Looking to put up an online store and considering using IncomeShops? It’s not a bad choice, but for the price and service, you can definitely do better.
Welcome to my review of Income Shops, today I will break down the Pros and Cons of this program.
I must admit, it’s really an impressive program and by no means do I want to downplay or berate what Income Shops has created.
If I would have found this program a year ago, I would have jumped all over it, without hesitation.
But luckily, for reasons discussed below, I found an amazing online training center that has taught me how to put up online stores, niche websites, and I now earn money online while traveling.
It’s kind of a dream come true for me 😉
Because of my training and education in internet marketing, niche website creation, and eCommerce website development, I feel it’s imperative to point out a few of the flaws of the Income Shops program, as well as show you a better alternative.
IncomeShops Review:
Name: IncomeShops
Website: www.incomeshops.com
Price: There are four packages to chose from. (discussed below).
Owners: Goliath Software
ScamAdviser Rating: High Trust Rating: 100% Safe
Overall Rank: 70 out of 100
If you’re looking for Custom Built Niche Websites, without the hefty price tag and all based on white hat SEO, you should check out Human Proof Designs custom built sites.
Learn more about Human Proof Designs Right Here >>
What is IncomeShops?
IncomeShops is an online platform that really is a Content Management System, kind of like WordPress.
They specialize in helping you build an Online Store based on a specific niche. They have over 1,900 retailers that you can use to affiliate your online store with in order to sell various online retail products.
This is completed through affiliate marketing strategies.
Affiliate Marketing is simple form of online sales where you never own any products. You just advertise products on your website.
Then when someone comes to your site, clicks on your advertisement, and is sent off to another site’s product page or checkout page to purchase said product, you make a commission off the sale.
Regardless if it’s the same product they originally saw on your website or another unrelated product.
Pretty cool right?
Once a customer clicks on any product you have listed on your online store, then goes off to another store and buys whatever product, you receive a commission.
The commissions from Income Shops range from 5% -20%.
Still with me? Hopefully so.
-A Content Management System allows you to control the back-end of a website. It allows you to add content, photos, products, etc.
This is essentially what Income Shops is: a simplified content management system that incorporates other helpful features to assist you with finding affiliate programs, marketing your site, and so forth.
– A Niche is any particular topic, hobby, field of study, or interest. With Income Shops, you can build your own niche online store or you can purchase one of their pre-built stores.
Below are some examples of the pre-built niche stores that Income Shops offers.
- Bedroom Stores – With this store you could sell bedding, associated accessories, beds, night lamps, etc..
- Photography Stores – Again you could sell cameras, lenses, filters, camera bags, etc..
- Desktop PC Stores, Gym Stores, Health Stores, Football Stores, and Cell Phone Shop just to name a few of their other pre-built stores you can purchase.
Why Affiliate Marketing with Websites?
An Affiliate Website is a website based on a particular niche that incorporates affiliate programs within the website as a way to make money.
Affiliate Programs are offered by most every retail company in the world as a way to sell products online.
The Retail Stores that Income Shops are affiliated with DO NOT have exclusive relationships with Income Shop clients.
Anyone can get an affiliate relationship with retail stores depending on your niche.
The most common requirement is that you have a website.
You can build a free website right here at Learn To Grow Wealth Online. It’s super easy to do.
Advantages to Affiliate Marketing:
Affiliate Marketing is one of the most lucrative forms of making money online and has become increasing popular in recent years due to it’s many advantages.
Namely..
- No inventory
- Low start up costs
- No costumer service to deal with
- You don’t purchase goods to sell online
- Zero loss of revenue if your products don’t sell
- Pure commissions for the sales generated from the niche website.
So Income Shops has created a one stop shop that allows you to…
- Pick out a niche.
- Build a site based on that niche.
- Then find products related to the niche to sell on you website.
Sounds perfect, right..
Well at first glance, Income Shops would appear ideal.
But there are a few flaws in their system and you definitely will want to know everything about Income Shops before building a long term online business with them.
Let’s start with their pricing.
Pay Attention to Income Shops Price Plans:
Below is the current list of Income Shops price plans along with the supported features per plan.
If you can’t read all the features, just click on the photo and you’ll be taken to an enlarged screen.
The first important thing to notice is that the Basic Plan for $29.95/mo is basically worthless.
You won’t have live chat support, nor access to the SEO Optimization Center.
If you’re a beginner in the online world, let me explain a few important things.
First off, SEO is everything in online sales. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and this is how search engines like Google recognize and rank websites and website content.
Understanding good SEO techniques is imperative to getting TRAFFIC. Without traffic, you’ll never see sales from your online store.
