Should I Be An Affiliate Markerter or Product Creator?

A product creator.

George Wright

Who do you think makes the real money?

The product Creator is the guy who makes the real money.

However, there are a lot of skills you'll need to learn from writing great copy, to handling support, to knowing what you market wants, how to build JVs, how to create a responsive list, etc. There are tons of things to learn to successfully owning and managing a very successful product.

How much are you willing to learn and struggle in the process?

Most affiliates do what they do because they want simple easy money and they're never married to any one single business.

You can easily piggy back on what's successful and not have to worry about tons of things that a product creator stays up at night thinking about.

The short answer is it depends on your goals and how much self development you want to put in and how much you understand your niche market.

I say do both. Seriously. Make affiliate sales, and while you do, develop products to sell the same way, with affiliates just like you.

Do affiliate marketing and make product creation your main priority

These days, after the famous Google updates, a successful affiliate site is also a product. No more just keyword research and copy-paste junk articles. Your blog and list content has to be kind of like a magazine, and this certainly is a product. In a longer timeframe you probably work on it even more than a CB product creator.

Both are good... at the end of the day, both gona make you money..

Hi sarlat! If a complete newbie asked I would recommend an affiliate product to start with

simply because most newbie don't quite understand how to create products just yet.

However for the more advanced marketer I would recommend trying to create your own

product. I see it this way if you can go all out and drive traffic to an affiliate link or for an

affiliate product you can certainly traffic for your own product.

Kind regards

You can be both. Create products while affiliate marketing. Most marketers do this.

If you are new, then I suggest becoming an affiliate until you have the skills and knowledge to create your own product.

Hello Sarlat

I would tell the newbie to start off promoting affiliate products to learn the basics and gain a little knowledge of their chosen niche.

Then simply invest all the commissions they have made in to creating their own products. This way they have no start up costs

Neil

Yes, eventually you need to try and do both when you've become sufficiently skilled. While you are learning, though, just do affiliate marketing.

It really depends on what you want out of your business. Start out as an affiliate marketer as you learn about internet marketing.

After you start generating an income and learn more about this business - then start creating your own products to sell.

It would depend on their existing skill-set.

But for the "typical, average" beginner (and several others) I'd advise them to be an affiliate. I think there's a huge number of reasons for affiliate marketing being better, overall, for many people, anyway. Here are just ten of them ...

• Affiliates have almost complete flexibility of products to promote: we can add, remove and change products whenever the need arises and for whatever reason, without needing to create a new one
• When you're an affiliate, you get the chance to build up an asset-based business based on genuine residual income without your fortunes being tied in to the longevity, success and demand for any specific, individual product at all
• Affiliates don't have to do (or outsource) the market research necessary to determine exactly which type of product's going to be a success - not to anything like the same extent as vendors, anyway
• Statistically, just among the people I know really well (this point is clearly subjective and I don't pretend otherwise) the long-term successful affiliates I know are mostly earning far more from internet marketing than the long-term successful vendors I know, and their businesses are far more stable for the long-term
• Affiliates don't have all the potential legal liability, compliance and enforcement problems (which incur time, effort, energy, worry and sometimes money to resolve) that vendors typically have
• Affiliates don't generally have most of the customer service/support problems that vendors tend to have to deal with all the time
• Affiliates have far greater flexibility of income-sources than vendors do: once I've built up my lists in a few different niches, covering a large range of products, if any one supplier gets into trouble, I can fairly easily promote things from other income-sources instead, so the sudden demise of a retail outlet (or even a payment processing method) doesn't affect me nearly as adversely as it would typically affect a vendor
• As an affiliate, it's far easier to offer a range of promotions at very different price-points than it typically is as a vendor
• Affiliates don't have to do (or outsource) the actual product creation-process and "put it all together"
• Affiliates have to pre-sell rather than sell (it's much easier and it doesn't involve sales copywriting, which vendors either need to be really professionally good at, or pay quite a bit to outsource)

I could easily go on ... those are just a few of the more obvious advantages that spring immediately to mind. You might want to bear them in mind if anyone tells you, mistakenly, that "all the real money is always in having your own products".

A newbie should start out as an affiliate then a product creator. Being an affilate first helps a newbie learn how things work.

Both

Affiliate marketing is great way to generate money, also product creation..
You should focus first on affiliate marketing, it's much more easier.

Most are both, at least I am. I make my products build my list and sell affiliate products to them.

Good question - only you know the answer to it though.

I was on both sides and now prefer affiliate marketing and actually am making much more money in the process.

But that's just me.

Most people responding to your question will tell u what to do based on their own feelings about it and are heavily biased towards their own feelings.

You shouldn't rely on anyone in this thread to help you make your decision but rather take a step in either direction and decide to succeed at whichever one you choose NO MATTER WHAT.

Product creator than in the backend promote affiliate products

I would absolutely say to be BOTH. You can get rich with your own products but you can also make good money via affiliate sales and when doing affiliate stuff, much of it can be setup as passive income (when done right) so I'd definitely recommend doing both.

Some great advice in this thread. I also find for a beginner with limited skills affiliate marketing will be the easiest way to get your foot in the door and expand from there. Product creating could take a few months and end up with it not selling because maybe you didn't do enough research into the demand or you weren't able to get traffic and affiliates to your product.This would cause many potential online money makers to possibly give up.

Perhaps the best option is to start doing AM, creating email lists and in the interim build your product around that niche. This way once you eventually have a fully designed product you can market it easily to your list.

Be both. Product creation isn't for everyone but if you have no problems creating and marketing your products then you can easily promote affiliate products as well.

A product creator every time! Like you said, why be an affiliate marketer when you can have your own affiliates?

You know what you are selling is the best quality, it's not rehashed nonsense and more importantly you have the potential to make more money!

For all the years that I have been a member of this awesome forum,
it never entered my mind to produce my own product.

But lately, I have been thinking - not a good thing when I start thinking
a certain way : -) But nonetheless, I have now been giving much
thought to creating my very own product.

Here's the thing. It scares me to death. For one thing, it is a lot of
responsibility. That is, if I am going to do it right - my customers
deserve the very best of a solution to whatever problem they
are having, or whatever challenge they are facing.

So I do not want to create a product just so that I can only line
my pocket, which seem to be happening quite a bit lately.

On the other hand, finding an excellent affiliate product to
promote, even if I am getting only 50% or so of the profit,
suits me just right for the time being. I have spared myself
a lot of the headache that comes with being a product owner.
At least, for the time being.

If the newbie already fully understands that to create a product
that answers a burning question is a heavy responsibility, then
by all means, go right ahead - create that product. I might even
be the first in line to grab it up; cash in hand. :-)

If for any other reason, the newbie might want to think long and
hard about that action.

Each approach has its own Pros and Cons, of course.

Just thinking out loud. :-)

Alodie