Shopster's Dropshippers, eCommerce, and Selling Online Blog

Shopster is not a scam, Part 2: Drop ship supply chain model

Let's start by addressing a very important question:

What is dropshipping?
Dropshipping (also drop shipping) is a supply chain model whereby the seller does not physically stock the products sold. Rather, product warehousing and order fulfillment is done by a supplier who processes and ships orders directly to the seller's customer on the seller's behalf.

There are some advantages to this model:
1. Lower starting overhead for the seller
2. Access to a larger variety of products
3. No specialty knowledge required for supply-side

These advantages must be weighed against these drawbacks:
1. No physical stock held by the seller
2. No seller control over shipment

These drawbacks can only be addressed by the following:
1. Trust
2. Insight into the supply chain
3. Availability of recourse

Shopster addresses each of these.
1. Trust. Shopster holds our network of dropship suppliers to a high standard of fulfillment. We have a history of auditing supplier fulfillment and retailer satisfaction, and have not hestitated to remove suppliers that have not met those standards. Shopster hopes to assuage the hesitancy of relying on a product source built on a network of dropship suppliers by ensuring great relationships with a reliable supplier base.
2. Insight into the supply chain. For every product in the Shopster warehouse, retailers can see a set of information about that product's supplier. You can see fulfillment rates, popularity, etc. On top of that, as soon as our supply team gets tracking IDs for your shipped orders, you get the tracking IDs for your orders. You can follow the order along, and contact our support team at the earliest sign of trouble. We want to give you all the information you'd have if you were running your supply relations yourself.
3. Availability of recourse. I hate to admit it, but sometimes things don't work out. When that happens, you should be able to seek an appropriate resolution. You can contact our customer support team at any time. We want you to be successful, so we're here to resolve anything that arises. Shopster wants to work with you as you build your business. And, hey, if that doesn't work out, we're BBB members – the option to take it to independent arbitration is always available. We don't think you'll have to utilize that step, but it's there if you need it.

Legitimate businesses aren’t worried about fulfilling these expectations. Look for a commitment to transparency when you’re looking for companies to help you build your business.

To help identify scams, look for the following:
1. Fees charged for use of dropshipper catalog without value-added services and solutions like storefront software, tools to sell on eBay, customer service, etc.
2. No physical address listed on web site.
3. No phone numbers or other contact info provided.
4. Lack of descriptive material regarding what is provided for fees paid.
5. Lack of free trial for subscription-based services/solutions.

Mostly, if you have any concerns or questions, be sure to get the answers you want before signing up.

Happy selling!

Read all Shopster Scam posts.

Grow your business with patience

By Peter Koizumi - Marketing Manager for Shopster

I recently came across a post from Seth Godin, where he writes about the importance of patience when starting a business. To quickly summarize his post, he states that many start-ups don’t succeed because they are expecting to hit a “homerun” on everything they do. I thought this would be a great topic to cover in this post as this is a common subject that gets brought up with Shopster retailers.

I’m sure many people have been a victim to this homerun philosophy, including myself. As a marketing manager for different tech companies, I often thought that the solution to a company’s marketing problems (ultimately my problem) could always be solved with a website overhaul or updating the brand of the company to be “more cool”. Or maybe if we hosted more banners and spent more money we could get more customers.

What I’ve come to realize is this, which Seth brings up in his post; it’s about making changes that make sense for the customer and your willingness to make those changes time after time until you get it right. And that requires patience!

You’ll be surprised on how much small wins can add up to one huge business over time. I’m sure our marketing team can tell you that this philosophy may seem very simple, but it can be quite painful when executing. It’s hard work! For our team, this means constantly making tweaks to our landing pages, our website, newsletters, ad campaigns, and messaging. It means putting aside new ideas so that we can maximize the return on the ideas we executed 3, 6, or 12 months ago.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to bring forth new ideas and to try them out. This is what marketing is all about. But I can’t stress enough how important it is to not forget about the work that you did before.

So for those of you working on growing your online business, remember that it’s not always about re-vamping your website or spending more money on ad campaigns. It’s important to have the discipline to come back and make improvements that makes sense to your business and customers. It ultimately comes down to patience.

