‘Dropshipping vs Affiliate Marketing’- These are the two most popular ways to earn money online. However, selecting one for your e-commerce business can be quite daunting.

Are you unsure which is the right choice for your business? Or perhaps you’re looking for a better understanding of the dropshipping concept?

In this quick post, you’ll understand the pros and cons of both Dropshipping and Affiliate Marketing. This will help you make a better and well-thought-out decision to start your online business today.

Dropshipping vs Affiliate Marketing: What is Affiliate Marketing?

Before I get into the major details, let me share a brief overview of Affiliate Marketing with you.

In simple words, Affiliate marketing is the type of marketing where you get paid for selling other people’s products. Let’s just say, if the seller earns a customer from your marketing skills, they will pay a fixed amount to you.

It is a performance-based marketing in which you are paid a fair amount by the business owner after the sale goes through from your own unique affiliate link. If you’re a marketing person, affiliate marketing may be of interest to you.

Dropshipping vs Affiliate Marketing: What is Dropshipping?

Have you heard of dropshipping before? If you haven’t don’t worry.

I’ve got you covered here.

Dropshipping, in layman term, is a business model in which you do not own the inventory. It is a retail method in which the dropshipper receives the order for a product and further passes the order to the supplier.

The supplier takes care of the rest of the work.

A dropshipper does not need to set up a brick and mortar store; he does not need to pack and ship the products or even manage the stock. Thus, the responsibility of the dropshipper is to get the order, pass it to the supplier and get his share at last.

Interesting, right?

Now, you might think managing your dropshipping store is difficult. Or perhaps you think you need to handle everything yourself?

Wait, till you see how easy it is!

Dropshipping vs Affiliate Marketing: The benefits of Affiliate Marketing

1. Low investment costs:

One of the major advantages of affiliate marketing is that you don’t need to accumulate capital for months or years to start up your business. You only have to set up your website, find relevant affiliate programs.

Then, find the most suitable products that are relevant to your market. And, you’re done.

2. Low technical expertise:

It is not necessary to have a technology-based background to be able to become an affiliate. You just need to brush up on the basic technical knowledge and you’re good to go with Affiliate marketing.

3. Virtual establishment:

There is no need to invest a lot of capital for establishing a store. Affiliate marketing does not need any physical set up and you can earn money right from your home.

4. No hassle of shipping and packing:

You are not responsible for packing and shipping the products. As an affiliate, you’re only responsible for marketing the product and earning an income from every sale made using your link.

5. No client handling:

An affiliate’s responsibility is to market the product and initiate the sale. Handling the customer service issues is not required.

Now that I have shared all the reasons why Affiliate marketing shines, let me reveal why it is not the right business path for you.

Let’s see why!

Dropshipping vs Affiliate Marketing: Why Affiliate Marketing is not the right choice for your business?

1. Easy money means more competition:

People consider affiliate marketing to be an easy way to make money. Therefore, it involves a lot of competition. There are many people who follow this path to make quick bucks increasing the list of competitors.

2. Zero ROI:

There is a high possibility where you make multiple efforts to market a product but no sale is initiated. In that case, all your efforts would go in vain.

3. Slower growth scale:

In affiliate marketing, there are not many chances for growth. It is not a well-established business that you can expect to grow with time. Thereby, you should be looking for other options which I’ll be discussing in the later section of this post.

4. Unreliable Affiliate programs:

After multiple efforts, even if the sale becomes successful, there is a high chance you may not get paid for your efforts. Sometimes, business owners shut down the affiliate programs and don’t pay the decided amount.

Unreliable affiliate programs can leave all your efforts to go unrecognized.

5. Low commission:

The commission on each sale is very low. So, you need a lot of targeted traffic to earn enough amount. If you’re a beginner with low traffic, Affiliate is not the right path for you.

After reading this, I am sure you must be on the lookout for the best alternatives to Affiliate which are both profitable and reliable. So, let me share the most trending way to earn money nowadays- WooDropship

WooDropship: The only thing you need to run your Dropshipping store

WooDropship is the ultimate solution to create and run your dropshipping store online. With WooDropship, you just have to create an account and install a browser plugin to get started.

WooDropship works seamlessly with Woocommerce and you can automate even the smallest of things with this wondrous facility at your service. Select the products you want to dropship from AliExpress, edit the title, category, description, variant info and everything else with just a few clicks.

What’s more?

It will even update all the products including their availability, prices and more automatically for you. You’ll see all the reflected changes on your virtual shop with WooDropship.

Dropshipping was never this easier!

WooDropship and Woocommerce: How does it work to make Dropshipping simple for you?

Using WooDropship is very easy. The WooDropship chrome extension makes all the things work perfectly for you.

Here’s how it will make your dropshipping experience easier:

• Use WooDropship chrome extension to add Aliexpress products to your Woocommerce dropshipping store.
• You can easily import the Aliexpress products from Aliexpress.com product page.
• Change the product title, pricing, and description accordingly.
• Place the products on your dropshipping store.
• After receiving an order for products, you just have to place that order on Aliexpress.
• The WooDropship chrome extension will even add the product variants to cart and auto-fill your customer details.

