"Affiliate Marketing vs. Product Creation"

 "Affiliate Marketing vs. Product Creation"
 We've made it this far and there's not much further left to go! In the last two parts of this
e course, I will illustrate a few of the advantages and disadvantages of affiliate marketing
and how you can manipulate them to maximize your chances of success!

You've got a map, you know your destination, now you just need to know a few of the
short-cuts, and also the dead-ends along the way!

When you look at the vast Internet landscape, you'll see all kinds of opportunities for
earning. And if you goal is to sell, then affiliate marketing stands head and shoulders
above creating your own product or service to sell for a variety of reasons.

• Affiliate Marketing Is Designed to Be Simple (and Lucrative)
  

It's the truth: the process of affiliate marketing is quite simple by nature.
All you really have to do to call yourself an affiliate marketer is pick a product or service
online that you want to sell, sign up for the affiliate program, then promote your affiliate
link. When a sale is made through your affiliate link you make a commission!

That's it in a nutshell!

There are, of course, clever tactics to use when affiliate marketing such as picking high
paying affiliate programs and advertising your affiliate link only to targeted prospects.
But basically the game remains the same for everyone!

• Let Someone Else Do The Book-keeping
  

As an affiliate of a program, you're not running the program…and that's one of the
most appealing aspects of being an affiliate marketer. As the affiliate, all you really have
to care about is how much you have made, and when you get paid.

Most affiliates have access to an online administration area. You'll use it to provide
the "mail to" information for your commission checks and to view statistical data such as
how many sales and visits you have referred to the affiliate program owner's website.
But that's it. No adding, no subtracting, no multiplying or dividing. The information is
provided to you as a back-up so that you can confirm that you're being paid correctly.

That is a lot less responsibility to have as compared to the person who is running the
affiliate program. The affiliate program owner or merchant must keep track of
virtually everything involved: all the accounting, which affiliates made money, how
much money was made, processing refunds, sending affiliate checks and more are all
weekly and sometimes daily routines for someone who owns an affiliate program.
Successful companies may have to staff entire departments just to handle these
administrative chores. And sure, there is software to help manage the multitude of tasks
to be done, but overall just being an affiliate is so much easier and less stressful.

Isn't that what you're looking for?

• The Best Kind of Customer Service - None
  

If you make 1000 affiliate sales for your products, there will inevitably be a few of
people who are going to want a refund, more information, their password re-sent, or some
sort of purchase "support." Many companies live or die based on the level of customer
care they provide.

Customer service is important, but it's also time-consuming and expensive. Fortunately,
as an affiliate, you don't have to lift one finger (or pay one dollar) to take care of all that
support. You just make the sale and cash the check.

Life's so easy as an affiliate!

• You Don't Have to Re-Invent The Wheel
  

Many people come on the Internet and try to create their own product to sell so that
instead of only getting a commission percentage, they get the whole 100% of the sale.
Many try…and many fail.

For advanced affiliate marketers, carving out a new market niche by creating a product
can prove to be extremely lucrative. But when you are just starting out, trying to create
your own product is not worth the extra 40% per sale that you make because if you
product fails, you'll end up losing 100% of your investment.

You're going to need a large upfront investment if you want to create a new product.
Whether it is for programming costs, website designs, or sales material costs, "new" can
get really expensive! And the problem with that is that you won't start to re-coup
your investment from your product until it's ready to sell!

• The Affiliate Difference:
  

As an affiliate you can make sales immediately on products and services that have
proven affiliate marketing tools already in place.

Really, being an affiliate is one of the best ways I know to get into the Internet marketing
arena without a whole lot of risk involved. Once you learn how to be a great affiliate,
then creating your own product and starting an affiliate program of your own will be
much more simple and profitable!



Thanks for reading.