Selling affiliate products is in many ways the perfect business model. This is a strategy that lets you earn money by selling something that someone else created. That means you don’t need to invest time, money, or energy into the act of promoting your products, but you can still enjoy a passive income and potentially scale your business indefinitely.
What’s not to like?
Well, all that is true. But there are actually even more benefits to selling affiliate products that potentially make this option even better than selling your own digital product! Here’s what you need to know.
You Can Follow the Money
“Follow the money” is advice given by a lot of top business owners. It basically means identifying what is popular and what is “hot” and then investing more time and effort into that thing. In other words, you might invest in a few items from multiple product lines to see what sells and THEN buy up hundreds of the item that everyone loves.
This is something you can’t really do with a digital product: you need to commit to that idea as it will take days or weeks to create!
But with an affiliate product? You can actually see how many copies it has already sold, and that way sell what is already a proven hit!
You Can Sell As Much As You Like
Similarly, there is nothing to stop you from adding as many additional affiliate products to your site as you like. This in turn means you can potentially generate even more sales, while also appealing to a broader audience.
If you do want to make your own digital product, then this serves as perfect market research!
No VAT!
That’s right! While digital products require VAT in some countries (the EU counts an ebook as a digital service, meaning you need to charge VAT to buyers in those regions), affiliate products do not. You’re just a sales person! Therefore, you only get taxed at the normal rate and there are far fewer forms.
Free Materials
Finally, many affiliate products include sales pages, emails, and all sorts of other materials to help you sell. This saves you time and effort and essentially means you’ve using a copy-paste business that you know has worked for other people. That’s because your success means the success of the product owner!