There’s various alternatives to dropshipping which give you the same freedoms associated with a drop shipping business. The appeal of dropshipping is you don’t need your own products, you can work from anywhere and you can send products directly to customers. But there’s downsides too. You can’t control the customer experience and you don’t control inventory. Shipping costs can vary, especially since Covid, and all manner of things can give you problems.
Other online business models can give you the same kind of geographical freedom without as many of the headaches. Here’s a few of them.
Alternatives To Drop Shipping – Etsy
Etsy is a platform which lets individuals sell their own products and services on a global scale. You can also become an affiliate for Etsy and promote the site to earn commissions. If you have a unique flare for creating something, Etsy might be for you.
Alternatives To Drop Shipping – Shopify
Shopify is another platform similar to Etsy. You can use the platform to create a digital online shop and put other people’s (or your own) products in it. Shopify is the better choice for online selling. It’s more scalable, more flexible, and offers better e-commerce tools than Etsy.
Alternatives To Dropshipping – Affiliate Marketing
The affiliate marketing business model is one of the most popular online. It’s similar to drop shipping in that you can work from anywhere and scale up your business. Affiliates use affiliate links to send people to various products and services online. Product delivery and customer service is dealt with by the product “vendor” or owner. So affiliate marketing can be much more hands off than drop shipping.
Affiliates use many kinds of marketing strategy to send people to products and services online. Many of these can be considered alternatives to dropshipping in their own right.
Alternatives To Dropshipping – Blogging
Blogging is a marketing strategy which can be used alongside many monetisations methods such as:
- Selling your own business, service or product/s
- Affiliate marketing products and services
- Using paid advertising to earn commissions based on clicks (e.g. Google’s Adsense program)
Blogging is definitely a long term marketing strategy but many bloggers love their topic and so can build content over the longer term to generate free traffic and build a passive income.
Alternatives To DropShipping – Website Flipping
Website flipping is another alternative to drop shipping. Many website flippers will purchase a domain name and build a website into an asset – through some online business model. Some will monetise through affiliate marketing, or through using Adsense or even through drop shipping. Once built and the value of the site has increased, they sell the site through websites such as Flippa.com or empireflippers.com
You can also purchase domain names you think will appreciate and sell them on at a profit.
Selling Memberships
Another alternative to drop shipping is to sell memberships. You can either create your own membership product or use an existing affiliate membership program. With memberships, you can earn recurring commissions over the longer term. This can mean your business grows exponentially once you start selling consistently and providing you’re offering real value.
See recurring income affiliate programs for some of the best programs to promote.
High Ticket Affiliate Business/Lifestyle Business
Most affiliate marketing products pay only small commissions. Amazon, for example pays between 1% and 11% commissions on sales you can generate using their affiliate program. (See Affiliate marketing commission rates). This leaves very little scope for using paid marketing to generate sales and still come out with a profit.
A high ticket digital product gives you the largest possible commissions from the affiliate marketing business model. With a high ticket product range, you can more quickly tap into marketing methods which are scalable. See high ticket affiliate marketing for more on this topic.
With paid marketing, you can send targeted visitors into a sales funnel and sell a range of digital products. This is one of the fastest legit ways to make money online.
Ebooks – Selling Or Using
Ebooks can be used either to sell online or as a marketing tool to get people to join your email marketing list. What’s great about ebooks is the ability to sell them on complete autopilot. See also affiliate marketing ebook free download and how to sell ebooks on your own website.
Alternatives To Dropshipping – Access Free Videos
So there’s a short list of alternatives to dropshipping. If you can think of any more, please mention them in the comments. If you’d like more information on other online business models, access a free video series by clicking on the image below. You’ll be able to access a 4 video workshop series and a free webinar.
