Has anyone here had experience with both forms of business? What are the pros and cons of getting into each area and do you think there's a clear winner in the best way to make money?
I don't have any experience with dropshipping, but I do have experience with affiliate marketing Without experience with dropshipping, I can assume that the biggest disadvantages are probably dealing with dropshippers. I've heard that it is not easy to find a decent dropshipper. The advantage with dropshipping over affiliate marketing is that you get to set your own price. With affiliate marketing, you are given a price to work with. That said...This is what makes affiliate marketing better than dropshipping (in my opinion ). The two biggest advantages are low start-up cost and 0 liability/customer service. When you do affiliate marketing, you have instant access to thousands of products and services...When you do dropshipping, you've got to do research and usually settle in on a handful of products or types of products. Another huge advantage of affiliate marketing is that you are not actually selling or delivering the product. You don't have to deal with angry customers or returns - that's all in the hands of the company that you're promoting. Again, I've never done any dropshipping, but I don't think it holds a candle to affiliate marketing...If you have more specific questions about affiliate marketing or how it works, let me know. I can answer those, but not so much questions about dropshipping
Drop shipping can make more money but you have to do more work. Affiliate marketing requires less work. You do not need to order and pay for product to be shipped. You also do not have to worry about fraud
Well, I think it really depends on your product. But lets assume that both products are very good then I would go with dropshipping personally. I am confident that the business will do well and once it gets moving then you are very likely to keep the ball rolling depending on your methods. I think dropshipping has higher profit margins but is harder to get going. A lot people have decent success with affiliate marketing because it is typically instant gratification with a good product.
I have one place where they do drop shipping it's about sunglasses top brands like Gucci,Dolce & Gabbana,Hugo Boss,Versace,Nike,RayBan etc...All that glasses cost $9.99 each so you can sell at $60 USD ,i already order 12 glasses and received this morning,no boxes it's just plastic bags but who cares...
Dropshipping requires just as much work! Especially if you're doing it on EBay. To be successful anything requires alot of work. I have actually done both, and I must say: if you are searching for quick results then your best bet is to start dropshipping with EBay [make sure you avoid the pay-pal freeze] From personal experience: it took me about 3 days to earn a sale with dropshipping [got bids on the first day of listing] - It took me 2 months to earn my first sale with affiliate marketing So I'll simply say this: Dropshipping Pro's & Cons Pro's - You can see sales instantly, depending on your research you can make a substantial profit - You can use EBay to dropship, and it actually doesn't even feel like work - very fun business - You can build a great business using EBay, and actually build a dropshipping store/empire. - If you do your research, I can almost promise you sales. Cons - You have to depend on the supplier to consistent send out the products - You have to make sure that you have back-up suppliers just incase a product isn't sent as promised - Risk losing money; [trust me, you can lose money dropshipping if you decide to pay for the item before it's sent] Affiliate Pro's & Cons Pros - Can affiliate market any product that's with an affiliate program - Learning how to affilaite market really teaches you how the internet works - Have the ability to earn literally thousands a day all on autopilot - No Risk, High Reward Business [unless you decide to use PPC] Cons - Can be rather tedious, can be months before you even see a sale - payments can come slower than expected - Can be rather hard to find a product - Huge learning curve - many affiliates tend to quit due to the enormous competition Conclusion I recommend affiliate marketing. Once you have a residual income with affiliate marketing, then you should definitely try dropshipping on EBay. When you do this, you will create a financial net for your EBay business. You will probably get paid bi-weekly with affiliate marketing, and every single day with EBay. It's hard to do, but very possible - in fact; I'm doing it right now
Just to clarify, if you go about affiliate marketing the right way, it is very easy to make sales quickly...If you don't make a sale the first day you get into affiliate marketing, then you aren't trying hard enough I would also argue that the investment costs and risks are actually pretty low using PPC. It is up to you how much or how little to spend. You can put forth as little as $1 or as much as $1,000
If you go about anything the right way, you can do it quickly - Most newbies have no idea where to begin, which is why it can take them tons of time, loss of money, before they start seeing sales online. Most people don't even make enough money to warrant a check. Remember - you're experienced. Newbies aren't experienced - they're newbies ; so it can take them a while to make a sale ya know? Or atleast to start seeing profit. Your second statement "if you don't make a sale the first day...." is pretty wrong, because there are other ways than PPC. Here's a scenario: - Most newbies expect to slap up some ppc ads, put up some affiliate links, and call it the day. If they do make a sale the first day, they're probably trying to pay off their expensive PPC bill no profit for the nooobs. Remember Content is King And it's pretty hard to make money off of content in one single day - unless you are highly experienced.
