Affiliate marketing, drop shipping, etc. - Anyone here making real money online?

[LeeH]

I can't watch a Youtube video without an ad featuring a 27 year old standing next to a Lambo in front of a mansion telling me that I can make $50K/month if I buy their course to learn affiliate marketing or drop shipping.

So I know these guys make their money selling courses, but let's say I don't need $50K/month. What if $10K/month is enough? Anyone here pursued any of these money making methods with any success?

[petrolhead611]

If it was so easy :for these guys to make lots of money, why do they need to sell courses as well?

[widebody911]

He's making $50k a month convincing other suckers they can make $50k a month if they buy his course...

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by widebody911

He's making $50k a month convincing other suckers they can make $50k a month if they buy his course...

And this has been going on since the days of snake oil.

The master of it all was a cat named Joe Karbo

[MBAtarga]

I've got an ebook for sale for $29.95 with free shipping.

The title is "How to Write a Book and Make Thou$and$"

[sammyg2]

Not to change the subject, but have you heard of The wonderful line of products from a company called AMWAY?
How about nutrilite vitamins and dietary supplements?
Not only are they incredible values, they offer a lucrative income opportunity to anyone willing to sell sell sell!

[Zeke]

^^^You forgot Herbalife, not to mention:

5Linx
ACN Inc.
AdvoCare
Ambit Energy
Amsoil
Amway[13]
Amway Global, previously known as Quixtar
Arbonne International
Avon Products
Beachbody[14]
Beautycounter
BioPerformance
Discovery Toys[13]
doTerra[15]
Forever Living Products
FreeLife
Fuel Freedom International
Herbalife
Isagenix International
Juice Plus
Kleeneze
LegalShield, previously known as Pre-Paid Legal Services
LifeVantage
The Longaberger Company[13]
LuLaRoe
Lyoness
Mannatech
Market America
Mary Kay[13]
Medifast
Melaleuca[16]
Morinda Bioactives[17]
National Safety Associates
Nature's Sunshine Products
Neal's Yard Remedies Organic
Neways
Nu Skin Enterprises[13][18]
NXIVM[19][20]
Omnilife
Oriflame
The Pampered Chef[13]
Primerica[13]
Qnet, previously known as QuestNet, GoldQuest, and QI Limited
Rodan + Fields
Shaklee[13]
SeneGence
Stream Energy
Success University
Sunrider[13]
Tastefully Simple
Telecom Plus
USANA Health Sciences
Vector Marketing
Vemma[21]
ViSalus
Wakaya Perfection
Watkins Incorporated[13]
World Financial Group
XanGo[18]
Young Living
YTB International
----------------------------------------------------
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multi-level_marketing_companies

[stomachmonkey]

I built an ecommerce solution for P&G for a couple of specific skus in their line.

They were constantly running coupons and specials to move product online.

Once or twice a month they would call, "we have a customer asking for a refund, we have a record of shipping them the product but we can't find their payment. The accounting is correct, orders shipped correlates with revenue booked so we are pretty sure we got paid."

Was making me crazy for about 6 months. One day I happened to sort the DB a different way to find something specific and I see this huge chunk of identical email addresses and think "who the F is ordering hundreds of units?"

So I take a closer look and all the purchases are the same person but the ship to's are all different. I go to the URL associated with the email address and it's a site that has hundreds of products for sale. I find my clients products and it turns out he is using the promo products and for example if the promo was free shipping he would drop the product price a bit but charge shipping so the total was higher than if someone bought direct from the client. If the promo was a BOGO off he would sell two units at discount and offer free shipping.

So his customers would buy from and pay him then he would buy from P&G and have them drop ship.

It was freakin genius because he controlled his affiliate rate.

I call client to tell them I figured out the missing payments and at first they were pissed until I pointed out to them that the guy moves a lot of volume for them at their full price without having to pay him a commission so think carefully if you want to shut him down.

They let it go.

[id10t]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

Not to change the subject, but have you heard of The wonderful line of products from a company called AMWAY?
How about nutrilite vitamins and dietary supplements?
Not only are they incredible values, they offer a lucrative income opportunity to anyone willing to sell sell sell!

It is possible to make the $ on these kinds of things - One of my cousins on my dad's side of the family and her husband became VERY wealthy via Amway, but it took a while, and they started a long time ago. Also, as soon as they were making some $, they made it work for them and did real estate, etc. in S Florida. Very well off.

But... success like that is the edge case, and the only advantage Amway,etc. gives over any other type of job is that with Amway, etc. you have the flexibility to make/have time to invest in making more $ in other ways.

