Storesonline Review - Part 1
I will now write a review of the storesonline workshop that I attended a few days ago.
The workshop venue was already full when I arrived with my friend. So full that they had to bring in more chairs and binders for those who were still ariving. This was further evidence of the success of their marketing system.
The main speaker was a person by the name of Kory Thurston. He claimed that he wasn’t an employee of storesonline; rather he owns internet business and was paid by storesonline to conduct the workshop. As part of the agreement, he was not allowed to reveal any of his websites to us.
First, a bit on his background. Here’s a brief summary:
Many years ago, he attended a storesonline workshop just like what we did. Even though he had no technical skills, he purchased a few websites from storesonline. Thanks to storesonline, he could now work from home and take care of his three kids.
I must say that this was cleverly done to build rapport with the audience. If someone with his backgound could do it, then anyone of us present should be able to repeat his success.
The first part of this presentation was about the required tools and support required to succeed in an online business. Things like website, shopping cart, secure hosting, etc. All of which were provided by storesonline.
He mentioned that there was no need for us to create any new product. People usually buy common items on the internet, not something that they have not heard of.
Kory went on to correctly point out that information was the best selling item on the internet, and also the effectiveness of permission based marketing.
He stressed on the importance of having multiple websites. Having only one site was a big mistake. My personal opinion was that we should concentrate on one site and make it profitable before starting the next. If that one site has a certain theme and doesn’t deviate, it’s perfectly ok.
The next part of the workshop was a demonstration of some of the tools found in the storesonline platform. The first was on a keyword research tool. This was a very useful tool for estimating the demand of any potential product.
In actual fact, this tool is freely available. The exact tool that he used can be found here.
The next tool was the traffic statistics and tracking feature. We were shown that it was able to track the sources of traffic for the site and also which were the search engine keywords that were generating the orders.
A very useful tool I must say. But traffic statistics are provided as part of nearly all hosting packages. And most tracking tools are pretty affordable. Google Analytics provides all these for free.
Before lunch, another speaker came to talk to us about the 90 day offer and workshop offer. Essentially, participants were offered discounted prices on the storesonline software. We were able to purchase 3 or 6 websites for the startup cost of 1 and 2 websites respectively.
No wonder there were so many references earlier on the importance of having multiple websites.
We were told to sign up for our 1-1 consultation which would take place after lunch. The “consultations” turned out to be sales talk which took place throughout the rest of the afternoon, even while the workshop was going on.
As this review is getting a bit long, I will talk about the afternoon session in the next review post on the storesonline workshop. There were five strategies covered and a guaranteed method to get your website on the first page of a search engine within three days.
on August 21st, 2006 at 11:40 pm
Please, can anyone help us. My husband and I were stupid enough to join Storesonline. We signed up for 3 sites at $2500 dollars each. We have only 1 site up. We had such a hard time getting that site together and we feel it’s not even making any money. We got so discouraged and depressed that we put our site on construction and we think Storesonline people took it off construction. We have till December this year to come up with the other 2 sites. However, my husband became ill and is now on medical leave. I tried to work with storeonline to cancel our contract because we can’t seem to pay for it and besides we are very unhappy with them. Please, is there anyone out there that can help us. We’ve been having threatning letters from Duvera for payment. Please help us. Our email address is roxylei10@yahoo.com
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on August 22nd, 2006 at 12:00 am
My husband and I would like some help to cancel our contract with Storesonline. We beleive that they misled us with lies. Please email us at roxylei10@yahoo.com
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on March 27th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Thank you so much for your review of Storesonline. I attended the full day seminar yesterday, and must admit that I was swept up in the excitment of their sales pitch. However, not having the finances to sign up on the day, I walked away a bit bummed, but now relieved! My best friend and her mum however did buy a package of 6 websites. After researching a number of reviews, I am now concerned that they have made a terrible decision. Thanks again for being so honest and forthcoming with your opinions of the company. I am sure you just saved me a lot of headaches!
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on May 16th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Now I realize what a terrible mistake I have made. I feel the butterfly in my stomach as I think “money down the drain” I bought three websites of which I have not even one up. I f anyone an help me please do. let us get toguether and file class action law suit to this bunch of fakes. Is there any way out of this mess? is there any lawyer somewhere reading this comment? if there is please help us.!!!!
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on May 16th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
stores on line is just too good to be true, they make it seem so easy. although they admit that you are not going to become rich from the night to the morning. I am calling my lawyer on them to have thids contract cancelled. they presented so simple and the more I try to get my web site up I get even morefrustrated and confused. when ou use the chat line they only refer you to the same resource in the merchant tools. I need to cancel this contract this is really a licenced rip off.
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on May 16th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Please heeeelllppp!!! Stores on line is a ripoff.
