Because I have been reviewing premium themes for nearly two years now, and have seen a number of solutions that blog theme designers have used, I want to provide some feedback on what I have seen happening.
Getting started, E-Junkie was the premier solution. I don’t know whether it was the set of features or price that people had to pay on a monthly basis that began drawing people away form it, but there is a growing trend of clients that are using their own solutions, or aMember.
The experience factor may be coming into play, as even going through E-Junkie to get product or affiliate links can be a struggle, as many of the pages are relatively slow loading, because the services was built in Flash. Now, I am not directly making criticisms, but it would be nice to have all the links placed on one page, making it easier to navigate between individual sellers, rather than having to go through multiple pages to get to a single product.
Hosting your own script on your server obviously gives you more control. The up-front costs will certainly be higher unless you already own the software, but the benefits in the end might be greater. Instead of relying on someone else to “host” all your sales, it is dependent of you to ensure that you cater to the needs of your customers. You are given more flexibility over how your potential customers turn into long-term customers, and how they pay through your system.
With E-Junkie you are paying for storage on someone else’s servers, with a price tag that can certainly add up as you increase the number of products you sell increases. Many default payment systems are included with both systems, so that really isn’t a factor in this discussion.
Even though I, as both a customer and affiliate of some of these sites would like to say that having everything managed on one site (take E-Junkie, for example), going to the site can be a pain at times, having to manage multiple accounts. This is what everyone was trying to get away form when other hosted solutions were created. Instead, many people are going back to that, as the client management software is becoming more complex, easier to use, and more feature-rich for what you are selling.
There are a number of additional features that both systems offer that may be of benefit to you, but they can be included in a more specific review and comparison of the services. At this time, I’d like to hear which system (out of these, or others) you prefer to use when selling products online, manage your customers, and create an affiliate program.
