Have you ever thought about...

[khalid]

Hey all,

There's a number of users on these boards with names that would make fantastic e-commerce stores and I'm just wondering if anyone has ever thought about turning their .co.uk into a shop front?

There's been a few posts regarding the future of domaining, affiliate marketing and revenue from PPC and I'm curious as to whether you may think it is a better option to move into something with a potentially a profitable future rather than sitting on them or generating revenue from being a middle man (or woman).

I know running a store isn't exactly domaining, but I thought I'd ask the question anyway

 

[bb99]

You can be a middle man (say with affiliate marketing) and you can make some money with very little risk as you don't handle any of the usual internet retailing beefs (customer service, complaints, stockholding, insurance, payment processing, fraud, delivery, etc). But you earn less as a result because someone else is dealing with all that.

If you cut out the middle man and start selling direct then you're faced with all those issues. Even if you don't hold stock and drop ship instead, you still get lumbered with many of the beefs I've listed above (eg returns). But the big plus is you (hopefully) make more money doing it this way.

If you've got a decent domain name, you can still make a good amount of money and rank well in search engines even if you're only a middle man. Which in turn adds value to your domain.

Also it's not unheard of for affiliate merchants to buy up domains with a proven track record of driving good sales to them, or to negotiate better deals for exclusivity ;-)

 

[khalid]

bb99 You raise some good points and regarding

Also it's not unheard of for affiliate merchants to buy up domains with a proven track record of driving good sales to them, or to negotiate better deals for exclusivity

I think you have hit the nail on the head. Prove yourself and you have the upper hand to negotiate.

 

[bb99]

Very much so - it's not just about selling the domain, there's also things like extra commission rates and exclusive content or voucher codes. The world's your lobster if you're getting targetted relevant traffic....

 

[accelerator]

The question is really whether you want to be in advertising or in retail. I would much rather be in advertising because it is much easier to run a highly scalable business and there is a lot less day to day hassle.

Rgds

 

[retired_member4]

Affiliate marketing is simple if you have the right domains. It involves very little work after the initial site setup, and is much more lucrative than parking a name and getting pennies for PPC clicks. I'm really surprised that so few domainers put their domains to work.

 

[squarerobot]

I have to agree, having run an e-commerce business in the past, it's a serious hassle, lots of packing, shipping, customer service and all that time really eats into your margins.

I ran a successfully iPod accessory store for about 3 years before giving up and calling it a day simply because it became too much hassle. I'm now in the process of setting up that domain on myaffsite just because it still gets so much residual traffic from when it was a 'proper' store.

 

[bensd]

Has anyone tried or been successful with the drop shipping model?

I know the profits are less but it takes considerably less time and hassle, plus there is no large initial outlay with having to buy stock.

I have a few store front domains and i am thinking of going down this route.

 

[charlie]

Affiliate marketing is simple if you have the right domains. It involves very little work after the initial site setup, and is much more lucrative than parking a name and getting pennies for PPC clicks. I'm really surprised that so few domainers put their domains to work.

I'm not sure this is true - google actively works against you when you dont update on a regular basis - competition in many areas is tough, you really have to be constantly updating content and features to make good money - compared to say a single domain sale of £5k every month?

 

[retired_member21]

Has anyone tried or been successful with the drop shipping model?

I know the profits are less but it takes considerably less time and hassle, plus there is no large initial outlay with having to buy stock.

I have a few store front domains and i am thinking of going down this route.

Bensd,

If you were to dropship, I'd stick to products < £200 which can be quickly dispatched/refunded and can be easily delivered via Royal Mail (the whole courier embargo really does take ages to get right).

It's when things go wrong that the dropship model can often cause a headache.

- Out of stock
- Stock enquiry speed
- Multiple suppliers/delivery dates
- Faulty goods / returns (argh)
- Incorrect delivery
- Low order volume (won't be responded to by suppliers/taken seriously)

These things and more, mean any bad reputation will be on your company, not your supplier and it's often frustrating when you want the best for your customers and have been let down as the middle man.

If you can find a great dropshipping company (white label) then by all means go for it, but if you aren't sure I'd seriously put your efforts into stockholding your own stuff (small qty) or go for an affiliate site.

I've just spent 18-24 months working on an e-commerce dropship operation, and if it'd been an affiliate site would've been making far better money and been far far far less hassle

 

[mally]

I bought Zippo lighters. of a forum member, defo hard work, posting and customer comments and problems are regular issues

 

[MattUK]

I've looked into drop shipping before, but it always works out to be more hassle than it's worth. There are very few reliable suppliers with good products, and those of them that are any good are already being hugely over promoted.

I've always wondered about getting in touch with some smaller business that aren't trading online already and coming to an ad-hoc affiliatte agreemnt with them.

 

[dashu1]

I'm now doing drop shipping only on my leather handbags site.

It works well, but can cause a lot of headaches as pointed out by Nick - I've had wrong products sent, products sent to the wrong address, products not sent at all, multiple products sent, etc, etc, etc.

In the end I've dropped all of my previous handbags suppliers except 2 since they were hopeless, the 2 remaining ones are excellent - I now just have the customers to contend with

It's a good business model if you can work at it - we make the same 50% GM that shops do, we have credit accounts with the suppliers, we never handle stock, & all it takes is a couple of emails per day.

I'd highly recommend going to trade fairs though & talking to different manufacturers to find out who's who & discuss things with them.

 

[stender]

I'm yet to go down the dropship route, have thought about it but seeing as half the companies can't send orders out correctly for themselves doesn't inspire me that they'll do mine ok.
If I could get a domain specific to a small product and can find a decent supplier I would probably buy my own stock rather than dropship but you obviously need capital for that.

Re affiliate shops, what do you mean by that? are you talking about ready made affiliate sites? I find with a lot of the ones that the affiliate companies offer aren't very seo friendly and if you do your own you have the hassle of constantly checking for dead links.
I had a good one using a buy at product feed but it wasn't updated very often and when it was they would never alert you to the fact there was a new feed.