Yes, that’s how easy and simple it is.

WooDropship: What’s in store for you & why should you use it?

As mentioned earlier, WooDropship makes everything easy for your dropshipping store. There are many great benefits of using WooDropship, Some of them are discussed below:

• WooDropship allows you to add products from Aliexpress.
• Order fulfillment is easy with WooDropship.
• Your prices and inventory will always be up to date.
• WooDropship allows you to have more control over your products. You can edit product titles, descriptions, price, and a lot more.
• WooDropship supports 130+ store currencies. Simply stated, you can cater to millions of clients worldwide.

Dropshipping: Why it is the best choice for your business?

1. No physical presence required:

The greatest advantage that dropshipping offers is that there is no need to set up a brick and mortar store. You can create your own virtual shop and that’d be all the investment required for starting up your business.

2. Lower risk:

Dropshipping involves negligible risk. If you selected a niche for your store and it doesn’t work, all you need to do is find a better goods for you.

You are not buying and storing the products in bulk. Therefore, there would be no inventory loss to consider even if things go haywire for your new establishment.

3. No additional hassle:

The supplier takes all the responsibility. You are the one who makes the sale possible and the seller takes care of the rest. The supplier manages the tasks like packaging and shipping giving you more time to focus on your business.

4. Products diversity:

Dropshipping offers you diversity in products. You will not stick to a single product or a few products. It is possible to sell a variety of products that work well for you and extend your business anytime with WooDropship.

5. Resource efficient:

Dropshipping saves your cost as well as your time. It is the most suitable form of business for those who have less time or funds to invest.

6. Experiment all you want:

Dropshipping allows you to experiment. If you feel that a particular product will work for you, all you need to do is to display it on your dropshipping store.

7. Location flexibility:

Dropshipping provides flexibility of location. You only need a good Internet connection. Anyplace, be it your room, study or lawn can be a suitable location to carry your business.

That’s the beauty of dropshipping with WooDropship.

However, Dropshipping is also known to have some downsides.

Dropshipping: Let’s talk about the downside now

1. Heavy competition:

Competition is unavoidable in any business. Dropshipping brings up the similar issue. Many dropshippers sell the same products and sometimes, at even lower prices.

With dropshipping, you’ll have to make a strong pricing strategy to stay ahead of your competitors.

2. Customer issues:

The customers will come up with their problems to you. A dropshipper may not be able to handle the customer service issues well. It is the supplier who possesses all the details regarding the product.

So, you’ll have to pacify your customers accordingly.

3. Setting up a virtual store:

Setting up a dropshipping site is not that difficult, but you need software, e-commerce accounts, and security to begin with.

4.Product stock management:

You have no control over shipping and supply. If the product goes out of stock or it does not reach on time, you can’t manage these shortcomings.

Dropshipping vs Affiliate Marketing: The winner that’ll enhance your business revenue

By now, you might already know which is the most profitable path for your business in this Dropshipping vs Affiliate Marketing debate. Though, affiliate marketing is quite an easy method to earn money, setting up a dropshipping store will be far more beneficial in the long run.

To make a point, here’s why you should opt for Dropshipping right away…

1. Higher profits ($$$):

The profit margin in dropshipping is much higher than in affiliate marketing. In affiliate marketing, you get a small proportion of the sale price whereas in dropshipping you’re your own boss.

You can set your own profit margins and pricing rules as per your liking and business strategy.

2. Higher level of growth scale:

When it comes to ‘dropshipping vs affiliate marketing’, chances of growth and expansion are much higher in dropshipping. Setting up your own business means that you can expect your business to grow.

As a dropshipper. You can always expand your business with new and trendy products and consume a larger portion of the revenue which is not possible in Affiliate marketing.

3. Larger consumer base:

A good customer base can be generated in the dropshipping business whereas, in affiliate marketing, you will always keep on searching for new referrals. This is an important point you must consider while deciding between ‘dropshipping vs affiliate marketing’.

Create your own brand:

Through your dropshipping store, you are making efforts to build up your own goodwill, your own name. In affiliate marketing, you are doing all this for someone else’s business.

Down the line, it is a wiser choice to create your own brand and reap profits from it.

Lower risk:

Dropshipping business involves lesser risk as compared to Affiliate Marketing. In Affiliate Marketing, there are a lot more chances that do not get the payment.

It does not happen in dropshipping as you have all the control including the financial aspects of the business.

Dropshipping vs Affiliate Marketing: In a nutshell

Dropshipping and Affiliate Marketing, both are great choices to make more money in lesser time. However, if you must choose, Dropshipping is the right way to go. This trending business platform is here to stay and you’ll benefit from it with lesser investments.

When should you start your own dropshipping business? The earlier, the better.