I’ve been seeing a number of folks posting in forums over the last few weeks that are advising others to sell other people’s products – not entering into the dangerous, risky world of creating your own information products…

Wanna guess where this advice will put you?

Right into the poor house!!

Now I’ve got nothing against affiliate marketing – or selling someone else’s product for commissions, but there are some risks that, in my experience, make affiliate marketing a far more risky proposition that creating your own infoproducts:

1.  Harder to build your expertise.  Buyers purchase online based on a tip or suggestion of someone they trust, someone they feel is an expert in their field.  Most affiliate marketers are simply advertising someone else’s product for them – the most expensive part of any business by the way.  If you develop your own product, you have a credibility, trust and mystique about you that will help get you sales and position within your market.

2. It’s a limited business model.  How many times can you pitch products to your subscribers or lists.  We all know them – the guys that send us a few emails every week with yet another pitch – how many of us hit the Delete button after a few weeks of seeing these?

3. What happens when your lead affiliate managers pull the plug on their program, change the commissions structure, don’t pay – unknown to many, there is a very high rate of dissatisfaction among affiliates which leads to everyone pitching the same core products where the competition is very tough.

4. You are building their reputation NOT your own.  A great deal of success in business comes from building your own reputation or the reputation of your company.  Take Richard Branson of Virgin – he gets tons of publicity because of his branding.  You can brand yourself or your business with your own products, but it’s tough to create any brand when you are marketing other people’s products.

5. Your missing out on BIG money.  Often you are selling a $97 or $297 product for 40% commissions that you could have developed yourself in 3-4 weeks where you can keep the entire (or at least 90% of the profits).  And here’s the real kicker…with your own product you could have an army of affiliates (even 20-30 can make a massive number of sales) bringing you profit 24X7 without any effort from yourself.  As an affiliate you are always a one-man show and that caps your income potential.

When SHOULD you market affiliate products…

• When you are brand new to the business or market and you want to test things out
• As a reciprocation to someone else for promoting your product to their list
• As a back-end product to your own front-end product (say you have a $47 ebook, then you can promote a $997 coaching program as an affiliate to customers who have already purchased your $47 ebook)
• As part of the market research phase of the SYSTEM we have put together to enter new markets – where you launch a content website with affiliate products as you are building your own products to sell online.  The system is outlined over at InfoMarketer’sZone – it’s a powerful method to get your business online within days, find out the burning hot topics people have, start making money with affiliate programs immediately and then developing your own infoproduct publishing enterprise within 6-weeks. 

Bottom line – build a business based on creating and marketing your own information products – as part of launching and operating this business you can certainly create a stream of income from related affiliate products.

How about you – what are your experiences marketing affiliate products?

Jeff