If you’re sick of the standard 9-to-5 work routine, then you might be considering the benefits of starting your own online business. After all, getting started with your own company online is a great way to keep overheads low, while improving your chances of earning some serious profits. What’s more, since more people than ever before are shopping online, you have plenty of opportunities to get some great sales.

If you’re reading this article, there’s a good chance you’re already thinking about running an online business. The question is, would you be better suited to a blogging strategy that might include affiliate marketing, or would you prefer to simply launch an online store? Let’s look at the positives and negatives of each option.

The Benefits of Starting a Blog

When you launch your own blog, the chances are that you’ll be looking for a way to pass useful information on to other people. Usually, this means that you’ll be focused on launching a blog that relates to your personal experiences, or your expertise in a specific area. When you first get started, you’ll need to work on getting people in your readership pool to trust you and think of you as an authority in your niche.

Blogging is a great way to improve your chances of successfully selling a service-based business, as many of the people in your audience may require your services at some point. Depending on your engagement rate, and your audience base, you could end up earning a significant amount of money – particularly if you consider using the affiliate marketing route.

With affiliate marketing, you can add to your chances of earning cash through advertisements and services, by showcasing and selling other people’s products too. The key to success with affiliate marketing is making sure that you’re not too obvious with your selling tactics and choosing products that relate to your chosen industry.

The Problems with Starting a Blog

While launching a blog might be simple enough, growing that blog successfully into a solution that makes you a significant amount of money requires a lot of time, dedication, and effort. You also need incredible writing skills to ensure that you’ll be able to pass useful information to your audience in a way that’s engaging and interesting, otherwise, they’ll struggle to connect to your content.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that blogging isn’t a great way to make money in the short-term. Blogging is a long-term strategy which requires a lot of time and attention on the behalf of the blogger. Depending on the niche that you’re blogging about, your advertising opportunities might be limited, so make sure you make decisions carefully.

The Benefits of Starting an eCommerce Store

While a blog might be great for selling services, an eCommerce store is perfect for selling products. When you launch your own store, you’ll have complete control over the products and services you choose to sell. You’ll also have the opportunity to handle customer service carefully, give discounts as you like, and re-market several products to your audience.

The great thing about eCommerce is that you can launch your store quickly and start making money fast. If you need a short-term solution to making cash, then eCommerce will always be a simpler option than blogging, because you can start selling quickly with paid advertising strategies and social media marketing.

Additionally, there are plenty of shipping and fulfillment models that you can use to improve your chances of success while keeping costs low. For instance, a lot of beginners start by using a dropshipping model, where they don’t have to keep their own products in a warehouse because they’re shipped to a customer by a third party.

The Problems with an Online Shop

Perhaps the biggest disadvantage of running an eCommerce store is the fact that despite having the ability to scale up quickly, you might not make a lot of profits, to begin with. At first, you might just break even until you start to earn the trust and attention of the right audience.

Additionally, launching your own store can cost a lot of money depending on the selling model you choose. For instance, if you want to stock and ship your own products, then you’ll need to invest a significant amount of cash into getting the products you need from a manufacturer and storing them in a warehouse.

Choosing the Right Strategy

Ultimately, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for running the best online business. The route you take will often depend on your personal preferences, and what you’re trying to accomplish. In fact, some people will even attempt to run an online store and blog at the same time to enhance their chances of success.