Why Is Selling Your Own Product is Better Than Selling Affiliate Product?

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Tenzho

You are the BOSS
You are not working for others
You learn something new when you do your research to create your product
You know your content well, so you can won't be blindly promoting a product without knowing what's inside and risk losing trust from your subscriber.
You can build your own affiliate empire and make others work for you
You can gain more subscribers
You are branding yourself, this will make yourself well-known

So why do you think selling your own product is better than selling affiliate product. Or do you disagree with it?

i get what you're saying, that said:

4. Here's what one should do if they are promoting someone else's product, emphasis on "SHOULD". If you're going to promote a product heavily. Own it, use it, experience it. not only will you have more faith in it and believe in it, but you can create a kick@ss youtube video of it, not 1 of those crappy .ppt presentations or no crappy animoto videos but real legit videos with your real face (

o no not that) actually demonstrating a product you're promoting.

you may make sales pumping out garbage animoto videos on youtube but I bet you can make a lot more with one or two actual videos of myself using a product, showing I believe in it enough to own and show my real face.

5. this can be very difficult to undertake

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Tenzho

12 years ago

Originally Posted by redstanford

i get what you're saying, that said:

4. Here's what one should do if they are promoting someone else's product, emphasis on "SHOULD". If you're going to promote a product heavily. Own it, use it, experience it. not only will you have more faith in it and believe in it, but you can create a kick@ss youtube video of it, not 1 of those crappy .ppt presentations or no crappy animoto videos but real legit videos with your real face (

o no not that) actually demonstrating a product you're promoting.

Great advice, how can you promote a product when you did not buy and use it.

Another reason to create your own product, you SHOULD buy an affiliate product if you want to promote it.

Thanks

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Dave90210

12 years ago

Selling your own product is way better!!! Remember there's likely hundreds if not thousands of people promoting the same affiliate program. The chances of you making a sale with your link is diminished.

Also you have to rely on cookies and allot of people have cookies disabled in there browsers. Also you have to worry about faulty affiliate tracking software. If that wasn't enough some sponsors simply wont pay you.

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bt

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Tenzho

You are the BOSS
You are not working for others
You learn something new when you do your research to create your product
You know your content well, so you can won't be blindly promoting a product without knowing what's inside and risk losing trust from your subscriber.
You can build your own affiliate empire and make others work for you
You can gain more subscribers
You are branding yourself, this will make yourself well-known

So why do you think selling your own product is better than selling affiliate product. Or do you disagree with it?

Good point, and you also don't have to worry about crooked affiliate networks. I'm not saying all affiliate networks are crooked, but I truly believe that some are.

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123andyt 12 years ago

I would also add that with your own product you can put your own affiliate links within the product itself (eg where hosting is discussed put in your affiliate link for hostgator)....
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Alexa Smith

Banned 12 years ago

Originally Posted by Tenzho

1. You are the BOSS

You can be the boss as an affiliate, too.

Originally Posted by Tenzho

2. You are not working for others

Neither am I, as an affiliate.

Originally Posted by Tenzho

3. You learn something new when you do your research to create your product

I learn something new, as an affiliate, when I do my research to promote the products I'm promoting, my articles, my websites, my articels, my autoresponder emails ...

Originally Posted by Tenzho

4. You know your content well, so you can won't be blindly promoting a product without knowing what's inside and risk losing trust from your subscriber.

Yes, that applies fully to me as an affiliate, also. (Who's going to risk attaching their name and reputation to a product they don't know well?)

Originally Posted by Tenzho

5. You can build your own affiliate empire and make others work for you

This one isn't even true. They won't be working for you - they'll be working for themselves.

Originally Posted by Tenzho

6. You can gain more subscribers

Again, untrue. An affiliate can gain (at least) as many subscribers as a vendor.

Originally Posted by Tenzho

7. You are branding yourself, this will make yourself well-known

Affiliates can do this, in exactly the same way.

So, let's see where we are, here ...

You listed 7 points as "advantages of being a vendor".

2 of them were untrue and the other 5 apply to affiliates just as they apply to vendors.

Was this really the best you can do?

:confused:

Originally Posted by Tenzho

So why do you think selling your own product is better than selling affiliate product.

I don't.

I think it's worse.

Much worse.

Now I'll tell you just a few of the many advantages of being an affiliate (and unlike yours, these don't apply equally to "both situations") ...

