You want more sales by having to pay commissions. To cover the cost of that you need to increase the price of products that have already been increased by two previous middle men. In the end, the final customer suffers from a higher price tag. Because of greed. Great for short time quick cash but in the end ... fewer customers. I plan to keep my stores going for many, many years by keeping the prices as low as possible. I can only do that by keeping all the profit margin to myself. This has been very successful for me as a dropshipping eBay seller for years. There are many other eBay dropshippers and they don't use affiliates either. It's just not really viable.
Sometime in the future I may abandon dropshipping and import products in bulk directly from Alibaba, 1688.com (via an agent) or manufacturers and do my own shipping ...
then I may consider using affiliates ... but not at the moment with Aliexpress and other middlemen in the equation.
All smart business owners do this form of marketing.
All? Lets say
some businesses use affiliates ... as in my second example above with the original manufacturers and sellers. Not the first example that you want to implement with the multiple middlemen involved. Comparing bottom of the barrel dropshippers with high end retailers who import in bulk and do their own shipping is laughable. And dropshipping IS the bottom of the barrel in the retail business world. And I'm being honest and realistic as a dropshipper myself in saying that.
Dropshippers using affiliates is just a bit tacky, immoral and unrealistic in my book. Like I said above ... it's fine for people at the top of the pyramid (original sellers, manufacturers etc) ... but dropshippers halfway down the pyramid? No thanks.
Another big factor is that many of the stores I've seen here on this forum and elsewhere simply aren't worth the time of an affiliate. Bottom line ... many of them are boring crappy sites selling clothing, shoes, cheap electronics and phone cases etc that can be bought easily at the local department store. They have almost no customisation, they are not unique, they look dreary and boring, they have no articles or blogs, no videos, no extra content at all. If I was an affiliate I wouldn't waste my time trying to promote cheap, boring dropshipped products from China that are being sold on a crappy boring site. I'd spend my time and energy on quality stuff from original manufacturers for high commissions. The whole idea of dropshippers (the lowest of the low in the retail world) using affiliates is ... in the long run, just not viable. Anyone considering it is, in my book, a bit of a dreamer.
But if I was you, I'd at least get your store up and running, established, looking good and well designed, having unique and interesting products and lots of extra content etc before you start thinking about using affiliates. It's sort of like putting the cart before the horse. Greed makes people impatient I guess.
In 15 years of being in e-commerce I've seen this sort of unrealistic over eagerness result in sites (a few eBay stores too) crashing and burning after a few months or a year or two.
But good luck ... this is just my personal opinion ... follow your own plan.
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