Shopster - Drop Ship Affiliate Program - HOT!

[James Nardell]

Hi neverknow1,

I just need to clarify what you wrote. Shopster has two programs; the program for retailers, and the program for affiliates.

The affiliate program uses Shareasale as the tracking network, and therefore uses Shareasale cookies. The retailer program i.e. you build a Shopster store using the system does not use cookies. There is an internal tracking system that is to all intents and purposes 'cookie free'.

Please check out the information on Shopster and how the system works here: http://www.amwso.com/shopster.php. There's loads more at: http://www.shopster.com.

[Starfire]

If you elect Shopster's 6% profit margin markup, you'll have to sell an item in your Rshop for $83.33 just to make a $5 profit. With only a 2% profit margin, the same item will have to sell for $250 to earn $5. To recover the $99 to-join fee, you'll have to make $1,650 in sales (at 6% profit margin) or $4,950 (at 2%). The monthly membership fee of $29 will require you to consistently make monthly sales of $483 (at 6%) or $1,450 (at 2%) just to break even. People probably won't mind paying Shopster's higher prices for low cost items, but the profits you make will be only pennies in most cases - seriously! If you sell costlier
items, people will usually do some comparative shopping before buying, and probably end up buying elsewhere for less money.

[James Nardell]

Hi Starfire,

It entirely depends on the products you are selling as to what margin you can work with. Many products/product ranges will allow for much more than 6% margin and they will still be priced at competitive levels.

A 2% margin would only be applicable to high value electronic goods where the prices just don't allow for siginificant markup, but this is the case for pretty much all of the electronics retailers out there. Margins are slim at best.

If you have the traffic and the right niche/product range you can make solid revenues through Shopster. Certainly way more than 'pennies'. Shopster would not be in business if that was the case as all our retailers would cancel their subscriptions! The majority of our retailers pay off their subscription fees extremely quickly, and from there on it's all profit.

[Starfire]

Shopster statistics gathered from Alexa:

Reach for Secure2u.com:
Percent of Internet users who visit this site
Avg. 3 mos. 0.00145% 34% decrease

This means that 1,450 people (on average) visit one of the secure2u.com websites each day.

NOTE: Reach measures the number of users. Reach is typically expressed as the percentage of all Internet users who visit a given site. So, for example, if a site like yahoo.com has a reach of 28%, this means that if you took random samples of one million Internet users, you would on average find that 280,000 of them visit yahoo.com. Alexa expresses reach as number of users per million.

(List of urls deleted by Linda - explained below)

48 external web sites are linked to secure2u.com

I'm not sure how they determine the percentages, shown above, since they greatly exceed 100%, in total. Alexa may tell you, but I didn't look for an explanation.

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Starfire,

I deleted the long list of URLs you posted because most of those are affiliate sites and affiliates do not like the public and other affiliates to see their sites.
(Too much site copying and idea stealing.)

Anyone can go to the site you pulled the info from if they want to find out but I don't want affiliate URLS posted here on 5 Star. I try to protect the info affiliates want kept private.

Alexa results are skewed for many reasons based on how many people of a market segment are using the Alexa toolbar. Average Joe consumer that's going to a site to shop is less likely to have the toolbar installed.

Example: Heres what Alexa says about 5 Star.

Where people go on 5staraffiliateprograms.com?
* affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com - 68%
* affiliate-blogs.5staraffiliateprograms.com - 16%
* 5staraffiliateprograms.com - 14%
* affiliate-directory.5staraffiliateprograms.com - 2%

THose numbers are very backward from my actual traffic stats. My blog gets the most traffic by far, then my main site, and then the forum.

So what that says to me is that more people that visit the forum have the Alexa toolbar installed. Considering the fact that Larwee and I are here tons of times every day checking the forum and both have Alexa, the 2 of us are probably a large percentage of the forum number.

So anyway Alexa can be used as a guide for how much traffic sites get but the info is often skewed.

[Starfire]

I don't mind you deleting the url's I had listed, they serve no purpose other than to show which Shopster members receive the largest number of visitors on a daily basis. Affiliates receive a commission from the parent company they represent - I would venture it's either a fixed dollar amount, or a percentage of the potential member's fee to join and/or their monthly fee to generate residual income.

Unfortunately, for Shopster members (not affiliates), they are either locked in with either a 2% or 6% profit markup, or they can set their own retail prices - very foolish if they set them higher than Shopsters already inflated prices.

After joining Shopster, I loaded 4,000 products into my online catalog (Rshop). The following day I did more research and learned that only 720 items would yield a profit of $5 or more! The majority of the remaining 3,300 products would have produced profits of less than $1 per product - and the profit for many were in the pennies. One I had listed would have given me 11 cents profit.

I would like to know, from people who spent the $99 to join Shopster, how many stuck with it, and why those who dropped out, did so. I would venture to say it's because Shopster's prices are too high, their profit of margin is too low and it's difficult to get search engine exposure because most Rshops have the same header and meta tags - this "sameness" is frowned upon by many search engines/directories.

As an affiliate, you may make money bringing the beef to market, but Shopster is definitely no Utopia for making money, as a paying member.

[Starfire]

I keep forgetting that this forum is for Affiliates of various programs, and the comments I have been making about Shopster are counter-productive to the scope of the forum. I will, therefore, refrain from making further posts.

[1hugemall]

Ok so I have to admit it. I'm a shopsteraholic. You might find others just like me out there. Those of us that spend hours and hours a day JUST optimizing and designing our shopster websites. I'm such an addict!

Shopster is the BEST THING GOING ONLINE RIGHT NOW. I have done ecommerce for many many years but who has time to load products, write titles, descriptions, and insert images for each product, add pricing and shipping information, and then ABOVE AND BEYOUND ALL market their website??? My area of expertise is search engine optimization. With shopster I'm able to do nothing but work my website each and every day to gain higher placement in the engines. This is what I love doing the most!

My hat goes off to shopster! Their tech support is AWESOME and the program is totally unique. Someone mentioned vstore (which is now out of business) but vstore didn't hold a candle to shopster. It's not even in the same ballpark.

I am a VERY satisfied shopster customer. Does it make you rich overnight? No, it doesn't. It takes a lot of hard work, dedication, and time to make it work - but this is no different than with any other ecommerce store online. If you go in with the expectation of putting a lot of work and effort into your website then your store will go well. You will get out of it as much as you put into it.

[Linda Buquet]

Hi 1hugemall,

Welcome to 5 Star and thanks SO MUCH for sharing your Shopster experience with out members. Seems like you painted a very realistic picture. Shopster makes it easy but you still have to work hard and it's not a get rich quick scheme. I'm glad you so enthusiastic and addicted! Its that kind of passion that will help you be successful!

[KarSin]

Hi,

Great to know shopster, haven't try on it, but is evaluating other solutions like monster commerce, yahoo ecommerce solution and etc. finding one best suited for me. Is there anyone that sharing ton of existing reviews and collect product review? Can Shopster integrate with PowerReview.com?

thx

ks