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on June 22nd, 2007 at 2:53 pm
I bought the 3 website package and I have been very impressed with the support. I am enjoying setting up my site and have followed the instructions closely. If I have a criticism its that there is too much detail.This can lead to confusion as you may be doing extra work not knowing if its necessary for the type of products you are selling. I am pleased with the professional look of the site. People learn in different ways . If you are visual learner then you can watch the instructions in movie form,if not then its in print. . It does take a lot of time for research and assembling the products and images you want to the site. There are a lot of cheaper web building programs out there and I investigated a lot of them. They usually looked cheap,had poor artwork,no choice of design and were constantly after more money.From a basic site,they went for more money for direct download to Ebay ,then more for email searches. One site even charges $100 per year for telephone support ! Another will answer your questions within 24 hrs ! Wow ! I get instant help with instant messaging. Yes a lot of the information is out there,but take it from someone who has been trying to figure out how to sell on the internet in a professional way for two years… I was thrilled to have it all in a nice neat package for me. Storesonline was not cheap,but my daughter had a professional company develop her site for her and that cost her close to $2000.She will not be able to wipe it out and start over again with another product if it doesnt work. I will.I think thats a very important point.I feel I am learning a great skill at the same time. I feel more like I have purchased a course that will earn me an income. I guess its all in how much you want to work and how you look at the opportunities out there.If you had the doubt butterflies you should have listened. I never did and I still dont.
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on June 22nd, 2007 at 2:59 pm
<p>Hi Linda, nice to hear that you liked the package. Do keep us updated on how your site goes. The last time I heard, storesonline does charge you for extra support as well.</p>
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on June 23rd, 2007 at 10:47 am
I need help from someone out there.Me and my wife went to the storesonline seminar and we listened to their speaker on storesonline and how money could be made.The more we listened we got excited.Well they talked us into getting 3 websites they offered on a special deal that day.They made it sound so good.Well it cost us $4098.00 total and we gave a down payment of $320.00 and they had financing so we financed $3778.00.Any way we finally sent the finance company a check for $3778.00 which we really could not afford.Anyway we tried to make our web site over and over.We could not get it done Not Easy at all.Finally me and my wife got so frustrated we just gaveup.We called them but really did not help.Just coul not get it.Is there anyone out there that can help us get at least most of our money Back.Please Please Please Help us someone.
James Bernal
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andrew Reply:
October 27th, 2008 at 12:48 am
Hi James, I have been reading a lot about stores online and basicly i feel sick to my stomach. Dont tell me i have just been ripped off. I JUST CAME BACK FROM A STORES ONLINE INVITATION AND FREE LUNCH, and after thinking of the prospect of selling online purchased the binder only for $25.00 can, i have not gone to the internet workshop yet which is booked for nov 8/ 2008 and i am now trying to cancel this agreement which i have 3 bussiness days to do so, but have not had any luck getting through to cxlrequest@myquickresponse.com to give notice of cancelation prior to my three days grace, can you advise to what to do if i cannot get through to them for cancelling prior to the internet workshop where i suppose thay are going to give me the selling of website,s
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Hedles Reply:
November 2nd, 2008 at 2:31 am
Sorry, this post is a few days later than intended - due to my not reading the instructions carefully!
Hi Andrew,
If it is the initial one day workshop (£20 when I did it a year or so ago) that you have booked for, I wouldn’t be too worried about it. Yes you will get a hard sell of their web sites, but - depending upon how much you know already - you will likely learn a lot about web marketing and you are not committed to buying anything from them . . . go and learn, is my advice - I certainly learned a lot when I did the workshop, but don’t be suckered into believing that Storesonline web sites are the only ones that provide all the facilities they offer, and don’t take any means of payment with you! I also read a lot of this site between signing up for the £20 seminar and going to it. Forewarned is forearmed.
As you will see if you have read a lot of this web site there are other sites providing (often free) facilities that replicate the function of many of Storesonline’s
On the other, if you have paid an arm and a leg for the workshop keep trying to contact them.
Hedles
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on June 23rd, 2007 at 11:20 am
I for got to list my e-mail address.It is navarro@tcaexpress.net.Again someone please help us get most our money back.
Thank You
James Bernal
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on June 27th, 2007 at 7:36 am
A few comments for storesonline.com’s starters! I have been a web developer/programmer for many years. My opinion, after working on a few storesonline.com’s website for a few years (belonging to my clients), is … don’t start your business with storesonline because
1- It’s relatively easier to start but once your business starts to expand; it’s hard to scale the expansion of your business with storesonline since they DO NOT give any access to YOUR own source files for your website. I can write pages on the problems caused because of that but so much for that.
2- NO scripting language is supported except Javascript. I remember I had to implement a custom search feature for my client and I was shocked to know that there was no database or script supported by them. Even free web servers offer basic database and scripting on their server. We ended up buying additional hosting to host this feature.
3- Their URL structure is a nightmare of any SEO. I have worked on many websites for search engine optimization and I found storesonline’s websites to be the worst. Weird domain name splitting, no .htaccess, no httpd.conf access etc. Simply put, Google does not like storesonline. Trust me, you can’t run an internet based business if Google doesn’t like you (unless all your customers live next door to you).
Finally, setting up a basic website on storesonline may look easy enough to you but watch out for what will follow when it will come to scalability in future.
Nadeem
admin@blueribbonventures.com
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on June 27th, 2007 at 7:49 am
Hi Nadeem, very good points.
I wholeheartedly agree with your comments.
