Affiliate Marketing vs Digital Products: Which Should You Start With?

Standing on the shore of Kenosha Harbor, Lake Michigan at his back, Milwaukee visible in the distance, Alston Godbolt walks through the question he gets asked more than almost any other: should you start with affiliate marketing or should you create your own digital products?

The answer is not a coin flip. It comes down to one core difference in how each model works, and once you see it clearly, the path forward gets a lot less confusing. This post breaks down the full comparison: pros, cons, commission structures, who owns the customer relationship, and a specific starting strategy Alston recommends to people who are just getting off the ground.

What You’ll Walk Out With

A plain-language explanation of how affiliate marketing works and how commissions are tracked
The real pros of starting with affiliate marketing, and why it ranked 7 to 8 out of 10 for ease of entry
The honest drawbacks, including what happened to Amazon’s commission rates and the 30-to-90-day payment delay
How digital products work, what types convert best, and why you keep more of the sale
Why Alston recommends a $7 to $17 tiny digital product as the first move, not a course, not a coaching program
How to stack affiliate links inside a digital product so you get two revenue streams from one piece of content
A real example, a save-the-date templates product with a Canva affiliate link built in
Not sure which type of product fits your audience? finder.platformproof.com will help you figure it out in two minutes.

What Affiliate Marketing Actually Is

Affiliate marketing means you recommend or sell someone else’s product or service. That’s it. You find a product you want to promote, apply to the company’s affiliate program, either directly, like Amazon Associates, or through a network that bundles hundreds of programs in one place, and if you’re accepted, they give you a unique link.

That link tracks everything: where the click came from, the date and time, the buyer’s session. When someone clicks your link and buys, you get a commission. You never touch inventory. You never deal with shipping. You never answer support tickets about a product you didn’t build. Your only job is to create content that drives clicks.

There are over 11,000 affiliate programs, so there is almost certainly one that fits whatever topic you create content about, whether that’s personal finance, home improvement, cooking, fitness, software, or anything else.

The Real Pros of Starting With Affiliate Marketing

The biggest advantage affiliate marketing has over everything else is speed. You do not have to create a product. You skip the market research phase, the product development phase, the pricing debate, and the launch sequence. You find something that is already working, already trusted, already converting, and you plug into it.

That trust factor matters more than most people give it credit for. When you recommend a product from a company people already know, Amazon, Canva, Bluehost, a well-known software tool, you are borrowing credibility from a brand that spent years building it. You do not have to build that trust from scratch yourself. You just have to create content that connects the right person with the right product.

Alston started with affiliate marketing. The very first product he ever recommended was web hosting. He did not build a course first, did not launch a coaching program, did not spend months figuring out pricing. He picked something, created content around it, and let the affiliate link do the rest. On an ease-of-entry scale, he puts affiliate marketing at a 7 or 8 out of 10, genuinely accessible for most people who are just starting out.

The other underrated advantage: because you only have to create content, you can move fast. One review video, one comparison post, one tutorial: any of those can have an affiliate link in them. You can publish Monday and theoretically earn a commission by Friday.

The Honest Drawbacks of Affiliate Marketing

Here is where people hit walls they did not see coming. First: you can be rejected. Affiliate programs, especially the better-paying ones, want to see that you actually get traffic. Some require a website. Some require a minimum audience size. If you are brand new with no track record, some programs will turn you down. That is not a reason to give up, but it is a reality worth knowing before you start planning around a specific program.

Second, and this one stings: the program can change the rules on you at any time. About ten years ago, Amazon Associates paid roughly 10% commission on products. An affiliate could recommend a $100 item and keep $10, plus earn on anything else the buyer added to their cart during that same session. That was a meaningful amount of money. Then Amazon cut those rates, multiple times. The commission structure today requires far more traffic to produce the same income that was possible before. Affiliates who had built their whole model around those rates got hurt. That is the core risk of affiliate marketing: you are operating at the discretion of another company’s pricing decisions.

Third: payment is not immediate. Most affiliate programs make you wait 30, 60, or even 90 days to collect. They need to verify purchases, protect against fraud, and confirm returns did not happen. So if someone buys through your link today, you might not see that money until next quarter. For someone who needs faster feedback, financially and motivationally, that delay can be a real problem.

And fourth: you do not own the customer relationship. Unless you have separately built an email list, you have no idea who bought through your link. You cannot follow up. You cannot offer them something else. You helped make a sale, collected a commission, and that is the end of the relationship. The company gets the customer. You get a cut.

What Digital Products Are and Why They Work Differently

A digital product is something you create on your computer and deliver over the internet. That includes templates, cheat sheets, guides, planners, mini-courses, Notion dashboards, Canva bundles, workflow documents, and more. You make it once. You can sell it to anyone, anywhere, as many times as you want. There is no shipping. There is no inventory. The file exists and you can sell it forever.

