Thanks for posting a comment. To answer your question, I created and launched my first popshops store a few days ago. My initial push will be organic traffic. I submitted to the search engines, stumbled it, linked to a couple of social bookmarking sites and created a few usfreeads.

I’ll continue to do this, and probably make a squidoo lense or two for the rest of Feb. In March I plan to do a light test PPC campaign. Ten cent keywords with a low daily ceiling ($4/day). I basically want to see if I can get a conversion.

I don’t know if it’s worth it or not. Once I get a base of conversions I’ll know at that time. I think Enterprise is the way to go.. but that’s $30/month, and I want to know what kind of action to expect.

I’m excited to work on something non-eBay, which could lead to much higher commissions.. and allow me to diversify. My PopShop test also is restrictive in that I’m not promoting any eBay or other affiliates. No Adsense, and I’m sticking to one merchant for now. Once I get a feel of what this is about, I’ll slowly expand.

I’ll keep everyone posted on my progress… or non-progress.

Thanks!
hanji

Thanks!
hanji

Thanks for commenting!
hanji

Thanks!

-matt

Thanks for commenting!
hanji

Thanks for the update on your success with CJ/PopShop. It’s really encouraging to see that someone has been able to have success with them even in the economic crisis at present. It’s also very motivating to get started right away. I’ve always had that thought in the back of my mind that there’s too much competition, that this wont work, etc.

Instead of using PopShops, I’ve used Joomla to build my product catalog website. One thing I like about Joomla is that it’s free and there are manyextensions available like photo galleries, polls, forums and more. I have yet to earn a commission so I will definitely be starting a PPC campaign and doing some article marketing. You can check it at http://www.motorcycle-helmets-online.com

When you do PPC campaigns with a product catalog, are you redirecting to the merchant page with the item details? Or are you taking the visitor to your page where they then click through to the merchant page? One of my concerns is that the visitor might get turned off by having to click through so many pages or worse, have to search your website to get to what they are looking for.

If you don’t mind me asking, how do you pick your niches to promote? Also, CJ doesn’t make it apparent as to which of their merchants utilize datafeeds and not to mention that most of the times you have to be accepted by them first. Have you had any success with LinkShare or ShareASale? I have accounts with them also, but I haven’t really browsed through their datafeed network yet.

Any advice is greatly appreciated and as always, keep up the good posts!

Hann

The benefit of PopShops vs WordPress/Joomla/Other is that they update their content. So if products are removed, descriptions change or prices change, that is reflected in your site. Statically adding products you could run into problems. Not to mention adding products by hand. Creating a shop in PopShops literally takes a minute, and then is dynamic after that. I do like your helmet site though, it looks very pro.

PPC Campaigns. I do broad PPC campaigns vs campaigns that are narrow to a specific product. I promote my site in general terms. Using your helmet site as an example, I would create a ad similar to this

Great deals on Motorcycle Helmets
We sell a wide variety from brand x to brand y
http://www.MyDomain.com

This ad would be direct to the home page or the ‘category’ of helmets. I understand your concern about turning visitors off, but I like to cast a wide net. I think you would miss many visitors with product specific campaigns. I would test both though.. and see what works for you.

How do I pick my niches? That is a good question. I’m still refining my niches for CJ products. I think I start with the merchants that have quality brand are already trusted highly. I don’t like to use small merchants where people don’t know them very well. It’s been my experience that those do NOT convert very well for me. Picking big name merchants seem to convert the best for me.

I like to pick hobbies or interests that I’m familiar with and then see if the big name merchants promote products within that niche.. and go from there. My niche strategy for CJ is completely different than how I pick niches for EPN, etc.

I have played with ShareASale and LinkShare but have not really devoted the time/energy to those yet to warrant a thumbs up or down.

On your datafeed question, you are correct CJ does a bad job letting you know who has datafeeds. Again, this is where PopShops is good. They’ve already worked that out. All the merchants in there have feeds. I almost like to do product search using PopShops vs. CJ since it’s so much faster. Also with PopShops you are able to promote those other networks in the same shop.

My advice is to try PopShops. I would start with the Pro account and create a new site and see if it’s worth it for you. If you want to go ‘big’, then you’ll need to upgrade to Enterprise. Enterprise will allow you to use RSS/XML feeds from PopShops as well as create profiles, so you can have multiple PIDs.

Hope this helps.. thanks for visiting!!!!
hanji