So Making Your Own Product Really Is the Key to Success???

For sure you are more likely to make it if you begin to offer your products. Just think about it, if you are doing the affiliate program you will always have just you selling this product/service. If you have your own product, you can have uncountable amount of affiliates and more people selling your product = more money for ya

I knew going in that here aren't any "good choices" on CB for my niches, and I would have to create my own sales funnels from scratch. No big deal. And on the upside, these products will be selling for years to come - the almost perfect passive income. The catch is that I'll have to continue my blogs and my lists; two or three hours a week, max. How much of a "hardship" is that?

Now, I'm thinking 'reset.' Rather than 'rinse and repeat' with other (related) niches, I'm thinking I can afford the risks and challenges of going into entirely new direction - a new plan, a new model, new everything.

So, 'Yes!' Create your own products!

This is not necessarily an 'either/or' situation with affiliate marketing, but 'both, damn it!' Turn the tables on your competition and crush them with a vastly superior product! Or better, a whole series of products... if you're up to it.

I dont agree. There are more than a few people making alot of money by being affiliates. If you have a list and/or audience then producing a product of your own might pay off for you (supposing you know something they dont).

The smart thing would be to work both angles...have a good affiliate income then a good product income.

I'm with Spike. I don't have my own products and I do just fine with the ususal spread of 3rd party income streams.

One day when I do get round to creating my own I might see a big hike in income, but the idea / work to create and launch is a big investment in time and effort. Time which I can spend rinsing and repeating proven income generators.

I think that you are primarily in business to sell things. Whether its your own products or someone else's.

There is no need for it to be an 'either or' decision. Sell your own stuff and other people's stuff too.

just never stop selling.
At some point, you'll be able to delegate or externalize, which means more time to develop your sales (wherever they come from).
Anyway that 's how I achieved this goal of yours.

Creating your own product not only adds masively to your bottom line but it also helps to build your list on auto-pilot too.

James

What works for some doesn't necessarily work for others.

It just all comes down to more traffic + higher conversions.

Honestly, creating your own product is the key. First off, you're going to make 100% profits, secondly, you're going to have affiliates such as you selling and promoting your products and making you money without doing anything!

That's my opinion,
Ben

Difficult one I made a similar thread to this asking if you have your own products.

You say:

"What do you worriers think? Am I right to think that I am more likely to make it if I begin to offer my own products, or should I stick to affiliate marketing?"

Also most Warriors are not "worriers"!

If you are having success with affiliate marketing then a product is the next step but this does not mean you WILL have success with your own product.

More often than not I have found it harder work...

Making your own products in itself is NOT the key to success the same way that promoting other people's products is NOT the key to success.

However if you research your niche well, have a good USP and a plan you have far more chance of success whether as an affiliate OR a product owner.

Chris

I do agree with some Warriors here, but I disagree with others. Yes, it's going to need a little investment and a lot of work to create your own product, promote it, etc., but for me, it always came down to huge profits and affiliates doing the work for me!

What do you worriers think? Am I right to think that I am more likely to make it if I begin to offer my own products, or should I stick to affiliate marketing?

I have a heavy marketer's bias toward creating my own products. I started out doing affiliate marketing. It took awhile, but I eventually got to the point where I could quit my job. That was over ten years ago. Then I thought to myself, "I'm earning a 25% commission here, a 50% there, and another % commission over here."

So why not earn a higher percentage of that commission?

So I created my first e-book and with the exact same kind of targeted traffic I was immediately able to increase my bottom line. So I created another product, then another one, since I had Marlon Sanders in one of his products advise me to "keep rolling out quality products and you'll increase your profits."

I took that advice to heart and it's made a huge impact.

While I've earned money from Adsense, Affiliate Marketing, product licensing, advertising, nothing has earned me more money than offering my own line of products and mixing it up with affiliate marketing. The clear advantage of affiliate marketing is you don't have to deal with some of the downsides of having your products, however, the upside from where I'm sitting is a bigger piece of the profit pie, you have more control, and you can recruit your own affiliates.

RoD

Well most people don't have enough insight or confidence to create their own product. That's why they go the easier route which is Affiliate Marketing. However, creating your own product can be easier than you think and is a sure fire way to success.

