The biggest difference I found was due to drop shipping generally being unresponsive to customer satisfaction. As an affiliate you have no contact with the consumer of the product or item, you are paid a commission and the merchant deals with things like shipping damage. As a drop shipper, the customer is paying you and you are responsible when things don't go right. I quickly moved away from drop shipping when the first complaint cost more to replace than repair and shipping is additional.

I enjoyed making the replacement so much I decided to manufacture my own products and skip the drop shipping experience. That way I only had that one order to fix and better income until I retired. I consider drop shipping to be the ugly cousin of MLM as a marketing method.

@not2easy: thanks for sharing Your expirience, very useful for me! :)