Shopster - Drop Ship Affiliate Program - HOT!

[Linda Buquet]

I believe, shopster is the next generation of affiliate marketing...

WOW that means a lot especially coming from Joe who's seen it all in this industry.

[andy]

Hi all,

I'm interested in this 'Private label' affiliate program. It sounds promising too.
I'm currently in search of affiliate program like this.
But my main problem is: I lives in a country (Indonesia) not supported by paypal nor clickbank.
As for shopster.com, I checked with their site, tried to regeister and found out that the only supported payment option is only through paypal.

Any other similar program that can work on my condition, guys?

TIA,
Andy

[James Nardell]

Hi Andy,

As far as I know, with international partners, Shopster ususally pays by check unless you specifically request PayPal.

"Shopster pays you your profit check on a monthly basis (with a 30 to 60 day hold for the first payment). With Shopster, you can make as much as or even more than any other retailer on the internet."

In any case...Please send me the details requested on the sign up page by email and I'll have you signed up manually...We'll pay you by check...

My email address is: James [@] Shopster.com

[andy]

Hi Jim,

Thanks for the reply. My mistake. I misread the header. Just successfully signed up, and now my first retail store is up and running. There's still question(s) though:
- The logo is labelled 'Beta'. Why is it? Is it mean that it is still in testing phase. What and how will the final systems looks?
- Is it only supported shipping to US/Canada customers only?

Again, thanks for the reply.

Regards,
Andy

[jmarto]

Originally Posted by Chris

Hi Kim

Thanks for the post, in reply to your questions :

1. If you mail James AT shopster.com he can give you demo access to review the warehouse.

2. You have to have a prefix to launch, but you can then change it to a full domain once live so you sign up with the prefix as something close or the same as the domain you have in mind and once signed up you can put in a domain change request.

Cheers

chris

check this site, now it has its own domain: http://www.yourretailer.com

[jened]

shopster is pretty cool. however i was real disappointed at seeing the shipping costs of the items. like $9+ for a $8 item weighing less than a pound. adding more reduced shipping slightly by only $8 instead of another $9. i think all the items i picked out were like this. this is really high especially considering it's not even expediated shipping and handling. in this day and age of being spoiled by free shipping and flat rate shipping, i feel this is a real showstopper.

[trinity]

I believe that Shopster is in for some tough times unless they can get a handle on their warehouse prices and their shipping costs. At present, one can often get better prices from the same dropshippers that they use than the prices they offer rShop owners.

Couple that with all of the new "add-on" fees, and you have some fairly disgruntled rShop owners at the present.

It would seem that Shopster is trying to make money on both ends..... monthly fees from the rShop owners and upcharging the merchandise. They can't have it both ways and still expect these rShops to be viable.

I've yet to see Michael Barrette respond directly to these concerns.

[Linda Buquet]

Hi trinity,

Thanks for joining 5 Star and for posting. I have been watching the concerns about this program grow and am anxious to hear what AMWSO has to say. Sometimes unfortunately the AM does not have as much control as we would like them to and sometimes the merchant company does what they want to do in spite of advice given. Not sure if thats the case here or whats up.

[trinity]

Hi Linda,

I'm sure that James and Chris at AMWSO are looking into this and will comment in due time. The AMWSO crew is highly respected by the affiliate community and has worked hard to achieve their reputation as honest and forthright players.

Perhaps Shopster was too eager to get out of their beta phase and should have waited until they had worked out more of the kinks in their system. I would like to think that the pricing issues are a temporary bug and will get ironed out soon. If it is not a bug in the system......

[James Nardell]

Hi guys,

Sorry I've been out of touch for a while...I went to the UK on holiday to see the folks and some friends...I was online...Just much less than usual!

I still urge you all to try out the system if you're not already signed up...It is working well for a large number of our partners...I wish I could show you all the sales reports so you could see this with your own eyes...Shopster I will admit has a few teething problems, but we have proven out that the system and the concept really does work...

Trinity...If you find that there is a group of products where the pricing doesn't look right, please bring it to our attention. Some parts of the Shopster inventory is sourced from third parties, and we will approach the relelvant manufacturers directly in order to get better pricing...

The shipping prices will get worked on too Trinity...We know that the prices need to come down, and we will work on acomplishing this ASAP...

I want to reassure you all that if you don't make $25 in sales over a three month period - which really isn't at all difficult if you've got decent targeted traffic - but you are obviously trying i.e. pushing traffic through your store Shopster will not close it down...I will personally make sure that this doesn't happen for AMWSO retailers...

Right now the data feed issue is a moot point...This has cropped up in ABW...The current data feed is for Froogle, and they have stopped accepting our data feeds...Shopster is going to produce data feeds for submission to Shopping.com and all the other major Shopping comparison engines...Here there will be a major value add for some retailers...In the meantime, if you want to request a data feed you will not have to pay a dime...

One thing i want to emphasize is that Shopster have let all current retailers keep their inventory irrespective of how many products are in the store...Some guys have 10,000+ products...You may have to pay for an additional 1,000 products, but this really isn't so bad...I'd argue it's probably highly unecessary for many retailers...Remember that many highly successful online retailers have between 1 and 500 products...Some of the AMWSO merchants turn over 7 figures with a lot less than 1,000 products...We really don't see this is a major issue...Shopster is meant to be for niche stores, and if you feel you need thousands of products we feel you are really missing the point of the system...

I'll post some more soon guys...It'd be great to hear from the successful retailers...I'm pretty sure a few of them frequent this board!!!