There are options if dropshipping is not the best strategy for your e-commerce firm. If outsourcing fulfillment is what you want to do, here are a few choices:

Use third-party fulfillment to outsource the storing and shipment of your products.

Instead of dropshipping, some merchants make bulk product purchases and then employ a third-party fulfillment company to store the products, pick and pack orders, and manage shipment to customers.

With this strategy, you can buy things upfront and possibly for less. Additionally, you can: 

• Evaluate the quality of the goods before shipping them to the fulfillment center.
• Offer discounts and promotions on your products.
• Offer subscription services or product bundles through some providers.

Fulfillment by Amazon: A dropshipping substitute with extra benefits

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) provides similar advantages to dropshipping, but you have more control over your brand’s experience. Although Amazon is a selling channel worth considering given its 200 million monthly unique visitors, you do not need to sell things there to use FBA.

You keep your goods in an Amazon fulfillment facility via FBA, and Amazon:

• Offer Prime Shipping for rapid delivery.
• Controlling customer service
• Organize your returns.
• Notify you when products need to be restocked

How FBA operates

• Send Amazon the goods and quantities you’d like to fulfill after making your decision.
• Products are delivered to Amazon’s network and kept in Amazon fulfillment facilities.
• Amazon picks pack and ship the goods on your behalf when orders come in.
• Amazon handles customer support and returns for these orders.

Create your products with your branding 

You can need specialized goods with your logo during your company’s existence. Selling branded goods can help your company expand by doing the following:

• Make your company stand out from other e-commerce firms.
• Create a distinctive online experience to gain consumer loyalty.
• Creating a distinctive online store brand
• Increasing brand awareness to support the introduction of future products
• Create your brand’s identity as a resource.

Some retailers look for a dropshipping vendor to include customized elements like unique packaging and branding and produce branded or white-label goods.

Having a company make branded goods in large quantities and then using FBA for distribution is an additional choice. Using this technique, you can benefit from Amazon’s quick Prime Shipping, which will help you stand out

Concentrate on promotion to use affiliate marketing to make money.

If you’d prefer to completely skip managing clients, orders, and returns, affiliate marketing is something to take into consideration. Affiliate marketing is an entirely new business strategy.

Affiliate marketers don’t sell any goods. Instead, they market goods for an online store and get paid when a customer purchases via a unique referral link.

While affiliate marketing is more of an advertising strategy than a retail one, it can nevertheless have advantages like lowering startup or overhead expenses while allowing you to grow an audience and earning money when things you recommend to your audience result in sales.

How affiliate marketing works

You are engaging in affiliate marketing by promoting a product online and providing a link for buyers to use to purchase it. Customers can instantly place an order on the website they access by clicking the link. You get compensated when a buyer uses your referral link and purchases something. Order Confirmation, fulfillment, and delivery are all handled by the supplier.

An existing asset, such as a blog or email list, can be made more profitable through affiliate marketing. Because you don’t store, process, or ship the products, you could be able to run your business with only a small overhead. You can also:

• Launch an affiliate marketing business by utilizing your website or social media accounts.
• Outsource customer management to your supplier, which then acts as the seller of record and handles customer communication
• Outsource returns or order management to your supplier

If you employ affiliate marketing as opposed to dropshipping, your supplier handles product returns. As a result, there can be a predetermined period during which the provider hangs onto your commission payment before paying you.