PRODUCT CREATION VS AFFILIATE MARKETING. WHICH ONE

If you're a beginner

Start with affiliate marketing, subscribe to the newsletters of the vendors
Study their emails and pages

Then create your own product

Rick

Product creation = complete control over product, pricing etc... ability to get affiliates.

Affiliate marketing = no customer support or affiliate issues, less control over product.

Did I oversimplify it?

I agree that affiliate marketing is easier. The work becomes harder when you create your own product. There is the making of the product, creation of a sales page and you have to actively seek affiliates to help you sell your product.

The upside of having your own product is that you make more money from the traffic sent to your offer. It comes down to economies of scale. Great question!

I have been going back and forth between the two seriously for a while now and I have to say product creation is definitely taking the lead.

Id like to contribute my thoughts here if I may.

When I first started out in internet marketing, I really had no idea what I was doing. Instead of learning the basics, I jumped straight into the deep end, creating my own products and well, trying to market them (If you could call it that) Let me just say that I wasted a LOT of time and money, and became extremely frustrated in the process.

If I could have my time over again, I would (as already suggested) start out as an affiliate, and LEARN THE BASICS, before venturing out as a vendor/product creator.

Once you learn and understand the basics, marketing your own products will be a lot less stressful and potentially, more profitable.

Do both (What I am doing now) but focus your time and energy to building your list and product. You must determine how often you are to launch a product + copywriting + looking for affiliates and then work backwards.

Affiliate products are to supplement your income while you work on creating products.

I had to try it all to see which area I liked the best. I have been successful with product creation as well as affiliate marketing. Even flipping websites. Just get started, and one thing will lead to another.

Every time I ran into a stumbling block, I usually found the answer here in the forum.

good luck...and don't delay.

Obviously product creation will give you the most control and instant access to your funds (since you'd typically sell it via Paypal), whereas affiliate marketing is a lot less complicated and may be the preferred route if you're new to IM and don't want to deal with technical hassles and the extra effort involved with product creation.

Paul

The funny thing is that you are more likely to get a lot of people say affiliate marketing because it's easier, less hassle, etc, but a lot of product creators aren't going to chime in and convince you to do product creation.

Why?

Product creators want affiliates and want their affiliates to stay affiliates and not become competition. Sure some people who are honest will chime in here and tell you product creation is better, but a lot of product owners don't really want you to know that.

Sure, affiliate marketing is easier to start out with as a beginner, but as soon as you get a feel for the market and understand how things work, create your own product as soon as possible.

Product creation opens so many more doors for you and lets you LEVERAGE other people, their lists, their money, and their time, along with building your reputation and building your buyers list.

Product creation to me gets you to the next level in IM, once you are there and have your own buyers list you can then make even more with affiliate marketing, but you can get to the point where you make more with affiliate marketing faster by creating your own product first.

I sold my own products up to 2003 at that point I switched to affiliate products and life is much easier. I may make a little less but it runs itself. Keep in mind however I had to actually ship the product.

It depends on your comfort level. Are you up for the challenge when it comes to creating your own awesome product, sales page, product launch, affiliate program, etc.? If so, you should take action on it immediately. You can always fall back on affiliate marketing, or continue to do it while you launch your own product. There's no rule that says you can't do both and do them well!

Iris

Here is one more reason product creation may be your best choice...

When you create a product it is very similar to building a rental property in real estate. You now have an asset you can leverage for income for years.

You can reinvest your profits and keep adding to your product line-up, just like you would adding apartment complexes. You now have a wide line-up of products which are all selling, all making you money.

With affiliate marketing you do not own the property. It is like renting a stall at the mall. You can make great money, you can keep at it for a long time, but when the mall changes ownership you might lose your spot and be scrambling to relocate.

The best method is to have a product lineup of your own, use affiliate products as "added sales" to your email list you create through your own product sales.

I am part time into IM and have done fairly well with it but I would say go where you have a passion. I have done well with CB and some CPA's as a hobby/ second income but have lost the edge b/c my heart was not into it.

Hard to say where the money is based on your passion. You need to decide that. I'm turning to the product creation route. It's long and hard work though if you want to create quality products. Feel free to PM me if you would like to discuss more.