As an affiliate, I can build my own real, asset-based, residual-income producting business with complete product flexibility, promoting whatever product(s) I like, whenever I like, without my business ever being dependent on the continued success, availability and reliability of any specific individual product at all.

And if a much better, newer, cheaper product suddenly comes along from some other new vendor, that'll be an advantage, not a disadvantage, for my business. How will it affect you, as a vendor? :p

And I don't have to develop the products.

And I don't have the same customer-relations, transaction-handling, back-up, product-design, packaging/presentation, formatting, research and other problems that vendors have.

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Tenzho

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

You can be the boss as an affiliate, too.

Neither am I, as an affiliate.

I learn something new, as an affiliate, when I do my research to promote the products I'm promoting, my articles, my websites, my articels, my autoresponder emails ...

Yes, that applies fully to me as an affiliate, also. (Who's going to risk attaching their name and reputation to a product they don't know well?)

This one isn't even true. They won't be working for you - they'll be working for themselves.

Again, untrue. An affiliate can gain (at least) as many subscribers as a vendor.

Affiliates can do this, in exactly the same way.

So, let's see where we are, here ...

You listed 7 points as "advantages of being a vendor".

2 of them were untrue and the other 5 apply to affiliates just as they apply to vendors.

Was this really the best you can do?

:confused:

I don't.

I think it's worse.

Much worse.

Now I'll tell you just a few of the many advantages of being an affiliate (and unlike yours, these don't apply equally to "both situations") ...

As an affiliate, I can build my own real, asset-based, residual-income producting business with complete product flexibility, promoting whatever product(s) I like, whenever I like, without my business ever being dependent on the continued success, availability and reliability of any specific individual product at all.

And if a much better, newer, cheaper product suddenly comes along from some other new vendor, that'll be an advantage, not a disadvantage, for my business. How will it affect you, as a vendor? :p

And I don't have to develop the products.

And I don't have the same customer-relations, transaction-handling, back-up, product-design, packaging/presentation, formatting, research and other problems that vendors have.

Ouch, you hurt my heart.

Thanks
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Alexa Smith

Banned 12 years ago

Originally Posted by Tenzho

Ouch, you hurt my heart.

Oooh, sorry!

There are some advantages to being a vendor, too - just not quite the ones you alleged in your OP, I think?

It's all personal preference, anyway. I'm just trying to make the point that (as always happens here when this is discussed - not only in your thread!), many of the issues that vendors often think of as "advantages of being a vendor" also apply to affiliates; and that there are also some specific advantages to being an affiliate that aren't available to vendors at all.

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myob 12 years ago

Originally Posted by Tenzho

Ouch, you hurt my heart.

If your own product fizzles out, it will do a lot more than just hurt your heart. The major advantage of being an affiliate, IMHO, is the flexibility of representing perhaps hundreds of products. If one (or more) affiliate product bombs, vendors can be much more easily replaced than producing another product. In addition, everything else (points 1-7) can and are being done by affiliates. :p
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Phil Ainsworth

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

Oooh, sorry!

There are some advantages to being a vendor, too - just not quite the ones you alleged in your OP, I think?

At the end of the day, it's all personal preference, anyway. I'm just trying to make the point that (as always happens here when this is discussed - not only in your thread!), many of the issues that vendors often think of as "advantages of being a vendor" also apply to affiliates; and that there are also some specific advantages to being an affiliate that aren't available to vendors at all.

Oooh, this is shaping up to be a interesting, cheeky little discussion....

I guess my 2ps worth (yes, I am British, we say "2ps" ;-) ) is that the product creators have the advantage of being both an affiliate and promoting their own products to their customers... whereas affiliates seem to work very hard at driving traffic to make someone else rich without having that second income stream...

I guess it comes down to how comfortable you are at driving traffic... if you can do that, then being an affiliate can work well for you... I've always been rubbish at doing that, so I personally I prefer to have my own "sales-force" working for me.... (by that I mean my affiliates being paid commissions on the sales they refer)

I guess it's one of those "horses for courses" thangs...

(Alexa, feel free to share your best traffic-generation strategies with us, btw :-) )

I gotta be honest though, I genuinely think it's easier to make money by creating a product and getting other people to sell it for you, than selling someone elses... just my experience, that's all...

