of the many many online streams of income. Even those super secret CPA marketers that don't tell anyone about their income have (or should have anyway) more than one stream of revenue.

They all have MULTIPLE streams of income/traffic

That's the only way to add stability.


The reason so many offer affiliate marketing as a quick start is that it's:
1. Easy to get into
2. Simple in concept and easy to explain (yet hard to actually do)
3. Allows a newbie to cut their teeth in marketing (if they can't do affiliate marketing, chances are they can't market their own products either)
4. Has a low cost of entry
5. etc. etc. etc.


A smart business person with no capital would probably start in affiliate marketing (unless they were quite proficient in marketing already and had an already developed expertise), develop that stream, and then move on to another stream using the proceeds from their previous ventures to fund new ventures.

I look at affiliate marketing as the bottom level on a totem pole. It's the training grounds for online business. It's where you should be learning techniques and the framework of how marketing works. You should then be moving on to more profitable ventures and APPLYING those techniques to those ventures.



The reason that newbies get STUCK being affiliate marketers is that they:
1. Don't manage their money well. They spend every cent that they make on whatever, and are thus stuck writing articles and trading their time for more money. This is essentially a JOB (and often times a lower paying job than starbucks).
2. Don't invest their time in taking action on new ideas to expand their ability to make money.
3. Don't see that it is entirely possible to outsource something that you have no idea how to do yourself, and insist on doing everything themselves.... again, trading their time for money.
4. Don't understand the concept of LEVERAGE
5. Continually focus on the 80% of things that are INEFFICIENT sources of income and not on the 20% that will get them ahead (i.e. article marketing) and thus end up spending hours upon hours behind a computer just to make minimum wage.
6. etc. etc. etc.



I might be getting a little off topic here, but I think that the main reason that the failure rate in this industry is so astronomical is that people don't understand, and no one teaches, that if you intend on making anything out of this you're going to have to be in BUSINESS. This is not a hobby. It requires work. It's not get rich quick. It's a whole lot less glamorous than people make it out to be. It's cut throat. It's survival of the fittest. And you have to be GOOD at it to make it permanent.

If you can't look at that list and be OK with that, then you're probably not going to make it very far.




/rant

I would have to say affiliate marketing because you need to get your feet wet unless you are already a professional in a niche.

Search for a product that converts in a niche that you are interested in. Then make it better with better marketing for your own product. You know, the classic model to online success.

Then go back and pick up a few high dollar affiliate programs to promote for more income streams.

Honestly...you can do both. It doesn't really matter which way you choose really.

Personally I just do both and both can pull in big money if you know what your doing....I affiliate marketing to calm down the variance in my income...aka: $200,000 in one launch then having nothing for the next two or three months it takes to develop a new product.

Plus if you establish yourself in your niche it'll be easier to affiliate to others.

I think to truly get a firm grasp of the internet marketing field, you should ideally at sometime be an affiliate. Once you understand what it takes to be a successful affiliate move onto product creation. You can then use what you learned as an affilaite to attract more affiliates to sell your products for you.

I believe that product creation may ultimately be the better option, but affiliate marketing is generally better for a newbie. In my opinion, you can find a product with a proven record, and then sell it.

You do not have to worry about spending a ton of time, money, and additional resources into creating a product that may not sell. A newbie may not know how to do the research required to ensure that a product will be a success.

When you start with affiliate marketing, you can instantly focus your efforts on driving traffic and making sales. You learn the process of internet marketing, and it gives you a strong foundation to create your own products in the future.

Again, I am not preaching this as Gospel, it is just simply what has worked for me. I am glad that I started in affiliate marketing, because I learned a lot of valuable lessons about online marketing that can now be applied to my own products and services.

Neither. It is best to develop a brand and loyal list.

Then you can sell them both your own and other peoples products.

you can make a lot of money if you do PPC, for example, without creating any products. I think if you dominate the key words and you are on top of Google you can be an affiliate marketer and make a lot of money. George Brown and Google sniper for example proves that. however, you can make money selling books as well and there's nothing wrong about that. Hope this helps.

The cool thing about affiliate marketing is that you can promote so many niches easily! Product creation can take some time and money.

Affiliate marketing is way easier for newbies that's
for sure. All you have to do is send traffic and you're
done.

Selling your own product requires much more responsibility. You
have to create a good product first, which is not as easy as it
sounds. You have to write greate copy yourself, or hire a good
copywriter (which is not affordable for most newbies).

Then you have to recruit affiliates... again, that's not as easy
as it sounds. Remember that there are lots of products for
affiliates to promote.

If you can't recruit affiliates, then you would still end up
trying to send traffic to it yourself.

Oh and don't forget about customer care. It can really
takes it's toll on you.

Now I'm not discouraging people from creating & selling
their own product, not at all, I'm just adding a little bit
of reality.

It is better to start developing your product only after you have some success with affiliate marketing.You have to sell something in both methods.

Assume you want to develop a product about SEO.What if you failed to promote high converting products in SEO niche as an affiliate.That means you don't know how to sell products online.

You may spend thousands of dollars developing your product but the result remain the same.


is one of the popular mistake marketers do when they start online.I did the same so I know it well

Instead of A B C D E they do A E D C B

Thanks

hi..I just wanna share my experience.. I've just 3 months start my own business..Before it I used to be an affiliate..And guess what can I get...? Wow..It's much bigger than when I was an afiliate..I also get passive income because I also create affiliate program(reseler) for my product..I hope you can understand what I mean..Sorry..My english is bad..I'm from Indonesia...Good Luck..

It's all about building your own trusted audience and you can build it through using affiliate products or your own. Therefore start with affiliate marketing while building your list same time and finance your own product with your affiliate commissions.

Jamian.

like anything, both have advantages. Affiliates never have to take the return even if they get dinged for it. Product owners may make more, but the start up is usually more work. One route is to do affiliate in a market and if it is a buying market create a product.

Personally, I think affiliate marketing is a good stepping stone for making money. If someone is a complete newbie, he's not going to be writing an ebook with a sales copy; no -- he would want to do something for quick money, like promoting dating leads through direct linking via PPC or even ezine.

IMO, affiliate marketing is a good stepping stone, then move up to product creation once you know it's a proven market with buyers.

It is true that your own products are important to make a lot of money. But I think starting by promoting affiliate products is helpful to someone who does not have an experience or expertise for creating products.

Affiliate marketing gives someone time to learn and acquire some skills necessary in the internet business whilst making money. The truth is that creating products has to be incorporated in the future plan.

I think it takes a good amount of experience being an AFFILIATE MARKETER FIRST, then getting into product creation later.

That way, you know what it's like to be on the receiving end of a lousy product offer and not being able to receive adequate support.

I think that's very important.

Affiliate marketing would yield you best according to the best TIMING.

Here's one old-but-still-great post from Yaro Starak about affiliate marketing:

Timing Is Everything In Affiliate Marketing – Read This Now - Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

Learned a lot from there too!