That ownership piece, “once you create it, it can’t be taken away from you”, is something Alston comes back to repeatedly. A digital product lives on your hard drive and in your customers’ downloads folders. No company can cut your commission rate. No platform can deplatform your product. Nobody changes the deal on you. It is yours.

When someone buys your digital product, you collect their name and email address. That is a buyer list. Unlike affiliate marketing, where the merchant owns the customer, here you own that relationship. You can reach out again. You can offer them the next product. You can invite them into a higher-ticket program later. That list of buyers is one of the most valuable assets a content business can have.

On the pricing side, you keep almost everything. Subtract the payment processor fee and whatever you pay for your sales page or funnel builder, and the rest is yours. You set the price. You keep the margin. Compare that to affiliate commissions, even good ones at 30 or 40 percent, and the math on digital products starts to look different quickly.

The Honest Drawbacks of Digital Products

Digital products are not a free lunch either. The one thing affiliate marketing never requires you to do is validate demand. That is the exact thing digital products require you to get right before you invest time building something.

You could spend a weekend creating a planner, set up a sales page, launch it, and hear nothing. Not because your product was bad, but because nobody in your audience wanted that specific thing right now. That possibility, creating something that does not sell, is real. It is frustrating. And it costs time, which is usually what people have least of when they are trying to get started.

The content strategy is also a bit different. With affiliate marketing, you can create pure product-focused content: top 10 microwaves for college students, best budget laptops under $500. Those videos exist to rank, get clicked, and convert affiliate links. With digital products, your content needs to demonstrate your own expertise and point toward your own solution. That requires a slightly different creative muscle, and it takes some people longer to find their footing.

Alston rates digital products at 7.3 to 8 out of 10, one to two steps above pure beginner. Not because they are harder, but because they require a bit more intentionality upfront around what your audience actually wants.

Why Alston Recommends Starting With a Tiny Digital Product

Given all of the above, here is where Alston lands: start with a tiny digital product priced at $7 or $17. Not a course. Not coaching. Not a $97 membership. A single, specific, downloadable thing that solves one immediate problem and gets the buyer a result quickly.

The logic is straightforward. A tiny product forces you to stay specific. The biggest mistake beginners make when they create their first digital product is trying to solve every problem their audience has. They build something comprehensive and sprawling, and it takes three months and never ships. A tiny product solves one thing. One pain point. One result. You can build it in a weekend, Alston has said before that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday is enough time to build your first one.

When someone buys a $7 or $17 product and immediately gets that result, they trust you. They know you can help them. They are now a buyer, not a free subscriber, not a lead, a buyer. That is a completely different kind of relationship, and it is one you can build on.

Templates are one of the highest-performing formats here. Alston uses the example of Instagram Stories templates, or save-the-date templates for the wedding niche. People in those situations have a specific, urgent need, they need this thing done, they do not want to design it from scratch, and they will pay a small amount to skip straight to the result. That is the problem your tiny product should solve.

The Power Move: Affiliate Links Inside Your Digital Product

Here is where the strategy gets genuinely clever. You do not have to choose between affiliate marketing and digital products. You can run both at the same time, and a tiny digital product is the perfect vehicle for doing exactly that.

Inside your digital product, you can include affiliate links to tools and resources that help your customer actually use the product. Alston gave a live example: he is building a content repurposing guide for content creators, a $17 product that shows them how to take one piece of content and distribute it across multiple platforms. Inside that guide, he plans to include affiliate links to DigitalOcean, Make.com, and camera gear. Some buyers will click those links and upgrade or purchase. Some will not. But either way, every single sale of the $17 guide has the potential to produce additional revenue through the embedded affiliate links.

The save-the-date templates example works the same way. You sell the template bundle. Inside the product, you recommend Canva, and link to Canva with your affiliate link. People who want to customize the templates might upgrade to Canva Pro. You just earned an affiliate commission from a buyer who already trusted you enough to purchase from you once. That is a second revenue stream that costs you nothing extra to build.

Not sure what tiny product fits your audience?

Answer a few questions at finder.platformproof.com and get a specific recommendation matched to your niche, your skills, and the time you actually have.

How to Build Your First Tiny Digital Product

The order of operations matters here. Do not build first and validate second. Start by looking at the questions your audience is already asking, the comments they are leaving, the DMs they are sending. The problem worth solving will show up repeatedly before you ever start building.

Once you have identified one specific, immediate problem, build the simplest possible version of the solution. If it is a template, build the template. If it is a checklist, build the checklist. Keep the scope tight. The goal is something they can download, open, and use within an hour of buying, not something that requires three hours of onboarding.

Price it at $7 to $17. That price range is low enough that it does not require a long decision-making process, people will buy it on impulse if it clearly solves the problem. But it is high enough that you are building a list of actual buyers, not freebie seekers.

Then look at what tools, resources, or products your buyers will naturally need in order to use what you created. Find the affiliate programs for those products. Include your affiliate links inside the product. Now every sale has two potential revenue streams attached to it.