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on June 28th, 2007 at 2:33 am
I bet Linda Naneen work for Storesonline
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on June 28th, 2007 at 2:49 am
It certainly looked like that to me. A better and more unbaised review from a user of the system can be found here :
http://beginnerinternetmarketing.wordpress.com
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on June 28th, 2007 at 11:06 am
I went to a storesonline seminar today. It reminded me of those late night hard tv sell “scammers”. I luckily held to my gut feelings and did not succumb. I feel terrible for those that did. The audience today was mainly women over 45 and elderly couples. I watched in horror as innocent persons eagerly handed over about $6500.00 for the six website deal. I felt so sickened by what I observed that I had to leave. I was not brave enough to stand up and yell. These people are nothing but scammers and liars. I wish anyone who got involved with them the best of luck in pursuing the justice they deserve. I also found a lot of bad press today about this company and their parent company iMergant from around the globe. I did wonder during they speaches that seemed why they never mentioned the Better Business Bureau, after reading the proceeding comments and other critics of this company, I now don’t have to guess.
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on June 28th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Sorry my earlier comments were seem lacking in grammar, etc. I am still upset by the experience.
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on June 28th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Janet, it’s ok. Thanks for sharing.
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on June 29th, 2007 at 12:55 am
I have been a Sales Manager for Ford Dealerships, VW, and other imports for 25 years.
I retired and this week went to a seminar for Storesonline. I have to admit that it was exciting and fun to watch these guys deliver the message,and do everything they could to “close” the folks there. It did appear that most fo the people there could not write a check and they Zoomed in on those people to get the finance money also. They never really approached me until late in the afternoon, when I told them of my background and was asked to leave out the back way, so as not to disturb( or let others see me leave) the salespitch. I did leave without a purchase, but felt sorry for the ones they got….They Hit them like a SWAT Team. BEWARE of anyone who tells you ” If you don’t go into business with me NOW You will never get this chance again” Yeah Right ! ! !
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on June 29th, 2007 at 6:42 am
I went to the seminar today with my daughter. We listened to their sales pitch up until 1:00, then we left before lunch was served and never went back.
I felt they were using high pressure sales pitching, but softening the pitch by being so “down to earth” and congenial with the captive audience.
The speaker we heard stated that if we were worried about spending the money(right now!) to make money or spending the money if a business partner wasn’t at this seminar, that we would never get anywhere and would always be on the bottom.
Well, my dad who is my business partner was unable to attend the seminar with me and no way was I going to “jump on board” without his input or consulting with him about spending that kind of cash.
My gut feeling told me during the seminar to leave, the storesonline rep’s are a bunch of really smooth high pressure salesmen.
Am glad I listened to my instincts for once and my symphathies to the one’s that did get snookered in by Storesonline.
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on June 29th, 2007 at 7:50 am
the comment from Loreece is the date wrong. Today is june 28 2007 so how can her comment be for the 29 th which is tomorrow ?
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on June 29th, 2007 at 8:00 am
Hi Joe, previously I was using the time zone of another country that was way ahead of US, so there is some slight difference in the dates.
I will now slowly switch it to using US Central time. Hope that clarifies.
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on July 3rd, 2007 at 11:30 am
I have also purchased 6 websites and have been unable to start any one of them. I did try to cancel but they told me the time had expired which I knew it hadn’t. So I have 6 licenses which mean absolutely nothing. They have not helped me at all and I have tried to contact them on several attempts. Now I can’t even log on because they say my password is not working so when I call to complain no one gets back to me. I want to do something about this but I don’t know what. Does anyone have a lawsuit against them right now.
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on July 3rd, 2007 at 11:50 am
Hi Cindy, you can try contacting your State Attorneys General for advice and help.
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on July 3rd, 2007 at 7:00 pm
I did not have a credit card, but purchased 3 website packages, was not helped by any storeline employee, was told to send package back and no payments to be rendered thereafter, however I am being hounded by Duvera and now Polymar Associates to make the contract good. Next step: Attorney state General. Storesonline is a major ripoff, scam operation. Go to Ripoffs.com and read all the complaints. NBC Dateline did a story on them in January 06, get the transcripts. I will not pay anymore $$$ to this Satanic company that abuses the low to middle income workers!
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on July 14th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
I went to the free seminar recently with a VERY closed mind (I only wanted the free MP3 player and meal). I left there with the MP3 player afterwards, and that’s it.
My brother, however, made the mistake of buying the $25 kit and signed up for the day seminar. Now he knows that he was ripped off. Don’t make the same mistake that he did. If you DO go, DON’T buy anything from them. Just eat, take the gift, and go. 
These losers don’t deserve your business.
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on July 16th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Im a full time Mechanic, My boss bought 6 websites from storesonline… I was roped into building the sites for him. so far we have one site that is almost ready to publish… My experience with storesonline has been great so far… they have been very helpful.. ( i have called them 5 times in the last 2 days) i was helped right away every time… as of now even though i have no investment i am pleased with their service… keep in mind that when you sell a product online or in your retail store you must market the product… i will post more later on the success or failure of our stores… so far so good!
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on July 16th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Hi Darren, glad to hear you are doing well. Would you like to share your website url so that the rest of us can visit your site and have a look?