Secondly, if you’re new to putting up websites, it’s critical that you have support when you need it. Without live support and SEO training, the Basic Plan has ZERO Value.
This forces you to buy one of IncomeShops more expensive plans that cost: $49.95/mo, $59.95/mo, or $99.95/mo
And the only other difference between these plans are the number of products, categories, and retailers you are permitted to have on your IncomeShops website.
Income Shops Up-Sell:
This is really just a way to up-sell you on the more expensive monthly plans.
The reality is that when you first start an online store or niche website, you don’t need 100’s of products to sell online.
But you do need support, SEO training, and plenty of both.
There’s another important point to understand when comparing the other 3 plans to the number of products/categories/retailers that you can have.
And that is, when you first start an online store, you don’t need that many products, categories, or retailers.
I know what you’re thinking.. you want to have a niche store with as many products to attract as many shoppers as you can.
But it’s not the amount of products that will bring traffic to your store, it’s the quality content that you will need to write about that is based on the products you are selling.
This is what brings in the FREE traffic. Don’t know how it’s done, no worries. Grab my Free Traffic eBook.
Online Stores are really niche websites, and sites that have 100’s of products typically get a lot of lookie-loos, but not many purchases.
Think Less Products, Not More!
Compare this to an Online Store that is specialized and focuses on a few products, where you build a good amount of quality content based on those products.
What you’ll find is that you will receive a much more targeted traffic and higher volume of sales.
You will get more targeted traffic and therefore you’ll get customers who are ready to buy.
By building more focused content based on the products you are selling, you will see much more natural traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
This will bring in the Almighty Traffic we spoke of earlier, which will lead to more sales.
So these different Income Shop packages you are paying for don’t make much sense to me.
I used a simple – but extremely effective – educational program and didn’t have to pay any extras.
I can have unlimited amounts of categories, retailers, and products without limitations. Plus I own my site – you don’t with Income Shops. (discussed below)
Become Awesome at Online Business, 100% Free Training >>
Income Shops Store Features:
Here are a list of store features you’ll receive when you buy a website from IncomeShops, as well as my opinion on each feature.
Instant Delivery: Here Income Shops makes it sound like you’ll have your store up and ready for business in a minute.
What you’ll really have set up is your template. You will still have to buy a domain name, get approved for affiliate programs, and write content based on your retail products.
But a good sales pitch nonetheless 🙂
Web Hosting: Web hosting is a standard feature with any website builder. With the hosting that I use, you can host for up to 25 sites using the newest form of hosting technology called “Cloud Hosting”.
You also get free SSL Certification. This is an add on for many hosting companies for $30 – $50 more per month.
Design Control: The simplified Income Shops website maker is overly simplified and really doesn’t allow you much control in your website design.
You can drag and drop a few boxes here and there, add a custom logo, but that’s about it. There really isn’t much design control with Income Shops websites.
Product Retailers: Anyone with a website can fill their site with retail products.
The one feature that I like here is that Income Shops will update your affiliate banners and programs as your affiliates update their products/sales/etc.
Content: The WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface is also standard on any content management system. No big deal here.
One thing to mention is that Income Shops offers a content writing service which can be good for those who aren’t good at writing content.
Income Shops will write content for $99.99 for 5 posts, for 30 posts the price is $300.
With the educational program I use, they teach you how to write content, reviews, and structure your content in order to achieve natural rankings.
Remember, this is the MOST CRITICAL aspect about creating a successful Online Store or Niche Website.
And you would be surprised at what you can do with a little training using your own brain.
Content that is original and based on your experience with the products you want to sell on your website will be the key to your website success.
Social Media: Any pre-built website will have social media already incorporated into the site. Nothing special here.
Mobile Friendly: This means your site will be responsive and look good on desktops, laptops, tablets, or mobile phones.
Again, this is great that they have this feature, but this is pretty standard these days, even with free websites.
SEO: Here they have recruited Neil Patel, who is a SEO and internet marketing guru.
And although this is awesome to learn a few tricks and tips from Neil Patel, the videos will most likely be too advanced for newbies.
Learning proper SEO is a step-by-step process and takes several courses plus experience before you can start implementing SEO strategies into your website.
Support and Training: IncomeShops offers several easy to follow walk-through videos where they guide you step-by-step in setting up your website.
They also have an online support system.
I first used this system to ask a simple question and received help right away.
Then I asked a more challenging question which was.. “How long are the video courses that Neil Patel teaches and how many courses come with the program?” – I didn’t even receive a response to this question.
A little disappointing for a perspective buyer to say the least.
