DropShip store vs. Affiliate Website?

[johnHarvard]

Lately I have been looking into starting a drop ship website and I've been doing a lot of research into how to get started.

However, I recently learned about affiliate stores. This kind of business seems to eliminate a lot of problems (like: inventory, shipping, customer complaints). You get a commission for every sale that originates at your site.

My questions:
1. which is better - drop ship store or affiliate store? Is the profit margin better with drop shipping?
2. I'm wondering why someone would go to an Amazon affiliate store when they could just start right off with Amazon?
3. I have been looking at ecommerceforeveryone for the affiliate store platform. Any experience with them?

adv<Thanks>ance

[noob]

Look into Revolution202 Partner Network. There are guys there that will help you understand the affiliate business. Much more lucrative than drop ship.

[nexushigher]

dropshipping is good, but it is much better to buy in bulk from distributors or directly from manufacturers and stock some products yourself, the rest of your items can be dropshipped.

then you send the dropshipped orders to your supplier to fill, and ship your own stocked items directly to the customer.

eventually, you might just and up stocking and shipping everything yourself.

[GotLiveChat]

With affiliate program it's less hassle, but then you don't have the customer long-term (the site you referred does now). If you drop ship, then you can always continually market to those customers (for future business).
May be worth going with affiliate program at first (to see how successful you are) -- if it works out, consider switching to drop-ship to hold customers for the long run...