Should I prioritize creating my own products or earning through affiliate marketing?

That's a great question, and it really depends on where you currently are in your journey, your resources, and your long-term goals.

When I first transitioned from the corporate world to freelancing, I found myself facing a similar dilemma. Let me break down a few key considerations for each route:

1. Creating Your Own Products:
2. Control: You're in full control over the product, pricing, branding, and customer experience. This creative freedom can be incredibly rewarding but also demands a lot of responsibility.
3. Higher Margins: Typically, creating your own product offers better profit margins compared to earning a commission through affiliate marketing.
4. Initial Investment: Producing a product, whether it's digital or physical, usually requires upfront time and financial investment.

5. Long-term Asset: Your product can become a long-term asset that contributes to passive income, especially if it's digital.

6. Affiliate Marketing:

7. Low Barrier to Entry: You can start almost immediately with minimal upfront cost.
8. Diverse Income Streams: It allows you to diversify your income by promoting products across different niches, which can be especially useful if you're still exploring your interests.
9. Reliance on External Factors: Success often depends on the product quality and the reliability of the affiliate partner. You also have less control over changes in commission structures.
10. Quick Feedback Loop: You can quickly test what resonates with your audience by promoting different products.

Given the above, here's my advice:

Start by assessing your current strengths and resources. If you have a unique idea or expertise that people are willing to pay for, creating your own product could be a fulfilling path. However, if you're not ready to dive into product creation or you want to start generating income faster, affiliate marketing might be a good way to test the waters.

Consider using my Capture, Develop, Expose framework as a way to balance the two: - Capture insights from your audience to identify their needs and the types of products they respond to. - Develop a strategy that might start with affiliate marketing to build your audience and gather feedback, then pivot toward your own products as you grow. - Expose your audience to valuable content and products, establishing trust and authority, which will benefit both affiliate and product-based avenues.

Ultimately, many successful freelancers and entrepreneurs find a hybrid approach most effective over the long term. You could start with affiliate marketing to build capital and market understanding, then reinvest those insights and funds into developing your own products. This way, you're actively building both short-term income streams and long-term assets.