First I am going to talk about affiliate marketing and drop-shipping. In my web marketing class we focused on affiliate marketing and drop-shipping. Affiliate marketing is similar to advertisement marketing. With an affiliate model you would market another company's product and get paid commission. With drop-shipping you create your website that allows customers to look at multiple products and then you collect the customer's payment and pay for shipping and deal with returns. So which one is better?
I think that depends on the business and what products they are selling. People have made great points in which one is better. A lot of my classmates mentioned that affiliate marketing is easier to start up because you wouldn't have to deal with inventory, customers and it is easy to stay on trends. Affiliate marketing tends to focus more on marketing to consumers and finding trends in the demand. Whereas drop-shipping it is a little more complex. You would have to know how to handle returns by creating a return system that is simple for customers to understand, you have to find a secure way to get customers payment methods and you pay the shipper. Drop-shipping seems to be a little scary but it makes up for it with income. Affiliate marketing income comes from gaining commission companies offer you to sell their products or to advertise them on social media. Drop-shipping income comes from customers making payments, the payment comes to you, and after that all you have to do is send a supplier the money to ship the item. It is only one expense and you can make a stable income instead of relaying on how much commission a company can offer. A classmate did mention in our discussion that some companies offer a low commission price, which for me does not seem like it is worth investing time to market someone else's product.
But again, there are pros and cons to each one and you just have to find the right method for you.
Now that we discussed more about affiliate marketing and drop-shipping, how do you know what is the best to pick? It is important to remember there is more than just affiliate marketing and drop-shipping for getting supplies. You can be a wholesaler, hand make your products to create supplies, offer services you can preform, or even go to trade shows to see what people are offering. To help decided which route to go my class created an excel sheet that listed the criteria we wanted from each option and rated it. For me I focused on delivery times, communication with suppliers, what would be low costing and customer engagement. You can see my results below.
Yours doesn't have to look like mine as somethings may be more important to you than to me. But this is just an example on we did as a class to show you how to choose the best route to go. Based on our case study and the results I would say drop-shipping is the best way to go and getting product from an international broker is better as both are low costing, help build income, and have better customer engagement by suppliers responding to messages and people liking drop-shipping websites. Just as my teacher encouraged me go and find out what would work best for you. I know this has helped me gather thoughts on how I want to promote the product I want to sell and which options would be best for me to sell the product and what kind of online business to have.
I wish you luck in your endeavors as you follow me and I hope I helped you find a clearer picture of how you want your web business to go.
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