Affiliate marketing is easy to start with – that’s why it is recommended to beginners so often. But the irony is that it’s really one of the most difficult ways to make money online. Your greatest enemy in this case is the cutthroat competition.

I started with affiliate marketing and learned a lot about internet marketing in general, but made nothing.

I then started making my own information products and did much better that way.

I spent a lot of time and money trying to do internet marketing, After all these years I wish I had found this site first.

If you have your own unique product, you can use them as great bonuses to affiliate offers like all the big name gurus do durin those crazy mega-launches.
Use them both. Don't limit urself by 1 over the other.

Hi:

Actually that's no right or wrong answers.

I prefer product creation because I have 100% control.

- I can offer special discount to my list (keep my list happy)

- I can package a few of my own products & run a firesale (makes more $$)

- I can recruit affiliates to sell for me

- My creditability increase instantly if I create my own products.

- I'll be perceived as expert in my chosen niche

Hope it helps

better to start as an affiliate for you to be able to assess the good product to invest with...its the start from there you will be able to identify the pros and cons.

The Pros and Cons of Being an Affiliate Marketer
pros:
once you understand it, you can make a lot of money
cons:
if can I take you a very long time to actually understand it properly

The Pros and Cons of Being a Product Owner
cons:
if you do not know anything you try to make a product based on others' information you will fail and get burnt out very quickly
pros:
you can make a lot of money when you're offering the community very valuable information that you personally have experimented with.

I think whatever you do, just take a short cut, find someone who's really good, and even better at teaching, and just learn directly, instead of learning a little here, and learning a little there and gaining nothing.

Benefits of product creation is that you can send visitors to a squeeze page to build your list and then promote your own product.

This divides your traffic into 2 sources - buyers and non-buyers - which you can then follow-up with accordingly. You can mix up promotions for your own products and affiliate products.

Another benefit to product creation is that you can recruit affiliates to drive your traffic - and you can promote your own products and affiliate products on the backend.

Product creation and affiliate marketing don't have to be seperate entities and work superbly together.

And more importantly - what do you think you enjoy most and what are you good at? I'm very slow when it comes to creating products so tend to stick primarily to list building, review sites and promoting affiliate products.

Personally I don't see nothing wrong with going into a market or niche and getting right into the product creation side, as you have total control and you can be the one recruiting affiliates, theres nothing wrong with then getting involved with affiliate marketing later on

okay once the product is ready how to find affiliates to promote it?

I am in favor of product creation as I've found it to lead into other areas to market in. Also when done right additional products are brought in the mix to supplement.

I had great success early on producing short 15 page reports on non-IM topics, then promoting them in relevant forums. I used to 'knock on out' (a report that is!) about once a month then promote the crap out of it for the next 4 weeks. Some of them are still getting sales all these years on!

Regards,
Caiden

It’s true. Being an affiliate is a great place to start as a business owner. Just make sure to find those that are reliable online. But don’t forget that creating your own product is better since you’ll be its pioneer. Research, skill practice, and interest will bring you success on it.

Affiliate marketing you build someone elses list.
Your own product you build your own list.

The money is in the list.

You want to create a product to built your list then do affiliate marketing to your list.

My view is that product creation should be the end goal, Affiliate marketing for me was the beginning stepping stones which help everyone understand and learn how 'Product Creation & marketing aspects' work when put into real life action.

It does take more effort and knowledge to begin to create solid quality products but if you can reach that point you are in a good position, being able to own and control what is in front of you, being able to market and distribute your own products & offers how you want.

Getting a percentage without having to worry about processing
refunds, dealing with difficult customers, replying to questions,
support etc is some times well worth it. Best if you are starting out.

Own products... Well you control the game. you have more
responsibility, though you have a much greater potential for making
the big bucks.

Not only do you have all the usual affiliate traffic sources you can
also build you own little army of affiliates and have them out promoting
for you. As well as doing joint ventures with other product owners.

Adding your product to other peoples as an upsell or downsell and
selling other peoples the same way.

Having your own product you will probably end up with a much
more valuable list, because you know who your buyers are (unless
you are running an affiliate bonus system where they need to
redeem).

A final thought.. Even if you have your own products affiliate
marketing can be a good add on. More legs under the table so to
speak.

If your just starting out and need some fast cash i would personally do a matrix system.