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on July 18th, 2007 at 12:17 am
I have been RIPPED OFF by storesonline. I have saved many of my chat contacts with them. Their csr’s are incompetent and have absolutely no idea of how to solve problems. I have been given incorrect solutions by them on how to solve a problems I have. All they do is say they’re sorry. They charged me $50 to tranfer my site from the old format to the newer PRO format. It’s been weeks and it hasn’t been done yet. It was promised to me by their programmer Josh Porter that it would be completed by Thursday, July 12, 2007. It’s now Wednesday, July 18th and it still hasn’t been done, despite them taking my money.
This is only one instance of my displeasure with this company. Could someone please help me to get my $6,000+ money back? Your advice would be appreciated. Thank you.
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on July 18th, 2007 at 12:21 am
Forgot to mention, when I call to speak to the programmer they say he’s in a meeting and will get back to me. He never does.
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on July 18th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Hi Mark, you can consider going to your State AG.
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on July 27th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
RE: STORES ONLINE
I ATTENDED A FREE SEMINAR THAT PROMISED A FREE DINNER AND A BUSINESS PLANNER WHICH WAS SUPPOSED TO BE WORTH 120.00 TOTAL. WHAT A JOKE! WE WERE SERVED COLD SANDWICHES AND CHIPS-FOR DINNER AND THE 49.95 PLANNER WAS CHEAP AND PLASTIC AND IT DIDN’T EVEN HAVE DATES. THE SEMINAR WAS IN A FANCY HOTEL AND THE SPEAKER WAS VERY CONVINCING- HE EVEN CRIED!!.WE WERE TOLD THEIR PURPOSE WAS DEFINITELY”NOT” TO SELL US ANYTHING. BOY,DID THEY LIE!!! WE WERE INVITED TO AN ALL DAY “LEARNING” SEMINAR FOR THE LOW PRICE OF 20.00 AND WE COULD EVEN BRING A GUEST-FREE.
AS A SNAKE OIL SALESMAN-WHO THEY SAID WAS NOT EMPLOYED BY THEM MISLEAD AND ENTERTAINED US, I LISTENED AND WATCHED IN HORROR AS PEOPLE LINED UP TO BUY A” VERY EXPENSIVE” DREAM-THAT I KNOW WILL PROBABLY NEVER COME TRUE. SOME SPENT ALL THEY HAD AND OTHERS SPENT MONEY THEY DIDN’T HAVE. FROM MY WEB RESEARCH, I HAVE LEARNED— BUYER BEWARE! THERE ARE TONS OF FREE INFORMATION ON THE WEB. PLEASE RESEARCH BEFORE YOU SPEND A DIME. IF SOMETHING LOOKS TO GOOD TO BE TRUE-IT USUALLY IS.
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on August 9th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
I have three websites hosted by storesonline. http://www.the-best-hot-sauce.com , http://www.selfdefenseequipment.biz , and http://www.mysimplifynurse.com . I have been doing pretty well with my sites, however I have been struggling to get high rankings on Google. I had no problem with yahoo and msn. I like the software and find it easy to use, but like I say it os hard to rank on google. I cannot find anyone who can do seo for my sites. I tryed several companys, but none of them could do anything for me.
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on August 9th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Hi Jon,
Thanks for sharing your sites. Finally, we have someone who managed to get their sites up. Great job.
Yes, the SEO portion can be a problem as the urls are not exactly SEO friendly. Can’t do anything about that. I see you have already optimised your title, keyword and description meta data for each individual page.
Other than getting more links (and some deep links) to your site, there probably isn’t much more that you can do.
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on August 9th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Hi Jon, you can also try adding more words to your individual product descriptions.
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on August 12th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
I went to the introduction seminar today. Unfortunately I gave them the 20.00 so that my friend and I could go to the full days seminar. THANK YOU EVERYONE! For voicing your discontent with this company. Gotta love the internet. What ever you need to know…you can find out. I won’t be going to the full day seminar so I wasted 20.00 but ultimately I have saved thousands. I only decided to research this company because I was planning on going to the seminar. Thanks again everyone!!!
Jewel-atlanta,ga
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on August 14th, 2007 at 4:34 am
Hi All:
I also went to the full day seminar, but I considered the $25 as investing in what NOT to invest in. A lot of assurances and promises of making money, but in reality, it could take years before all those profits pile up.
1. The sales pitch was owning more than one web-site. Yatta Yatta Yatta, 6 is the best, you can’t go wrong for the cost of CAD $6500 with credit card processor and something else. Fine, but you only get 500MB of storage and as detailed earlier no database or scripting. In addition, you pay $30 per month per website for hosting and publishing. $150 for SOL to build your websites and $50 per hour after that for them to make changes to your website.
2. A lot was emphasised on dropshippers (a.k.a. suppiers who ship the product on your behalf. You take orders, but they ship). Although you may get the ‘tools’ to find a dropshipper, SOL is not helping you in lets say initiating contact or revewing the contractual agreement with the dropshipper. So bottom line is, you need to spend some more $$$ in lawyers fees to have that done.
