Affiliate Marketing Vs. Selling Your Own Product
Affiliate marketing involves advertising and selling someone else product. You agree to share the profits of the sale based on a percentage that the product owner decides. There are many advantages to affiliate marketing, but there are also disadvantages. The primary advantages of affiliate marketing are that you don’t have to spend money or time on product development. The owner of the product has already done that. They have already paid for someone to create the sales page and all the graphics. They have either written the book themselves or they have outsourced this to someone as well. This allows you to quickly start selling a product that is already finished and ready to go to market. You also do not have to deal with returns, product complaints or angry customers.
The owner of the product has to do that. You will however, have money deducted from your affiliate checks if people ask for refund. But you will not have to actually worry about getting them their money back or dealing with their complaints. This may not always be the case. People may complain to you if they didn’t like a product that you endorsed. Simply refer them to the product owner.
There is a down side to affiliate marketing. The major disadvantages are that there is a real possibility that you can be ripped off. You can spend a lot of money advertising a product, only to never receive an affiliate check. You are forced to share the profits that you generate with the product owner. You also can not make changes to the sales page in order to increase conversions. You might find a product on a hot topic, but the sales page sucks which cuts into your conversions. There is really nothing that you can do about it short of contacting the owner and offering to help them with their sales page.
The advantages of owning your own product are that the money that you earn is all yours. You don’t have to share it with anyone else. You can also recruit affiliates to sell your product for you. This allows you to make money without doing any work if you have recruited a sufficient amount of affiliates.
Some of the disadvantages of owning your own product are that you do have to pay for product development. You will have to write, create or outsource the writing of the e-book and the sales page. You also have to deal with refund requests, and complaints.
There are benefits to both being an affiliate marketer, and selling your own product. When deciding which is right for you, consider the money and time that you have available to create your own product if you’re thinking about going that route. For Internet marketing newbies, it is generally best to start with affiliate marketing and to only work with top affiliate companies such as Clickbank, Linkshare and Commission Junction. These affiliate portals have a great reputation for sending out timely payments.
I’m pretty new to affiliate marketing and this is one area that I’m going to focus more in the future. Great insight, Colin. Looks like you are picking up your pace here.
Yan
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You could sell your own product through clickbank or something similar as well, then the refunds and everything would be handled by them.
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Affiliate Marketing can make you a lot of money with the right niche. Tks Yan, BTW who is Colin?
Josh You are so right, But realize most marketers do not have the knowledge to create thier own product, so affliate marketing is another way to make some money.
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I’d pick affiliate marketing anytime, unless I’ve got a really great and innovative product…
Yeah you are probably right, I think mastering one and then building on another would be a great way to diversify and maintain a good level of income.
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@ Lucas Affiliate marketing is the best way to get started but like Josh said once you master that, build or get your own product to increase your income.
@ Josh You are right, I have my own product that I sell in addition to my affiliate programs, so the Income come from different sources.
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I also think that affiliate marketing is a great way to get started in making money online, as you don’t have to deal with varous complications that may arise as well as costs involved. Oh, and actually creating the product too
Having said that, however, you can make a lot of money with your own product, so it’s a great option if you have something good to offer and are more experienced in technical issues.
Thanks, Wayne – appreciate your thoughts and agree with you.
First, find out your interest and second find out the niche keywords, and then make site with the keywords as the main post and you will got a lot of cash.
We don’t disagree. Thanks for sharing. But those new to this need to realize that, even with a half-decent niche, there is a lot of substance needed to make it longer-term. We’re talking about business here, with the nuts and bolts of business that are required in any other business.
Well with the way things are going now, I ‘d say that it would still be more advantageous to go with Affiliate Marketing..
Thanks for your blogspot.com post for affiliate marketing, we will post your article. Thanks Jeff Affiliate Marketing