You probably do not have the Flash Player installed for your browser or the video files are misplaced on your server!
Download StoreStacker for Just One Dollar ($1.00 USD)
There’s been a lot of talk lately about eBay’s recent round of affiliate layoffs. No one seems to know exactly why the account terminations took place, but one thing is for sure it’s been a wake up call for affiliates. Just like the Adsense shake up, the eBay affiliate layoffs are proving the same lesson again; don’t put all your economic well being in one source of online income.
If you’ve followed the make money online topic for very long, you’ve probably read advice recommending you establish multiple streams of income, like selling electronic products or setting up membership sites. The main reason being, diversification.
It’s important to establish your online business with as few points of failure as possible. If one source of income disappears, other sources will continue to provide you with revenue.
Unfortunately many affiliates invest a good bit of their time building up businesses based on systems with single points of failure and they are now having to learn the lesson the hard way.
Turnkey affiliate systems have made it extremely easy for affiliates to establish niche affiliate sites that pull in thousands of product listings and make good money, but they are not prepared when a company like eBay turns off their source of income.
A good example of this is the Build A Niche Store (BANS) software. It’s an affiliate product that’s been a great money maker for a lot of people. But its long been vulnerable to affiliate layoffs because of its single product sourcing. That product source is of course eBay. So now that eBay has shown their willingness to terminate affiliates without notice or explanation, systems like BANS don’t seem to offer as much value as they once did.
I’ve been using BANS for the past year to setup niche affiliate sites and make money. But, because BANS only uses one affiliate product source, I’ve been looking into better alternatives. With the recent eBay shift I’m convinced that it’s time to move on to other affiliate solutions.
One alternative I’ve been evaluating is Store Stacker. It’s a turnkey niche affiliate store builder system that offers hooks into several well known affiliate programs and offers a lot of flexibility to the affiliate and value to the shopper. Store Stacker also has the ability to pull in content from multiple RSS feeds which is a great way to add a constant supply of fresh content to an affiliate site.
So far I’ve just been testing the system to understand how everything works, but I plan to start implementing the tool as soon as I can free up time to start a new affiliate campaign.
Overall Store Stacker offers an interesting mix of product feeds, video feeds, and content feeds. Unlike the BANS model of only pulling products from one source, Store Stacker pulls in products from multiple affiliate sources like eBay, Amazon, ClickBank, Overstock.com, RegNow, and HotelClub.
Template based
Because Store Stacker is template based, it is easy to customize the look and feel of the site with custom website templates.
The template system is very well organized and easy to follow. Even a non-coder can understand which template files control the layout of the site.
Store Stacker can even be integrated with a content management system like WordPress and custom WordPress themes can be used to bring all the pieces together.
I’ve done this with other affiliate systems using WordPress and I can tell you the results are very positive.
Easy administration
The Store Stacker administration area is also very simple to navigate because both the store and the admin control appear on the same page. BANS has a whole separate admin area which makes switching back and forth a pain.
Fortunately Store Stacker has adopted an easier model of letting you see the admin options and the affiliate site all at one time.
When you log into the admin area an admin panel appears on top of your store and as you make changes they show up in your store. This is significant for preserving your productivity.
Product feeds
Store Stacker offers product feeds from well known ecommerce sites like eBay, Amazon, ClickBank, and Overture.com. But, unlike other affiliate store solutions, Store Stacker is able to pull in product listings from all these affiliate sites to create a custom selection of products that buyers can choose from.
You can also mix and match product feeds to create custom tailored category and product pages. This helps to make your store unique because you’re not stuck with just one way to present products to your shoppers.
Video feeds
Store Stacker also offers the ability to pull in product related video content from YouTube.
Online shoppers are accustomed to researching product reviews and demonstrations before they ultimately decide to make a purchase and online video is playing a big part in that process.
Store Stacker makes it easy to pull videos in from YouTube that can be displayed as additional product content.
In my testing, I set up a few MacBook product pages and then pulled in some YouTube videos by keyword that were related to the MacBook. I was able to delete the video listings that I didn’t want and add additional descriptions and content to the videos I liked.
Because Store Stacker lets you customize the video listing just like products or categories, you can pull in video content and then customize the content that surrounds a specific video or group of videos.