Online retail success: Why planning is paramount

Have you ever wondered what executives of some of the most successful companies do all day? You can bet your bottom dollar that they are in meetings discussing the future of the company and their action plans.

Planning is paramount to the success of any business. Without planning you don’t know where you are going or how to get there.

For example, Shopster helps you initially with our interactive tutorials. Step one of both the Product Source and eCommerce interactive tutorials is to chose the product(s) you want to sell. What is not explained is that prior to this step you should have a plan.

The first step in creating your online sales plan is creating goals. A goal should include a numerical value and a time frame. For example, when I opened my store my goal was to sell $200 worth of product within 60 days. By having a numerical value and a timeframe the goal is easily evaluated and can be changed.

It is important that you make your goal realistic. If you do not know what a realistic goal is do some research or ask more experienced business people. Forums, such as Shopster’s forums, are a great resource for this type of research.

A realistic goal is important because an unrealistic goal can set you up for failure. Starting a business of any kind is challenging, and an unrealistic goal can make you feel bad about your business and yourself. It is not encouraging to fail right away. A realistic goal is more achievable and when you reach your goal it is encouraging and motivates you to strive for larger goals. Realistic goals help you build a successful business.

Once you have your goals plan the steps you have to take to achieve those goals. This includes choosing a product to sell, choosing how you will sell those products (either through auction sites, 3rd party websites, or your Shopster Storefront), and creating a marketing strategy.

Outside of creating realistic goals, your marketing strategy is the most important part of your plan. If no one knows your store or products exist they will not buy from you. The Shopster Help Centre is full of ideas on how to marketing your business. Use these resources to build your marketing plan.

There is one final step in your plan and that is evaluation. Continually analyze and evaluate your business. Track your growth and compare your results with your goals. Your goals are the standards for your business. If you have surpassed them, or are not going to meet them, figure out why and consider adjusting your goals, or making new ones.

The only way your business will grow is through evaluation and adaptation. And with every evaluation you should be creating another plan. Planning never ends, and that’s why executives are always in meetings.

Shopster is not a scam - Part 1

Is Shopster a scam? No. But, Shopster does business in an arena that is often rife with scams. To help dispel some concerns you might have, here is part one of a four part series addressing various aspects of Shopster and our industry.

Customer recourse and online business solutions

The Internet gives you unprecedented research and recourse tools. You can look up anything and get information from a number of sources. When you feel you've been ripped off or that you've uncovered an unscrupulous or otherwise sketchy business practice, you have a number of options at your disposal. Scam businesses don't like this. Legitimate businesses do.

Here are some tips for doing some background checking before signing up for anything.

Look a company up at the Better Business Bureau. The BBB is an independent, voluntary membership program that facilitates non-binding arbitration between businesses and consumers. You can see:
(1) Whether the company is concerned with customer complaints and issues,
(2) Whether the company has endeavored to resolve any issues,
(3) How many official complaints have been levied against the company.

Check out the company's profile at Rip Off Report. You get a lot of the same type of information you would at BBB, but the company does not have to be a member. It's important to keep an eye on the number of unique complaints from different people.

Do a general search on Google. Try keywords like "company name scam" or "company name rip off" or "company name complaints". You can find independent sites with reviews the company cannot affect.

If the company offers a free trial, try it out for yourself. Spend the time evaluating it and making sure it meets your needs.

Shopster has had some complaints levied against us - we won't try to hide them. However, we have endeavored to resolve all customer issues in a timely and professional manner. We've had thousands of customers over the years, but only a handful of complaints. Our commitment to transparency dictates that we divulge these complaints so that everyone can evaluate us for themselves.

To help you check us out, here are some relevant links.

Links for Shopster:
Our BBB page
Results from a search for "Shopster" at Rip Off Report
Scam Types' review of Shopster
Google results for shopster scam, shopster rip-off, and shopster complaints
Shopster's free trial

Even though some of those links above won't have absolutely shining reviews of us (the search keywords are of a negative nature after all), we feel that giving our visitors that information is ultimately of more value. We're a legitimate business with a keen interest in the success of our users. We're not a bunch of shadowy villains sitting in a dark cave twisting our mustaches, rubbing our hands together, and asking each other "how can Shopster scam people?" We want everyone to be able to evaluate us impartially.

