WORDPRESS
9 Best WooCommerce Multi Vendor Plugins (Compared)
Are you looking for the best WooCommerce multi-vendor plugins?
Creating your own online store is great, but you could potentially earn more money by letting other sellers rent a small part of the space. With multi-vendor plugins, you can turn your eCommerce site into a professional-looking marketplace, such as eBay, Amazon, or Etsy.
In this article, we will go over the best WooCommerce multi-vendor plugins so that you can allow other sellers to promote their products on your website.
Why Do You Need a WooCommerce Multi Vendor Plugin?
A WooCommerce multi-vendor plugin allows you to turn your store into a marketplace where vendors can easily sell their products. It adds a feature to your WooCommerce site where other users create their own stores and manage products, payments, and orders.
Rather than trying to tinker with code, WooCommerce multi-vendor plugins are the fastest way to get started.
Creating a marketplace might be useful if your website has a large audience who wants to buy certain products. Maybe you can drive traffic to the marketplace but don’t have the products to sell.
In that case, you can just bring sellers onboard to your marketplace and earn a commission for each sale.
Here are just a few advantages of building your own eCommerce multi-vendor website:
- Earn a commission: As mentioned, you can piggyback on the sales generated by vendors on your site. This is similar to dropshipping, where you can make money online without having to deal with the hassle of managing inventory or shipping.
- An expanded audience: The more sellers on your eCommerce platform, the more customers you’ll have. Each seller brings their own word-of-mouth contacts, established customer base, and social media presence, which means more visitors to your platform.
- Sell a wide range of products: Every seller can add their own unique products or services. This can be either physical or digital products. It’s a win-win for everyone because customers have more products to choose from.
- Save on costs: Creating a marketplace usually takes a huge upfront investment, such as hiring developers to code a website that offers multi-vendor functionality.
With all that said, let’s look at the top WordPress multi-vendor plugins available so you can create a beautiful marketplace that attracts both buyers and sellers.
1. WC Vendors
WC Vendors is the best WooCommerce multi-vendor plugin out there, and it has all the features you need to convert your online store into a marketplace and begin selling third-party products online.
You can easily accept registrations from potential vendors. That way, they can hop on board and start selling on your platform. You can require admin approval, or vendor submissions can be approved automatically.
That said, if you require a more comprehensive application process, it’s best to use a dedicated form builder.
For example, WPForms would allow you to create a multi-page user registration form to collect all the information you need. You may want to ask sellers about the types of products they sell, their current revenue, and whether they already have a retail store.
In addition, the plugin offers plenty of customization options. Individual vendors can create their own storefronts, and they have the ability to easily upload products, manage inventory, and fulfill orders.
Best of all, you can set the commission rate to a fixed or percentage rate. You can even set up a tiered system where you reduce commission rates for top sellers to incentivize them to keep selling on your website.
If you are not ready to commit to a paid plan, then WC Vendors offers a free version to help you get started. You can easily allow vendors to register, and you can set up a commission rate for sales. Beyond that, all vendors have the ability to publish products.
That said, if you want more advanced features, such as creating service or digital product marketplaces, offering more SEO compatibility, adding auction capabilities, and creating membership plans, then you need to install the Pro version.
Pros:
- With its launch wizard, WC Vendors is easy to set up.
- WC Vendors make it easy to accept vendor registrations.
- You can accept customer reviews and ratings on each product page.
Cons:
- While there is a free version, the best features are paid.
Pricing: Starts at $99.50 per year.
Why We Recommend Using WCVendors: We recommend WC Vendors as the best choice for turning your online store into a highly profitable marketplace. It has all the features needed to sell physical products, handcrafted and second-hand goods, digital products, services, and more. Plus, since the plugin supports many WordPress themes and plugins, you can easily integrate all sorts of marketing apps to boost sales and conversations.
To learn more about its features, check out our complete WC Vendors review.
2. Dokan
Trusted by over 60,000+ marketplaces, Dokan is one of the most popular WooCommerce multi-vendor plugins on the market. Like WC Vendors, it lets you create your own online marketplace, similar to Amazon, eBay, or Magneto, in under 30 minutes.
What’s great about Dokan is that each vendor gets their own customizable dashboard on the storefront. They can easily control and navigate each aspect of their store, like creating product listings, managing orders, creating coupons, and viewing sales reports. However, the backend access is restricted to those with admin access only.
Dokan has arguably the most available payment gateways, with over 100+ integrations, including Apple Pay, Stripe Express, Google Pay, Razor Pay, and more. Vendors can enjoy automatic payment distribution, meaning that the plugin automatically calculates and distributes payouts with the commissions already included.
Also, vendors can easily manage shipments as well by selecting their own shipping zones or setting flat-rate shipping. It’s a good idea to have a built-in shipping calculator at the checkout page so customers can view the final price to avoid unexpected surprises.