Earnings and Revenue: This is a nice feature where you can go to your IncomeShops dashboard and see up to date revenue that your shop has earned. Very convenient.
What I like about Income Shops:
I love the concept of a one-stop shop that allows people who don’t have any experience in building websites to easily put together a site of their own.
Like the fact that you can buy pre-built niche websites. Although they don’t look really all that great, they would function fine to start out with.
I also like the automation of having affiliates related to your niche at your disposal and that you can pay for custom built online stores and some of the extra services like content writing.
However, you can find much better pricing for these services if you do a little research.
What I Don’t Like
The #1 worst thing about Income Shops is that you will never actually own your own website.
You can own your own domain name, but if you want to transfer your site to another hosting company or get to the point that you don’t want to pay for your overpriced monthly membership, you will lose all the hard work that you put into writing content, adding products, etc.
And that is the WORST flaw in the IncomeShops system.
It’s good for them because it keeps your monthly membership fee coming in.
But this is a horrible move for you as a online business owner.
Imagine you build an awesome online store loaded with cool products, great content, and you’re getting loads of traffic.
Say your site is making $10,000 per month. If you wanted to sell your online business for a couple hundred thousand dollars, you can’t do it with IncomeShops.
They own your site, you only own the domain name.
Or maybe you want to change hosting and add a more professional theme, not happening with IncomeShops.
Other things I don’t like about IncomeShops:
- They offer services to get Twitter and Facebook likes – This is poor advice and won’t help your SEO. You need proper training on how to develop social networks. Buying likes that are generated from robots are not recommended. Developing social profiles that engages people with your content/products is good SEO.
- The cost for their additional services is unnecessary and excessively expensive.
- Income Shops websites are not .com websites. Instead you’ll have your website name as BestBikeStore.incomeshops.com and NOT BestBikeStore.com.
- You can not sign up and try out Income Shops for free.
- The Basic Plan is absolutely worthless without live support or SEO training forcing you to buy a more expensive plan.
- The websites look OK, but nothing special.
- The limit on products, categories, and retailers is just silly. It seems just a way for them to charge you higher monthly fees.
A Better Alternative To Income Shops?
If you want a unique online shop that you can be proud of, generates money, puts you in the drivers seat, I highly recommend you check out my top recommended training.
I’ve been working successfully online for almost a decade now and having the right resources at the right time matters.
My #1 Recommended Training Program Has Been Training People How to Make Profitable Online Businesses for Over a Decade:
You’re Smart: Get the Training You Need >>
If you have any questions about my review of Income Shops, let me know in the comments section below.
Best,
Todd
Having read this review, I signed up for WA and became a premium member, only to find out it is not the same as Income Shops at all. You cannot build an affiliate program direct from the site like you can with Income Shops.
In my experience of both, they are completely different. I am not saying either one is better or worse for making (or not making) money, just that I don’t see how they can be compared.
Therefore, i feel that this article is misleading, unless I have read it wrong and if I have, would welcome the correction!
Hi David,
Wealthy Affiliate and Income Shops can be compared, although Income Shops is inferior for several reasons. With Wealthy Affiliate you’re getting a lot more in terms of value. Income Shops has a service that will write content for you $99.99 for 5 posts, for 30 posts the price is $300. You don’t learn how to optimize this content or even know if it so that you can get it to rank. Remember, by ranking content, you bring traffic to your niche site.
This is a major distinction from Wealthy Affiliate in that they teach you how to write and rank content by understanding keywords and search engine optimization. So in this sense, Wealthy Affiliate is teaching you to become a fisherman versus handing you a fish. You gain skills that you will be able to use for the lifetime of your online business.
The other thing I need to correct you on is your statement that WA is not teaching you to build an affiliate program directly from your site. WA is teaching you how to build a niche site that you can then affiliate yourself with any amount of affiliates products.
If you’re trying to build a digital product that allows you to become the affiliate (so that other internet marketers are trying to sell your product as an affiliate for you), then you don’t want Income Shops. You would want something more along the lines of ClickBank University.
Income Shops and Wealthy Affiliate are both teaching how to put up niche sites that sell products through affiliate marketing. Income Shops is much more expensive and doesn’t have half of the educational training material that Wealthy Affiliate has. Nor a step by step guide to walk you through the process.
One other thing with WA and Income Shops is that WA is teaching you how to build your own online business, with Income Shops, you never own your own website. Does that make any sense? Absolutely not. What if your niche site becomes successful and you want to sell it. Can’t do it with Income Shops program, but you certainly can with WA. Why? Because you own your site and own online business.
