Shopster Review

Overall rating: 9/10

	Full eCommerce Solution
	Access to over 1 million products
	Free Account - no cc required
	Create an online store easily
	High Quality educational materials
	Very easy & intuitive to use
	Push items to eBay,  Amazon
	Extensive Merchant Network

What is Shopster?

Shopster offers an all in one eCommerce solution, combining a very powerful and intuitive store builder with a large inventory of drop ship products provided through a unique concept called the Shopster Merchant Network. The Shopster Merchant Network lets you connect to other merchants, find products to sell and also sell your own products through your online store, eBay, Amazon and even shopping comparison sites.

Access to all of these features and services is FREE if you sign up for a Free account. Unlike a number of competitive services you can use the free account for as long as you like and you are not billed after a trial period. All you do is input your email address and password and you are off and running.

Click Here To Join Shopster For FREE

Shopster Store Builder

When you sign up for your free account you will be taken to a setup wizard to start building your store. Unless you know exactly what you are doing it is best to skip the wizard and come back to it after you have familiarized yourself with the site and all Shopsters features.

When you have decided what to sell you can set up your store in literally minutes using the store building wizard. You can chose a store design from a number of different templates, create your pages and navigation structure and also select the products you are going to sell. There is an integrated shopping cart and free domain name and hosting package, making this an ideal solution if you are just starting out and want to start making money quickly.

Shopsters Merchant Network

The Shopster Merchant Network is a pretty unique concept, and could be described as a social network for sellers and suppliers. Basically, by joining the network you have access to all of the merchants and products available in the network. To start you off, Shopster have dozens of pre-approved suppliers selling thousands of products that you can instantly upload into your store and start selling. You can access an even wider range of products by 'connecting' to other merchants in the network and selling the products offered by those merchants.

Selecting the products you want to sell

You can search the entire shopster network for products you want to sell. When you find something, all you do is 'connect' with that merchant and gain access to sell his products in your store. When you make a sale, your customer will pay you the retail price of the product and you will forward the network price to the selling merchant, keeping the profits from the sale. The supplying merchant will then ship the item to your customer and handle all of the customer service.

Adding your own products to the Shopster Merchant network

If you have your own products to sell, you can easily add these products to your store using a simple upload tool. Once you have added your own products, those products automatically become part of the shopster network warehouse. This means that any shopster merchant can see your products. However, other merchants can only sell your products by 'connecting' to you and getting your permission to sell those products. This puts you in complete control of your distribution network.

When a merchant sells your products the order will come in to your order management page in Shopster and you will fulfill the order. The selling merchant passes the customer information to you, pays you the network price of the product and you ship the product directly to the customer. You gain a customer for very little effort and you then have the opportunity to upsell or cross sell other products to that customer as part of your ongoing sales and marketing activity.

Managing your products

The inventory management tool allows you to see all the products you are selling, edit pricing and details of your own products and purchase products directly from someone in your network. Products can easily be organised into a number of different categories.

Shopster allows you to push your products to eBay, Amazon and shopping comparison sites, so you are not limited to selling your products through your online store.

Shopster PowerMerchant

The Shopster free account offers a great set of tools and services when you are just starting out and want to start selling products quickly and easily. However, as you grow your business you will soon come across some limitations of the free account and should consider upgrading to Shopster PowerMerchant, Shopsters premium eCommerce package.

Shopster PowerMerchant will allow you to sell more products and reduce your transaction fees by 80%, which will ultimately increase your profits. You also have a lot more control over your stores look and feel and can use your own custom domain name if it adds value to your business and reinforces your brand. The price of a PowerMerchant membership is $69.95 per month, but once you are up and running this cost should be more than offset by the reduction in transaction fees.

Conclusion

Shopster offers a complete eCommerce solution in a box, which is ideal if you are just starting out and would like to sell products through an online store or an auction site like eBay. The store builder is simple and intuitive to use and will enable you to build a store and stock that store with dropship products from the Merchant network in a very short space of time with no technical knowledge. One major advantage to the Shopster approach is that you can also upload your own products into your store and increase you own distribution network by allowing other merchants to sell your products.

You have nothing to lose by signing up to the Shopster free account and testing out the service. This is a great training vehicle. Once you are up and running, you will quickly come across the limitations of the free account and will need to consider upgrading to the PowerMerchant package. All in all, a great service which could seriously add value to your existing business or kick start your new online venture.