Pricing: Free to get started with limited features. But if you want a full-featured marketplace with product bulk edits, multiple commission types, and reporting, the plans start at a one-time fee of $559.
Pros:
- Dokan has 20+ extensions, allowing you to add a lot of different functionalities to your marketplace.
- The plugin has a built-in order tracking system so vendors and customers can see the status of their shipments.
- It is an easy-to-use plugin with an intuitive interface.
Cons:
- Dokan’s paid plan is more expensive than WC Vendors.
- It doesn’t have advanced commission settings like WC Vendors.
Why We Recommend Using Dokan: It’s hard to argue against Dokan, especially with all of its add-ons and integration capabilities. Dokan also provides all the essential features you need, like commission settings, vendor customization, and more.
3. MultiVendorX
MultiVendorX is one of the best plugins for creating a niche marketplace. What’s cool about MultiVendorX is that you are not limited to making just an eCommerce marketplace.
You can also add subscriptions, auction features, or even a rental marketplace. Let’s say you wanted only to sell handmade goods, similar to how you would use Etsy. With MultiVendorX, you are in total control.
MultiVendorX gives you a wider range of monetization strategies than other platforms. While you can charge a commission fee, you can also charge subscription fees, listing fees, pay-per-contact, pay-per-action, or a mixed model. Pay-per-contact and pay-per-action would be best suited to a service marketplace.
For example, when a user books a table at a restaurant through your marketplace, you would get paid for that.
MultiVendorX also offers an easy-to-read analytics dashboard so that you can view sales performance. You can filter by vendors, products, product categories, and more.
There’s even a Google Analytics integration that allows you to track your traffic sources. That being said, we recommend using MonsterInsights to get insights from Google Analytics directly in your WordPress dashboard.
Pricing: Free to get started, but if you want advanced features, plans start at $399 per year.
Pros:
- Lots of available monetization strategies.
- Vendors can create a product catalog.
- You can create many types of niche marketplaces.
Cons:
- Paid plans are more expensive due to their diverse feature set.
Why We Recommend Using MultiVendorX: If selling products isn’t your main focus, then MultiVendorX might be the perfect solution. It allows you to create niche, subscription-based, and auction marketplaces. So whether you want to be the next eBay or Craigslist, there’s something for everyone. The plugin offers many monetization options, so you are not just limited by charging commissions, either.
4. WooCommerce Product Vendors
WooCommerce Product Vendors is an official plugin from WooCommerce that allows you to turn your store into a powerful marketplace. At its core, the plugin lets you:
- Build a diverse community of sellers.
- Set a commission rate for each vendor.
- Receive detailed earnings and sales.
While vendors don’t have the same level of customization over their storefronts as plugins like WC Vendors or Dokan, they do still have some control. For example, they can manage their shipping rules, view sales performance, control their public profiles, and send customers tracking numbers.
The biggest advantage to using this plugin is that it’s a part of the vast WooCommerce ecosystem. It allows you to sell anything from digital downloads and handmade products to music, themes, photographs, and more. You could even sell services and have customers book appointments using WooCommerce Bookings.
Pricing: It costs $119 per year.
Pros:
- You can tailor the appearance of vendor pages to align with your brand.
- Woo Product Vendors allows you to onboard new sellers easily with a customizable registration form.
- Vendors can manage their product listings, orders, and inventories.
Cons:
- Vendors must have PayPal accounts to use the plugin’s automatic payout feature, which can be very limiting for sellers in certain regions.
- It doesn’t allow vendors to customize the front end of their store.
Why We Recommend Using Product Vendors: WooCommerce Product Vendors is a simple solution that lets you easily turn your store into a multi-vendor site. You can enable commissions based on a set amount, percentage, store, product, vendor, or individual. Beyond that, you can set payouts to send on a schedule like weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly.
5. YITH WooCommerce Multi Vendor / Marketplace
YITH WooCommerce Multi Vendor is a beginner-friendly WooCommerce multi-vendor plugin that allows you to create and manage an eCommerce marketplace similar to AliExpress, SHEIN, or Amazon. It comes with both free and paid versions, so you can test the tool before making a commitment.
What’s unique about the YITH WooCommerce Multi Vendor plugin is that you can customize what appears on the vendor side. For example, you can perform actions like setting the seller’s header size and color, customizing the related products section, and more.
You also get instant compatibility with all of the YITH plugins. For instance, if you wanted to add reviews of all products to each listing, then you could connect your site to the YITH WooCommerce Advanced Reviews plugin.
Pricing: It costs $149.99 per year.
Pros:
- You can easily set up your marketplace.
- The plugin allows you to customize the registration form and approve or reject vendor applications.
- As the marketplace owner, you can set vendor permissions.
Cons:
- Vendors don’t have a lot of customization options to personalize their own store.
