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Rating: 
Level of Review:
Researched, observed in several
friends.
Overview:
You are promised a full virtual mall for payment of
a startup fee, and monthly fee. This is supposed to
bring you customers who shop for all sorts of
things.
Product: The
product is a wide variety of items, sold by either
the company you bought the program from, or other
companies they contract with.
Costs:
$19.95 on up (and we do mean UP). Ongoing costs for
monthly rights, plus additional costs for other
services.
Compensation:
Compensation is commission on sales from the site.
Commissions vary with the program.
Conclusion:
We did not try this, because we found several
flaws with the overall concept, and with the
various programs. It was certain to take our money
and not pay us back.
1. Competition.
They replicate their website, or they use
programming scripts to code the access to their
website so you are credited with sales from
customers who click in through your link. It is
difficult to compete, or to get listed in the
search engines, when there are 10,000 identical
sites out there, and another 100,000 copycats. You
are competing with the parent company, and with all
of the other registered users of the program, each
which has an identical program, with no
differentiation.
2. What they Don't
tell you, or provide for you. Companies that sell
this type of thing rarely sell them to trained web
or computer techs. They are usually selling them to
web newbies, ensuring that the virtual mall is
their access to money on the net. They fail to tell
you that if you do not register your site with the
search engines, no one will find it (or that the
site they made for you CANNOT be registered with
many search engines). They also fail to tell you
that you need to market the site aggressively and
that it is going to cost you something to do so
competitively (because someone else out there
already knows that, and is doing a better job than
you!). The success of the site depends on several
aspects, partly how well the company has designed
the site, and partly on what you do with it once
you get it. Either one of those things requires
expertise on your part, to either know whether they
have done a good job or not, or to know how to
market it effectively once you have it.
3. They promise you
multiple merchants or a wide variety of products.
Sometimes you have a choice of merchants, sometimes
you take the whole bundle. Either way, you are
dependent on the quality of someone else's product,
their shipping and return policies. You have no
control over customer satisfaction, return
purchases, or customer service. If it is not good
enough to generate income, you are stuck with
someone else's mistakes.
We have known
people who have tried variations on this scheme.
One made a couple hundred dollars over several
months by advertising her URL to all and sundry
before it fizzled out. Several others paid their
fee and never saw a dime of return. Another paid
for one with the promise that the company would do
the marketing for it if she upgraded to a lifetime
membership (which she paid a couple of hundred
dollars for). They then upgraded her site to an
inferior design, and they have not followed through
with the marketing. They have her money, why should
they?
As an income
replacement, it was simply not a practical means of
making money.
If you bought into
one and need to know what to do now, go to
http://www.skinnyshoestring.com/sohotools/cookiecutter.htm
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