Which is best?
Or even both?
Personally, along with a lot of internet marketers, I do both.
I create my own products (quite a few of them as you can tell here).
And I sell other people’s products as an affiliate.
But when I first started internet marketing – and for quite a long time after starting – I concentrated on selling other people’s products in an affiliate capacity.
Why?
Because it’s easier…
The products are ready made, the sales pages have been written, the payment processor is set up, everything’s in place.
It can take anything from a few seconds to maybe an hour to promote an affiliate product.
It almost always takes longer than that to create your own product with all the associated “stuff” around it. Even with 160 internet marketing products plus a few others scattered around elsewhere, I still find it takes me several hours to create a sales page and set up all the behind the scenes things let alone actually creating the product.
The flip side is that my own products are often more profitable than the affiliate ones I promote.
Not always – you never quite know what’s going to sell until after you create it – but usually.
Whether that always pays me for the extra amount of time spent creating the products is another matter,
Some of that could be the market
Internet marketing changes fast.
Another of my products – a piece of specialist software – sells steadily and takes no effort on my part except handling the occasional email support question.
A different product, this time in the self help market, is equally hands free. I leave it to affiliates to promote and it blips every now and then when they do that, giving me a small commission (affiliates get the lion’s share of the sale price) and a new lead.
Yes, affiliates get the lion’s share of the money
So you could argue that if you’re getting 75% upwards of the front end sale price (often 100%, sometimes even higher in big launches) and probably 50% of any back end upsells, why should you be anything other than an affiliate?
Especially when you can make those sales day in, day out.
Which would be next to impossible with your own products – you’d be worn out!
Of course, the control freak in me says that I should concentrate on my own products – I’ve got near enough total control over the product quality, how often a product is launched and much more.
Which means it’s mainly down to personal preference!
The relatively easy route is simply promoting other people’s products as an affiliate marketer.
You’ve got an almost infinite selection of products you can promote – so you need to deal with the potential overwhelm of that – and if you choose carefully you can even get a share of the recurring income.
The bigger learning curve is creating your own products. There are a lot more “moving parts” involved and it can be a lonely task at times.
Sit down and brainstorm with yourself to work out which you’d prefer or whether, like me, you’d like a mix of both.
There’s no right answer
It’s up to you.
And the answer may change over time or from market to market.
Some of the markets I’m in as an affiliate, I’d never consider creating my own product (not many markets but there are one or two).
Most of the markets I’d be happy to create a product.
But if I was into promoting physical products (most of my markets are digital unless you count books which are essentially digital products turned into physical ones) then I probably wouldn’t go out and start manufacturing my own stuff.
Your knowledge of yourself and the products and markets you enjoy selling into will determine where you sit on that scale between 100% your own products and 100% other people’s products.
And if affiliate marketing appeals – maybe more than it did when you started reading – then check out my free affiliate marketing secrets video.