After looking at some of the video aggregation scripts and custom WordPress Video Plugins, I can tell you that Store Stacker makes it easy to pull in YouTube video content without any additional programming required and it’s integrated extremely well into the affiliate store.
In fact, it would be very easy to setup a site totally committed to displaying video content and hosting related ads.
Text Content feeds
It’s been said a million times, “Content is king” and it’s true. While it may sound like something that’s popular to say, the truth is it’s a fact.
Without content on your site search engines (I’m talking about Google) won’t index and rank your site on a regular basis to bring you the traffic you need to make a niche affiliate store work.
In fact, even if you try to buy all your traffic with Pay-Per-Click, Google will hit you with a poor quality score and your cost per click (CPC) will be to high to make any money.
RSS feeds are a great way to keep fresh content on your site. Using RSS feeds, Store Stacker can pull in new content from sites like Yahoo News or CNET on a regular basis.
Keep in mind you can also pull content from blogs using RSS, but I highly recommend getting permission from the blog owner first so that you don’t get your AdSense account slapped or your hosting account shut down.
Bloggers work hard to produce their content and if you cross one of them, you’ll end up paying a price that’s more than it’s worth.
You can use a tool like Yahoo Pipes to create your own custom feed of content and then publish that to your site as unique content. Remember, to approach this concept from the perspective of adding value to the site visitor.
A good approach is to offer recent news or highlights around a specific product or category of product.
Customizable Categories and Item Descriptions
Store Stacker fully automates the process of pulling content into your affiliate store. Just like with the video content, Store Stacker, also gives you the ability to customize product listings.
You can remove items from the list, customize descriptions, and add additional content.
This is a benefit if you want to tweak the page elements of a category or product listing to get the most search engine optimization benefit possible.
Custom Store Pages
Custom pages give you the opportunity to include important pages on your affiliate store like, privacy policies, a contact page, and disclaimer pages. Google doesn’t like it when sites are lacking additional pages so having this option is a benefit that will work in your favor.
Related Items feature
One feature that I like and I think offers a good deal of value to an affiliate site and its visitors is the related items feature.
When product detail pages are displayed related items are shown below the product.
This helps to ull the potential buyer through your site and keep them engaged longer. It also adds an element of “social proof” by associating products together. The buyer gets the feel that they are on the right track for finding what they’re looking for when they encounter a collection of related products.
Simple File Structure
One of the key elements I always look for in a software package is file structure. If the file structure is too complicated or unorganized I don’t invest my time in it, because it will be more effort than necessary to work with.
But, if the file structure is organized and easy to understand then it will be easy to administer, customize, and maintain.
The Store Stacker file structure is extremely easy to follow and there are very few files to maintain.
The software is broken up logically by folders making it easy to determine where the templates are stored versus where the core store files are kept.
Additional Plugins
Because Store Stacker supports a plugin model for expansion it is possible to add additional modules that help you pull more value into an affiliate store.
I haven’t played with the plugin code myself, but if you’re the adventurous type, I’m certain you could write your own Store Stacker plugins.
Built In Sitemap
The system will even produce a site map to help site visitors navigate your site more easily. This feature saves you a lot of time because you don’t have to create a custom site map by hand once you’ve set up your affiliate store.
Setup Video Tutorials
One of the key aspects of Store Stacker that I really like is the support that’s standard with the product.
In addition to the support forums and easy setup instructions, Store Stacker provides a useful series of videos to help walk you through the process of setting up a store, installing plugins, customizing Store Stacker templates, and more.
They make it extremely simple to get a niche affiliate store up and running.
Active Support Forum
In case you have custom questions that reach beyond the video tutorials or the setup process, there is an active forum community were you can learn additional tips and get answers to specific questions. In fact, an active forum is a good sign of a healthy product and Store Stacker has one.
Product Improvements
Store Stacker is getting ready to release a new version. Continued updates is a good sign of a healthy product and just another reason why I think Store Stacker is the way to go when choosing a turnkey niche affiliate store system. If you’re into building your own niche affiliate sites and you think Store Stacker is right for you, be sure to read about the Store Stacker product updates.
Do you have a niche affiliate store builder solution that you recommend? Leave a comment and tell me about it.
Keeping one ear to the ground,
Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com
Download StoreStacker for Just One Dollar ($1.00 USD)