You're my new guru ExpertForumGuy ... I'm an affiliate marketing pro for a few years but if I make thousands a month (net) without any PPC I do not make thousands a day ... Good thread anyway
I have a little experience with shopster which is a dropshipper and shareasale which is an affiliate program. what can i tell you is this: - both needs to heavily promoted - ppc works best
No, I'm speaking from experience...I read around the forums, blogs, internet, etc. about affiliate marketing for a month or so before I started...And I remember that the day I started, I did make a sale...Not a profit, but a sale It only took me a few weeks to start seeing profit, and now after only ~5 months, I am profiting $100/day, spending only 3-4 hours per day doing it. That is steady income day to day, and I consider that excellent results for any money-making ventures on the internet. I don't know, maybe I'm a unique situation, but I do think that affiliate marketing is relatively straight-forward. As long as you give it some serious thought, anybody can succeed here. I'm no different than anybody else here.
You do realize that part of business is acquiring know-how right? - That's what i meant, it took you a little while before you started to see sales. with my method, It takes me 5 days before i start seeing sales on average, however, it's pure profit - no adspend involved.
I know that acquiring know-how is part of the business...and you have to acquire know-how to learn dropshipping also. I also think (or know?) that dropshipping requires more learning than affiliate marketing. With dropping shipping you have to learn 1) Where to find suppliers 2) How to handle customer service 3) Where to find buyers With affiliate marketing you need: 1) Where to find buyers Also, how can dropshipping be pure profit? You've got to buy a product to sell If anything, affiliate marketing is pure profit because you do not have to buy the product yourself...You are selling somebody else's product. Granted, it's only pure profit if you use free methods of advertising.
Nice comment.. you could also mix them both.. have a dropshipping as a store front then on the side bar you can display affiliate links
That is the top comment of this thread ! Absolutely true. Nice post comparing pros and cons of both. I would say statistically on average that Affiliate marketing has lower returns because 1)affiliate marketing is much easier to do than dropshipping (or trading), the returns on affiliate marketing is lower than dropshipping. Less Work/ Risk , Less Returns. 2) Online affiliate marketing works on a more perfect market than dropshipping which has non-online components. There are more variables(eg. logistics, supply chain management), less automation and therefore bigger margin of error in dropshipping. There are more areas (i.e. therefore, more opportunities) to compete/differentiate on in dropshipping whereas affiliate marketing typically competes mainly on finding buyers/demand. So the question is not so much what suits everyone but what suits you....i.e. what are your inidividual skill sets/ capabilities/ competencies. Simply put, Affiliate marketing suits those with marketing/ promotions capabilities/competencies whereas dropshipping suits people with strong operational capabilities/competencies. Merry Xmas and Happy New Year 2008!
I would lean a bit more towards dropshipping. Dropshipping does generally require more work and there is more risk in it. Considering some dropshipper membership fees maybe and so on. But if you can find a good dropshipper with some good product you can earn a lot. More than affliate in my opinion, but that's not to say you can't earn lots with affliate, you can too. But in my opinion I just think that the pot is a bigger on the dropshipping side.
Let me tell you something: If you want to see immediate results - you definitely want to with dropshipping; as you can get bids on EBay the first days of posting a product on their marketplace. - The profit potential is the same; in fact I believe if you're running a one man internet business - affiliate marketing's your ticket because you can create automatic profit systems. - With dropshipping, you have to place orders practically everyday. In the long run - you might want to consider doing both Imagine having a constant stream of affiliate profits - creating a financial net just incase something goes horribly wrong with your dropshipping business. The thing with dropshipping is: It gives you a chance to establish a customer database - pretty much for life for a good percentage of them. Imagine you have a clothing store - male or female traditional/hiphop/exotic/business/etc You have an EBay store and you start off dropshipping - this way you can get your name out there, get some exposure and get some funds. - In due time you earn enough money to be called a true hero - You start an EBay store, but it's mainly a dropshipping store where people can place an order and you send them the product for a profit. - Once your business is REALLY rolling [$333 p/day 10K + (selling 11 products that give you 33$ profit] - you can start contacting wholesale distributors and buying the hottest - popular products @ wholesale. Now you can continue to dropship - but you will want to make a slow transition to wholesale. - Start building up a huge network of wholesalers. When one fails - there's another to take its place. You want to be in charge of your own shipping so that you can start branding your boxes, products, and store. Dropship should only be the beginning to get your business off the ground. - Now you will want to start a store, a highly professional website with a store and a cart. You might want to consider renting a warehouse with some employees - [yes you should be making that much money if your EBay business is going the right way] - You may become a supplier for OTHER BUSINESSES! - so that's pretty crazy huh? - You will want to drive traffic to this website and boom! you're an internet powerhouse
Actually it depends. If you sell on Ebay yes you have to place an order when you sell something, and you can get immediate profit and results selling on ebay. But with many of the dropshippers that require membership fees all the sales that go through your site will be automated, so no need to place orders. It's all intergrated into the system.