I am looking for various ways to monetize a website and also possibly open an eBay store. I have tried affiliate programs and Google ad sense as well as Clickbank - but none of them have worked except Google ad sense (limited ). I have been looking at drop shipping for a number of years now and because my traffic is only 100 and a bit per day I was thinking about using drop shipping in something like an eBay store which I have been told gets a fair amount of traffic and exposure . What I would like to know is in your opinion would the combination of drop shipping and an eBay store work for me ?. Please give me all the information on these topics that you can't think of, anything will help me to make up my mind what I am going to do.
Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to make money online and does work if you know how to do it like the experienced affiliate marketers. Michael Jones created a great product called the "Clickbank code" which takes you by the hand on how to do good as an affiliate marketer.
Dropshipping is not that easy really. Finding the right dropshipper is very tough. Then comes to the marketing.
And after that comes all the myriad of details associated with providing a product for which you never have your hands on. In essence, you are a middle man, which can be a difficult role to fulfill. When things go wrong it is your fault, regardless of what the "real" merchant might have done.
It is quite easy to find a quality dropshippers. What you need is a bit patience and time & energy investment .
Finding the right quality of dropshipper, a market that isnt saturated, the right products etc is tough As is getting enough sales and mark up to make a profit As is the amount fo time spent listing items, dealing with questions, complaints and the like There is money to be made by dropshipping but it is at least as hard as affliate marketing, probably far more so
If you want to get into dropshipping I recommend buying the Niche Blueprint Course, it has a step by step guide to help you start your own E-Commerce business. I purchased it a while back and it has helped me greatly. I am in no way affiliated with them, just thought I would add a personal recommendation. I don't know if it is on sale again yet or not but you can check it out, it may be a bit expensive but it's worth it.
Dropshiping is not an easy alternative to affiliate marketing. One of the appeals that people use to justify dropshipping is the fact that you don't have any overhead. No employees, no paying to stock inventory, no warehouse space. But that's not really true. Your dropshipper has all of those costs and they build it into the price that they give to you. There's usually double-credit card charges as well (charged to you when your customer buys and charged to your dropshipper when you pay them) which your dropshipper builds into the cost they pass to you as well. The result is that your margin is a lot slimmer than you ever want to think. I bought Niche Blueprint and setup a store. It's #2 for it's keyword term and is getting almost 600 uniques p/day and sales only trickle in every few days. You need a LOT of traffic to convert. That's why I'm switching it to an Ebay Affiliate with phpBay. I'll make a lot more p/month and won't have ANY fulfillment responsibilities to the customer. If you are considering building e-commerce style sites, give a second look at either EPN or Amazon's Affiliate program.
Dropshiping can be worth it as long as you find good reputable suppliers. Although dropshipping on ebay is`nt easy as there are a lot of people doing it. I run a very succesful website where all the products i sell are dropshipped from chine and it does me very well.
If you are dropshipping you will not be in total control of things. You have to deal with both the dropshipper and consumer. Say your dropshiper delays delivery you must handle your customer's complaints. You must be on top of what you are doing and should be in constant touch with your dropshipper. In the end it is money that matters. So if you feel you get fair compensation for your time go for it.
I ran a solar panel/wind turbine/eco gadget drop shipping website for 18 months while at univeristy. I managed to do 32k turnover in year one for a maximum of 1 years work a day. This mean't a profit of about 20-30% in general. It is possible, and it isn't that hard. There are a few key components to doing it properly though. 1. Make use of eBay as it combines effective marketing at cheap rates and a well used traffic source. 2. Use Froogle by google (or whateverit might be called now) 3. NEVER have adverts on your website if you are selling things. 4. Organise products to be drop shipped from multiple suppliers, never use one drop shipper. Use one store ofr one item and another for somthing else.
dropshipping is quite easy I set sites up for my customers with electronics like projectors/mp4 players in car dvd players etc for $4.95 aud per month including .info domain finding a source is hard lol I have 2 china sources and 3 aussie sources to dropship products put in markup and advertise on some auction sites
Dropshipping does work. The thing is though that you have to be in small niche markets to be successful. If you are trying to compete with Wal-mart, you might as well forget it. Do you product research before you commit.
I've found drop shipping to be much easier than affiliate marketing. But that's just me. I know plenty of people who are successful doing both. I started a dropship site and within five months it was bringing in $8k per month. This was from only working on the site for about an hour per day. The first month brought in just under $2k and each month after that saw an increase. I didn't run into any problems from my vendors/drop shippers. The way I look at it is that drop shipping is more like having a "real" business than affiliate marketing. So of course there are extra tasks like customer service but if you do it right you create a business that will grow and grow. If you don't want to deal with things that come with owning a business then drop shipping might not be for you. But for me, all of that is a small price to pay for the added income. $8,000 per month for 25 hours of work isn't that bad in my book.