Why We Recommend Using YITH WooCommerce Multi Vendor: We like the YITH WooCommerce Multi Vendor plugin because it gives the owner a lot of control over what vendors can and can’t do. You can set the commissions and permissions. for instance, you can decide whether you want to allow them to generate coupons, manage reviews, or limit the number of products they can publish.
6. WCFM Marketplace
WCFM Marketplace is a free marketplace plugin from the WordPress repository. It has a lot of the essential features you’d expect, like flexible commissions, vendor registration, bulk product uploads, and more.
Vendors have a lot of control over their shipping rates. They can set them by zone, country, distance, weight, country, and even zip code.
The plugin also gives the marketplace owner a lot of control. For instance, you can set the rules for withdrawals and disbursements. It also supports reverse withdrawals in the event that a customer requests a refund.
You can configure the refund settings for vendors. For instance, you may want refunds to be auto-approved or set up to enforce a threshold number of days for permissible refunds.
But if you want additional features, then the WCFM Marketplace has a wide range of paid add-ons. For example, the WooCommerce Frontend Manager addon allows you to set store hours, store vacations, add reviews, and more.
The Analytics addon gives you the ability to analyze visitors and sales by product category, specific products, traffic sources, etc.
Pricing: Free to get started, but they offer a variety of premium extensions available that range between $19 to $249+.
Pros:
- Marketplace owners have a lot of control over setting rules for operating their multi-vendor stores.
- It is a relatively affordable plugin with a free plan.
- Vendors can configure the store’s SEO by placing appropriate keywords.
Cons:
- There are complaints about the quality of customer service.
- You need to pay for add-ons to allow vendors to customize and manage the front end of their stores.
Why We Recommend Using WCFM Marketplace: WCFM Marketplace is a good option with a wide range of feature sets for both the marketplace owner and vendors. Plus, unique customizations such as seller verification and badges are available. The verification ensures a seller verifies they are a real person, and the badge will showcase the best vendors on your site.
7. Easy Digital Downloads
Easy Digital Downloads is a popular plugin for selling digital products like ebooks, courses, audio, pdf, templates, and more.
While it’s not a WooCommerce plugin, it’s the best choice for people looking to turn their website into a digital product marketplace.
With the Frontend Submissions addon, you can configure your own eCommerce store for selling third-party products. Once configured, you can allow anyone to sell digital products through your store, similar to Etsy or Gumroad.
On the front end, vendors can register to become sellers in your marketplace. Upon approval, they’ll be given access to a vendor dashboard, where they can create new products, add product pages, manage orders, access revenue stats, and communicate with customers.
What’s also cool about this addon is that it integrates with the Reviews extension. That way, customers can rate and leave reviews on the products they’ve purchased. Vendors get valuable feedback about their products and can leverage these reviews as social proof for more orders.
Everything is drag-and-drop, so vendors can easily build out their product listings without writing code. All they do is add a product description, upload images, and set their pricing.
For a full tutorial, check out our complete guide on how to create a digital product marketplace in WordPress.
Pricing: Starts at $99.50 per year.
Pros:
- Easy registration process for vendors.
- Vendors can easily create their own storefronts since everything is drag-and-drop.
- Vendors have the power to track their stats and communicate with customers.
Cons:
- Easy Digital Downloads is geared towards selling digital products, not physical products.
Why We Recommend Using Easy Digital Downloads: If you plan on selling digital products, then Easy Digital Downloads is the perfect choice. While it’s not a WooCommerce plugin, it still works for all WordPress websites. Easy Digital Downloads also comes with a wide range of extensions like multi-currency capabilities, email marketing service and payment gateway integrations, add-to-cart pop-ups, and more.
Other Useful Plugins for WooCommerce Websites
Besides having a WooCommerce multi-vendor plugin to simply create the marketplace, you might want to download a few additional tools to help provide sellers and buyers with a better user experience.
Here are a few tools to consider.
8. TeraWallet
TeraWallet is a free WordPress plugin that lets your customers easily store money in a digital wallet on your multi-vendor marketplace website.
Returning buyers can add money to their wallets using a variety of payment methods and later use it to make purchases. With this plugin installed on the website, customers won’t have to fill in their payment details every time or for every vendor they purchase from.
Beyond the core wallet functionality, TeraWallet has a useful cashback and rewards system that allows you to provide discounts to customers based on their purchases.
For instance, you can set cashback rates for specific categories or products and even provide bonus cashback during special events or seasonal promotions. This is a great way to build customer loyalty and drive more buyers to your marketplace.
Pricing: Free to use
Pros:
- The plugin is free to use.
- Customers can deposit funds, transfer money to other users, and make purchases with their wallet balance.
- Customers can even make partial payments with the balance and the remainder with their credit cards.
Cons:
- It’s not a multi-vendor-specific plugin, so it works for regular WooCommerce and online stores, too.
