As an affiliate marketer or a business owner, you may want to choose between offering products or services to your clients and followers. Or, you may decide that you would like to offer both, as they are not mutually exclusive. Looking at the pros and cons of each one will help you to proceed with making a well-informed decision.
The components of each are really rather similar, as they both require a certain set of skills and marketing techniques, they will also require timely deliverability and the need to provide exceptional quality and service. They both will require a particular sum of technological knowledge and expertise in one’s chosen field, and in both cases, if you are the product or service-based business owner, work can be outsourced if need be.
There are some differences, though.
With a product, as the affiliate, there is not much more to do than drive traffic to the offer and collect commissions. The sales are pretty cut and dried, and in the event of a need for customer service, the vendor will be required to provide it. As long as you are choosing quality products to promote, preferably ones you have purchased yourself and found to be helpful, there should be very little chance of difficulty.
As a product creator, there is the opportunity to have very little work involved as well. You could potentially outsource both the product creation and customer service aspects of your business. With affiliate commissions being paid and products being delivered automatically via technology, assuming they are digital products, you could be in a position in which all you really need to do is oversee the project and collect your earnings. You could, in fact, continuously earn money from something you only had to create once.
Service-based products differ for the business owner in the fact that they will have a lot more direct association with their clients and customers. Though it is true that some of the aspects of the business may be outsourced, you will still be trading hours (or projects) for dollars. This will require a much higher level of involvement and management. A single person only has so many hours of time available for planning, marketing, promoting, and completing client orders. Unless your current income level is such that you will be able to hire employees or freelancers to help with the work, you may quickly become overwhelmed and unable to provide the highest quality of service your customers deserve.
As an affiliate, it would be extremely important that you knew without a doubt that the person you were recommending for a service was one that you could trust to do the work requested in a timely manner and who provided the absolute best quality. One bad experience with a vendor who you recommend could mean an end to that customer’s future purchases.
The choice, really, is up to you and what you feel comfortable with. Whether you choose to promote products, services, or both, the main thing to keep in mind is to only recommend that which you can fully endorse without hesitation or doubt.