If you want a niche site made for you with all the leg work accomplished, I’d recommend Dom from Human Proof Designs. They can get your niche site up with SEO’d content and photos. But you still need to learn how to bring in traffic, rank content, etc. If you don’t, you’ll have a nice looking site that gets no visitors and earns no revenue. You could always try to blast your posts through social medial. But do you even have an extensive social following on Facebook, Google Plus, etc.?
This another thing that WA teaches you how to do. I’d just stick to the classes at WA and get to learning and taking action on building your own niche affiliate website. But you can always waste a lot of money with Income Shops only to have a website that never sees any traffic.
Wealthy Affiliate taught me all these things and now I get 500 to 1,000 visitors PER DAY to this site alone for free. All come from either organic traffic (people searching stuff from Google that I rank for) or from social sites. 86% of that traffic is organic (free traffic). That’s what you want to bring to your niche site to create full time income.
Hope this helps clear up the confusion,
Todd
Hello Todd,
Thanks for your reply.
However, unfortunately it doesn’t clear up any confusion.
Whilst I fully understand your comments, you are still not comparing ‘like for like’. If the article was about “which is the best platform for learning online marketing”, then your comments in your reply would be more relevant.
Also, I did not say that “WA is not teaching you to build an affiliate program directly from your site”, what I said was “You cannot build an affiliate program direct from the site like you can with Income Shops.” these are different statements and my comment is true, because Income Shops has automatic links with affiliate programmes and WA hasn’t.
In fact it is this point that I am focussing on, because this is what makes the two sites different.
Your reply is setting out the benefits of WA. I am not challenging these. What I am questioning is, how can you compare apples with pears? There is a fundamental difference between how the two sites work regardless of which one is better. The difference between the two, provides the user with a choice as to whether they would rather have an ‘automated’ affiliate programme or not.
It’s a bit like comparing a manual gearbox to an automatic one, where there is a fundamental difference. If one was comparing two manual gearboxes then one could argue that one make was better than another, but with two completely different operations, one can only make a decision based on preference. And preference is a choice and therefore not a direct comparison. Yet your article reads as if the two sites are offering the same product and that one is better than the other, and this I find somewhat confusing.
When I read your article, I signed up for WA believing that I was getting a fully automated affiliates system, because of the way your article read, which of course I now discover, is not the case.
David
P.s. I also think you should make it clear in your article, that you are a customer of WA.
Hi David,
Let me guess, you’re just learning about affiliate marketing and building websites, correct? That’s OK, the key here is your success and value of what training product you select.
Having automatic affiliates could be an advantage, as well as having one place to check your affiliate commission is convenient, but it’s really a moot point. Anyone having a site based on a niche that’s based on a brand name product (within that niche) can become an affiliate of any brand name product.
Example, you have a site about computers, you can apply to Apple, HP, Dell, etc. and get an affiliate approval in a day or two. Income Shops has like 900 affiliates, that’s really quite limited when you think of how many affiliate programs are out there in the world.
You want to pay for an automated system to become an affiliate to only certain companies that are affiliates within Income Shops program, you’re limiting your affiliates and relying on Income Shops to pick your affiliates.
This should not be your focus, your focus should be on the quality of training. How are you going to learn to bring traffic to your site with Income Shops? Do the do extended training on content writing, SEO, keyword research, PPC campaigns? They do not, Wealthy Affiliate does.
Maybe you want a business in a box, this concept attacks many, but unfortunately is what scams are based on. You want to put up a quality niche site that brings in traffic and then converts that traffic to online sales, and the best place to learn this is through WA’s extensive training.
I’m a proud life time member of Wealthy Affiliate, I’m also an affiliate for them. I only affiliate this particular site with a dozen of so really quality products that TEACH (ergo the name, learn to grow wealth online) people how to build successful online businesses. I gave Income Shops an 80/100 rating, that might be a bit high since the have little to none (compared to WA) training on how to bring traffic to your site.
And without traffic, you got nothing.
Hope this helps,
Todd
One other thing David to think about. We’re talking about my review of Income Shops in comparison with Wealthy Affiliate.
Both programs are training you on how to create a successful online business. Agreed?
And both do it primarily based on creating niche websites and earning income via affiliate marketing. Agreed
Wealthy Affiliate is an all inclusive online business training center, so there’s training on ever aspect of internet marketing. But the core starts with affiliate marketing based on a niche website.
This is where I’m making my case. Ask your self why is it when you Google… Income Shops, my site is in position 2 in Google, right behind IncomeShops.com. And it’s been there for over a year and I achieved this ranking within the first week or two after publishing this post.