3. The whole seminar as well as one on one consultation was geared to you buying the websites. Even if you can’t afford it, but your credit card is deep enough to charge it on, it’s still a good investment. The consultant was so desperate and proceeded to tell me that charging the cost of the website on my credit card and paying the minimum payments on the credit card would still be a wise investment decision. I dont’ know about you, but I’m seeing interest charges going over the roof here.
4. You can’t avail from their tools unless you’re a ‘merchant’ with them. That involves buying the websites. For people like me, who like to build everything from scratch, I only need to avail from their marketing tools (reverse search engine for example) for minimal charge.
All and all being said, they did provide some useful marketing information, which is what I needed. This SOL could work only if you already have a product to sell, but you don’t have the technical know how on building web-sites with shopping cart features. For everything else, you’re down the hole at least CAD $6500 for at least a couple of months before you begin to have sales.
As conculsion in my opinion I would say it’s worth spending the entrance fee and weed the information from the sales pitch and invest in a computer where you can install the web server, the database, and any scripting language. You get descent marketing ideas; computers are now cheap (not more than CAD $500 for a tower); the software (Apache web server, MySQL database, PHP language to connect the Apache and MySQL) are free.
Thank you for reading my comments….
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on August 14th, 2007 at 5:04 am
Thanks for sharing ScorpionFiko!
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on August 17th, 2007 at 2:59 am
Thank you all for your comments. My father had the joy of purchasing 5 – 6 web sites from these guys and asked me to build a web the web site for his nutritional company.
I have a little bit of experience but am not anything close to an expert. Had an online paintball company that was doing well but the increasing cost of shipping was just killing me. Added to that the paintball mfgs would go directly after my customers to have them buy from them it was very frustrating. But anyways I built my dads little site and added my two bits about using his products and started a bloggish section of how so far I have dropped about 30 pounds over the last month and a half.
I had no idea how much he had paid for these sites and thought maybe $100 bucks a piece was about what they were worth due to constraints of the template type model that most of these types of site companies have. I about flipped out when he told me how much he had spent. At that point I was thinking well hell you spent it we might as well use it. I think I spent something like $400 for my shopping cart when I did mine.
This all leads up to what these knuckleheads are up to now.
We get a call from a Heidi from stores online who is saying that they are looking for a few “open minded” = (dumb) and aggressive = (desperate) people that they can use as a case study. We set up a phone appointment and had an hour long conversation that was very professional and smooth. I will give them that, they are very smooth. During the whole call I had this feeling I was in the film the Boiler Room. It went something like this. Mostly the highlights.
Heidi: Thank you guys for your time, like I said we are only picking a few customers who are open minded and aggressive to take their sites to the next level.
Me: Well that’s great what’s so special about us, we are a Mom and Pop shop with a retarded son who can make a site kinda pretty.
Heidi: Laughs… I wouldn’t say you were retarted.
Me: I was talking about my brother.
Heidi: Laughs again… Anyways we are looking for a couple of people to put under our experts to get the results that you are looking for.
Dad: And what exactly are those results.
Heidi: We have had clients that have made $18k in three weeks.
Me: Is it that male enhancement guy that keeps sending me e-mails? And how do they know its starting to give me a bit of a complex?
Dad has to pull the phone away from his mouth because he is laughing to hard.
Heidi: Long awkward pause and kinda chuckles. No I don’t believe he is that guy.
Me: Oh ok I was wondering not that I have that problem or anything. So can I take a look at these experts sites?
Heidi: Well do to Non-disclosure reasons with our clients we cannot give out that information.
Me: Well it’s kinda hard to make a case study if you can’t give an example of said case study.
Heidi: No you’re the case they are the experts.
Me: The guy who is sending me male enhancement e-mails?
Heidi: exactly.. I mean no I don’t know who that guy is.
At this point I have her off her script and she is desperate to get back on it.
Heidi: Anyways we are looking for Open Minded and teachable people that we can show that our services work very well.
Me: Well the old man is open minded and I’m teachable so we have that going for us.
Heidi: pauses again… for an online business you need key ingredients. A product that people want, time, mentoring, and capital. (tah dah we get down to
business)
Dad: Well that makes sense.
Heidi: Are you willing to invest 8 hours of time a week into your business.
Dad: We both are workaholics and 8 hours is nothing.
Heidi: Well most of time when your starting something new a majority of the time spent is making mistakes. We have already invested that time so you don’t have to.
(Hell sounds good to me)
Heidi: We would like to be your mentors and enabling you to start making money quickly taking out the time you don’t have to spend figuring out what doesn’t work.
Dad: Sounds good to me.
Heidi: The number one reason that companies fail is lack of cash flow and capital. If we could get that kind of cash flow going through you company wouldn’t the capital investment be worth it.
Me: Generally is. But that doesn’t really happen in real life.
Heidi: Yes it does, we have 70,000 sites and people are making their livings on them every day.
Me: Sounds like you already have a good case study than.
Heidi: We want to be able to prove that we can do it from a startup.
At this point Heidi starts profiling us for how much we have available on credit cards which is about 20k. I start getting pissed off but am maintaining my cool. Time to harass Heidi some more.
Heidi: We would be very interested in working with you to make you successful.
Me: So Heidi tell me how is your sites doing.