Why We Recommend Using TeraWallet: We like TeraWallet as a plugin to improve the user experience. If you want your customers to keep returning to your website, then it’s a good idea to ensure a seamless checkout experience. With TeraWallet, customers can keep an account balance, and sellers can reward them with cashback.
9. Product Feed PRO for WooCommerce
Product Feed PRO for WooCommerce is a plugin that helps you set up better eCommerce marketing campaigns.
It helps you add product feeds to your marketing channels, such as Facebook, Google Shopping, Bing Ads, and others. Adding these feeds will help you showcase your top sellers, which help you boost their sales. Best of all, this plugin has an unlimited number of products you can put in your product feeds.
In addition, you can set various filters and rules to show only your vendor’s most profitable products. You can exclude products that are low on stock, have low-profit margins, or only include products on sale.
Pricing: Free to use
Pros:
- Free and paid versions are available.
- Filter rules so you can show the best products for your marketing campaigns.
- 100+ templates included for marketplaces and comparison shopping engines.
Cons:
- It is not designed explicitly for multi-vendor sites, so each seller does not get their own control set.
Why We Recommend Using Product Feed Pro for WooCommerce: We like Product Feed Pro for WooCommerce because it’s a good way to help advertise your marketplace. Adding product feeds to your Google Shopping campaigns will allow you to showcase some of the most popular products on your website and, in turn, help out your vendors.
How to Choose the Right WooCommerce Multi-Vendor Plugin
Not all WooCommerce multi-vendor plugins are made equal. That’s because you may have specific needs that are different from those of other eCommerce marketplaces.
But still, here are some key features and factors to consider when making your decision.
Vendor Management Tools
At the heart of a successful eCommerce marketplace is the ability to easily manage multiple vendors. So, you’ll want to look for vendor management features such as:
- Unlimited product uploads and variations
- Inventory management
- Sales data and reporting dashboard
- Shipping management
- Vendor Registration
For instance, WC Vendors provides a full vendor dashboard so you can see all of your orders and shipment status.
The idea is that the plugin should be able to handle all multi-vendor activities, contributing to smoother operation.
Individual Vendor Stores
Your branding plays a vital role in attracting vendors and customers. That means your chosen platform offers a high level of customization.
These customization options may include things like flexible layout designs, adjustable themes, and personalized storefronts for vendors. Each vendor must have its own independent storefront with unique URLs that customers can send.
On top of that, vendors should have the power to add custom dashboard logos, unique headers, and product descriptions.
Commission Structure
Since you are responsible for driving all the traffic to your marketplace, it’s a good idea to have a commission structure in place.
The best multi-vendor plugins offer a flexible commission system. Under this system, you can charge vendors a fixed or percentage fee for every successful sale made through your platform.
For instance, WC Vendors allows you to set multiple commission types. You can even offer tiered commissions based on product price, product sales, or total sales.
Essentially, it allows you to take a small cut to provide the customer base, infrastructure, and platform so that vendors can sell their products or services.
Payment Gateways
Without convenient payment gateway options, there’s a good chance your visitors will abandon their shopping carts.
No matter how many pop-ups, social proof, countdown timers, or other trust badges you add, customers need a reliable payment option they can trust, like Stripe and PayPal.
These are trusted WooCommerce payment gateways available in most countries. They allow you to process credit card payments. Furthermore, customers know they can always contact these payment providers should a problem arise with their order.
Integration and Third-Party Apps
Your multi-vendor plugin is just one part of your entire eCommerce ecosystem. You’ll need other third-party apps such as inventory management systems, email marketing services, accounting software, and help desk plugins.
For example, adding various WooCommerce shipping plugins is probably helpful so that customers can calculate extra fees before checkout and track their orders after making a purchase.
WC Vendors offers integrations with UPS and FedEx shipping plugins, which is helpful for getting accurate shipping costs and handling returns.
Navigation and Search
When customers land on a marketplace site, they expect a smooth shopping experience. Slow website performance or a lack of mobile responsiveness are a few factors that could increase bounce rates.
But beyond that, it’s helpful to have a search bar on your site along with a filter option. For example, WC Vendors provides a sorting feature so users can easily sort through products by rating, price point, and popularity.
They also have an intuitive search functionality so shoppers can find the products they’re looking for without needing to scroll through pages of product listings.
Documentation and Customer Support
When an issue comes up, getting the error fixed should be the top priority. That’s why you want to look for a multi-vendor plugin with a dedicated support team that you can easily reach.
It should also provide a comprehensive knowledge base with documentation showing you how to perform every single function offered by the platform. Ideally, there should also be a way to submit a support ticket or a live chat feature where you can speak with a customer service representative.
Frequently Asked Questions About WooCommerce Multi Vendor Plugins
What is the best multi-vendor plugin for WooCommerce?