If you Google… Income Shops review. I’m in position 4. Right behind 2 other Wealthy Affiliate members.
The way we learned to rank our content on page one quickly is what Wealthy Affiliate teaches.
That’s what you want in order to build traffic for your niche site to produce consistent online income.
This is the point of my review.
Cheers, Todd
Hi Todd,
Thanks for an extremely thorough review of IncomeShops. I did have a look at IncomeShops, but like you I found their plans a little expensive. The extra services are also over priced and the training may not be good for newbies.
The worst thing for me is not owning the site you have worked on probably for many hours.
Having said that I really like the idea and if they correct these problems they would have a really good product.
I agree that Wealthy Affiliate is a better alternative for learning about internet marketing and for creating a niche store or site. There is no better program!
Thanks again Todd for the great review.
Peter
Hey Peter,
Thanks so much for your feedback on my IncomeShops Review. I agree, they’ve got a good product but I think they got greedy by trying to keep their members by not allowing them to take their sites to another hosting company. That just doesn’t make any sense and it’s not good for the customer, good for them, but not the customer.
The other critical part that I hope was thoroughly expressed in this review is that you won’t learn much on SEO with IncomeShops. And this is the most critical component to creating a niche store or site. If you don’t know how to naturally bring in traffic, you could have the fanciest looking online store with a billion products, but you’ll never get anyone there to see your products.
I’ve known several friends who tried to set up online shops only to see them fail because they couldn’t get traffic to their store. They try spamming Facebook with some links, but it doesn’t produce results.
If you want a successful online business, it takes education, support, and work to make it happen.
Thanks again Peter for your feedback and testimony to the professional education of Wealthy Affiliate.
Cheers,
Todd
I have honestly never heard of incomeshops before sounds pretty interesting, I don’t really care for the part you mentioned that you don’t actually own the site, to me that just isn’t fair.
Considering you are doing all the work.
I probably would of signed up if I wanted to set up a shop online, still don’t care about you not owning the site though, your review will help someone who is thinking of joining IncomeShops for more information, you laid it out very well. Wealthy Affiliate is the best way to go to learn how to create a shop or any website online. Great job
Thanks Jennifer for your comments and feedback on my IncomeShops Review. Yeah, it’s a pretty user friendly service, but I gave it 80/100 score for the reason you mentioned, not owning the store, and I think that you can do a lot better off with a little education rather than paying for all the extra services the IncomeShops provides.
The other point I want to drive home is that the quality of education that Wealthy Affiliate provides is the difference maker whether you learn how to get TRAFFIC. If you don’t learn SEO techniques and how to write content to rank, your shop could have 100’s of products on it but nobody to buy.
Wealthy Affiliate is the clear winner for anyone who is serious about building an online store that produces traffic and income.
Thanks for your feedback, have a great weekend.
Todd
Very detailed overview of income shops, it is the first time I have heard of it, I think I to might have tried this out had I come across it first, but by comparison I can see the obvious advantages of being with Wealthy Affiliate
Hi Katie,
Thanks for coming by and checking out my review of IncomeShops. I know what you’re talking about, it seems like such a fun and easy way to start selling goods online.
But the fact that you don’t ever own the site that you build, the limited design control, and the lack of serious knowledge that you need to put up a successful online store and business, makes WA the clear choice. If you really want to create an online store and a business that will make money, start your training and business off on the right foot.
Thanks again for your feedback, have a great weekend.
Todd
Interesting comparison of WA vs IncomeShops. Easy to follow and understand. WA definitely comes out ahead. Thanks for the nice review.
Hi Debbi,
Thanks for your feedback on my IncomeShops review, I appreciate you taking the time to provide your feedback. And agreed, Wealthy Affiliate is the clear winner versus IncomeShops for building online stores.
Happy Friday,
Todd
I like your review, very detailed and with focus on the main points anyone need to know before making an informed decision. But since I know Wealthy Affiliate program and have tried it, the only thing I can say is that it’s really extremely difficult to compare any product out there with Wealthy Affiliate because the latter is the absolute winner on the web. And I highly recommend Wealthy Affiliate to anyone who wants to learn internet marketing and start making money on the internet.
Hi Rufat,
Thanks so much for your feedback on my IncomeShops Review. And you are right, you can describe all the awesomeness that makes Wealthy Affiliate the number one training program to build online businesses, but it doesn’t do them justice until you come into their program and see all the knowledge, resources, and structure they provide their students. But it’s true, WA is the clear winner for programs to teach people how to make money online, whether it be a niche website, an authoritative website, or an online store.
Thanks again for the feedback and have a great day,
Todd