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I had about 45 minutes to spare - I put online a store with 51 products for sale. It could have been done in 20 minutes but I didn't have anything better to do. I developed my own personalized "storefront" using products from Affinia's extensive catalogue of over four million items! I simply picked the items I wanted my store to sell and presto, Affinia's system assembled the products into a storefront. They even hosted the store for me - it costs nothing. It was almost painless. I say almost painless because Affinia's ship recently sunk. It has "ceased operations" which probably means it leaked so much money that its investors finally stopped bailing and jumped ship. The system was interesting but that, of course, isn't always enough. The way it worked: Affinia would sign up web merchants like amazon.com and eToys who's products were added to the Affinia database of products that you'd pick from for your store. Affinia would bundle all your selections into an attractive webstore that you could then promote. Visitors to your store would see product pictures, read written descriptions and any comments you added. If your visitors saw something they might like to purchase they'd click the item and a new window would open connecting them with the merchant who was to fulfill the order. If your customers bought anything, Affinia would get a commission from its merchant partner. Affinia would give you 50% of their commission. The sinking of Affinia took down with it the efforts (and perhaps dreams) of those who invested some of their time to create their own store using the system. Affinia considered these people its "customers". Upon the company's decision to discontinue operations they emailed the customers and said they'd "honor all financial obligations" to them. They went on to say they'd send final checks to those they owed greater than twenty dollars. What about all the folks like myself to whom they owed less than that? I suspect they owed the vast majority of their customers less than $20 so they can hardly hold their heads high and claim to have honored all financial obligations. Shame on you Affinia! You can probably see some bitterness in my words about my experience with Affinia. You'd be bitter too! I'm most upset because by writing about the Affinia system, I encouraged others to try it. I received email from DesignStop.Com visitors who built their own Affinia storefronts after reading about it here. Whilst their enthusiasm was pleasing at the time I now hope they didn't put to much of themselves into their storefronts. Sigh... The important thing to realize is that when you participate in a system like Affina's, or any affiliate program for that matter, you run the risk of the plug being pulled at some point. You could invest thousands of hours, or your life savings, promoting their "product" only to find it was for nothing. It isn't easy for you to reduce your risk. I suppose when it comes to affiliate programs (including systems like Affinia's) you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket - participate in more than one to reduce your dependence upon a potential sinker. Also as the web develops there are getting to be some companies that have established themselves. They are perhaps somewhat less risky. If you find the idea of an easy-to-build shopfront system interesting you might want to check out Vstore.com. Shortly after Affinia came on the scene they had competition from Vstore.com who offered a similar system. Affinia is gone but you can still find Vstore.com - maybe that says something about the survivor? I've only investigated it enough to see that it's system is very similar to what Affinia offered. Both claim you can create your own storefront in as little as five minutes. That five minutes might be enough to get your feet wet with the system and teach you the basics. Don't fool yourself - to develop a successful storefront you'll need to spend much more time. The time you'll spend will be much less than almost any other way of getting involved in ecommerce. Try it - you'll have fun! With the Affinia system I was very impressed with the ease at which I could "create" and customize my store. I'm confident Vstore.com is just as easy. No design or html skills are necessary to use the system. You don't have to have your own website to participate. You'll need a valid email address ( I'm giving away free ones here ) and you need to give them your name and mailing address for all the checks they'll be sending you! Making money with your webstore will require you to promote it. You'll need to get people interested in your product selections to visit the site. DesignStop.Com can help you in that department. Be sure to visit my marketing/promotion pages for advice on building quality traffic to your site. The Vstore.com system can let you join the ecommerce revolution in the next few minutes. You've got nothing to loose. Get a piece of the action ... If you create your own store using this system please and let me know. It won't be hard to get me to consider putting a link to your store on this page; all you have to do is ask.
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