Honest Drawbacks Worth Knowing Before You Start

Creating a digital product that nobody wants is a real risk, and the only protection against it is market research done before you build. Do not skip that step because you are excited about an idea.

The affiliate links embedded inside your product will only perform if your buyers are actually engaged enough to use the product. A product that sits unopened in a downloads folder does not generate affiliate clicks. This means your product has to be genuinely useful, not just a lead magnet with a price tag on it.

Affiliate programs still have their own terms. Some programs do not allow their links inside downloadable PDFs. Some have restrictions on how and where you can promote. Read the terms before you build your product around a specific affiliate relationship.

And building a buyer list requires a platform, a sales page, a payment processor, a way to deliver the file. That is not complicated, but it is a setup step that affiliate-only models do not require. Budget a few hours for that infrastructure before your first launch.

Find Your X

The framework in this video, start with a tiny digital product, embed affiliate links, build a buyer list, is a starting point, not a ceiling. Once you have your first product selling and your first buyers on a list, the options multiply fast. But none of that starts without picking the first specific thing.

If you are not sure what that first thing should be for your audience, your niche, and your current skill set, finder.platformproof.com is built for exactly that moment. Answer a short set of questions and get a clear recommendation, not a vague category, a specific starting point.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I do both affiliate marketing and digital products at the same time?

Yes, and Alston’s core recommendation is built around doing exactly that. The approach is to sell your own digital product and include affiliate links inside it, so every buyer has the potential to generate both a product sale and affiliate commission revenue. You are not choosing between two models, you are stacking them.

How long does it actually take to create a tiny digital product?

Alston’s estimate is three days, a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, for a first tiny digital product. That assumes you already know your topic and your audience’s problem. It also assumes you are building something small: a template, a checklist, a concise guide. If you try to build a multi-module course in a weekend, three days will not be enough. Keep the scope to one specific result and the timeline is realistic.

Why price at $7 or $17 instead of higher?

The $7 to $17 range serves two purposes. First, it is low enough to be an impulse purchase, your buyer does not need to think hard or compare you to alternatives. Second, it converts browsers into buyers, and buyers are a categorically different relationship than subscribers or followers. Once someone has paid you money, the trust and commitment level goes up. That buyer list becomes the foundation for offering higher-priced products later.

What happened to Amazon’s affiliate commission rates?

About ten years ago, Amazon Associates paid roughly 10% commission on most product categories. Affiliates who drove traffic to Amazon could earn meaningful money even from lower-priced items because of cart attribution, you earned commission on everything a buyer added to their cart during that visit. Amazon has since cut rates significantly across most categories, which means affiliates now need more traffic to generate the same income. It is a concrete example of the control risk Alston points to: when your income depends on another company’s rate decisions, those decisions can hurt you without warning.

What types of digital products actually sell well for beginners?

Alston specifically calls out templates as one of the highest-performing formats for beginners. Instagram Stories templates, save-the-date templates, social media calendar templates, anything where the buyer has an immediate need and does not want to start from a blank canvas. The product delivers a specific, visible result quickly, which makes it easy to explain and easy to buy. Cheat sheets, quick-reference guides, and single-workflow documents can also perform well when they solve one clear problem.

Do affiliate programs really reject beginners?

Some do. Certain programs want to see that you already have an audience, traffic, or an established website before approving you. Others are open to anyone who applies. Amazon Associates is generally easy to get into. Higher-commission software programs and premium networks can be more selective. If you get rejected from one, it does not mean the path is closed, it means that specific program wants more traction before working with you. Keep building, then reapply.

Why does owning the buyer’s email matter so much?

When you do affiliate marketing without an email list, you are invisible after the sale. The merchant gets the customer. You got a commission. When you sell your own digital product, you collect the buyer’s name and email address at checkout. That list is yours. You can contact those people again, offer them your next product, invite them to a higher-tier offer, or simply keep building a relationship. The email list is the asset that compounds over time in ways that affiliate commissions alone cannot.

Is content creation for digital products different from affiliate marketing content?

Somewhat. Affiliate marketing content can be highly product-focused: comparison reviews, top-10 lists, how-to tutorials that organically mention and link to specific products. That content is designed to rank and convert clicks. Digital product content is more about demonstrating your expertise and showing that you understand your audience’s specific problems. It tends to build trust and authority rather than just drive transactional clicks. Both types of content work, but they serve slightly different goals and require a slightly different creative approach.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, “Affiliate Marketing or Digital Products? My Honest Review!”, YouTube, filmed at Kenosha Harbor, Wisconsin
Amazon Associates Program, commission rate changes documented across multiple affiliate marketing communities since 2020
Platform Proof, platformproof.com

Helping 1 million working adults make their first $3,000 online with the skills they already have. Alston Godbolt, Platform Proof.