I have been an Internet marketer on and off, in between fatherhood and full time work for about 2 years now. The way I go about it is probably very familiar to you. I’ll research a market and find a niche, find a product that I think will sell, research the competition, find some good keywords, and work out how I’m going to drive traffic. Although, not necessarily in that order.

Now, that’s a very basic outline of some of the steps involved as an affiliate marketer. If the truth be told, there are a lot more involved, areas you may need to focus on also include: Do you build your own landing page, or maybe you’ll direct link to an offer? Have you got analytics and conversion tracking set up? How are you going to drive traffic i.e. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), PPC or Web 2.0 social traffic, or a combination of these, etc.

My intention with this article is to discuss how one makes that step up, from an affiliate marketer, to a product creator or vendor if you like, rather than going through the processes involved to becoming a successful affiliate marketer. As I said previously, I have been an affiliate marketer and had some success, but I can see that is not where the big bucks are. Don’t get me wrong, affiliate marketing can be, and is, an excellent way to make money online. It’s a great method, and probably the easiest, most popular way for beginners to get started.

Although there is one thing that all the popular Internet Marketing Guru’s share – They’ve created and developed their own products. So, these guys are considered or perceived as authority figures in their market or niche and are followed online by thousands. So setting yourself up in a position as an authority figure is important and it would greatly benefit your cause if you could create your own products too.

There is no doubt that there can be a lot of competition amongst affiliates, just take a look at Clickbank. Every Tom, Dick and Harry is shown Clickbank as a starting point for their affiliate marketing career. I don’t need to tell you how many „Clickbank Affiliate Courses“ there are out there, you can imagine how many newbies would be signing up every day.

Now imagine if you had your own product on Clickbank, your potentially going to have hundreds of affiliates being exposed and hopefully signing up to promote it. Can you see the potential? You create the product, and other people (potentially hundreds) try and sell it for you. The creation of one product can generate income for years to come. To this day, there are big name marketers still making money, from affiliates selling a product they created years ago.

So it’s clear to me, in order to end the 9 to 5 rat race, and really kick this Internet marketing into the next gear, one of your best chances is to have your own product. Yes, easier said than done, but with enough experience, knowledge and the confidence to be able to back yourself you can move from an affiliate mind-set to one of a product developer/creator.

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