Dropshipping VS Affiliate Marketing: The Best Way To Make Money in 2019 - Start Selling Stuff

Dropshipping VS Affiliate Marketing: The Best Way To Make Money in 2019

dropshipping vs affiliate marketing

Do you want to know the 2 most practical ways to earn your FIRST dollars online?

Do you want to know which of these 2 ways would fit you well?

And lastly, do you want to know how you can do it?

If you answered yes to all these questions, then keep reading.

This article is made specifically for you.

With that said, this may change your life forever . . .

So when it comes to making money online, there are 2 choices that come to mind:

Dropshipping and Affiliate Marketing.

Now, you’re here because you want to know how to do each of these business models.

You also want to know which of these two would be best fit for you.

That means you’re interested to learn in a concise, high-yield content that will help you finally start your first business online.

Here’s what you will learn:

  • What Affiliate Marketing and Dropshipping Is – And How to Do Them
  • The Pros and Cons of Dropshipping and Affiliate Marketing
  • Guide Questions You NEED to Ask Yourself Before You Make Your Decision

Let’s start . . .

Dropshipping and Affiliate Marketing

I will not waste your time by discussing in-depth what dropshipping and affiliate marketing is.

You can read that somewhere else.

But what you will get here is something that’s BETTER than a long, boring content filled with words just to rank well in Google.

In this article, I’ll tell you exactly what dropshipping and affiliate marketing is in very simple words that even a 12-year old will understand.

What Is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a retail fulfillment method in which you don’t have to store any inventory or ship products.

All you have to do is this:

  1. You set a up a store on Shopify (you will get a FREE trial here).
  2. Go to Facebook or Instagram, do your research and find the perfect niche to sell products on.
  3. You go to Aliexpress or com or Etsy or wherever to find the best products in that niche.
  4. You set those products on your store and sell it.
  5. A customer orders, let’s say a $19.95 watch.
  6. You forward your customer’s order details to your supplier.
  7. Then, your supplier sends the watch to your customer.

And that’s it.

It’s simply just another form of order fulfillment where the supplier handles everything else in the back-end.

You’re just being the middleman between a customer and a wholesaler.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is simply promoting another person’s products/services and you get commission in return if the product sells because of your promotion.

In other words, you’re simply referring a customer to another business.

How this works?

The way this works is that you get an affiliate link from any kind of business you can find.

You create a content through writing, video or whatever that connects your customers to the link you’ll be sending them to.

You put those links into your content.

You publish that content, and now you let Google find you traffic.

How you get money from this?

Simple.

When a customer makes a purchase by using your link, you get a commission.

And that’s it.

Similarities of Affiliate Marketing and Dropshipping

By knowing their similarities, making your decision will take less effort because all you will have left are their differences.

So here they are:

  • You don’t need to have inventory or ship products to do this
  • They are relatively low risk business models
  • Both have high earning potentials (one is fast while the other is slow but consistent)
  • They are both easy to start working on immediately – like literally after you read this article
  • Both of these business models can be started for a relatively low price

In other words?

They have low barrier to entry and they’re both easy to start!

But don’t get excited.

We have yet to discuss about their pros and cons . . .

Pros and Cons of Dropshipping and Affiliate Marketing

By learning where each of these two excels and falls behind, deciding will even get 100x easier for you.

Plus after this, you’ll have an even greater ability to resonate with the business model that fits your preferences more.

So without further ado . . .

Dropshipping Pros and Affiliate Marketing Cons:

💥 Scalability

It’s easier to scale with dropshipping than with niche sites, especially when you’re buying traffic from Facebook (rather than when you’re doing Instagram Shoutouts like I recommend for beginners).

Why?

Because it’s simple easier to reach thousands of people with paid traffic.

However, it doesn’t stop there.

Facebook is a very powerful platform for advertising because you can target very specific audiences that you want to reach.

You’re selling rosaries? You can specifically target Christians.

You’re selling iPhone cases? You can sell specifically to iPhone users.

You get the idea.

💥 You Can Easily Outsource Virtual Assistants (VA)

Don’t want to do all the other back-end stuff like customer service, answering emails or fulfilling orders?

No problem!

All of these things can be outsourced easily.

The best part?

This will save you tremendous amount of time and effort.

You can literally save 40 hours of work per month with $400 by hiring VAs.

However, when you’re just starting out, I recommend  you try and learn these things first.

This experience is something you can’t trade for anything.

💥 The Skills You Acquire Can Be Used in Any Business

The skills you’ll learn in dropshipping will be your building blocks or foundation to start another, bigger online business.

