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!