Based on our experience and testing, WC Vendors is the best multi-vendor plugin for WooCommerce. Its combination of user-friendliness, customization, and diverse feature sets makes it the most popular choice for building your own online marketplace.
Why create a multi-vendor marketplace?
Creating your own marketplace allows you to stand out from the pack. You can create niche multi-vendor platforms to serve a specific audience, such as a marketplace for hand-crafted goods or an online booking system for online contractors. The possibilities are endless. By creating a multi-vendor site, you can earn an additional income stream with commissions and serve a niche audience.
With all that in mind, WC Vendors is the best overall multi-vendor plugin for WooCommerce since you can sell physical goods, digital products, services, and subscriptions. That said, MultiVendorX offers multiple monetization methods like charging a subscription model, listing fees, or pay-per-action.
We hope this article helped you find the best WooCommerce multi-vendor plugin for WordPress. You may also want to check out our curated list of the best WooCommerce plugins for your store and the best WooCommerce WordPress themes.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
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WP Engine sues WordPress co-creator Mullenweg and Automattic, alleging abuse of power
Web hosting provider WP Engine has filed a lawsuit against Automattic, and WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, accusing them of extortion and abuse of power. The lawsuit comes after nearly two weeks of tussling between Mullenweg, who is also CEO of Automattic, and WP Engine over trademark infringement and contributions to the open-source WordPress project.
WP Engine accused Automattic and Mullenweg of not keeping their promises to run WordPress open-source projects without any constraints and giving developers the freedom to build, run, modify and redistribute the software.
“Matt Mullenweg’s conduct over the last ten days has exposed significant conflicts of interest and governance issues that, if left unchecked, threaten to destroy that trust. WP Engine has no choice but to pursue these claims to protect its people, agency partners, customers, and the broader WordPress community,” the company said.
The case document, filed in a court in California, also accused Mullenweg of having a “long history of
obfuscating the true facts” about his control of WordPress Foundation and WordPress.org
The story so far
Mullenweg had criticized WP Engine for infringing WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks. He called them the “Cancer of WordPress” and also called out WP Engine’s private equity partner, Silver Lake, for not caring about the open-source community.
Later, WP Engine sent a cease-and-desist letter, asking Mullenweg and Automattic to withdraw these comments. Automattic then sent its own cease-and-desist, accusing WP Engine of infringing WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks.
Notably, Mullenweg banned WP Engine on September 25 from accessing WordPress.org resources, including plug-ins and themes, and preventing WP Engine customers from updating them. Two days later, Mullenweg provided a temporary reprieve and unblocked WP Engine until October 1.
On Wednesday, Automattic published a proposed seven-year term sheet that it had sent to WP Engine on September 20, asking the hosting company to pay 8% of its gross revenues per month as a royalty fee for using the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks.
Alternatively, WP Engine was given the option to commit 8% by deploying employees to contribute to WordPress’s core features and functionalities, or a combination of both people hours and money.
WP Engine didn’t accept these terms, which included a probation on forking plugins and extensions from Automattic and WooCommerce.
You can contact this reporter at [email protected] or on Signal: @ivan.42
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Automattic demanded web host pay $32M annually for using WordPress trademark
“WPE’s nominative uses of those marks to refer to the open-source software platform and plugin used for its clients’ websites are fair uses under settled trademark law, and they are consistent with WordPress’ own guidelines and the practices of nearly all businesses in this space,” the lawsuit said.
Mullenweg told Ars that “we had numerous meetings with WPE over the past 20 months, including a previous term sheet that was delivered in July. The term sheet was meant to be simple, and if they had agreed to negotiate it we could have, but they refused to even take a call with me, so we called their bluff.” Automattic also published a timeline of meetings and calls between the two companies going back to 2023.
Mullenweg also said, “Automattic had the commercial rights to the WordPress trademark and could sub-license, hence why the payment should go to Automattic for commercial use of the trademark. Also the term sheet covered the WooCommerce trademark, which they also abuse, and is 100 percent owned by Automattic.”
Automattic alleged “widespread unlicensed use”
Exhibit A in the lawsuit includes a letter to WP Engine CEO Heather Brunner from a trademark lawyer representing Automattic and a subsidiary, WooCommerce, which makes a plugin for WordPress.
“As you know, our Client owns all intellectual property rights globally in and to the world-famous WOOCOMMERCE and WOO trademarks; and the exclusive commercial rights from the WordPress Foundation to use, enforce, and sublicense the world-famous WORDPRESS trademark, among others, and all other associated intellectual property rights,” the letter said.
The letter alleged that “your blatant and widespread unlicensed use of our Client’s trademarks has infringed our Client’s rights and confused consumers into believing, falsely, that WP Engine is authorized, endorsed, or sponsored by, or otherwise affiliated or associated with, our Client.” It also alleged that “WP Engine’s entire business model is predicated on using our Client’s trademarks… to mislead consumers into believing there is an association between WP Engine and Automattic.”
