Are you someone who’s interested in hair styling and looking to make some money with this passion? Then you must have heard of hair extensions before. There’s a growing demand for this product on the internet causing hair extensions online businesses to sprout everywhere.
How can you overcome this competition and maximize your profit? Here are 3 marketing models that I’ve analyzed to help you get started.
1) Buy and Sell
Probably one of the most traditional methods, this model requires you to source for the product, buy them at wholesale price and resell them at a higher profit margin. Searching for the right quality, packaging the product and marketing them online – the entire process can be very time consuming and laborious.
In addition, you run the risk of stock pile up. Let’s say you buy hair extensions that are of poor quality or doesn’t meet the style of your online customers, you are literally stuck with hundred over products that nobody wants unless, you sell them for half the price that you offer. Then, you would be running your business at a loss.
If you do get them to sell, you’ll need manpower to manage orders, packaging and restock the products. This is not the work of a one man show and you’ll need to build a team in order to keep your sales at a consistent level.
Final thoughts – High overhead and too risky; Verdict – Not recommended
2) Drop shipping
In essence, drop shipping is fulfilling an order and getting a third-party (suppliers) to deliver the product straight to the customers without going through you. This model has become quite popular since marketplaces like eBay and Amazon open their doors for people to list their products.
One of the biggest advantages with this business model is for the obvious reason – you don’t keep stocks. You only process orders and the suppliers will do all the shipping. But there are some caveats to this.
- Firstly, you need to find a reliable supplier; they not only have to deliver promptly, but they also need to deliver good quality hair extensions.
- If they fail to achieve either one, you’ll have to bear the consequences of handling customer complaints or processing refunds. Very troublesome if you asked me.
- If you list on eBay or Amazon, you have to commit to their (hefty) listing fees that can take a big chunk out of your earnings.
- Since anyone can join, you’ll be facing with a lot of competitions in your product category.
Having said that, some suppliers are now offering website platforms for people to run their business independently away from the crowded marketplaces. These services claim to provide you with the best hair extension products AND marketing channels to boost your sales. However, after scrutinizing a few platforms, I find that these setups are a bit shady.
- Firstly, they make you buy into various membership plans in order to get access to their product features. On top of that, they charge you a sign-up fee.
- They don’t really tell you who they are or make their product information visible, for example where their products come from.
- You can’t find any positive reviews about their services online (except for those on their websites).
- They will provide all resources for free (even the website is free) to help you generate a lucrative income.
- I would be very cautious with the last offer. If there’s one thing you need to know about building a successful online business, drill this into your common sense – free websites are UNRELIABLE. They don’t have good backups, they don’t rank on the search engines and they don’t belong to you.
- If the XYZ company decides to terminate their services one day, all your effort will be gone and wasted. The only place that you should be creating a business website with are companies that specialize in domain and hosting services because that’s what they do best.
Final thoughts – Too competitive with potential scams; Verdict – Not Recommended
3) Affiliate Marketing
In this third model, you build a business by affiliating with reputable merchants. Every time you refer a buying customer to their site, you’ll earn a sales commission. You convert readers mainly through product reviews, which means you offer people information based on your experience first, before promoting a certain type of hair extensions to them.
From the reader’s point of view, such approach offers more benefits than all those products listed on a marketplace that are trying to grab your attention.
For example, if you are affiliated with Luxy Hair, you will be sending your readers to this gorgeous looking website to do their shopping.
This reputable company offers so much engaging visuals and videos that even a novice like me feel like buying one. On your blog, you can also leverage from their extensive YouTube tutorials to teach readers how to improve on their hair styling techniques, what type of extensions is suitable for them and ways they can implement to prevent their hair from becoming damaged. Overall, they make their brand trustworthy because of the amount of information that they are willing to share for free.
Luxy Hair offers a $10 sales commission for every purchase made. Although this might look like a small sum initially, keep in mind that this income is recurring as long as you keep your blog active with helpful content and social engagement. With good targeted traffic, you could potentially attract hundreds (if not thousands) of readers to your product review.
So if you do the math, $10 x 100, that’s $1000 of online income generated WITHOUT any inventory investment. You do have to pay for your domain and hosting fee, but you can easily break even, considering how high the commission payout is for this particular affiliate program.
Final thoughts – Low risk, easy to start and value added; Verdict – Highly recommended 🙂
Start Your Business With a Strong Foundation
If you have mingled with ladies in the salon, wedding parties or people with thin hair problems, you’ll know that there’s a huge market online for hair extensions. Do you think people want to buy something that’s cheap, or do you think they prefer something that can change their lives?
I am sure you’ll choose the latter. So reflect that in your hair extension online business. Be unique and be creative. Your readers will thank you for that.
If you like to learn how to become a successful affiliate marketer, check out my recommended training platform here for more details.
Have any thoughts or questions? Please leave them in the space below and I’ll respond to you the soonest.
You may also be interested to read;
How to Become a Beauty Blogger in 5 Days
I disagree – drop shipping is a very good way to sell hair extensions. There are vendors out there where you do not have to pay high fees to get access to wholesale pricing and offer tons of resources for you when starting out.
Hi there Lisa, can you provide us some information about these vendors or your experience with them if you have any? Thanks.
Hi,
I am impressed with this post. I think the beauty niche is a great niche to be in and there is a lot of money to be made from popular products like hair extensions. You make me want to start a beauty blog! The affiliate commission from Luxy hair is really good too.
I think someone could make a killing in this niche. I have a hair appointment in a few days and I wonder if my stylist would be interested.
Hello Cathy,
Your blog is one of the most interesting blogs I’ve read lately. When I started reading and it was about hair extensions, I didn’t know how this would connect to the affiliate marketing but you have done a very smooth transition indeed.
I like the way you have contrasted and reviewed the first two options and proved them risky. The way you have explained about affiliate marketing is exceptional and that makes you very creative. I’m a fun of hair extensions so every time I do buy them for my wife. I think this is a powerful and innovative way to do business online on hair extensions.
This is a great post on how someone interested in hair extensions can get started in an online business.
I like the ideas of drop shipping, and in particular, affiliate marketing. I think a lot of similar businesses, someone with similar interests to hair extensions can grow a business online via affiliate marketing.
As you suggest though, having a strong foundation in place is the key to success in an online business!
Hair extension products – what a great idea. I am sure people knowledgeable in the hair trade, including hairdressers can use this post to boost their income substantially.
Most people think that it is difficult to build a website for their businesses, which is why they prefer to get somebody else to do it for them, but they don’t realize they can do it for a fraction of the cost using the tools that you recommend.
Hello Cathy!
Such a great post. Totally applicable in any business situation based on what I’ve read. In today’s marketplace, affiliate marketing is the way to go. We need to embrace this change and exploit the benefits of this method of running an online business. Otherwise, looking for the right supplier and all that would be the second best, but such a hassle though.