Peace and Ben and Jerry's Phish Food,

Phil

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sunray

12 years ago

Why is writing a book better than keeping a bookstore?
It is definitely if you are next Rowling, otherwise you might do better selling others' stuff

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Tech19

12 years ago

No one has even mentioned what is possibly the most important part of this entire debate.... Profitability. It doesn't take a genius to realize that your margins will be much smaller on 50% commissions than 100% from your own products. I don't have my own products, but some people just aren't able to make the numbers work. If you are paying for advertising then this is something you must strategically measure. I know there are companies/products that pay 100% commission, I'm just saying that as an affiliate you must make sure your numbers add up and you find a way to create long term customers, not just one time sales. If you can do it either way then it just comes down to how you personally run your business

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sunray

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Tech19

No one has even mentioned what is possibly the most important part of this entire debate.... Profitability. It doesn't take a genius to realize that your margins will be much smaller on 50% commissions than 100% from your own products. I don't have my own products, but some people just aren't able to make the numbers work. If you are paying for advertising then this is something you must strategically measure. I know there are companies/products that pay 100% commission, I'm just saying that as an affiliate you must make sure your numbers add up and you find a way to create long term customers, not just one time sales. If you can do it either way then it just comes down to how you personally run your business

Selling your product at 100 % profit (no affiliates) assumes that you must be very good at marketing, getting traffic etc., otherwise you would still have to pay 50 % away. And if you are that good and you have websites with lots of traffic, why sell only one product? You could sell five, ten or fifty products. Now, 50 % of fifty products is much more than 100 % of one product, isn't it?

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Tech19

12 years ago

Originally Posted by sunray

Selling your product at 100 % profit (no affiliates) assumes that you must be very good at marketing, getting traffic etc., otherwise you would still have to pay 50 % away. And if you are that good and you have websites with lots of traffic, why sell only one product? You could sell five, ten or fifty products. Now, 50 % of fifty products is much more than 100 % of one product, isn't it?

First off, paying out 50% to your affiliates is not the same as only getting 50% commission as an affiliate. Second, no one said you are only allowed to create one product. And by your calculations, you are assuming that you would only make 1 sale of 100% commission, and 50 sales at 50% commission. That is way off base

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seobro

12 years ago

I have been an aff for many companies. My main complaint is that they do not want to pay me. For example one guy offered me 10% commission. Already I have sold $2,000 worth of his product and he has yet to send me one penny. What he has are a lot of excuses. Those are so he does not pay me.

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DavidG

12 years ago

I'm sorry to hear that seobro.

I agree with Phil.

For some, they "get" traffic generation.

I personally don't.

I like creating my own product, then having a set of affiliates drive traffic.

regZ

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E. Brian Rose

12 years ago

It all depends on whose foundation you want to build your house on. Personally, I'd rather own the foundation where I build my home.

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Rob Howard

12 years ago

I have a product in which 15 affiliates sent me 1000 buyers in 2 days. I had an upsell, and when combined with my own sales of the front end, I brought in 7000 bucks in around 3 days. That's profit.

I now have another 1600 buyers on my list, from that tiny little launch.

However, I'm not silly enough to play the either/or game.

I'm also an affiliate - and that 1600 extra buyers is worth about another 500 bucks+ a month in just affiliate commissions and future product sales.

No need for it to be either or.

Rob

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Kurt

12 years ago

Originally Posted by ccmusicman

I have a product in which 15 affiliates sent me 1000 buyers in 2 days. I had an upsell, and when combined with my own sales of the front end, I brought in 7000 bucks in around 3 days. That's profit.

I now have another 1600 buyers on my list, from that tiny little launch.

However, I'm not silly enough to play the either/or game.

I'm also an affiliate - and that 1600 extra buyers is worth about another 500 bucks+ a month in just affiliate commissions and future product sales.

No need for it to be either or.

Rob

I agree that it's not either/or.

But to answer the OP's question directly, instead of bashing it, here's some more reasons:

Assuming you just want to sell the product yourself, you can price the product at its very lowest since you don't have to consider paying affiliates. How much of the price at Clickbank is mark up just for affiliate commisions?

Own something tangible. By owning the product, you can barter it, give it away, use it to make JVs, etc.

Control over content. Who said product owners can't also be affiliates? By owning the product you can include related affiliate offers to increase the profit potential of the product.

