If you would ask this question, “Which one is more important the mailing list or the product?” any savvy marketer would answer you, “The mailing list”.

Any wise business person puts the importance of hungry demand (and not just any demand) in front of the product. In other words, there is no product if there is no demand and a mailing list represents the demand or your business.

If you frequent the Joint Venture forums and membership sites of any kind, you will find that product and service owners need mailing list owners more than the other way round. This is because the mailing list owners have the prospects that the other type of partner is looking for to sell to.

And if you are a mailing list owner, you do not have to necessarily make money from selling your own product. You can sell advertising space or craft a Joint Venture with product owners in return of commissions, recurring or not.

Most of the biggest success web businesses on the Internet today often establish the mailing list (or subscribers) first before the product.

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Phobos
http://tinyurl.com/2atgsj

I totally disagree.

You are favouring an emailing list, where you can sell things above offering any real value.

I would go for the product. The the product that is providing enormous value to the end user. The product that is easily accessible and competitively priced.

With the above product, it will sell itself. And if you wish, you can build a list from it.

Just my thoughts.

Also, although creating your own product sounds like hard work, don't forget that you have to draw traffic to your site and convince them to sign up to your mailing list in the first place.

So you either need great content, unique information, or something else to offer of value.

While some internet marketers do fine only promoting affiliate products, I tend to trust someone more who has also created something of their own that has a real value. (And of course you can get help doing this).

Well, usualy you do both at the same time. You build a mailing list by giving away a free ebook and then you sell your own product throught that list. You can also do Joint Ventures with other list owners or install an affiliate program for your product or just use clickbank...

If you can create your own product then go for it, it is more important then a mailing list.

Guido

Just thought I'd throw a curve ball at you...

If you don't have a product, you can promote affiliate products through your list...and once you have a product, you can market IT through that same list.