Creating a Digital Product vs Affiliate Marketing & How Big Sites and Brands Use Affiliate Marketing

If you want to make money as a marketer, then you really have two main options. One is to create a product and to sell that. The other is to sell an affiliate product.

Neither of these is the ‘right’ option. The right option will instead depends on what niche you’re in, what you enjoy doing, what you’re capable of doing and more.

So, let’s take a look at the pros and cons of each.

With a digital product, you of course have the advantage of keeping 100% of the profit. You also have the freedom and control to market your product however you like and even to edit it and alter it if you so wish. This also makes it easier for you to create a strong brand – if someone has enjoyed one of your products, there’s a good chance they’ll be interested in buying more from you in future.

But then of course that means you’ll also need to actually create that product. This in turn means you need to invest a lot of time and effort – or money if you plan on outsourcing – into the creation of that offering.

And what that means is that you can potentially end up out of pocket. If you invest lots of time and money into a product that then ends up not selling, you’ll have lost money. There are ways you can ‘validate’ a product to ensure there’s an audience for it, but ultimately you will always be taking a gamble.

On the other hand, if you choose an affiliate product that is already making lots of sales, then you’ll know for sure that it can sell. All that’s left is finding the right audience. In some cases, even the marketing materials will be prepared for you.

In terms of profit, affiliate products still offer very high commission – up to 75% in some cases. If you pick a more expensive item then, or sell multiple items, you can make just as much money as you can from having your own product.

There’s no right answer then but remember: you don’t have to choose. Why not start with an affiliate product and use that to fund a digital product of your own?

Or better yet, why not use affiliate products to learn what works and what doesn’t, and then use that to help design the perfect product of your own!

(And of course, you should also look into PLR products!)

How Big Sites and Brands Use Affiliate Marketing

A lot of internet marketers will make money online by selling digital products such as eBooks and courses through affiliate platforms like JVZoo. These sites let them find products with zero overheads, and no storage or delivery costs. They then allow them to select those products, and to sell them to buyers for a huge cut of the profits.

In many ways, this is the perfect business model for those that want to get set up quickly, who don’t have a lot of money to invest, and who don’t want to deal with complex admin like fulfilment.

But if you take a look at any truly large brands – whether that’s Bodybuilding.com, Mashable, The Verge, Wired – you’ll see that they don’t use this business model.

Which is not to say that they don’t make money from affiliate sales! They just go about it in a different way. Here’s how, why, and what you should learn from them.

What the Big Brands Are Selling

Big brands don’t typically sell third party ebooks. Why? Firstly, ebooks have a limited appeal: they only tend to appeal to those that are tech savvy, in a certain age bracket, and also fans of reading. Conversely, physical products appeal to everyone.

The other reason is that – let’s face it – a lot of ebooks are bad value. Paying $30 for a PDF is a rather big ask when the PDF is only 10 pages long, and full of typos! Especially when the ebook is free to make and produce.

Potentially, this could hurt the brand of the big site and prevent them making future sales.

So instead, most big brands sell real products, and they sell services.

To do this, they use sites like Amazon, like Best Buys, and like EDx (a site that lists online courses – including those from top universities).

Imagine what commission a site like The Verge might make selling an MBA! (Which typically costs thousands of dollars per year!)

How to do It

So how do you set yourself up with this kind of business model?

First, you need to track down and sign up for those higher calibre affiliate accounts. You can sign up for Amazon easily, but to land something like EDx you will need to apply (which means having a big enough site).

Next, use a tool like Genius Links or Trackonomics in order to manage affiliate accounts across lots of platforms and quickly generate and track those links.