As long as you can stay focused, I don't see why you can't benefit from both.

Make sure you are building your list, first and foremost!

Create a couple of your own products and rotate them in the mix.

Test it out and see how it works!

T

building a list is where the money is ... you can make money at push of a button

I'd have to say yes, making your own product is a key but not the only key. I have my own products/services plus I do other things like affiliate marketing. If there is but only one key, I'd say that it is knowing that you need highly leveraged multiple streams of income first. Several little things can add up to one big bank account balance. I can't speak for anyone else but I'm in this for the money....plain and simple. If you're not in this or anything for the money then why do it? Stay focused on your goals and I wish you success.

Nice arguments...

I think you can make a lot of money as an affiliate by thinking outside of the box.

Like if you're getting 50% commissions from an affiliate offer and you want your own product in order to get 100% of all sales...

Why not go to a merchant who sees the value in the buyers list you're sending them and ask them to bump you to 100% commissions if you send them consistent traffic.

Heck, you can even get a merchant to add more upsells for you to the offer you're promoting... or get them to make a specialized landing page for you.

How? Show them some data from another offer you've promoted. If you're committed to sending them consistent traffic then many will work with you.

I actually find that getting affiliates CAN be a hassle when you're on the merchant end. Plus with your own product you have to dedicate an employee to customer service if you're doing any serious volume. Plus you're in the spotlight, which means you're a target to be ripped on all over the internet.

So doing things a little outside of the box and working with merchants to make the most money possible can be far more profitable than going out and creating your own product. Plus, just making your own product doesn't make you money. You have to have great copy which can cost money, create upsells, etc...

But you can't listen to other people all the time. Don't even listen to me. No one does anyway, and I don't listen to anyone else either. You have to THINK for yourself.

In my experience having my own product is definitely much more profitable... especially as I have a membership site which has taken the stress away of having to make new sales every month.

However, as other people have said, it is a different game and active affiliates are the key. I find that less than 1% of my affiliates actually promote the product and they make good recurring income.

feedtherightwolf, I clicked on your signature links and was actually astounded by the comments on your blog posts. I would say you have an audience that would gladly pay you a subscription because they are desperate for solutions.

Good Luck
Ian McConnell

Having your own product will give your more options, but its not easy. You will have a learning curve to go through ...

Own product: $100
Advertising cost via PPC,etc: $30
Profit: $70

Affiliate 50% commission ($100 product): $50
Advertising cost via PPC,etc: $30
Profit: $20

There is a huge gap in the profit margin !

From those who have experience with making their own products..

Did you see a huge rise in earning once you did this? compared to affiliate marketing?

There is no specific key to success, so get that out of your head right now. Each person is different with varying strengths and weaknesses. Some will have success launching products and others will not.

That said, you can do well with pretty much anything in IM. From retail, to affiliate sales, to direct product sales.

You do not really need your own product to make tons of money online. It is best to understand your strengths and weaknesses as a business person and proceeded from there.

There are many people who are highly creative and can create very high quality products more easily than others. At the same time, they may be a terrible sales person and thus lack in the ability to convince people to pay for someone else's product.

having your own products isn't really necessary if you know how to market the products of others. we went to Clickbank's Apex and close to the top of several other networks without having a single product of our own - just by building sites that got a lot of traffic and monetizing it.

Most will never made a product I think it's a mistake I have made a bunch its' easy and profitable so my questions is why do most people not do it?

I haven't created and sold a product so take this with a grain of salt(i'm an affiliate marketer)..

In my opinion, selling your own product is the most secure form of Internet marketing. If you make a really good product for a hungry niche, then you'll be a lot more stable than most affiliate marketers. Let your affiliates go out and fight with Google, Facebook, and other traffic sources. You just makes sure that your product is good and stays that way.

what do you do if you don't have an idea for a product?

My 2 cents: you probably have a pretty good email list. Start making your own products and sell them to your list and grow your list by finding JV Partners in your niche.

Tons of good answers in this thread. Now follow your own path Grasshopper.

