StoreStacker Review – The Best Niche Store Solution
October 23, 2008 - Written by Gyutae Park
If I told you that in just 1 hour you could set up a unique niche store that automatically updated itself and generated profits from affiliate products, would you be interested? With better technology and software, niche stores are becoming increasingly popular for webmasters to set up and earn serious commissions. If you want the tools to create an automated money-making machine, you need to hear about the StoreStacker solution.
Before I get into the details, I want to note that although StoreStacker is a great piece of software that automates your site content and affiliate links, it does not automate your income. Like any other site, niche stores need to be heavily promoted in order to see success. This can be done through SEO, link building, PPC traffic, and other traffic generation techniques but I wanted to mention this important caveat before you expected too much from a script.
What is StoreStacker?
StoreStacker is a comprehensive self-hosted system that automatically builds out a huge affiliate site around any theme imaginable. The way it works is that it pulls products and content from merchants and networks like eBay, Amazon, Clickbank, Overstock, RegNow, and Commission Junction (coming soon) and creates thousands of customized product pages that use your affiliate links and automatically update themselves. Not only that, but you can also add relevant videos from YouTube and articles from any RSS source including blogs and news sites. Again, everything updates itself automatically so it really eliminates the need for any grunt work in maintaining the site. You set up the store, promote it, and watch the affiliate sales roll in.
Customization & Features
With access to over 10 million products from networks and an infinite number of videos and content from feeds around the web, StoreStacker is an extremely versatile niche store solution that can be used to create a site about pretty much anything. The script is publicly available to all, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a unique store that is tailored for all of your own needs. The package comes with 12 fully customizable templates as well as user manuals, video tutorials and on-call email support to help you use the system.
One of the strong points of StoreStacker is that it is well-optimized for SEO by incorporating the following components:
- search engine friendly URLs that include important keywords
- keyword tags on every page
- links to related product listings on every page
- automatically generated google sitemap
- new page for every imported product, video or article
The above features by themselves probably won’t get you top rankings in the search engines, but when combined with an effective link building strategy, they can help to substantially increase free organic search referrals to your niche store from targeted keywords. Doesn’t everyone love free traffic?
Admin interface
The main selling point of StoreStacker is its ability to easily pull in data from a variety of sources and automatically create a high-quality niche store. All of this is made possible by the simple and easy to use backend admin interface, where you can edit settings and preferences, choose products, and tweak templates. If you’re interested in seeing more, watch the video walk through below.
Pricing
So how much does StoreStacker cost? The full version which includes eBay, Amazon and YouTube plugins, 12 customizable templates, user manuals, video tutorials and on-call email support costs $97. If you want to add functionality for ClickBank and Overstock, those extra plugins cost $25 each. There are no monthly licensing fees and once you download the package, you can use it on as many sites and domains as you would like. If you think about it, $97 is a steal considering the new found affiliate commissions and time savings possible by using StoreStacker. You should be able to make up the price in just a few weeks.
Final Verdict
If you’re looking to create low maintenance affiliate sites in niche markets, StoreStacker is the script for you. Many of the other packages available work with only 1 network or merchant, but StoreStacker is able to integrate all of the main ones as well as videos and RSS feeds. For example, another popular system called Build A Niche Store (BANS) is similar in concept but only works with the eBay affiliate program.
Overall, automatically-created niche stores are not the most effective way to make money online. Traffic is extremely volatile depending on SEO search rankings and PPC ads, and competition is becoming increasingly stiff as commercial scripts like StoreStacker and BANS are made available. At the end of the day, you need to provide real value to users and that becomes more difficult as more and more aggregator sites are created.
Still, StoreStacker offers a great way to experiment with affiliate marketing in various niches and to easily implement niche stores to your existing blogs or websites. At just $97, it’s definitely worth a try and I recommend you do so.
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Hey Man, nice review. I wanted to point out one other thing as well about store stacker. I am using this exact system for a few of my sites and first of all I love it. BANS does not even compare to how well this system works.
Even though this software is a stand alone system, you can intergate it fully into a wordpress blog. I have a tutorial video here ( http://www.feedflare.ca/niche-stores/build-a-niche-store-with-store-st acker ) of the review I did of store stacker last week which shows you how to add store stacker to a wordpress blog.
Clearly there are a few big features with doing this and they are 1- increase blog earnings by promoting products that follow along with your niche and 2- increase blog page views which helps with private ad sales.
Set up is really simple to do and if any of your readers deicde to buy this product I am more then willing to help anyone with set up if they get stuck.
Once again, great review but with store stacker being as good as it is, its hard not to give a great review.
Hey Collin,
Thanks for the positive feedback. BANS seems to be more popular among webmasters right now, but I can see that quickly changing as StoreStacker gains more exposure.
You can pretty much include any product niche imaginable especially with merchants like Amazon, eBay, and Commission Junction so the possibilities are endless. I may experiment with it on some of my more retail oriented sites.
I bought StoreStacker when it first came out and it was so buggy that it was hardly usable. The modules/add-ons were difficult to get to work, there were only 2 layouts, it was difficult to customize… etc. I switched back to BANS real quick.
That’s interesting. Have you tried it since then? I’ve heard nothing but good things about it so far. It may be more complicated than BANS but that’s probably because it has more features. I’d love to get more of your thoughts on this.
This looks like an interesting product, and another great way to bring in some more money, thanks for sharing it
No problem, Zurpit. There are a lot of tools and methods for making money online. The important thing is that you pick one and take action. StoreStacker is just another option that you can use to experiment and discover new possibilities.
Storestaker certainly sounds like a better investment than BANS, especially with the recent problems that BANS users are having with deindexing, all though I know this is because of the lack of original content on their sites, but I also suspect that is in part to the BANS footprint all over the source code, and G knowing what BANS is. Does anyone know if Storestacker has a footprint?
StoreStacker offers a lot more value because you can customize it however you’d like by adding unique feeds, videos, and products from various sources. Because of that, you can provide real benefit to end users (unlike with most BANS sites) and Google will be less likely to deindex your sites. I’m not exactly sure about the StoreStacker footprint though. I’m sure Google can detect patterns with any site.
Yeah, my buddy and I were talking about starting some niche stores like what this product offers, and BANS is too one sided. I like the ability to add a variety of items to the page, like eBay and Amazon.
The Clickbank I bet is AWESOME, but would be nice if it was included.
Amazing review mate, I ve always wanted to check out a similar store option to build an ecom site..but that never happened. Maybe this one will help me build the store
datafeedr all the way people. a little clunky at first but is great once it is set up.
Hello,
What do you mean by self hosted system? does it mean that I dont have to pay monthly hosting dues to other webhosts?
thank
oliver
I read a lot of positive comments about Store Stacker here but I don’t see where anyone has made a store with it. Have you? Also I went on the Store Stacker forums and most everyone who made one have since quit. Very curious.