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5 Most Profitable Online Businesses You Can Start Today for Free!
In today’s digitalized world, starting a business doesn’t always mean you have to have a good chunk of money and years of experience in the field. Yeah, it’s good if you have them, but even without them, you can start a business and make money. Not just a few hundred dollars; some businesses can even make you a millionaire if you invest your time and available resources into them.
You need to have the right approach and the proper set of skills to make that happen. And you can learn such skills for free on the internet. So, all you need is the willingness to put in the work and effort it needs.
In this post, you’ll see 5 most profitable online business ideas that you can start today for free. You don’t need anyone to help you with these businesses when you’re starting out; you can do it all alone, and you can manage these businesses from the comfort of your home.
Even if you don’t know a single thing about these businesses, you can learn them for free on YouTube, Udemy, and the Interent. There’s more than enough free resources out there about these topics to take you from 0-10 real quick.
So, sit down and grab your popcorns, because this article might be the only thing you need to launch your first online business, today itself!
Please note: This post contains affiliate links to products I use, trust, and recommend. If you choose to purchase a helpful product using these links, I may receive a small commission for referring you – at no extra cost to you. These funds help me keep this blog up and running.
1. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the most profitable and easy-to-start businesses out there. In affiliate marketing, you need to promote someone else’s product in order to make money. The person who promotes the product in exchange for some commission is called an affiliate.
When you sign up to be an affiliate of any program, you’ll get a unique link to promote the products called an affiliate link. You need to use your affiliate link to send customers to the seller’s page. That link tracks the amount of sales you generate to determine the money you make.
You don’t need to create, package, or ship the products yourself. The seller who is selling the product will do these all. All you need to do is, refer customers to the seller. And when the customer referred by you through your affiliate link makes a purchase, you get a small percentage of the sale amount as a reward. That’s it. That’s what affiliate marketing is!
Through affiliate marketing, you can promote both physical and digital products.
You don’t always have to sell products to earn affiliate commission. Sometimes, you get commission to make people download something. That can be an app, software, or browser extension. Sometimes, you get commissions to make people sign up for particular websites or services. Sometimes, you get commission to generate leads for businesses and agencies, etc. All these things need to be done through your affiliate link in order for you to make a commission.
How to Get Started?
1. Choose your Niche
You need to choose a niche to start affiliate marketing. You can’t promote everything from workout gear to making money online courses yourself! So, choosing a niche is very important to succeed in affiliate marketing. Some popular niches for affiliate marketing are: health & fitness, finance, home & kitchen, technology, relationships, etc.
2. Find the Product
After choosing a niche, you need to find a product to promote. If you decide to get into the health and fitness niche, then you can promote workout plans, weight loss supplements, keto meal plans, hair loss products, and so much more. So, decide what you want to promote and find a good product for it.
3. Build a Platform
Now, you’ve decided your niche, and your product is ready to promote, so all you need is a platform to promote it. You can promote affiliate products either through a blog or through social media. You can write articles on your blog or grow your social media accounts to share your affiliate links.
Here are some popular affiliate marketing platforms you can join.
The affiliate marketing industry is worth nearly $17 billion. So, you can start your affiliate marketing journey today to get a small chunk of that seventeen billion dollars for yourself!
2. Selling Digital Products
Selling digital products is another great way to make a hefty amount of money online. Digital products are a great way to share your knowledge and creativity with the world while making some money.
Digital products are products that are created and sold online. They don’t exist in the real world, except for printables. Printables are graphics that are created digitally but needs to be printed out in the real world to be used.
From ebooks to online courses and printables to music, there’s a wide variety of products that you can create and sell.
Here are some digital products that you can create and sell easily.
If you’re wondering which digital product sells the best and which one you should sell, consider this analysis done among 96,000 creators by influencers.club. According to the analysis, online courses were the most sold digital products, with 35.7% of the entire digital products sold, followed by ebooks (7.3%) and cookbooks (3.8%).
Here are a few more:
Check out 16 Best Digital Products to Sell in 2024
How to Get Started?
1. Choose Your Niche
The first step to building a profitable digital product business is to choose a niche that you’re interested in and have a demand in the market. You can select a niche based on your expertise, passion or to profit from an untapped market opportunity. Make sure that there are enough people willing to pay for your products so that you can make a good amount of money selling them.
2. Create Your Product
After choosing a niche to get into, you need to create a solid product to sell. In order to get constant sales, your product needs to be highly valuable. Either it needs to solve your customer’s problem or it needs to add significant value to their life. Make sure that your product is up-to-date, functional, and user-friendly.
3. Set up a Platform to Sell
Now that you have decided your niche and your product is ready to sell, all you need is a platform to host and sell your products. You can either sell digital products through your own website or through platforms like Etsy, Gumroad, Teachable, etc.
