The Ability to Sell Physical Products
Working as an affiliate marketer will often mean that you have to sell digital products in order to get the big profit margins. While it’s true that you can get 75% and upward from affiliate networks like JVZoo, this will normally mean that you’re limited to selling ebooks and online courses. This can be an effective way to run a business model but it is also sometimes quite restricting. While digital products have many advantages, their appeal is not as broad as it is for physical products.
For example, if you try and sell a digital product to your grandma, you’ll probably have difficulty. The same probably goes for your Mum. And most likely your Dad.
And it also goes for most of your peers in reality! In fact, the main kind of person willing to spend lots of money on an ebook or online course is going to be someone who is already quite familiar with technology. The person most likely to buy from you of all is probably other digital marketers looking for more ways to make money online. And as you’re probably aware, these are a savvy bunch who aren’t easily going to have the wool pulled over their eyes!
That, and they’ve already had people online try to sell them just about every digital product in existence. How many times have you seen ads on Facebook for ‘make money at home’ schemes?
It’s just a very crowded market with a limited potential audience.
Clothes on the other hand are something you can sell to anyone! And then there’s all the rest: stuff like technology, toys or fitness supplements. Suddenly, you can sell things that average people really need and that makes a massive difference!
Flexibility
Another benefit of selling physical products is the huge amount of flexibility it gives you. We’ve already seen that you’ll have a lot more flexibility in terms of the types of things you can sell but of course this will also extend to drastically increase your flexibility in terms of the way you sell.
For starters, you suddenly have pretty much limitless niches that you can choose from (industries) and then there are the many different ways of selling those areas.
Because right now, if you’re the ‘internet marketing type’, then you’re probably imagining the ways that you can sell products from your website or your mailing list. You’re probably thinking about content marketing, establishing your authority in your subject area… etc. etc.
But that’s not the only way you can make money from a dropshipping business. Did you know for example, that many of the products being sold on eBay are actually being dropshipped? This means that you can save yourself the trouble of building an audience and creating a website – just find a product you like, create a listing and you’re good to go!
Even big companies like Home Depot and Sears reportedly use dropshipping on some of their less popular products – so you know it must be a good model!
With dropshipping you also have total control over the way you sell the product. That means it’s up to you if you want to introduce a limited time discount, or if you want to bundle multiple items together in order to offer special deals etc. This can all help you to make a lot more sales and it’s not an option you would have available to you if you were acting as an affiliate. In that scenario, the product owner would set the price and you would have no option other than to go along with it.
Reduced Risk
We’ve already seen that you can reduce the risk by dropshipping. There’s less risk than reselling here but also far less risk than selling your own product. That’s because creating your own product would involve the lengthy and stressful process of designing the product specifications, working with factories and then spending lots of money on materials etc. None of this is to say it’s not possible – it’s just a huge amount of risk!
With dropshipping, you don’t have any of this risk because you’re not spending upfront investment. You simply find the product you want to sell and then promote it!
But there’s another way that you can reduce risk with dropshipping too – which is by picking a product that’s already highly popular! By finding products that you know are already selling very well and that are very in-vogue, you can completely minimize the possibility that your product won’t sell. Now you’re selling products that sell in droves – you just need to find the people that are buying and make it easy for them!
Branding – How to Run Your Dropshipping Business and Strengthen Your Brand
Perhaps the biggest advantage of the dropshipping business model though, is one that many people don’t even consider.
As mentioned, dropshipping has the benefit of allowing you to keep the actual manufacturer/fulfilment company as a silent partner. They will send out the products on your behalf but as far as the customer is aware, they bought it directly from you. This has the massive benefit of meaning that you’re not sending visitors away from your website.
This is a massive deal as a digital marketer. If you’ve been working in this business a while, then you should have a good idea of just how hard it is to attract customers to your website and your business. This is what you’ll spend most of your time doing working online and you’ll probably find it takes up much of your effort.
If you’re an affiliate marketer, then you’re bringing those visitors to your website so that you can sell products that other companies created. This then means that when they buy those products, they have to leave your website and thereby disengage with your brand.
Which brand are they more likely to remember and visit in future? The guy who recommended the product to them? Or the company that actually sold it to them? And when they want more of the same thing, where are they going to go in future?
And now consider this: how can they buy more products from you during the same session, if you are actively sending them away from your site? Instead of being able to offer a smorgasbord of products that you handpicked, you’re now simply telling them to go somewhere else to buy one item.
With a dropshipping business you no longer have this problem. Now you can offer all the items you have for sale on your website from one spot and let your customers choose as many as they want and then continue to buy from you!
But that’s not even the best part…
White Label Dropshipping
The best part is that in some cases, the products you sell will even be able to have your company name on them. This is called ‘white label’ dropshipping, with the white label essentially describing the packaging or the branding.
Let’s say you want to sell a supplement like creatine from your fitness website. With a white label service, the product will be developed with packaging that literally consists of a pot and a white label attached. That white label can then have your branding printed right on it, meaning that to all extents and purposes this is now your own product. In many cases, you can even choose the ‘blend’ of ingredients that go into the product. In other words, if you’re selling a supplement like a vitamin tablet, you can select all the vitamins and minerals yourself and then add your own logo.
If you don’t sell a single item, then you have lost nothing. But if you sell lots, then you’ll be making a profit at the same time as building your own brand and your own market presence.