Just to preface this post, I have done well creating an offer I can sell myself, whether as a distributor, reseller etc. I have tried to avoid affiliate marketing.
My question to your hardcore super affiliates. Why do remain affiliates and not focus all your skills on creating your own product and selling this directly? Dont the product owners/vendors/advertisers (as they are often called) win in the end, retain the majority of the profits, build real businesses etc?
Even on the most basic level, selling something directly gives you complete control with things as basic as conversion tracking and optimization (yes i know you can do this as an aff as well). And then of course there is the fact that you own the customer and have complete exclusivity with regards to backend marketing without product owners your sent customers to vying for their attention as well?
So basically what are the benefits of affiliate marketing other then the obvious, such as low barrier to entry, less responsibility, less startup costs and no support issues? Obviously its the place to start, but why remain?
Oh and of course there is my biggest fear, Googles dislike of affiliates and the potential business destroying ban. Eek.
AM is a ninja skill. My initial step into AM is to gain Paid Traffic skills since I come from slow SEO. Got caught up in making it work. I think the skills picked up here can be applied to any business and likelihood to success is much higher when we graduate from AM.
When do you think we should graduate and move on though? When we reach Super Affiliate Status?
am sure everyone would like to become a successful big website owner, even super affiliates...and most do eventually market something they own.
its also a matter of timing.
some affiliates make good money from daily deals, know where to get the traffic and demographic.
however, setting up a daily deal site like groupon is out of the reach of alot of people. i know people who tried and failed.
so its smart to just stay as a daily deal affiliate, partner up with good companies, earn the affiliate monies while they can,
as much of it as possible, rather then fight against the BIG Dogs.
So the answer would be, its easy to partner up with successful established ventures and work alongside with good bumps then to slug it out with the competition.