You can sell ebooks, printables, planners, digital arts, wallpapers, templates, etc. through Etsy and Gumroad. And to sell online courses, you can use platforms like Teachable or Udemy.
You can use graphic design tools like Canva and Adobe Illustrator to create printables, stickers, templates, wallpapers, etc. And you can write your ebook on Google Docs or Notepad and save it as a pdf to sell it.
4. Price Your Products
After your product is ready and you’ve decided a platform to sell, you need to set a price to sell your products.
Pricing is a really crucial part. You can’t price it too high or too low. If you price it too high, very few people are likely to buy it, and if you price it too low, you won’t make enough profit.
So, while pricing your product, evaluate the product yourself and do your market research to analyze your competitors pricing to determine your own product’s pricing.
You can promote your digital products by creating video/image content, writing blog posts, email marketing, paid ads, SEO, and through social media marketing.
Digital products can be a great way to make money online passively without needing much work and attention. So, this might be something you would love to get into! The best part is, there is no limit on how much money you can make. Ana from TheSheApproach has made over $55,000 selling ebooks alone through her small blog.
3. Print on Demand
Print on Demand, or POD, is gaining immense popularity in recent times due to its business model. Print on demand business has less to no startup cost, which makes it easier for anyone to get into it.
In Print on Demand business, you create designs to print on mugs, t-shirts, hoodies, caps, pants, etc. After your design is ready, you find a print-on-demand supplier to print and sell your products.
Unlike other type of businesses, in POD, the products are not produced first and listed for sale later. Instead, the products are promoted first and only produced or printed when a customer places an order.
In POD, your job is to create designs and market your products. Your POD supplier will do everything else, from printing, packaging, and delivering the product. They will even handle the returns if they have to.
How to Get Started?
1. Choose a Niche
First of all, choose a niche you want to start your business in. Choose a niche that has huge demand in the market and something you’re interested in. For example, if you’re interested in sports, you can create designs related to sports, print them, and sell them.
2. Create Your Designs
After you’ve chosen your niche, you need to create designs to print on products. Good designs attract more eyeballs and generate more sales compared to plain, low-quality designs. So, put your maximum effort into creating good designs. Your designs might be the only differentiator between success and failure of your POD business.
3. Choose a Print on Demand Supplier
After your design is ready, you need to find a good and trustworthy POD supplier to print and supply your products. Choose a supplier that uses high-quality materials to create products, has less fees, low shipping time, good customer support, and large area coverage. These things are crucial for your business’s success.
Here are some popular print-on-demand suppliers:
4. Set up Your Store
Now that your product is ready to sell, you need to find a platform to sell it. You can sell your POD products on Etsy, WooCommerce, or eBay, or setup a Shopify store to sell them. Your store must be clean and colorful to convert more visitors into customers.
5. Price Your Products
After your store is setup, you need to price your product. Make sure to check your competitors prices before pricing your own products. You can’t sell your products for significantly more than what your competitor is selling for. If you do so, you won’t get as many sales as you would have with a lower price point.
You can market your Print on Demand products mainly through social media and paid ads. You can start and grow a social media account to promote your POD products for free.
The print-on-demand market is worth more than $7.24B in 2024 and is projected to reach $43.4B by 2030 with a growth rate of staggering 26.8%. So, this might be the chance to dip your toes into the world of ecommerce with print on demand.
4. Dropshipping
Dropshipping is one of the hottest and most popular online business right now. It has made thousands of teenagers and 20-year-olds millionaires, and its craze is not going down anytime soon.
Dropshipping is a business model where you find a product, advertise it, and generate sales, but someone else produces, packages, and ships them for you.
You buy products for less price from retailers or even manufacturers and sell them for a higher price through your own store. For example, if I find a cool watch on Alibaba.com that I can buy for $7 a piece, then I will create my own store to advertise that product and sell it for $20, $30, or even more. That is how you make money with dropshipping.
In dropshipping, you don’t have to worry about producing product, packaging, shipping, or keeping a product inventory because whenever an order comes in, you forward that order and customer’s details to your supplier, and then your supplier will produce, package, and deliver the product to your customer. There are several tools and softwares to automate this entire process. Here you’re basically a middleman reselling the products.
How to Get Started?
1. Find a Product
To start a dropshipping business, first you need to find a product that solves a specific problem of your customers. Sometimes the product can be a fashionable or decorative item like a watch. The product has to have a high potential to sell. In the world of dropshipping, a product that solves a problem and has a high potential to sell is called a winning product.
2. Find a Supplier
After finding a good product to sell, you need to find a supplier who can supply you the same product for a cheaper price. A supplier can be the making or breaking point of your business because your job is to promote the product and bring customers. Everything except that is done by your supplier, so if you find a good supplier, you won’t have or have very few problems in your business, and vice versa.
