This is a great question because there are so many possible applications for an online business by integrating the two, especially for existing dropshipping ecommerce websites. So yes, you definitely can combine Dropshipping and Affiliate Marketing.

How do I combine Dropshipping and Affiliate Marketing?

This question is best illustrated by an example. You have an existing dropshipping website in the health and wellness space that sells physical products such as yoga mats, foam rollers and theraband. Some of the content your using to attract customers via SEO talks about the importance of nutrition for a balanced healthy lifestyle; but you’re unable to source supplements and vitamins that are of the quality you want to sell on your site. Yet you still want to offer vitamins as part of your range to complement your other products. Simple answer – there are many affiliate programs available in the supplement field – you merely link to these in your content, and receive a commission if someone buys. This is a simple way to improve the revenue of your site as a whole – though you don’t receive the full amount of the sale or control the price of the product, you are gaining revenue where previously you had none.

Are there other ways to combine Dropshipping and Affiliate Marketing?

If you’ve been clever and have an email list of previous dropshipping or for that matter affiliate marketing customers, there’s good news. Why not market to these customers using products from the other business model. Again, as an example, say you have a health and wellness ecommerce website and a list of previous customer email addresses. As always, past customers are much more likely to convert than new customers, so why not leverage your goodwill by sending them an email describing to them how an affiliate product can be of benefit to them, and linking to this product via an affiliate link. While you’re at it, you can talk about your latest dropshipping products and link to them as well.

Email marketing is a whole other field in itself – if you’re interested, check out my article on ‘targeted emails’ for some insight into what’s possible.

Combining Affiliate Marketing with Dropshipping can raise your revenue

I hope from these examples you can see how combining the two online business models can help increase your overall revenue by filling in gaps in your dropshipping product range. Affiliate Marketing I would regard as a more passive form of income and generally requires less maintenance than Dropshipping and its associated customer service and supplier relations. Check out my main article Affiliate Marketing vs Dropshipping for more information.

Affiliate Disclaimer: In case you were in any sort of doubt, yes, I’m an Affiliate in some manner for some of these programs and products. I like to practice what I preach. If you are intending to utilise any of these offers I’d love if you went through one of these links to support my site.