This week in my business class we have been exploring the differences between affiliate marketing and drop shipments. We were given an assignment to weigh the value of each model. We then had to recommend one over the other. I eventually chose the affiliate model because it is less hassle. One can set up their page and let it do its thing. Of course traffic still needs to be funneled to the website.
Personally I never like being limited to only one choice. For my own website I would want to do a mixture of the two. I am enjoying looking over the various sites in order to find what will work for me. Being that my theme is books and publishing that knocks out a lot of retail — which I must admit it looks fun to try selling those as well.
So knowing my penchant to want to have it all. I really need to work at remaining focused on my theme; to keep it narrow and not make a mess of my website.
Additionally we studied how to find brokers, manufacturers, and wholesalers. It turns out most items are made overseas, in case you didn’t know. A person could have dreams of becoming a broker and warehousing all this stuff here in America to allow for faster delivery times. But it would require a large amount of money and is not a feasible option for someone just stepping into retailing without friends willing to back the operation fiscally.
I have never wanted to do inventory which is why I gave up the dream of a craft or fabric store long ago.
As for ice cream. . . The items needed for inventory are relatively few so I still entertain that dream.
Hm makes me want to go and explore what kind of wholesalers there are for ice cream and accompanying products. Sigh.
The hardest part of this week’s assignment was getting the Rank feature on my excel page to work correctly.
It took me several tries over three days to finally figure it out. I think I have it down now. I do see the value of weighing the criteria of various aspects of each site. Price alone is not the only thing to consider. Some of my classmates were concerned with shipping times, others wanted “Made in America,” as for me I wanted quality products at a reasonable price and wanted to trust the company. Of course, those things are hard to really know until one gets the product in hand. But I made my judgments based on their ratings from other customers as well as their revenues and how much was sold in North America as opposed to other places. My assumption being that if other Americans consistently bought the products then the importers must be making a good profit from the companies I was looking at. Like most things in life trust is essential.
Overall it was an enlightening week filled with good information.
So yeah, dare to dream . . . but then act on it too.