Dropshipping and affiliate marketing are two passive ways of making money in the digital world. Both require digital marketing skills, basic computer skills, and well-presented product or services on your niche site. But most new comers in the online market are confused about which one to start, and which one is better?
First thing first, both affiliation and drop shipping are an excellent choice for making money online, but none of them have an upper hand on the other. It totally depends on your convenience.
According to your personal need,you can choose either Drop Shipping or Affiliate Marketing. Down below, I will discuss the pros and cons for both affiliate marketing and dropshipping so you can decide which one to work with.
Affiliate marketing
The basics of affiliate marketing are to promote a product and refer it to the customers from a particular website. Just because you connect a customer to the sales website, you will receive a sales commission for each purchase. Depending on the product and number of sales,the commission starts around 4 percent and may increase.
You can promote your affiliate’s products through a facebook page, youtube channel or just a basic website where you will contribute some digital content and articles to your audience.
In that content and articles, you will provide the affiliate link of a particular product from an online store such as amazon.com. And when anyone clicks on a product link, redirects to the seller's site, and makes a purchase, the seller will give you a commission.
Pros of affiliate marketing– don’t have to deal with customers, no stock requirements, very little investment, passive income.
Cons of affiliate marketing– lower profits, lack of repeat purchase, and no control over the product and sales.
Dropshipping–
Dropshipping is somewhat similar to affiliate marketing but has some strategic and structural differences.
Basically, you are the middle man in this business.You will build an online store and reach the customers. When you get an order, you pass it onto the wholesaler,and they’ll send the product to customer’s residence.
For example, you can buy a simple product for 10 dollars from the wholesaler and sell it for 20 dollars to your customer. The best thing is you can make as much profit as you want by simply convincing your customer without even leaving your home.
So here how it goes – your job is to select some good products, set up an online store, receive orders from customers and connect them with the wholesaler to complete the order. And it’s so simple as I said.
Pros of dropshipping- Higher profits, no inventory cost, lower risk, brand value created, passive income, and easy to manage
Cons of dropshipping- you have to handle customers, deal with problems, higher investment compared to affiliate marketing, have to depend on suppliers.
The Bottom Line
Both of them are low-risk businesses with easy setup and high profits, allowing passive incomes. And both of them have their own pros and cons along with their similarities. So, which one is for you?
If you want to earn money without being involved with the customer too much, then you should give priority to affiliate marketing, but if you want a long term benefit and a name for yourself, you should choose drop shipping.
