The thought of product creation overwhelms me. I've studied what goes into it. The time, the knowledge, the money, the experience. I've purchased ebooks, courses, and audios with enticing titles such as "How to Create Your Own Information Product in 30 Minutes." Not.

Maybe these "courses" work for people who just want to make a little quick cash and don't really care about quality or long term success. Or perhaps they work for the experienced internet marketer who finds product creation easy and routine. But that's not what you hear. The gurus of internet marketing are full of stories about the chaos that accompanies a product launch. About being up all night. And, inevitably, about how their server crashed during launch day or how Paypal cut them off after they brought in too much money.

I've joined more than one internet marketing affiliate program. I've also done product creation, although I've yet to venture into product launch. I've found three reasons beginners should chose an internet marketing affiliate program over product creation.

A good internet marketing affiliate program is FAST, EASY, and FREE.

Product creation is time consuming, hard and costly.

Which one sounds like an easier path to successful marketing?

Affiliate internet marketing is FAST. You can be set up in an hour. Go to Clickbank. Find a niche that interests you and run a search using a relevant keyword. Pick a product with a high gravity and nice pitch page. Boom, you're on your way to affiliate marketing success. It's not possible to create a quality product and convincing sales page in the time it takes to join an internet marketing affiliate program through Clickbank.

Affiliate internet marketing is EASY. You don't have to come up with the product idea. You don't have to figure out how to create an ebook or how to produce and deliver a physical product. You don't need copywriting skills. You don't need the technical ability to put up a website. It's all done for you. How much easier could it be?

Finally, affiliate internet marketing is FREE. There's no cost to sign up with an affiliate program. There's no cost to create, set up, and host a web page, or to hire someone to do it for you. It's all done. Product creation involves all of these costs. Even if you're good, you can't realistically do it alone. You'll need to pay people to help with some aspects of the creation, promotion, and launch of the product.

If you are new to the internet marketing business, start with the fast, easy and free method. Your chances of affiliate marketing success are way greater than your chances of product creation success. Save product creation for a time when you have a little money, don't have the distraction of a j-o-b, and have the time and experience needed to ease the pains that come with product creation.

Too many people quit trying to make money online because it "doesn't work." The fact is, they just didn't know HOW to make it work. They didn't follow the fast, easy, free method that can result in affiliate marketing success with just a little persistence. Now that you know the method to follow, you have no excuse for failure.

One caveat. Having said all this, I think the commonly asked question: "Can I make money on the internet if I don't have any money?" is a different issue. I'll answer that question next time.