Us Versus
Others.

There is no other service out there quite like Click Start Digital.  

However, if you are considering other options out there such an online or business course, Amazon course or having a go at it yourself using Shopify, we have outlined below some things to consider with these platforms.

 

Ongoing Fees

Shopify charge a percentage of your sales (up to 2.9%) plus ongoing monthly fees (up to $299 per month): for life.  We use Word Press which is an open source platform (free) and have no ongoing fees whatsoever.  

Limited Functionality

When you use the Shopify platform you are restricted to their functionality.  If you ever want to add on additional functions to your site outside of Shopify’s capabilities this won’t be possible.  
 
Shopify offer 3200 apps (or add on’s) compared to Word Press who offer over 50,000. Because Shopify (& Square Space and the others) are a hosted platform, this can impact SEO (search engine optimisation) results.  Word Press sites are known for getting great SEO results organically.

Basic Site Templates

I’m sure you have noticed that most Shopify stores look the same.  They offer 8 basic templates that pretty much all look identical.  
 
However, you can pay a web developer to customise one of their premium templates but this will cost you, potentially thousands of $$ to do so. Word Press allows for total customisation so your website can grow as your business does.

Marketing Hype

Shopify are a Billion-dollar company.  They spend millions of dollars on advertising their platform and they like to position themselves as the leader in their field.  
 
Word Press (the platform we use) are an open source free platform and therefore spend $0 on ads.  Don’t buy into the marketing hype.  Shopify currently have 500,000 people using their platform compared to Word Press who have 1.3 billion. 

Locked Into Their Platform

When you sign up to Shopify they own your website, not you.  Which means if you breach any of their terms or don’t pay your monthly fees they can close you store down tomorrow. 

High Competition

A lot of like-minded Amazon or Ebay business owners stock the same products from the same drop shipping facilities and suppliers, creating price competition amongst themselves on the same platform.

This is a quick route to bare bones profits. Add to that the hefty fees you need to pay and you could easily go broke.

Lack of Control

Amazon will shut your store down if they decide to for any reason and this happens a lot.  

An example of this is if Amazon see that a particular product is earning a lot of revenue, they will sell the same product themselves and shut down all the competitors on their platform selling this product.

No Customer Data

Your customers are not your customers, they are Amazons customers.  You don’t get access to this data and therefore you are missing out on the bread and butter of most businesses = repeat customers. 

It is against Amazon policies for the seller to market directly to customers through email marketing or other methods. If you do, they’ll immediately shut down your store.  

Since the average ROI (return on investment) of email marketing is 4300%, you are literally losing thousands of customers and potential repeat sales.

High Fees

Expect to pay anywhere from 6 to 15% in fees on all sales.

Amazon charge a percentage of your sales (6 – 15%) plus ongoing monthly fees if you use their FBA program. We use Word Press which is an open source platform (free) and have no ongoing fees whatsoever.