Hi everyone, was curious to see what everyone's take is on dropshipping, affiliate marketing, and inventory/order fulfillment methods of business. For the sake of argument, if we select a niche and call it "Small Purple Widgets" and we determine it is a niche that is not being targeted and there is volume of people searching for it. If we take three store models, one that will run through droppshipping, another through affiliate marketing, and the last one to actually carry inventory. If we further assume that there will be the proper SEO and PPC marketing principles in place, which one do you think would make the most profit? My ans: I would think that the inventory model would turn the most profit, though the initial capital to start would be the highest as well as expenses. (Reason I am asking what people think, is I myself am in the affiliate marketing game, but been thinking of using some captial to go the inventory route verus opening up further affiliate marketing sites.)
I think the three combined would work best. It's all about balance. However, if you can only do one, it depends on your confidence as a marketer and your starting capital. If you are positive you can sell units of these purple widgets, then selling your own stock would yield the highest profits. Though I'd say affiliate marketing would yield the highest ROI. It becomes a question of whether you prefer volume or efficiency?
Yes, a combination of all three does sound like a well rounded portfolio! Would be an interesting experiment to run, if you had three sites with each method and marketed each 100% to review the results after one year. though you would be competing with yourself indirectly if each site was related to purple widgets, thinking you would almost need to break it up to three different kinds of widgets. So one site would carry inventory and sell yellow widgets, another would drop ship red widgets, and the last one would affiliate market blue widgets.