Here are just some of the skills you’ll learn:

  1. Facebook Ads
  2. Email Marketing and;
  3. Instagram Shoutouts

If you understand and really hone those skills, then you can easily build a really BIG business in the future.

💥 Instant Results (Positive and Negative)

This is possibly the most important advantage of dropshipping compared to niche sites.

However, keep in mind that these results may not always be positive.

Most often that not, when you’re just starting out, these results are very negative.

Here’s a possible outcome:

You spend $100 on Facebook Ads in 1 day, but you get no sales.

That’s an instant result.

You spend $100 on Instagram Shoutouts but nobody buys.

That’s an instant result.

When these things happen, you know that something’s not working, and you need to change something.

“So why is this a pro and not a con?”

It’s a pro because it helps you know what to improve and deal with it quickly.

Know this:

The ability to know what works and what does not is actually just one of the high ROI skill you’ll learn with dropshipping.

Keep this in mind always.

You’ll be learning more things through experience and you will find this journey to be very enjoyable.

Why Affiliate Niche Sites Have A Big Disadvantage When It Comes to Instant Results

When you’re doing affiliate niche sites, it will take months for you to even know if what you’re doing is working.

Why?

Because ranking in Google takes time.

1 month? You’ll see nothing.

2 months? You’ll see nothing.

3 months? MAYBE you’ll get some traction.

The worst part?

When you’re just a beginner, you won’t even know if your content will rank in Google in the first place.

This means you won’t know if what you’re doing is right or not after multiple months.

This is just a huge waste of time that you could be spending more effectively.

Affiliate Marketing Pros and Dropshipping Cons:

💥 More Passive Once It’s Set Up

When you create a content and it’s set up, it’s there FOREVER.

You might want to make some edits soon but it’s gonna be very minimal.

While you will have to do most of the work, because you can’t outsource this easily as we discussed before, once it’s set up, you’ll get a passive income.

💥 It’s a Simpler Business Model

It’s very simple, really.

Create some content, find a way to rank well in Google, throw in some affiliate links and then publish it.

Once someone clicks on your affiliate link, your work is done.

You don’t have to worry about processing orders, customer service, anything.

You create content and that’s it!

💥 Minimal Start-Up Cost (Close to Zero?)

Want to know how much you need to start creating niche sites?

Here it is:

Around $10 a year for a domain.

Around $10 a month for a shared hosting package so you can host all your sites on it.

And that’s about it.

Crucial Questions You Need to Ask Yourself Before Choosing Any of These Business Models

Now you’re probably curious which of these two business models is really designed for you.

Don’t worry.

After answering these questions, you will know your answer.

You will begin to understand which of these two would connect well with the kind of person that you are.

Question #1: Do you enjoy writing?

If you don’t enjoy writing, building niche sites is going to be a HUGE pain.

Remember: you’ll be putting out content almost daily.

So if you don’t like writing, this isn’t for you.

Question #2: Are you good at it?

While this question wouldn’t really be the main reason why you shouldn’t do niche sites, it’s still something to think about.

You’d want to be good at this.

If you’re not good at writing and you can’t convince people to click your links, then you might not be able to sell a product to a single soul – even after a year!

Don’t let this discourage you though.

If you like writing and you’re willing to learn how to do copywriting, then, by all means, do this.

If you are willing to learn, you can do anything.

Question #3: Would you rather spend 50 hours or $1000 on a website that may later fail?

100 hours – niche sites. 

Creating content eevery dayuntil you get traction is a good way to start.

You need to create at least 1 every day for maybe a month.

However, we still can’t assure it to rank well in Google.

This is the reason why you have to ask yourself if you’re willing to lose this amount of hours.

$1000 – dropshipping.

“Well I thought dropshipping was a low-cost business?”

Yes, it is.

However, if you want to drive traffic to your products, you must be willing to spend that much for ads.

Be it Facebook Ads or Instagram Shoutouts. 

You just really have to do them so that you can immediately test products and see results . . .

So now, let me ask you this:

Which of these 2 resources are you willing to lose?

You see, life’s all about taking risks even if there’s a chance you could fail.

Don’t let this chance of failure scare you.

To be successful, you must take the risks.

It’s the only way.

So now?

You decide.

I am not gonna answer for you which of these business models is “better”.

At the end of the day, this is always going to be a personal decision.

It all really depends on you

You probably even got an emotional inkling to which you would rather do anyway (it’s a good idea to follow that).

So go and learn it.

See where it takes you.

But most importantly?

Start.

P.S. If you’ve found this article helpful, and it has made you decide easier on which business model you should choose, then you’d love to join my email list.

I will be delivering money-making secrets to your inbox daily.

(All you have to do is click this link 👆👆👆)

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