eCommerce

[krush]

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I imagine most of us are tech savvy to easily get a fully functional store online, and I'm sure our knowledge in the affiliate world would come in useful when trying to create online store sales.

Do any of you affiliates ever think of going the ecommerce route and setting up an online store?

I'm just wondering to be honest

[Stellar]

yup.. all the time..

the main off putting thing is the cost of getting the stock, having to buy in bulk, storage etc

would love to do it though..

[SimonDance]

I run both an affiliate site and an ecommerce site, and the latter is a lot more work! but hopefully this summer I will be able to cross over the two.

But even now, I want to get more into affiliate and less into e-commerce, its getting tough to compete, and margins are being stretched everyday...

[Equinut]

i had an affiliate site and now run an ecommerce store. yes the downside is on occasion you have to commit to stock, and you also have the (punitive, imo) fees monthly to enable bank and also online transactions. however the plus side is the margins can be far higher. it depends on the product, of course. and like anything else, the greater the risk, the greater the potential gain.

my ecommerce store is driven by this main premise. wholesale company 'A' offers an affiliate programme at 10% commission to me. they also offer stock to me with 50% markup. this means i have to speculate to accumulate with the readies not just the programming time, however, i have a hell of a lot more room for manouever in a competitive market.

on the plus side, there are wholesalers in my sector who work on a drop-ship basis, which is even better, as you get a higher earning per sale without the requirement to part with cash to order in stock yourself.

[Dave@Profitistic]

There are other factors to consider when running a store also, like chargebacks (fraud), stock devaluation, the necessity for direct customer service, inventory/stock control, etc.

Equinut is right in that the margins can be higher, but don't under-estimate the sheer quantity of work and commitment required to run a successful store.

[R King]

Have you looked into Google Checkout? ( ads are all over the forum)

Free transaction processing till the end of the year and credit towards adwords spend..

.. so what are the draw backs aside from giving big G all of your conversion and sales data

[Stellar]

on the plus side, there are wholesalers in my sector who work on a drop-ship basis, which is even better, as you get a higher earning per sale without the requirement to part with cash to order in stock yourself.

Drop shipping is something that really interests me. It seems to be much less riskier way to dabble with a merchant site and to see what sells before you invest in stock.

Although, the drop shippers that I have looked at only give you a 10-15% discount on the retail price. But still, that is better to test than investing in stock that may never sell.

[scifind]

I have set up several stores in my time.
One did reasonably well even though I was a parttimer back then.
I will be launching another on an affiliate network in the very near future.
Shopping cart software is availble freely and so are payment gatway solutions (eg paypal google checkout).
The difficult thing is having a good business plan, managing stock, cc fraud, chargebacks and all the other things a merchant has to worr about

[Adeel]

interesting views in this tread.. i would have a good affiliate website than an ecommerce store becuase i am lazy and want to work in my own time.. well, both have advantages and problems.

customer expectations with ecommerce site are higher than affiliate website and it means better customer services, returns problems, telephone orders, inventory, distribution, logistics, security, virual or real store, registered or sole trader, expertise in design and technology etc etc..

affiliate website doesnt require 90% of the above from the start but it entirely depends on what your goals are? the potential to earn money with both scenarios is unlimited if you have expertise and resources (mainly MONIES )

there are several wholesalers with you could set up virtual online store (known as virtual warehousing) and build your brand identity but as mentioned above the margins could be less than what you earn as an affiliate so why bother spending money on ecommerce if return is lower than affiliate could earn in commissions. well thats not always the case really.. you need to know you market and products and i am sure ecommerce store can do a lot better such as computer and electronics market has less than 10% margins and assuming 6% (3% on marketing + 3% on trasnactions) is taken away before order is processed and not mentioning other admin cost - it would be different with DVDs, Gardening products, beds, furniture etc where margins are more than 50%..


Ciao.

[scifind]

it would be different with DVDs, Gardening products, beds, furniture etc where margins are more than 50%..

Looked into retailing and dropshipping DVDs, never seen margins of 50%, well that sort of margin and the ability to remain competitive.

Very nearly started reselling through amazon, as they were cheeper than dropshippers. (for specific titles that i had some demand for - in the end just listed affiliate links)

[Adeel]

Looked into retailing and dropshipping DVDs, never seen margins of 50%, well that sort of margin and the ability to remain competitive.

Very nearly started reselling through amazon, as they were cheeper than dropshippers. (for specific titles that i had some demand for - in the end just listed affiliate links)

if my memory is fine - there was a dropshipper with more than 50% margins but i guess he didnt have blockbustors in the list. he used to wholesale about 6 six months old movies on ebay, amazon and through his website.

Accessories for all electronic items is another market ignorned by affiliates which has huge potential for commission. spares.co.uk and partmaster (from currys) are well on the roll. i couldnt find my printer cable from whole manchester a couple of months ago so i had to buy from ebay (expensive with postage) otherwise new printer could cost 20 times more than the cable itself.

Ciao..