Is Shopster Any Good?

* Is Shopster any good?
* Is there a link to a Shopster review?
* How does Shopster compare to Doba, Megagoods, Dropship Direct, etc?

As you know, I work for Shopster, so I can't provide an unbiased review. I would suggest however, before you trust any dropship / wholesaler review, make sure to check the authenticity of the review site.

Check out a list of biased dropship reviews here:
http://www.scamreviewsites.com/

My best advice is to try the 1 week free trial. Make sure to cancel before the end of the first week, or you will be charged. The first week is 100% free. This means, if you cancel before the week is up you won't be charged a single penny.

Increase RShop Traffic with Sitemaps

Updated Oct. 17th, 2008: Good news! There is now a feature within Shopster to general the sitemap.xml file for you. After logging in, go to Promote Store, Submit to Search Engines

RShops and Sitemaps

One of the toughest problems you'll face in creating a profitable RShop is generating traffic to your website. The first step is to make sure Google, Yahoo, and all other search engines are aware of your site. That way, if a person is using Google to search for products, there is a chance your RShop will be in the search results.

Google, Yahoo, and MSN Live become aware of new web sites by following links from existing pages. Unless you've linked to your new RShop from a personal website or blog, and a search engine has followed the link to your RShop, your RShop may be never been found by the search engines.

Creating and uploading a Sitemap solves this problem. A Sitemap is a file which contains all the links in your website. You manually direct a search engine to your Sitemap file. Best of all, it's free!

While not technically difficult, there a number of steps to use a Sitemap.

1. Register a search engine account (i.e. www.google.com).
   
2. Verify your RShop with the Search Engine.
   
3. Generate and Upload the Sitemap file to your RShop.
   
4. Get the Search Engine to Read the Sitemap File.
   

For my example, I will use www.google.com. At the end of the post are links to other search engines which can also read Sitemap files.

Step 1: Register a Search Engine Account

1. Go to Google's Webmaster Tools page (http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/)
   
2. If you don't have a Google account, you'll have to create one.
   

Step 2: Verify your RShop with the Search Engine
While not technically a prerequisite for Steps 3 & 4, the first thing you should do it verify you are the owner of the RShop. This will let you see if your site is currently indexed by Google or not.

1. Login to Google's Webmaster Tools (http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/)
   
2. On the Dashboard page (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dashboard) under Sites, add your RShop's site. For example: 'thryva.secure2u.com'
   
3. Under Next Step, click the Verify your Site link. (The same link is also available on the Dashboard page next to your site's name.)
   
4. The page will say, Verification status: NOT VERIFIED.
   
5. For 'Choose verification method..' choose the Upload an HTML file.
   
6. Open Notepad, or any other text editor, and save a empty file with a file name specified by Google. Mine looks like "googleced35171b031861b.html". What is important is the file name, and not the actual contents of the file (it makes no different if the file is empty or not).
   
7. Open a new browser (will be returning to the current page later), and log in to your Shopster account (http://service.shopster.com/).
   
8. In the top navigation bar, click the EDIT RSHOP link.
   
9. From the left navigation panel, click the RShop Settings label to expand the menu choices.
   
10. Click the File Manager link.
    
11. You show now be on the RShop Settings: File Manager page. If you aren't, cheat by pasting this URL in your browser (http://service.shopster.com/retailer/designer/managefiles.aspx).
    
12. Make sure under the Current Folder panel, you see "/ Root /". If it is longer than this, make sure to click the Root link.
    
13. Under the Files panel, click the Browse button, and select the file you created in Step 5 (the empty file whose name is like 'googleced35171b031861b.html').
    
14. Click Open and the path to the file should now be in the text box to the left of the Browse button.
    
15. Click Upload File link to the right of the Browse button.
    
16. Your verification HTML file is now uploaded.
    
17. Switch back to your original browser displaying the Google Webmaster Tools - Verify a Site page.
    
18. Click Verify.
    
19. If all went smoothly, your RShop should be verified. You can check this by going back to the Dashboard page and looking at the Verified? column. It should be a green checkmark.
    

Step 3: Generate and Upload the Sitemap file to your RShop
I'm ashamed to admit Shopster does not generate this file for you. You'll have to user a third party tool. I used xml-sitemaps.com.

1. One xml-sitemaps.com home page, in the Starting URL text box, enter in your RShop's URL. In my case, 'http://thryva.secure2u.com/'.
   
2. I choose Change frequency to 'Monthly', but choose what most actively describes how often you will be updated your RShop.
   
3. Leave default choices for the rest of the options and click 'Start'.
   
4. Note that the 'free' version of their generator will only allow up to 500 pages.
   
5. Once it finishes, download the sitemap.xml file to your computer.
   
6. If you have more than one RShop, you should name the file to -sitemap.xml, because the files you upload to your RShops are stored in the same directory, and you will need one sitemap file for each RShop.
   
7. You will now want to upload the Sitemap file to your RShop exactly in the same way you uploaded your verification HTML file in the previous set of instructions. (go to http://service.shopster.com/retailer/designer/managefiles.aspx and upload file to root directory).
   

Step 4: Get the Search Engine to Read the Sitemap File
By this step, you have now verified your RShop with the search engine, and make available a Sitemap file available on your RShop.

1. Log in to Google's Webmaster Tools. (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/)
   
2. From the Dashboard, choose your RShop's site and under the Sitemap column click Add link.
   
3. For 'Choose Type...' choose Add General Web Sitemap.
   
4. In the text box, enter the file name of the Sitemap you uploaded to your RShop. This is either 'sitemap.xml' or '-sitemap.xml'.
   
5. Click the 'Add General Web Sitemap button'
   
6. Google should now tell you your Sitemap status is 'Pending'. Google will eventually use your sitemap to add your RShop to its search engine. Once done, you can use Webmaster Tools to see how your site is being found through Google searches.
   

Now that you have a Sitemap for your RShop, you should let the other search engines know about it. Here are some links:
Yahoo! Site Explorer (https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit)
Microsoft's MSN Search (http://webmaster.live.com/)
Ask.com (http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/webmasters.shtml#22)