We sell affiliate products = 30%

and our own products = 70%

In my own opinion this works killer for us, and the bigger our list grows the bigger our profits grow. Especially if you selling your own stuff you should be building a list.

I had more success in affiliate marketing than selling my own products
it really depends, you have to try it yourself

But offcourse..product creation is also a LOT MORE work and stress(back end support,sales emails etc..not funny!)

I think that a good idea would be to create a many earning revenues that you can manage. If this includes creating a product, then so be it.

As long as you diversify, you can ensure that you are covering all bases just in case there is a problem with one revenue.

Good luck

Tiptopcat

Look at what the online millionaires are doing. ALL of them are creating their own products. What does that tell you?

Russ

Dont listen to those who don't have their own product. Creating and selling your own product is MUCH more profitable and scalable than selling someone else's stuff.

I believe it all depends on the situations and skills.. Until you don't earn handful of income from affiliate marketing than I don't suggested to create own product, creating product needs valuable service or product which you will understand after generating good amount of income from affiliate marketing.. I hope this helps..

Thanks
Alam

Let's be rational here. What's the difference between a product owner and an affiliate besides product ownership? That's right, virtually NOTHING.

If you can't make money peddling someone else's product why do you think you'll suddenly make double peddling your own version of it?

IMO, selling your own products can be a hell of a lot more profitable than selling someone elses. BUT it requires a similar approach, a similar (and actually much larger) infrastructure and similar skill sets. If you can do one you can do the other. If you can't then you also can't.

It really depends on how much you have to spend on your product. To have one created will be at least $2000 unless you have good graphic design, writing, copy skills etc.

From the money that you have coming in at the moment it sounds like the best thing to do would be to grow your list until you have sufficient income to finance the creation of a high quality product.

I still haven't made a dollar with my IM efforts but am starting to get some traffic through organic results. I am taking the slow and steady approach and building a true authority site.

I suspect you can do a combination of things and result in a lot of money. My long term plan involves providing premium content (a la the membership model recommended by practical profits), a mailing list where I give away great free products and sell others (including my own), developing products to sell through affiliate networks, and taking those who buy from me regularly and putting them on a super high-end list, a la Dan Kennedy. I might be able to mix some ad space in there, too.

You can make a ton of money and become financially independent no matter what you're doing if you have the right niche and traffic. Keep at it and mix it up :-)

Do what you love and like and then you will get succes some day.

I would do both--product creation and affiliate marketing.

I think that being an affiliate marketer gives you the knowledge you need to succeed at product creation.

And I say this as someone who did it differently and created a product FIRST, then started affiliate marketing after realizing I couldn't effectively sell my product without a list.

If I could do it again, I'd reverse the order.

You both are right.

There are 7 figure affiliates, and, product creators.

It is a matter of your business model.

I'm in the process of making a membership site and i'm getting prospective leads . SO I hope that turns out into a big winner in the next month or so.

I think it is better to start as an affiliate marketer then move to product creation.

The life of an affiliate marketer is uncertain. Here are some common topics

1) Amazon terminated thousands of affiliates due to some tax law on which the poor affiliates have no control

2) Clickbank tracking problem. Affiliates are not getting their commission( Vendors are enjoying their full credit )

2) Ebay terminated many affiliates (even long term affiliates). No second chance to understand the real problem and correct it. (Personal experience)

3) The last affiliate gets credit even though two or more affiliates work hard

4) Coupon affiliates are stealing commission by exploiting the "last cookie" rule. Merchants and affiliate networks are not doing anything to save the ethical affiliates

5) Some Merchants are playing "tricky games" to steal affiliate commissions.

6) Your Google Adsense account is disabled and automatically your Google Affiliate Network account also disabled.

Do you think that you are your boss by being an affiliate?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I love affiliate marketing but my dream is to become a product creator. That is when you are becoming an online entrepreneur. That is where the real money and safety.

Affiliate = Employee in the online world

My plan is to promote some good affiliate programs and create my own products.