Pride. There's a certain satisfaction you get from making a product that you can't get through affiliate programs. This isn't a tangible thing you can put a price tag on, but those that create products know what I'm talking about.

Sure, there's advantages to being an affiliate too, but the OP didn't ask that question. It's always a point of interest to me as to how many people reply with what they want to say, rather than what was asked.

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Chris Worner

12 years ago

Here are some disadvantages of being the vendor;

Hiring, managing and paying staff.
Greater tax liabilities
Greater legal responsibilities
The list goes on...

My point being that it isn't as cut and dried as you make it. You may increase your gross income, but it is your net income that matters.

There is no point going out and pouring all your time and effort into creating and selling a product of your own if it is yielding a poorer result than that of being an affiliate instead.

-Chris

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JOSourcing

Banned 12 years ago

Originally Posted by Tenzho

So why do you think selling your own product is better than selling affiliate product.

You never, ever, ever have to worry about someone pulling the plug on your "inventory." A discontinued product dissolves everything that you've managed to make a dependent on your success as an affiliate.

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ruki 12 years ago

Sometimes, building a product and giving away 100% commissions is about building a list and not making a profit.

When you have the list you can always sell them something else and make huge profits.
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- Alexa Smith Banned 12 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by ruki
  
  When you have the list you can always sell them something else and make huge profits.
  
  Exactly so.
  
  But are you saying that that's an advantage of being an affiliate, or an advantage of being a vendor? :confused:
  
  There's not much point in being an affiliate without building lists, clearly. But to be fair, vendors also have (buyers') lists, don't they? They can legitimately contact people who've bought from them? It actually applies to them, too ...
  
  It seems to me - like so many of the points discussed - to apply to both equally ...
  
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anahita56

12 years ago

There's no better way to build a business that is highly scalable and can be easily upgraded, than creating and selling your own products.

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myob 12 years ago

Originally Posted by anahita56

There's no better way to build a business that is highly scalable and can be easily upgraded, than creating and selling your own products.

Affiliates can also build a business that is highly scalable and easily upgraded. And the great advantage of being an affiliate is that mistakes in product selections can be very quickly and easily fixed with a few simple link replacements. Poorly performing products get dumped; no more muss or fuss.
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Rough Outline

12 years ago

I don't think I'll ever getting into product selling seriously for two good reasons; support and customer service.

That stuff would make me pull my hair out. I'd rather get a hands off commission, make money and keep my sanity.

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tunity

12 years ago

Looking at the arguments and debate on this thread about which is better; I can sayfrom what i read that there is no one size fits all.

I am on the list of many marketers, i can tell you one thing i have deduce, and that is the fact that: most product owners are affiliates who promote other people's products and quite a lot of affiliates create their own products at some point and sell it.

So guys...instead of debating which one is better, the discussion should be about the advantages of both being an affiliate and vendor at the same time.

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WaterSprings

12 years ago

I agree that both have their pros & cons

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Dominican

12 years ago

Promoting your own product gives you a better view of things.
The vendor (who is not you) will always have more statistical information, because they have VARIOUS people promoting their product, much of which they can see.

An affiliate can only see what they are doing, and maybe a bit of spying on other people's campaigns, but not as extensive of a view as what the vendor themselves could see.

Being a vendor, would definitely be better in the long term, because it can become a very sustainable business; because of the fact that one can get others to promote for them...the whole idea of passive income, and getting others to do the work etc... would not entirely be there as an affiliate.

In short one is short term, the other is long term.

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Charanjit

12 years ago

Their is a half way house, find a product that is not on the internet or has poor on line marketing, do a distributor deal with them so you can sell their products on line, use their product to set up your own unique distribution channel (for this to work the product has to be of very good quality), once you have a good decent market start pushing though other products i.e your own brand. And yes this does work I did it with off line marketing about 8 years ago only wish I knew what I know now and it would of been so much easier. For this to work you need to change consumers into customers / clients and build up loyalty.

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CDarklock

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Tenzho

So why do you think selling your own product is better than selling affiliate product. Or do you disagree with it?

Why selling affiliate products is better:

It is simply impossible for you to create enough products to keep your customers happy.

Don't get me wrong; I create and sell my own products. But no matter how smart you are, no matter how good you are, no matter how much you outsource... you'll never create enough products on your own.
Which is why you need to develop close, long-term relationships with other product creators who will give you early access to their products before launch so you can promote them effectively.

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