"Want to make millions with no effort? Try affiliate marketing!"

What a joke! You have probably read it so many times. Many online "gurus" claim that affiliate marketing can make you rich quick and easy, but it’s not true. Affiliate marketing requires hard work – very hard. If you are new to the online business you may get fooled by such ads, but everyone with little experience knows they are untrue.

Recently I am starting to see a new mantra. "Forget affiliate marketing, drop shipping will make you easy millions!" Is it any different than the previous lie? I don’t think so. But there are very valid reasons why some people choose and do better with drop shipping as opposed to affiliate marketing and vice versus.

Let’s explore the advantages and disadvantages of both business models:

Initial Investment
You can start affiliate site with virtually no investment – even without the $9 for domain name if you decide to start an affiliate blog on Blogger or WordPress. You don’t need to buy any products although trying them helps. Getting your own domain and hosting is also better but many marketers save even these minor costs and still manage to make money.

In theory you can start a drop ship website for free, but your chances to success are close to zero. In practice you need a professional web store software, cutting edge design and paid subscription for a service that provides you with information and contacts of quality merchants. The initial investment of a drop ship web store is between several hundreds and several thousand dollars.

Clearly starting an affiliate marketing based business is cheaper.

Simplicity
Setting up an affiliate website does not require technical skills. Finding good affiliate programs is possible just by browsing few directories or searching Google. The hardest and most important work is attracting visitors and converting them into buyers.

For setting a successful drop ship web store you need not only to find the right products and providers, but also to constantly update the prices and inventory. You need to follow the competitors and adjust your price ranges to theirs. You may need to manually submit orders and answer support requests.

2:0 for the affiliate marketing.

Competition
Because starting an affiliate website is easy and cheap (see the previous two items), everyone is doing it. And because of that it’s almost impossible to find a niche which is not over saturated.

Starting a drop ship wholesale business is harder, requires initial investment, technical knowledge and constant maintenance. Due to this there is much less competition in it and the chances to find and dominate a profitable niche are much better.

Profitability
In the affiliate business you are sending your traffic to someone else. Very often your visitors go to the merchants site, don’t buy anything or buy just one item and leave forever. You may have other products which they would buy, but that doesn’t happen because they leave your site.

In drop shipping you are building an entire web store which is entirely yours. The customer doesn’t even need to know that you are not the merchant. If your customers like your store and the products you sell, they will come back again and again for more to it instead of going to the merchant’s site. You can also sell many products from different merchants to the same user by using a shopping cart. Your customers can purchase products without leaving your site. The profit potential of one good drop ship e-store is hundred times bigger than such of an affiliate website.

The final result is 2:2 if you count just the numbers. But I would put more weight on competition and profitability. If you are willing to invest some cash and hard work in your business, your chances for success are much bigger with drop shipping.

By: Tony Clifton

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

There are even more advantages of drop ship business that I can’t cover here. Visit my guide to drop shipping to know what is the most important factor for your success!