In How To Make Money Online, I focused on the online business model and essential processes. In fact, there are a few specific methods of making money online:

• Blogging and becoming an authority figure in a particular subject matter. Monetization comes when you have load of followers and web traffic
• YouTube/Instagram/Facebook Page authority sites, again leveraging on network of followers you have built up
• Affiliate Marketing, essentially having a web presence and promoting products (usually digital products) carried by others
• E-commerce website carrying your own products
• Drop Shipping, a retail concept where you only focus on promoting specific niche products while the fulfillment of products is done through say Aliexpress, Amazon etc (read further on drop shipping)

Does drop shipping work?

I believe drop shipping would work provided:

• you have identified a good profitable niche and understand your target market very well
• you still have sufficient margins to do a certain degree of paid ads (and you have to be very good at the specific ad campaigns like SEM or Facebook ads)
• you constantly refresh your products or extend product range to your existing customer base you have built up

Drop shipping does not require huge start up costs and is very scalable according to your success rates. I do think it is a good platform for beginners working on internet businesses.

However, as online shoppers get more and more sophisticated and start researching on products across different online shops, a drop shipper is always going to lose out because of much lower margins they enjoy.

I therefore think in order to thrive on a drop shipping business, one has to evolve to a hybrid model where you eventually also carry your own products to enjoy better margins; and you have established your own branding in terms of SEO rankings, social media followings etc.

Short article here to share our perspective on drop shipping and please let us know what you think.

Anspire Consulting offers various digital marketing services, we welcome you to contact us for discussions.