affiliate marketing vs. E-commerce - for a newbie

hello, i would like to know what would be the best way to start with an online business. Best means, that the chances to loose much money and time should be small, and also it would be good if it would be something with which i could learn much about internet marketing in general. As far as i know it is easy to start with affiliate marketing in small niches. No big investemts are needed. In e-commerce if i should do dropshipping also no big investments are needed as far as i know, with the chance to sell own brands later (white label). Probably in both, drop shipping and affiliate marketing the learing curve would be steep. With what i would end up in the long run i don´t know, i will decide later, but right now it is important to start somehow where chances of loosing much money or time (maybe because this field is not profitable anymore???) are small. What would you suggest? By the way, i am from germany, so i would „sell“ to german audience. thanks

is dropshipping still profitable?

In my experience, affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to get started. You will need to write plenty of content (which will take time), but hardly any money needed. If you're in Germany, you've got a nice opportunity to create a site in German reviewing Amazon.de products.

Once you've got some traffic, you can add dropshipping to your affiliate site, there's nothing stopping you having multiple revenue channels.

Focus on building traffic. You can always monetize it later.

I started with affiliate marketing and i must say im glad i did

You're going about it WRONG...

No joke.

Look for the TRAFFIC FIRST

Find traffic sources first

Build a way to create a community from these sources

Figure out what they NEED

Then build your business

TRAFFIC FIRST! Build your business around it