3 replies to this topic

[Jimbo]

In addition to consultation services as a Cartographer I am looking to go into wholesale distribution services related to our field. Several products I want to sell include GIS, vector products such as Illustrator, computer sales, GPS, & other essential software packages such as Microsoft Office Professional. All of my services will be through affiliation where I will be collecting comissions, & dropshippers. What I want to know are the experiences & advice of those in this industry can give for the newbies?

[Hans van der Maarel]

In addition to consultation services as a Cartographer I am looking to go into wholesale distribution services related to our field. Several products I want to sell include GIS, vector products such as Illustrator, computer sales, GPS, & other essential software packages such as Microsoft Office Professional. All of my services will be through affiliation where I will be collecting comissions, & dropshippers. What I want to know are the experiences & advice of those in this industry can give for the newbies?

You may also want to look into becoming an affiliate for places like maps.com and Interkart. Amazon.com offers a similar deal as well.

If you want to go the affiliate route, getting visitors to your site is key. Look into Google Adwords, and how to optimize their use.

It may be more interesting for you (finance-wise) to focus on a couple of key products and try to add value to those.

Hope this helps.

[Jimbo]

Hire a research team; (if your willing to spend some more money), that's another good way to find resellers & affiliations with other companies. Those who are interested in this industry with little money to spend should strictly look for affiliations, it's a good start & when you do make enough profits start looking at resell services. Fortunately I was able to find out that some of my suppliers also have affiliation programs, why not, if your going to buy from them you might as well sell for them, perhaps this might be a good way to get discounted prices for your own software needs.

[Hans van der Maarel]

perhaps this might be a good way to get discounted prices for your own software needs.

It usually doesn't work that way. If you intend to use the software commercially, count on having to pay full price for it.