Heidi: Excuse me?
Me: Well if it’s so doable how are YOUR sites doing.
Heidi: Well I don’t have any.
Me: Pardon me I’m just a simple country boy from Montana. And I’m a bit touched in the head. Please explain and use real little words that if this is so doable, how come your not making $18,000 in your first month.
Heidi: Well I umm, I work for the company and they pay me well.
Me: They pay you a quarter million dollars a year?
Heidi: Well no.
Me: Than it seems your under paid.
Heidi: I um ahh.
(at this point I actually start bouncing my head off the table)
Heidi: Ah whats that are you ok?
Me: Yeah sorry that was my retarted brother, he sings like a whale sometimes, TIMMY PUT YOUR HELMET BACK ON.
My dad once again has to put the phone down I think this time he might pee his pants he’s laughing so hard. At this point Heidi is so desperate to get hold of that $20k that she goes on to request that we talk with her consultant the next day.
We set up the appointment and I will look forward to torturing that rat bastard also. What these people are doing is simply wrong. It is the biggest scam as far as how much money they soak out of people I think I have ever seen.
My dads little nutritional network marketing company cost him $40 bucks to get in and he is doing well. He’s making some good money on it but he works hard at it. Someone earlier said there is no such thing a s free lunch. And I agree. There is also no such thing as instant mega money. If it is they are not going to share the secret unless they plan on using you.
I had to explain that to my father. He disagreed because of his network marketing business. I had to tell him that was different but still the same. Network marketing is about building a sales organization out of laymen. It’s possible but chances are to be successful your going to have to always work it. If you enjoy it and believe in your products like they do, (and I’m beginning
to) than be happy with that.
Thank you for this site and what you are doing.
God Bless.
[Reply]
Dana Fowler Reply:
October 15th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
I am suppose to go to the free dinner and get a MP3 with storeonline this evening in Sheridan WY. I have some websites and I work hard at keeping up with the marketing changes, ie blogging, now your suppose to make a video, social networks etc…and I have purchased A LOT of get rich schemes-usually the information is the same. I am sitting here wondering if I should go to the dinner, just to protect my neighbors, as I was once ripped off by an “e commerce” sales pitch way back when internet just got started, cost me a lot, had to get a second job to pay the leasing charge, I had committed to. It was a terrible experience, effected my credit, my family time, etc…
Anyway my advice is that google and yahoo offer tutorials, and there are some really good hosting companies, that have website tonight type packages, and there is plenty of good inexpensive information available for building a web businesses. All of these cost much less then the $$$’s storesonline is charging. Like any business it all takes research, time, and a good plan and some investment. If there is a good “get rich quick” scheme for internet I have not found it. So like others have said “buyer beware”!!
I do not know very many network marketers in Montana, but I would like to, as there is some great ground floor companies out there right now. Good luck everyone.
Dana
[Reply]
on August 22nd, 2007 at 8:07 am
I attended a StoresOnLine seminar on August 17 and got carried away and bought their 3 pack websites. The next day I did the research I should have done (including finding this website), and decided I wanted out. On Monday I phoned the number on the form and was told to look at the back of my yellow copy, and lo and behold, there was a cancellation form! We have 3 business days to cancel without penalty, so I did.
[Reply]
on August 22nd, 2007 at 8:32 am
Hi Jan, good for you!
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on August 28th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Ok here is my thing , if you dont know much about the internet or HTML code then you should not have a website or go to any storesonline seminars. My background is with computers so before I started with storesonline I knew somenthing. After getting my sites running I found lots of free info on how to make my sites better from the internet. Storesonline also has live help all of the time. They are usefull most of the time, but some of them dont know much. I guess its what time of day you try to get live help. I think storesonline os ok, its easyer than starting a site from scratch. However I think storesonline needs to inform people more that it is not easy to make a site or to get high rankings on Google. You cannot just build a site and just leave it there, you always have to tweak it always. I spend some time each day doing this to my sites.
[Reply]
on August 30th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
i have a website that cost me nothing and makes me no money from freeservers.com(a netzero affiliate)they have some better site building stuff for a small fee.
i got an invite to stores online and too felt like wheres the camera filming this late nite infomercial?. got my free cheap 128mb fake ipod nano and crosandwich with a peice of lettuce on the side. paid twentyfive bucks for the “ebay cd set” which came with a date for a full day sales pitch bombardment and never went back.
i looked for sol info like this site as i got another invite to an sol event at a local hotel. i called to reserve not 1 but 2 seats and on the day of the event (today) went to the local ymca and worked out in the gym and hit the hot tub. i suspect they will keep callin telling me to goto the site:
http://www.storesonlinesecondoffer.com which i looked at and was amazed at the ripoff price of 3999.00 for i beleive one web page hosting….well if u really wanna make money, lets get together and relabel bottled vitamins. we can send out invites to a seminar worth 150.00 give out bologna sandwiches and a free bottle of our super vitamins. selling them into our supervitamins business. they invest alot at 4.00 a bottle (retail 49.95) 100 bottle minimum we pay 1.00 per relabled bottle .. so guess who really wins.. if you want to make money never listen to someone who wants to tell you how. just watch what they do and make a moral and ethical decision.money aint everything.
