looking for advice on adding a "physical products store" onto website

1 - If it's a product that adds value, you have the right audience for it, and you can communicate the value to them effectively then yes, it can be very profitable.

2 - Traffic is traffic. If it's targeted already then why pay?

3 - Too broad a question as we have no idea what the product is or your site. But in a general sense, as long as it's not confusing in any way, doesn't slow down the site, etc, then I don't see any drawbacks.

To go along with Jack: Yes it can be profitable if your margins are set correctly, your basically a middle man. Does your website already have traffic? If so are they the right people to buy the products you will have? After your brand matures or if it already is your need for paid traffic may diminish.

What do you sell, what is your digital product about, and what kind of physical products are you looking to bridge/associate it with?

If you are running wordpress why not just use woocommerce instead of shopify?

If you have found a range of products that fits with your market you may want to look at contacting a wholesaler or manufacturer directly and buying some stock that you could fulfil yourself. The profit margins will be a lot better than dropshipping.

The biggest downside of trying to dropship out of China is the delay in getting the product into your buyers hands.

You could do it to test what was popular and then stock the popular items.

Alternatively you could use Amazon FBA to fulfil your orders and have the products listed there and on your website.

One advantage of bringing Amazon into the mix is the shipping times and reduced paperwork headaches etc. Plus you might find you may get people buying not only your product but adding other items to their cart earning you a sale plus the commission on the other products.

There can be downsides to doing it that way because you are sending traffic somewhere else but it can also be beneficial.

Test a few popular items on your website first.

There is not even any need to go down a shopping cart route to test whether people will buy.

Just put a few items listed on a page with a buy now button that goes to PayPal and test whether they buy what you are thinking. It is a whole lot quicker than building something out without having tested the products first.

Try emailing an offer for a product to your existing subscribers and see if they buy direct from the email.

I'd be trying a few things like that first before spending the time and money on building out an ecommerce site particularly if it is going to be dropshipping only.

Best regards,

Ozi

Payment processors is a problem with many new drop shipping websites. They have policies about the product fulfillment and some processors hold earnings for different reasons. For those reasons alone I steer clear because i don't need the headaches. Plus I already have warehouses full of seasonal physical products and manufacture my own line of physical products.



The trick with any wholesale fulfillment business is to own the product wherein wholesale buyers will come to you instead of relying on retail customers to buy from your retail stores.

Thanks for the replies!

I have a lot to learn here. I appreciate the replies!

1.) Absolutely worth it...if it's done well. Not all ecommerce sites earn income. We all know this. Otherwise, everyone would have one. It doesn't have to be shopify as others have said, but yes, add some form of ecommerce to your website that you are comfortable using.

2.) Yes, you can definitely get free traffic, why not? You already have a following, so it's easy to advertise to them for free. You can master IG and FB marketing without paying as well.

3.) Unless it dramatically slows down your site or makes it difficult to navigate, I don't see any drawbacks. You want to make sure your "before ecommerce" conversion rate isn't affected too much. If it is, maybe the design of the site needs to be re-worked to be more accommodating.

To be honest, if you are just okay with using YouTube I think you are limiting yourself in reaching a larger audience. Why not consider Instagram as another source of traffic, after all, it's also a source of free traffic if used properly.

What do you sell. What is your digital product about, and what kind of physical products are you looking to bridge it with?

If you have a popular YouTube channel, a Shopify store could be a great way to monetize that traffic. You could do t-shirts and/or other physical items (depending on your niche).

So, you don't NEED traffic -- you already HAVE (YouTube) traffic.

The HUGE drawback to AliExpress is the shipping time. It's painfully slow... and customers are impatient. However, you might be able to find dropshippers inside the United States. (Or, maybe the UK, too. I don't know where you live, Dr. House.)

Finallly... if you're going to sell physical products, you need to think about where the returns are going to go... and what you're going to do with them.

They will probably come back to YOU -- not the dropshopper (which can be a pain to deal with). But, If you can't sell the returns as new, you can blow them out on eBay.

John

My first thought is that you want to have your physical products in the same or similar niche to match the digital products you already sell. This will ensure that your site makes sinse and is consistent.

Going with drop ship from a shopify store may work if you set it up correctly. Another thought is simply adding physical products as a Amazon affiliate.

According to me it will work, just add products which are relevant to your audience

I don't find any drawbacks in what you are trying to do. If done correctly then it should produce good results. Try and experiment also with other marketing methods for traffic, influencer marketing for example.

It is a great idea to add different upsells to your current product, but only if they make sense and are somehow connected to your digital product.

Say that you are offering a course that helps people to lose weight, you could run a Shopify store to sell gym clothes, yoga mats, blenders for their juice cleanse and whatnot.

You can just drive your current audience and email lists to your store as well without using paid ads.

The only drawback to adding physical products would be that you haven't done enough research on the product and it's just bad quality or that the product has nothing to do with your niche and is not providing any real value to your audience, just monetizing it.

You should definitely add a physical product. This is going to allow you to up sell from your existing digital product which is essentially adding MORE value to what you are already providing to your customers.

Also, due to the fact that you already have an email list and that you use YouTube for traffic.. you should take full advantage of that and keep using these two forms of traffic because not only are they free but you are guaranteed to make sales.

I would recommend that after you start making a decent number of sales with those two forms of free traffic.. to invest into paid traffic but to start off little and gradually scale it.