If you have any questions about Shopster, do not hesitate to contact us. If you feel you have a legitimate complaint about Shopster, please contact us so that we can work towards a resolution with you.

Contact page: http://www.shopster.com/contact-us.aspx#

Over the next few weeks we'll be tackling specific concerns people have with certain aspects of Shopster. Here are the topics that will be covered:
September 29: Potential issues associated with the dropship supply chain model
October 6: Concerns with the Shopster business model -€“ particularly the profitability of the model
October 13: Hallmarks of the scam business

Read all Shopster scam posts.

What's Selling - Video Blog

After many grueling hours, missed deadlines, broken promises, and a high score in bowling, we're ready to introduce:

I hope you enjoyed it.

We learned a lot trying to make a video.  I have a newfound respect for all those YouTube auteurs.  We'll be working on our videographer...ing, our video editing, and our not-looking-so-nervous-in-front-of-the-camera-ing so the next edition is even better than this one.  (Also, I'll be working on GH3 to improve my score a little.) 

If there are things you liked, things you hated, things you want to see in the future, etc., post them in the comments and we'll consider all the reasonable ones.  Until next time:

Happy selling!

What's selling...

I know I promised you a video blog entry for yesterday. It didn't happen. I was up until midnight working on it (I've never used Windows Movie Maker... and I had to get help getting the video off of my camcorder). Of course, I also went to a movie last night, so I don't really expect any sympathy.

Anyhoo, this is a placeholder post until I get that bad boy posted this afternoon. I have to figure out the intricacies of getting video onto that series of tubes we call the Internet. Plus, we're filming a proper video for the Shopster.com home page today. I shaved and did my hair and everything. It's going to be awesome.

Video coming soon to ShopTalk!

Hey!

This is just a quick post to let you know that video is coming to ShopTalk. We will [trying very, very, very hard to] post new videos every three weeks.

The first in the series will be entitled "What's selling?" and will cover various things in the warehouse that are selling. (I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be about the Wii.) There will likely be sample products, spreadsheets, a white board, hitherto unreleased product trend data, and at least one shot of me rockin' Priestess' "Lay Down" in Guitar Hero III.

Ideas tossed around for videos have included: Top-selling products, marketing and design tips, instructional videos ("how to"-style), and sales tips.

Please comment below and let us know what you'd like to see in the Shopster blog videos. (I promise we'll consider all reasonable suggestions.)

See you Wednesday (as long as I figure out how to transfer video from my camera by then)!

The value of being "in the know" - RSS and other tools

We have a bunch of hockey fans around the office... well, there's really just a couple of us that talk about it on a regular basis. There's an unspoken contest to be the first to announce a major deal or big news. I think, particularly, back to July 2nd: "TSN breaking news. Marian Hossa signs with Detroit." We had basically been taking bets all day on where one of the season's biggest free agents would sign. Ray Lau (a marketing analyst who sits across from me) triumphantly announced the signing, earning (in his mind) the respect of those of us waiting to find out.

When it comes to doing business, the same holds true... except replace "respect" with "money". As someone in the business of selling products, you want to make sure you're in the know. That means you need to have access to the channels that discuss upcoming products, current top-selling products, surprise successes and failures, market trends, etc. It's up to you to know how to optimize your sales and marketing efforts. One of your best bets for success is to capitalize on popular products. What's better is to have those products listed before the market is inundated with people doing the selling. You need to have up-to-the-minute access to the goings-on in the market.

Get out there and scour the Internet for industry blogs and groups. Have a look for articles about products you're selling. Get involved in forums. That said, that's a lot of information to keep track of. You could have dozens of sites you visit regularly. Without some help, you might get bogged down. The key? RSS. You'll find most blogs and forums have RSS feeds. When you subscribe to an RSS feed, you're sent (via an "RSS Reader" or "aggregator") headlines and summaries when sites are updated. That way, you check a single interface for updates to dozens of websites (or hundreds, if you're ambitious).

Give it a try by signing up for the Shopster blog RSS feed.

Happy selling!

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

We have been hearing about it for months now: The economy is tumbling down the deep barrels of recession.