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on August 30th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
i meant that i skiped my second visit to this in person infomercial and went to the wmca instead
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on August 31st, 2007 at 8:37 am
Wow. The second chance thing is something new. Thanks for sharing.
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on September 5th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
My partner and I purchased 3 sites from SOL in January of this year. It was a NIGHTMARE getting that first site up and running, but it grossed over $11,000 our first month and over $14,000 the next. Our second site went live two weeks ago. It’s not anywhere near as easy as SOL says it will be. I would advise most people to pay the extra money to have SOL set up your site for you. My partner and myself are highly educated, computer literate and getting that first site up was one headache after another that SOL could not give us any help with. If you want sound on your site, don’t bother asking SOL for help. They have no idea how to do it. But we are making good money. Would I buy from SOL again? No.
[Reply]
on September 12th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Hi Sherri,
Thanks for sharing. I’m glad to see that a couple of people are making money with Storesonline. Would you share your url’s so we can take a look?
I noticed that most of the people who complain never actually went through and built and site and optimized it. They just got scared and quit and tried to get their money back based on the complaints of others. I bought 6 sites and I had a pretty good programmer so no complaints there. There’s just a learning curve that’s kind of hard to get around unless you have a lot of time.
[Reply]
on September 14th, 2007 at 9:21 am
Hello Shadrene,
Of course. My URL’s are:
http://www.CelticRenaissanceMusic.com
http://www.PoiDoggGourmetCoffee.com
I’m glad to hear your sites have done well too. Did you hire one of SOL’s programmers to build your sites or someone outside of SOL? We built our sites ourselves.
Thanks!
Sherri
[Reply]
on September 14th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
Nice sites! Here are mine if anyone wants to see them.
http://www.the-best-hot-sauce.com
http://www.selfdefenseequipment.biz
http://www.mysimplifynurse.com
[Reply]
on September 15th, 2007 at 7:29 am
great, so some people have sites..
they paid too much as there are other companys that do it for much less than sol. how many people do you know that shop online.. i dont know any. everyone i know goes to walmart.. sol did say you would make more or LESS than what you paid them..sol also says that the results of the testimonials are not typical..
[Reply]
on September 15th, 2007 at 10:13 am
Its all a matter of getting on the search engine’s first or second page. If you can do this people will buy from your site and not Walmart, besides lots of us have things that can’t be found in local stores. Most of the time it is easyer to shop online and save your gas.
[Reply]
on September 15th, 2007 at 11:38 am
True. A lot of people do shop at WalMart. But billions of people shop online daily. I’m one of them. Like it, or not, it’s big business. We advertise with Google. Every day, 24/7 and it’s made a huge difference in our hits, which results in a lot more business.
Sherri
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on September 15th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
sherri, if thats your real name….probably an employee of stores online..the only people really making money here is “storesonlinesecondoffer.com” you may be making some money. i wonder if that hotsauce site is doing. i bet workin 24 hours a day bottling hotsauce or relabeling franks red hot.do they have a permit from the health department as a food processor.sounds like a lot of tedious work..sol robs money from people everyday all over the place.. they make more than you do..ruining peoples finances for their own gain..want a fairer internet server service, try http://www.freeservers.com they dont have to give you a cheap gift and dinky sandwich to get your business and they are bigger than sol. oh by the way once sol gets your money, sol stands for sh#t outof luck.
[Reply]
Bill Reply:
November 17th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Thomas,
This might be too late, as it is over a year since you posted, but may I suggest you stick to the subject. If you do not care for the product, fine. Do not demean either yourself or others who simply are expressing their opinion.
[Reply]
on September 16th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
If you think SOL charges too much. Go to Yahoo Stores, selling online. They have a list of people that design and build website. Average price? $3,800 to $4,500. These are properly built stores not the cheapies. I’ve had a cheapie and after spending my entire summer building it, it can’t even handle the inventory management that I need. They knew what I was selling when they charged me $299 to basically put up a home page and I still had to do all the work.
Not defending SOL. I just want to hear from people who have built and promoted their site and stuck with it.
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on September 18th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Has anyone followed through with SOL after the call about you being openminded and SOL needing a case study.What actually happens?
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on September 18th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Thanx 4 the info on sol, yu changed my mind and future, about waisting a full day sitting and some 1 tugging at my purse strings.
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on September 22nd, 2007 at 9:41 am
I don’t appreciate being called something akin to a liar after I take the time to post my experience here. Thomas, you must take the positive comments along with the negative. SOL does some really underhanded things. There is no denying that. My success story is in spite of them, not because of them. I’m sorry your sites didn’t do well. I’m sorry to hear you aren’t making money. As I said in my first posting…would I buy from SOL again? No.
Now allow everyone to state their opinions and experiences without attacking.
Sherri
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on September 22nd, 2007 at 9:45 am
Hi Sherri,
Thank you for sharing. I’m sure your site is real and you are not an employee of Storesonline. I have seen a few of those and their comments are way too obvious.
