otc_cmnn - 9:37 pm on Apr 14, 2005 (gmt 0)

This is a big part of our business model. We deal with many suppliers who drop ship items direct to consumers. It is MUCH more labour intensive than an aff program but at least you are building your own customer base, control your own promotions, and building value into your own 'brand' or domain. Running a warehouse and stocking inventory is an expensive part of an online operation.

In fact this is Amazon's new model as well. They are dealing with 100's of dropshippers all over the country and taking 15pts instead of the 5-8% most affiliate programs are offering.

I'd say if you are generating more than 20k per month in sales for a merchant/product than it is worth persuing this angle. Provided there are 3-4 merchants/products you are doing this for.

You are in for a world of hurt at first dealing with merchant accounts, shopping carts engines, fraud detection, phone support, refunds, datafeeds, etc etc.

But once you are running smooth, you are headed up a road paved with gold. We did 3.5M in sales last year and never bought a peice of inventory until after we sold it. Had we stuck with the aff model, we probably would have done 1M is sales and put 8% of that in our pockets. (mind you my children might know what I look like... so there is an advantage there)

But I highly recommend it if your have tenacity, capital and LOTS of time.