Affiliate marketing Vs Dropshipping Vs Network Marketing

As an entrepreneur, you’re always looking for the next big idea to invest in. You want to make money fast, but you also want to be sure that you’re putting your money into a good idea. With some creative thinking, you can find the right niche for your products and the right affiliate partners to help you make money online.

Here are three ways to make money online that you may not have considered. They’re not necessarily all-encompassing, but they can help you make money online without too much hassle.

Affiliate Marketing

If you’ve ever sold something online, then you’ve probably heard of affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, you promote products (mostly affiliate products) on your website and earn a commission when someone clicks on a product and makes a purchase.

The benefits of affiliate marketing are that you don’t necessarily need to have or create a product. You just need to have a website or blog. Once you have that, all you need to do is to find products that you think are useful or that your target audience might want or need.

When you promote a product on your website, you are essentially “selling” someone else’s product. You are essentially acting as a middleman or broker who facilitates a transaction between a product owner and a buyer. When a reader lands on your site and makes a purchase after reading an article or watching a video, you earn a commission.

The downside of affiliate marketing is that, oftentimes, you’ll need to pay a commission to the vendor or merchant for each sale. If you’re asking someone to pay you to promote their product or service, it’s usually not going to be a profitable partnership. But, if you can find a vendor who is willing to pay you on a per-click basis or sale basis, then it’s a viable option.

Dropshipping

For those of you who have shopped online or at a physical store, you may have used dropshipping. With dropshipping, instead of selling your own product, you order or ‘drop ship’ products from a merchant (most commonly a manufacturer, vendor, or wholesaler).

When a customer or buyer buys a product from a dropshipper, the merchant creates and ships the product to the customer without your involvement. Most notably, there’s no need to physically own the product. You can operate a successful dropshipper with just a laptop and the ability to communicate with the merchant.

The appeal of dropshipping is that you don’t necessarily need to have a physical product to sell. You can sell anything digital or tangible. For instance, you can sell WordPress themes, eBooks, white papers, etc. Essentially, anything that you can think of that can be converted into a digital or tangible product can be sold using dropshipping. And because you don’t necessarily need to own the product to make money with dropshipping, it’s often seen as a less risky endeavor than starting a brick-and-mortar store.

The downside of dropshipping is pretty self-explanatory. You don’t necessarily make any money unless a customer or buyer buys a product from you (or your merchant). Also, you need to ensure that the merchant knows how to ship the product to the customer. This could be tricky if you’re not located in the same city or country as the customer. 

To make matters more complicated, some merchants have requirements for how they want you to ship the product (e.g., Fedex can only be used for certain products). So, to ensure you make money with discounts and incentives, you might need to find a way to work with several merchants – who each have their own requirements.

Network Marketing

If you’ve ever wondered how direct sales companies like Amway, Tupperware, and Herbalife make a ton of money, you’re in the right place. Network marketing (or multilevel marketing) is when a company encourages its distributors to become independent contractors or “consumers” who then promote and sell the company’s products. You may have heard of network marketing if you’ve ever bought a product from a garage or yard sale that was promoted and sold by a person known as a “dominant marketer” or “salesperson” who is “upselling” products.

As a network marketer, you’ll typically need to get your hands on a product that a customer wants or needs (and that you can afford to sell at a significant discount). Once you have that, you can get into the habit of convincing other people – who you’ll refer to as “independent contractors” or “distributors” – to sell or gift the product to their friends and family. In most cases, you’ll need to pay the distributor a monthly commission for each person they bring in until the product is sold.

When you sell a product, you get a commission and the distributor earns a commission. When you promote a product and someone buys the product, you earn a commission. The upside of network marketing is that you don’t necessarily need to have a physical product to get started.

You can get it by selling digital or tangible products (like WordPress themes or eBooks). Essentially, anything that can be bought and used by someone else is fair game. Plus, you can often score some pretty good deals on products that you need for your own business. The downside of network marketing is that it can be quite a hustle. 

You’ll need to make a lot of cold calls and convince people that your offer is worth their while. Also, you may need to train your team to be effective distributors. The good news is that once you’ve started, you can often find work as a network marketer, and it can be quite lucrative.

If you’re looking for ways to make money online, these are some pretty viable options. You don’t necessarily need to specialize in any of them. Instead, you can choose a niche and then choose a couple of ways to make money online in that niche.