Now my former boss has a relatively easy way to make money online - she's teaching English to international students (China IIRC) and is getting close to $40/hr. She keeps it very part time, about 15 hours per week, but she is doing some sort of "work for free rent" deal in various state and national parks and traveling the country, so she has minimal overhead. But if you were to really do it, there is the potential there for 60-80k/yr

[wdfifteen]

About 10 years ago there were people selling magazine subscriptions on eBay. They auctioned subs to magazines for as little as $10 with the promise that “your first issue will arrive in 8 to 10 weeks.” Then they took the money and disappeared. We only found out about it when we started getting complaints about non-delivery from people we had never heard of. We went to the mat with eBay to get them to stop it. eBay claimed it was an issue between the buyer and seller and as the manufacturer it was none of my business. It took 6months to convince them that it was damaging my brand and they needed to stop it.

[porsche4life]

As others mentioned, if they were so successful they’d be focusing on their business, not in classes. Similar to real estate, the best realtors don’t have time to sell seminars.


I looked into a few of them out of morbid curioustiy as there is a fair bit of overlap with my industry. Most of them seem to use Shopify, and the tricks are all in selecting the right products, getting them bought and fulfilled at the right price, and getting interest from buyers drummed up. IMHO a smart guy like you could make similar money on Amazon if you found the right products at the right prices.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by id10t

It is possible to make the $ on these kinds of things - One of my cousins on my dad's side of the family and her husband became VERY wealthy via Amway, but it took a while, and they started a long time ago.

And she most likely didn't have a friend left in the entire world ......

[Brando]

I have a client that wanted to break into the Amazon marketing side of things. I spent some time reading up on Reddit: /r/FulfillmentByAmazon/ and /r/AffiliateMarket/ can be some good places to read up about getting started.

It started as a good opportunity for people to buy from online bulk sites like Alibaba or direct from Chinese manufacturers, while making sure you don't have too deep an inventory for your sales. Now it has turned into "first to market" for a product before 5 to 10 to 50 "sellers" - who are really shills selling direct from China. It has also devolved into a lot of power-struggling between manufacturers of products and sellers of those products.

[asphaltgambler]

My understanding is that selling information has the highest profit margin of ANY product or service. The only 'cost' is organizing and 'putting' that into some type of media like DVD, CD, video, etc.

If you market that successfully, move lots of media - you'll become very wealthy, lather-rinse-repeat

[cstreit]

You can make SOME money doing it - but not on commodity items. If a bunch of other people sell already you will invest more time in building and administration than its worth.

Expect margins in the 5-8% range and low business volume because the consumer now expects shipping same or next day for free (amazon effect). So if you are selling a $100 item you will make $5 on it, have to answer 20 emails for each sale - and still do all the accounting. In other words - less than minimum wage.

The exception is if you provide a unique offer.. ...but if it were THAT unique - it wouldn't be available for affiliate sales and drop ship.

My qualifications? I've had an eCommerce side business that is largely automated for 15 years. Happy to chat with you if it helps.

[LWJ]

Buddy used to buy some kind of special light bulb by the vanful at Home Depot. Sold them on eBay. Did it many times. Odd.

[LeeH]

Originally Posted by porsche4life

As others mentioned, if they were so successful they’d be focusing on their business, not in classes. Similar to real estate, the best realtors don’t have time to sell seminars.


I looked into a few of them out of morbid curioustiy as there is a fair bit of overlap with my industry. Most of them seem to use Shopify, and the tricks are all in selecting the right products, getting them bought and fulfilled at the right price, and getting interest from buyers drummed up. IMHO a smart guy like you could make similar money on Amazon if you found the right products at the right prices.

Yep... seems like the trick is to find a unique product and sell it to a unique niche. The dog market is not a niche market. Male/Harley owner/dog lover is a niche.

I get that those selling courses make their money there, but I know people do make reasonable money using Amazon FBA and dropshipping from Aliexpress.com after selling on Shopify with Facebook ads. Funny, but my sister sent a link to a guitar related watch to my nephew who is a professional guitarist. The guitar watch was priced at around $65. I found a very similar one on Aliexpress for <$4.

[sammyg2]

no one goes there anymore, it's too crowded.

[Jims5543]

wrong thread

[ckelly78z]

If I were making $50,000 a month (plenty for me, and my family), why would I want to increase the competition by sharing all my secrets ? This is nothing more than a scam to get yourself a course on how to make money selling other people on "how to sell courses to others."