So, before choosing your supplier, check their product quality, delivery time, packaging style, and customer service. A good supplier must have high-quality products, low delivery time, good packaging quality, and good customer support.
AliExpress is the go-to platform to find suppliers and products at a cheaper price, for dropshipping.
3. Build Your Store
After you’ve found a good product and a reliable supplier, you need to build a store to market your products. You can create your store on platforms like WooCommerce, Shopify, GetResponse, and Wix or sell them directly on Amazon or eBay. The design of your store must be clean, simple, and colorful to get more sales.
4. Market Your Store
After your store is setup and ready to sell, you need to advertise it, to bring customers to it. To advertise your store, you can use social media, paid ads, content marketing, SEO, and more.
Most dropshippers advertise their store through either Facebook or TikTok ads and through content marketing by creating viral pieces of content for TikTok, Instagram reels, and YouTube shorts.
That’s it! That’s how you can start your own dropshipping business and profit from the $250B dropshipping industry.
5. Dropservicing
Now you know what dropshipping is, but have you ever heard about dropservicing? Huh? Dropshipping deals with selling physical products, but dropservicing is all about selling services.
Dropservicing, also known as service arbitrage, is a business model where you sell services to clients. But instead of doing the work yourself, you outsource the work to a third-party service provider, either a freelancer or an agency. In dropservicing, you’re basically a middleman, just like in dropshipping, who acts as a service seller in front of clients to make money without doing any work yourself.
Whatever remains after paying your service provider from the amount your client paid is your profit. For example, if you find a client who is ready to pay you $1000 to edit a video for him. Then you find a freelancer or a video editing agency who can edit the same video for $400, then you can keep the remaining $600 with yourself. The more you charge your client and the less you pay your service provider, the more money you make. Didn’t understand? Read it again, you’ll get it!
How to Get Started?
1. Choose a Niche
To start a dropservicing business, you must be good at some kind of skill or a particular niche. That can be web designing, video editing, graphic designing, content writing, etc. Even though you’re not the one doing the work, you need to have proper knowledge and skill in the field to convince your client that you’re capable enough and a perfect fit for the work.
2. Find Your Service Provider
After you’ve decided your niche, you need a service provider to do the required tasks for you. While choosing a service provider, you need to make sure that they are good at what they do; otherwise, you’ll end up with a low-quality output that may not satisfy your clients and may not fulfill their requirements. You can find service providers on platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer, etc., or on social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn.
3. Setup a Platform
After you’ve decided your niche and found the service providers, you need to market your services in order to get clients. To do so, either you can create your own website, create a profile on freelancing platforms, or promote your services through social media.
While setting up a platform, you need to add your portfolio, past works, pricing, client testimonials, and contact information. Don’t worry if you don’t have any of these! You can add your service provider’s portfolio and client testimonials as yours while setting up your platform.
4. Set Your Prices
Before you launch your dropservicing business, you need to set a price for your services. While setting up pricing your services, find out how much your service provider is charging for the service you’re going to sell, and set your prices accordingly. For example, if your service provider charges $400 to edit a video, you can set your video editing price at $600, $700, or more.
You can promote your dropservicing business through content marketing, SEO, social media marketing, cold outreach, paid advertising, and freelance platforms.
Cold outreach is a process where you reach out to or contact someone via email who doesn’t have any connection with your business. The email is meant to aware them about your product or service and provide them with an offer.
Best Platforms to Start Your Business
If you’re thinking of starting a blog to get into affiliate marketing, then I would highly suggest you create your blog on either Wix or WordPress. These two are the best blog builders out there.
And if you’d like to create your own website to promote your digital products, dropshipping/dropservicing business, and print-on-demand products, then I would suggest you use GetResponse’s simple drag-and-drop website builder. It’s very easy to use and completely free to create and manage a website for lifetime. Getresponse also has its own email marketing tool, so, if you want, you can even start email marketing with it for completely free!
Tips to succeed:
1. Stay Consistent: You won’t see results overnight, so you need to be consistent to get results and make money.
2. Learn, Learn, Learn: Whatever business you get into, learn about it as much as you can. Learning will help you gather more knowledge about the topic, which ultimately helps you to get better results and earn more.
3. Be Patient: Many people give up too early because they are really, really impatient. Remember, great things take time, and if it were so easy and fast, then everyone would have done it.
4. Provide Value: If you want to make money, then you need to provide something that is equally valuable to your customers. So, make sure your main motive is to provide value along with making money.
So, these were the 5 most profitable online business ideas that you can start today for free. Let me quickly recap them for you. 1. Affiliate marketing 2. Selling digital products 3. Print on Demand (POD) 4. Dropshipping 5. Dropservicing. Make sure to give them a try if you’re thinking of starting an online business. And tell me in the comments, which one of these businesses would you start if you have to?