But there is a ray of light in all of this darkness. That light is online retail. While ComScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, states that spending (off and online) is down for all income segments it also states that more people are looking to the internet to compare prices.

As an online seller you are well poised to take advantage of the consumer’s shift towards researching online prior to buying.

To take advantage of consumers’ use of the internet to research and compare prices I suggest offering comparisons on your website or in your product details. As an example, the Shopster's Hot Product page compares our warehouse product prices with Amazon.com prices.

If you compare prices right on your site your website may become a useful tool for consumers, which may drive traffic to your site. And we all know, with more visitors coming to your site there is more opportunity to make a sale.

Happy selling!
PS. Don’t have an online store, but want one? Try Shopster e-Commerce for free for 7 days!

Cashing in on popular products outside your regular vertical

You can't always rely on seasonal purchasing trends to give you year-round sales.  While I indicated that you should be taking note of, and planning for, these seasonal mini sales spikes, it's also prudent to create your own spikes.  There might not be enough seasonal variety in your chosen field.

For example, sports events occur all year and are fairly well spread out.  So, if you're selling sports stuff, you have a bunch of mini-spikes all year.  If you're selling home appliances, it's a bit harder to find events that pop up during the year - although you could probably sell a ton of electric carving knives near Thanksgiving.  In the [ed. poorly drawn sweet] graph to the right, you're looking to bump up sales in the orange-circled spots - the spots that aren't the holiday shopping season.
(Graph for illustrative purposes only - I totally made up those numbers)

What I'm talking about is promoting a popular brand, product, or product line that just might happen to be outside your regularly advertised product offering.  Use it to complement your existing sales effort.  Let's take a look at a sample: Poker.

Ever since Chris Moneymaker took the World Series of Poker main event in 2003, poker's popularity has exploded.  It's always been a casino curiosity and a kitchen table past-time, but it wasn't until recently that it's been enjoyed by so many people.  Depending on your store's (or eBay sales) focus, you just might be able to take advantage of such a popular product line.  I'm not talking about building a store around it.  I'm talking about incorporating it into your current sales efforts.

I was traveling recently and went into a big box bookstore to find something to idle the night away.  After finding a good book to read (I'd like to say it was some Nobel prize-winning masterpiece, but it was probably an Archie comic), I made my way to the checkout.  Sure enough, at the last three feet between me and the cashier was a display that included a ton of games - travel-sized versions of games I played as a kid, party games, and poker sets.  Poker sets don't have anything to do with books (except poker books), but here were $150 poker chips and carrying cases.  The bookstore was clearly taking advantage of a popular product that's pretty much unrelated to reading.

As a guy who owns his own poker chips (they stay in a briefcase-looking thing by my desk for Friday's after work poker game), I know they're not cheap.  When I wanted some, I thought about it and couldn't commit to the purchase.  I'm the owner of my poker chips not because I sucked it up and forked over the cash, but because someone knew I wanted them, saw them while they were out shopping for something else (back-to-school stuff, I think), and decided to get them for me as a gift.  Some other store's poker display won the gift-buyer over.

That's what I'm recommending to you.  Find a product line, like poker, that might not fit into your main repertoire and put it there anyway.  You might have to play around with some samples, but give it a try.  You'll have to play around with it a little because you have to balance the sales opportunity with any friction you might cause for your visitors. 

"Friction" ties into their expectations not matching your presentation.  If your store is called "Chet's Perfume Emporium" and the main item on your page is a car alarm, however nice that car alarm is, unless it wafts some sweet fragrances while you drive, you're going to have a tough sell.  However, if you're selling sports memorabilia it might not be too extreme to present some big screen TVs - it all depends on the marketing message you deliver.  ("Watch 'Local Sports Team' Crush 'Out of Town Rival' on 62" of Glorious Plasma Screen!" or "I heard those Jets fans have a 58" TV... Maybe it's time for you to get the 62" TV.  Show them who's the bigger fan.")  Just think about whether you'd squint confusedly and go somewhere else.  You're a consumer, so you have some insight into how consumers react to what they see in stores.

Give it a try and/or leave some feedback.

Happy selling!

PS: Don't have a Shopster store?  Try it out for FREE for 7 days.