Re "Create at least one lead generation channel as an affiliate for another product"
Selling another software app as an affiliate is completely different to selling your own application and I would argue much harder to actually make any decent money from. Any effort you expend is building the brand of the other company. You can't split test their landing page. You lose a lot of traffic to people that directly type in the url.
If you can rebrand some awesome software where you own the domain, brand etc and you sell and get 100%, this is not a terrible business model, but the problem is that any half decent software wouldn't want to do this as they would prefer to sell it themselves.
I guess they are saying to be an affiliate as practice. I don't really agree however. I think you can practice on your real business.
"you can't split test their landing page"
- Sure you can split test. Simply drive the traffic to your own list first and create your own landing page (the affiliate link on the lander is your own).
"You lose a lot of traffic to people that directly type in the url."
This is why you buy your own domain and only pay for traffic that goes to your domain. If needed (ex. the merchant starts giving you drama, the offer doesn't convert) - you replace it with a redirect.
You use other people's offers to test traffic sources, email sequences, landers. Then once you get it right you build your own products. People have been doing it for years.
"I guess they are saying to be an affiliate as practice."
That was my interpretation as well. It's not entirely bad advice since it is an existing product and you don't have to build one on your own in order to learn how to build a marketing machine.
"I think you can practice on your real business."
I'm inclined to agree with you however. This statement is doubly true if you take on client work while you build up a product company.
Selling another software app as an affiliate is completely different to selling your own application and I would argue much harder to actually make any decent money from. Any effort you expend is building the brand of the other company. You can't split test their landing page. You lose a lot of traffic to people that directly type in the url.
If you can rebrand some awesome software where you own the domain, brand etc and you sell and get 100%, this is not a terrible business model, but the problem is that any half decent software wouldn't want to do this as they would prefer to sell it themselves.
I guess they are saying to be an affiliate as practice. I don't really agree however. I think you can practice on your real business.