6 Good Reasons why Reseller Programs are better than Affiliate Programs

Many people confuse the difference between reseller programs and affiliate programs, and at times even use the two definitions interchangeably, however there are distinct differences between them.

An affiliate will host a link or banner promoting another company's website or

product. When someone makes a purchase through that website or link that affiliate will

earn a commission which is processed through affiliate

software tracking their unique affiliate ID.

A reseller is actually purchasing a product or resource from another company

and then reselling to an end user for a profit. Reseller programs usually

include resale rights, which allow the reseller to advertise, package and

present that product or resource as if it were their own.

Both affiliate and reseller programs can be profitable, however, when

comparing the two as a business opportunity, and before you decide which way

you should go, consider these 6 reasons I have outlined below.

1. Credibility. What kind of feeling do you get from a particular website offering when you realize that the offering you see is a link to another

website? Let me take this one step further: Have you ever discovered a

product or service that you were interested in while browsing someone else's

site; moused over it, then noticed it was an affiliate link to another

website? Didn't that site loose some credibility in your mind? You then typed

the URL directly into your address bar, and went straight to the originator

of that product while bypassing the commission for the affiliate who

introduced you to the product in the first place. You never did that? OK,

Fine, but this happens all the time in affiliate marketing, and forces the

webmaster to put additional lines of code in to prevent that affiliate link

from ever being displayed until it's actually clicked on. This in itself is

not enough and does nothing to increase credibility. A business model with

its own unique product and content will always lend itself to greater

credibility.

2. Competition. Affiliate Programs grow exponentially. Even if your lucky

enough to be the first one to sign up for a brand new shiny affiliate program

and the only one on your block with the latest and greatest product to sell,

you can bet that in no time there will be thousands of affiliates competing

with you, selling the very same product, many of whom will have more

experience and better marketing skills than you do.

3. Price Control. You can't discount something that doesn't belong to you in

the first place. To stay competitive in any market you have to have some

control over the selling price. When you're shopping in the department store

doesn't your interest peak on items marked for sale? With affiliate

marketing you have no control over the price. On the other hand a reseller

maintains complete control over the final selling price. In the case for a

reseller selling digital products for example there is no more overhead

involved in selling 1 or 1000 for download, a reseller of these types of

products can always afford to offer a sale price.

4. Packaging. Have you ever noticed those nifty box type packages for digital

products such as ebooks and software for download? This is nothing more than

eye candy, but those little graphics have really become popular over the last

5 years or so, and for good reason. Obviously, this packaging is not really

downloaded along with the product itself, and actually doesn't even exist

except for the graphical representation to display on the web. This type of

packaging makes your product aesthetically pleasing and really stand out

against your competition. You can purchase easy to edit templates for these

boxes all over the internet at places such as boxedart.com (they primarily

sell website templates but they also offer a few box templates as well) then

simply open them up in Photoshop or Fireworks and change the text to reflect

your product name and bingo! You've got the look and feel of a professionally

packaged product ready to sell and looking like something you might see on

the shelf at your favorite retail outlet.

5. Resellability. Only a reseller or owner of an original product can offer

their own affiliate program. Offering an affiliate program can be a great way

to generate exposure for your product and dramatically increase your

potential for sales. An affiliate marketer can never offer an affiliate

program but rather rely on someone else's product, or at best offer another

marketer an affiliate program which is accomplished with a two-tier type

system.

6. Indexing. The major search engines are quite aware of the duplication factor that

exists because of affiliate marketing programs and do take great steps in preventing

that duplication from compromising the system itself, and understandably so.

Imagine doing a search for a product that you're interested in, and your

search result displays an affiliate marketer in the number 1 spot above the

actual company who originated that product. It usually doesn't happen!

Knowing that the major search engines give the most weight to original

content you would best serve yourself to create some. A site compromised

mostly of affiliate links can actually be penalized by many of the search

engines. A site made with original well writen content, and or original products, can go a

long way in increasing the likelihood that the search engines will give a top

spot for a particular venue, and because people do use search engines to find

what they are looking for, your chance that they will find you really does

depend on you becoming indexed for your keywords and preferably in the number

1 spot, or at least on the first page of results. An affiliate can never

achieve these results for the products they are selling because of the

duplication factor; however a reseller can achieve this with high quality

content, optimized keywords and the right presentation.

Now having said all that let me add that as internet marketers we all need Affiliate Programs!

Huh? This is about the 6 good reasons why reseller programs are better than

affiliate programs then Um, why? Let me explain, If the affiliate program you

are marketing is a good match for the venue and content of your website then

a good affiliate program will enhance the usefulness of your website. Let us say

for example that your website is about weddings. Let us imagine that you

write wedding speeches. Your wedding speeches are well writen and are original, so should be well

received by those who are searching for wedding speeches, and the search

engines will love you for your original content. Unfortunately few are buying

wedding speeches these days, so you are offering them for free to gain

some traffic. What can you do with that traffic? Well, you can sell wedding

gowns, cakes, or just about anything else associated with weddings by using

an appropriate affiliate program. You can find an affiliate program for just

about any venue that you can imagine. Visitors to your website will

appreciate the convenience of having all those products related to weddings

all in one place, and your content specific offering will make good sense. That is opposed to a website about resume writing for example selling everything from tube-socks to cell phones.

So in closing, it is my opinion that reseller programs are better than affiliate

programs for at least the 6 reasons that I explained, however, affiliate

programs do have their place on the web, and can be extremely lucrative if

utilized properly, which will greatly improve your chances for success as an

internet marketer. Happy Marketing!