Understand what eCommerce Marketing is and discover the benefits and the disadvantages in this eCommerce marketing overview. Learn about the types of eCommerce products to sell, training and more.
Explaining eCommerce Marketing
E-commerce marketing is very similar to affiliate marketing. However it usually deals more with physical products sold directly from your website. This includes having your own shopping cart and checkout process using credit cards and services like PayPal.
Strategies for getting traffic and advertising are much the same as you would do in affiliate marketing. You have more responsibilities on what you are selling than what you would promoting an affiliate offer.
Drop Shipping
The most common type of eCommerce marketing is “Drop shipping”. With Drop Shipping you align yourself with a warehouse or handler that stocks and ships certain products. You make the consumer aware of these products by advertising. This would be the same process as you would use in affiliate marketing. The major difference is, you are now responsible for the product. If you would like to read more about drop shipping, Click Here…
Your consumer purchases the product through your site, in other words you’re the middle-man. Then you place the order to your handler or warehouse, they process the order and ship it. This is nice, because you do not have inventory to manage or shipping to deal with. The downside of this would be returns. If your consumer wants to return the merchandise, you are the one that deals with returns and the refunds.
There are many suppliers, wholesalers and warehouses that have this process automated. If an order comes through your website, it then processes the order straight to the supplier. However, you may still have to handle the returns and refunds yourself.
Affiliate And eCommerce Marketing Differences
With affiliate marketing, you point the consumer to a vendor’s store and they handle the whole selling 
process. As an eCommerce entrepreneur, you are the store, customer service and middle-man.
With drop shipping, your profit comes from price margins. You may be able to sell a golf club for $30, but your cost is $20. You can actually have control over your profit margins.
Affiliate marketing gives you no control over profit margins. Your income is bound by a set commission you get from each sale. However your involvement is just pointing consumers to a product and you are done.
Your Own Product
It is still eCommerce, if you make your own product such as a craft-work and sell it on your website. You can purchase products and inventory them yourself. In this scenario, the full load eCommerce Marketing is on you. All orders, payments, shipping, refunds and returns are solely on you.
The nice advantage to selling your own product is the profit margin increase. You control your product cost and remove supplier fees completely. Although you can make arrangements with a supplier to inventory your product and make it automated.
This is much like a brick and mortar business, you are basically a store owner. However your store is virtual so you do not have that overhead but still a store none the less. Some people prefer this type of business over being just an affiliate and the potential of making big money is really good.
Digital Products
Selling digital goods such as eBooks, games and music can be much easier than handling physical goods. With physical goods, there is the issue of dealing with inventory and ensuring the inventory is kept up to the demand. Whereas a digital product is one file stored on a server. You have an endless supply of inventory. Another advantage is, your consumer gets the product immediately after purchase.
You can also sell through other companies such as eBay, Shopify, Amazon, Bonanza, Etsy, Rakuten and Newegg. Selling merchandise through other sites usually incurs fees but the benefit is advertising. These sites already have the traffic, so getting found will be much easier.
eCommerce Marketing Through Your Own Website
With your own website, you control the layout and functions with no restrictions. When selling on a company site, they often set limits on how much you can sell or what you sell.
With your own website, you sell as much as you want and anything you want. However, the issue of being on your own, is Traffic. Running your own website takes on a new burden of task. Getting traffic to your site becomes a new job.
Traffic
Traffic can be purchased but “paid traffic” can get mighty expensive. Buying traffic can also be a bit of a gamble. You have to have good ads that convert people into buyers. There are ad companies that can handle your advertising and if you have the budget, it could be a good investment.
Quality Traffic Site Examples:
Advertising gets expensive but there are alternatives to driving traffic to your websites. There is FREE Traffic, also known as organic traffic. Organic traffic means that visitors come to your site naturally. They find you through search engines. The trick is, getting your website and products SEO Optimized.
Training Resources
As Internet Marketing has grown through the years, companies and organizations have formed to offer training. There are some unethical entities out there and you really have to be careful who to turn to. Many years back, I run across a group that offered everything you need to know for Internet Marketing.
Wealthy Affiliate offers both a free plan and a paid plan. Both provide excellent training along with awesome support. What makes Wealthy Affiliate so great, you get more than just normal support. You get a whole community of people from newbies to complete experts to ask for help from.
So for learning SEO, (Search Engine Optimization), how to build a website, and all the in’s and out’s of Affiliate and eCommerce Marketing, you would use Wealthy Affiliate.
Drop Shipping Training
As for learning how to make a real income through Drop Shipping, SaleHoo is one of the highest resources online. SaleHoo is a powerful research tool, supplier directory, and online community for dropshippers, wholesalers, and e-commerce stores.
They provide all the training to start your Drop Shipping business. This is especially made for beginners just starting out. Their Directory provides over 8,000 local and global suppliers. If your desire is Drop Shipping, this is where I would suggest getting start from.
See the “Training” page for more information about groups, programs and organizations to help become an online success. There are too many scams and misinformation out there, my goal is to get you pointed in the right direction.