At the Affiliate Summit one of the workshops mentioned an idea of considering downsizing the affiliate partnership and replacing it with your own merchandise.

If you are successful selling amazon books in a topic area, are you aware that you can contact book publishers, purchase small amounts of books for your own store and sell direct with 100% profit instead of the 5 - 15% that Amazon might send you in 90 days?

I've been a successful ecommerce manager for 8 years and find that affiliate relationships for merchandise simply do not work for me because I can purchase the merchandise and sell it to my customers for less cost and reap bigger profits.

What about you? Anything you are selling for an affiliate that you might could sell directly?

Well, it's not really 100% profit. You now have cost of goods sold, as well as the cost of maintaining inventory and being out of pocket for it from the time you buy it to the time it's sold, which may be longer than the 90 days it takes Amazon to pay you. And you have to make sure the publisher will take back any inventory that remains unsold past a certain date, or you may end up eating your inventory costs.

All in all - no, I'd rather let Amazon take their cut and collect my meager share while sitting by the pool and sipping margaritas.

True enough, there are down sides. I've found the effort worth more than the cut from amazon but I do know that unless the merchandise is easy to move, for me its been a good solution and quite profitable.

I would love to make money using either affiliate stuff like Amazon or direct sales. I tried it once and it didn't go well at all.

I have no talent in presentation at all.

I would always rather sell "my stuff" versus going the affiliate route. In ringtones for example, that would have been very difficult for me to do. I think it ultimately depends on what market you are in and what you are selling. I am also happy to have access to thousands of merchants on the affiliate marketing side where I can instantly market there products and be paid for doing so.

I have never been really successful as an affiliate. But my best performing affiliate products were health products. However, I would prefer to remain an affiliate because of potential health and safety, and legal concerns.

What kind of health products, zadaw?

These are natural health products and alternative health products. I could have sourced loads of similar products from China to sell but I am very concerned about product safety.

That is definitely a good point about the legal concerns of having your own products depending on what they are...

I lean more towards affiliate because then i don't have to deal with calls of i didn't get my item, or its not as promised or I got it but its messed up... or have to deal with shipping packaging etc.. While drop ship has always interested me many of them out there have very little margin or crap products (not saying all but ones i have come across) BUT I do Agree if i wanted the MOST overall profit and was willing to put in the effort handling the product myself would be the way to go in 90% of the cases... One good example where it wouldnt be is in the hay day with blockbuster and their online DVD rental you get a signup you made 50.00 ... there is no way i could compete with that personally as then i would have to buy inventory dvds etc...

for sure pros and cons of each.
I would much rather take care of the fulfillment of any product I sell.
Even the S&H profits are overlooked.... I pocket a min of $3 for every order that goes out the door in addition to the margin of the sale.
and I have employees that do all the fulfillment and customer services. I spend about 2hrs a day working "in" the business.

You are right. BUT for someone lazy and dislikes the hassle of transporting/ shipping/ accounting... bla bla bla, finding a good site selling good quality, innovative, tangible and intangible products is an excellent way to profit.

You may say affiliates earn less; yes when sales are few. What about sales in hundreds, thousands and remember it's of less work/ less hassle as compared to direct dealing with manufacturers and distributing the products to customers.

I am happy with my franchising with an ONLINE Hypermarket.

Cheers!
The cheerful affiliate

Can't agree more with xboxundone.
He has done it, bagging > 50K a month.

I too want that sort of income.

Working hard now in hope of a more relaxed life style, the cheerful affiliate life style.

Cheers!

Originally Posted by TheCEOdr

Can't agree more with xboxundone.
He has done it, bagging > 50K a month.

I too want that sort of income.

Working hard now in hope of a more relaxed life style, the cheerful affiliate life style.

Cheers!

keep in mind it didn't happen over night and i work hard every day to get to that point..... Honestly at times i wish i had a killer product to promote and get affiliates to push it for me. seriously it is a rocking time to be a merchant!!!