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Popshops: Six Weeks in Action - A Review
October 12, 2007
It's been about six weeks since I really started focusing on using Popshops. I actually signed up for the service back in July, but didn't start really using it until the end of summer.
I've mainly been using it on just one of my sites. It's not a highly trafficked site, and over the course of September I used the Popshops code on about 14 of my pages. I've added more pages since, but they've been recent additions, so I'm not counting them for now.
The traffic at this site averages about 54 page views a day, from about 34 unique visitors a day. Unfortunately, I haven't been tracking much else, and this site has a lot more pages than the 14 pages that I have the Popshops code on, so the amount of traffic doesn't really mean anything.
However, two of the pages are among my most popular pages, so the Popshops code definitely is seeing some action.
(I'm going to set up Google Analytics on it - it's on my to-do list. So hopefully the next update I'll have much better information.)
Since September, I've made three sales through my Popshops links, for a total of just under $26.00. I paid for six months (this saved me 10%, bringing the cost down to $4.50 per month), so I've almost made up the cost. All the sales have been with Shareasale merchants.
Altogether, it's a promising start, considering that I'm really only using it on a site with low traffic, and have only used it on a handful of pages. I'm thinking about building a new site using mainly Popshops code for content.
I'm on the Pro account - the only real differences for me between the Pro account and the Enterprise account are (1) there are no XML feeds available at the Pro level and (2) you can only use one CJ PID (CJ uses a separate PID for each website you have in your account with them). You also get "SEO Rules" with the Enterprise version, but I'm not too sure how beneficial I'd find that. (According to the faqs, you get to "Create SEO rules to automatically customize product descriptions and meta tags" as part of the Enterprise plan.)
The Enterprise account costs six times as much as the Pro account, and at this point, I don't actually have six sites ready to use Popshops code on. So for now, I will have to keep paying for additional Pro accounts for each website I want to use Popshops on - and that's only if I want to promote CJ merchants. I can use Popshops on all my sites if I select only Shareasale (or Linkshare) merchants.
If they added the ability to use tracking for Enterprise users, I'd probably bump up to the Enterprise account now, rather than wait until I have six or more sites ready to use the code in. Right now, there's no tracking, which is a bit of a pain. I also find the Popshops stats a bit odd. For example, I logged in today, and I have shops which show 0 views but sport a few clicks.
With the Pro version, you can use either PHP code, which will keep your prices up-to-date with the merchant's datafeed, or HTML code. Both are perfect for SEO purposes. (You also can generate ASP code.) I've been using the PHP code, but I may give the straight HTML a try, too, on future pages. Using the straight HTML would give me the option of switching out the Popshop redirect links to my own links if I ever needed to in the future, although if I have a ton of Popshop pages, that would be quite a chore.
There's one nice thing you can do even with a free account (the free account only gives you javascript, which isn't SEO friendly). It's easy to search for products at CJ, but Shareasale doesn't offer that function. With a Popshops account, you can search for a specific product from among all merchants in any of the networks supported by Popshops. This is a huge bonus for me, as I'm in the process of adding product links to a few of my sites, and I prefer to use Shareasale merchants whenever possible.
You can get a 15-day trial, or just take the free account for a spin.
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Posted by BJ at 08:33 PM in Affiliate Marketing | Permalink
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