Making your own product is the epitome for the IM that wants to be a "guru", as this is where the money is without dealing with too many third parties

I agree creating your products is more lucrative than being affiliate

Being affiliate is good , don't get me wrong but all your income depends on you , much like a job

if something happens to you and you are not able to work on ur affliate sites the your income suffers like a job

Having your prodcut gives you the unique leverage of having other people build your list and make you money WITHOUT doing the work

You have made money online . You can help people with what worked for you

Create your products and let others earn income for you like you have done for others

I just started making my own websites, and selling my own products, and I haven't made any money yet, but on the verge of starting a pay per click campaign. Something that is harder to do with an affiliate product.

Selling your own products has many advantages and disadvantages over selling others' products

The main advantages of selling your own products:
1.Easy to market for it because you write it and knows everything about it
2.You can make other people market for you, post links which link to your website, write ads for you, and send email for you in order to get commission
3.You are the person who is responsible about the price, update, and description of your product.
5.Nobody can change your partnership or cancel it but you can do so because the source of money will be your web site so people need you.

The main disadvantages of selling your own product:
1.You cannot put new list and add products every short time because you need time to have new product.
2.You cannot put links or ads on your website because you will loose costumer then.
3.You are the responsible about convincing costumes to buy your product.
4.You are the responsible about the costumer satisfaction.

There are many ways to make a lot of money in internet marketing. You don't have to have your own product.

I'd have to agree with Tiptopcat, diversity is definitely one of the best ways to ensure success, but there is a lot of other things that go along with it as well.

If you step back and take a look at what your doing, at those who are doing what you're doing and are successful and the skills you'd need to acquire to get from were you are to were they are I think would help.

I've never been one for outsourcing much, especially when I know that I'm perfectly capable of developing the skills needed to be successful.

Some keys to keep in mind for successful marketing:
*Presentation-Whether you're an affiliate or a vendor, presentation of the product you're selling is key. If you can't present it in the best light possible chances are your sales will go to someone who can. I'd recommend learning a bit of CSS and brushing up on your Photoshop skills. Those two things alone will take you far.
*Optimization-Make sure your onpage SEO is air tight, from our URL, to Meta Keywords and Description, to your Title and Content.
*Traffic-Now once you have the pretty, and your onpage stuff is in order and only then tell the world about it. Many people make the mistake of jumping to this too soon.

Just remember the three objectives to marketing success are to Acquire Customers, Engage Customers and Retain Customers.

Good Luck!

TrafficParthenon

Without a doubt. The more control you have the more wealth and happier you will be for sure. You can mix and match with affiliate stuff but you need your own products.

If you can get your own product to have high quality and sell well, having your own product will ALWAYS be more money than being an affiliate.

The reason is that no matter how many copies you sell as an affiliate, the product owner makes at the LEAST the same as the affiliate if we say there's a 50% commission and not sell any copies on his own. This is also assuming that we are looking at a single product to either sell as your own or sell as an affiliate (1:1). The benefit does get more complicated to calculate if you only have 1 of your own product vs. 100 affiliate products you are promoting in comparison. But at the same time, if you have a quality product, the number of affiliates for the product will also increase and most likely will end up generating more profit overall.

Most likely, it will be easier for people to start off as affiliates and one day they'll realize ".....I can probably make a better product" and decide whether they want to act on it or just let it go and continue their affiliate marketing.

To simply put, I think product creation has much more potential than affiliate marketing but with anything that has more potential, there's a higher risk-benefit ratio as well.

Great thread!


There are thousands of products out there but if you took say an average IM product like a 15-25 page PDF eBook and 4 to 5, 15-20 minute training videos!
With the experience you have in producing your own products, what would be the approximate time it would take to complete? Basically the total number of hours for one or all persons involved.
And how many dollars besides the labor?
I'm asking because I'm working on a product and it seems like it's taking forever.:confused:


Thanks,
TJ

There is often this misconception that the most successful people online are in the Warrior Forum- not necessarily the case.

There are a lot of people who are making a killing online doing media buys and selling affiliate products and CPA offers. You won't often hear from them, why? because they are busy making money.

Having your own product is great provided you have a good product and can get the affiliates on board. There are pros and cons to both business models.

Offering a service, having your own product or having websites promoting affiliate or your own products are definitely some of the top things you can do to make money as an internet marketer