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on September 22nd, 2007 at 1:47 pm
hi sherri, was not attacking you. i was however attacking stores on line for deceptive practices towards uninformed consumers.i still highly recomend http://www.freeservers.com for anyone inexperienced to get their ears wet without being taken to the bank for their life savings.it is still possible to get good service and do some work to promote a web site or multipage site selling a product service or better yet software downloads.stores online is not the best or only service available and there are competitively priced servers for those of us that choose not to own our own server with a higher bandwidth internet connection. servers today need not be any larger than a standard computor tower unless your into selling “web hosting services” like stores on line. many successful companys own thier own servers and have automated creditcard processing via a merchant services company which processes and deposits the funds into a specified account.i like selling software as you only need one copy which can be sold over and over again without shipping a thing.like i said earlier i wonder if the best hot sauce site is tired of filling all those tiny bottles by hand or do they have a factory and permit from the local health department….sounds like very tedious work
[Reply]
on September 22nd, 2007 at 5:29 pm
I am trying freeservers.com and it could be used to make a doorway page for your sol sites. On the plus side they have php scripts and you can edit your page right down to the html, there is also .hacess witch sol does not have. However it might take you a lot longer to build your site. There is no shopping cart and it would be extremly hard to put your credit card processor in. SOL is not the greatest but both sol and freeservers have their plus sides.
[Reply]
on September 22nd, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Also my site http://www.the-best-hot-sauce.com I do not fill my own bottles. I do drop shipping and that way I have no inventory. My other sites do the same. http://www.selfdefenseequipment.biz and http://www.mysimplifynurse.com. We sell Dickies nursing uniforms and my site for self defense equipment is on page two of google for the keyword “self defense equipment”
[Reply]
on September 26th, 2007 at 4:16 am
I just signed up yesterday for 6 sites. Now I am concerned that I made a mistake. I have a website but am not getting the traffic that I need and SOL convinced me that if I go with them and change the name of the site that I would do better in the search engines. I was told that there were no space limitations that you could post as many products as you like. Should I cancel while I can?
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on September 26th, 2007 at 4:17 am
I would liek to ask Jon if his sites are doing well and if he would do it again?
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on September 26th, 2007 at 5:04 am
Hey there! I found a site where you can sell your unused websites from storesonline. If you are frustrated with the program and don’t have time to learn how to publish your site you can sell it at http://www.StoresXchange.com
As long as you have not published the site it can be resold with the license numbers. So, if you have sites you are not using this is the way to get some of your money back.
After having “buyers remorse” it appears to me that many of the complaints here are because this wasn’t as easy as the buyers thought it would be. After viewing some of the sites I have to agree that they are all very professional looking and it seems that many are doing well. It is not a walk in the park to publish a website. I feel that Storesonline was very up front in explaining that there is a learning curve to this process and that our success is up to each one of us and how hard we are willing to work.
I felt that what I was paying for was the simplicity of the program, as well as being able to list products easily in E-Bay.
Sherri, your sites look great! Kudos to you! Glad to hear you are doing so well. At least you earned your investment back quickly.
Marie
[Reply]
on September 26th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
I bought six sites and did not cancel. Yet I have not built and launced any sites. My advice? Go with your gut feeling. If you felt at all pressured, then cancel. Future advice, never let anyone make you feel that if you don’t take advantage of what they have to offer right away, it won’t be there tomorrow.
I don’t regret signing up. I won’t know until I launch a site and promote it for at least a year. You sound like you need some SEO, search engine optimization help and that costs a lot less than SOL. Type SEO into google and start reading. A lot of web design teams also will do SEO for you, but be careful.
Good luck,
Shadrene
[Reply]
on September 26th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Hi Marie,
By itself, the Storesonline software doesn’t really do much to help your search engine rankings. In fact, sites built with them are very SEO unfriendly.
Post your site url here and I’ll help provide some additional comments on how to help your site ranked higher.
[Reply]
on September 26th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
My present site is http://www.feedmysheep.biz
I use Engine Seeker and I have checked the meta tags and virtually nothing shows up. My problem is that I can’t work on the front page myself and when I complain they tell me there is nothing wrong with it.
[Reply]
on September 26th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Hi Marie, yes your meta tags are not found in the header portion. You just need to add in that few lines of code into the html file.
Another thing is that your main page has too little text for the search engine to classify it properly. You can consider using text for some of the text which you are currently using an image files to represent.
[Reply]
on September 26th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Marie I was looking at your site and I viewed the source code and I could not find a meta description or keyword tag, also your title needs to be longer. As for my sites I have been doing good with visitors around 70 to 80 per day, but I cannot break 100. The more visitors you have the more you can sell. I also go here: http://www.onlinemerchantforum.com/forums/ for help. There are many people here with sol sites and you can get lots of free help. If I know today and was to go to a sol site I would not do it again. I bought 6 sites also and I have three running and three is enough work. Websites have to be maintained and need fresh content for search engines. Also I am constantly trading links to get page rank.
[Reply]
on September 26th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Thank you for your respose. I also checked the meta tags today and found none. I did get my webmasters attentiion and they are taking care of it.
I have been working on setting up my first store in the sol system. I was going to transfer my book inventory to it and change it to http://www.christianbooksbyfms.com
I am not sure that changing the domain name is a good idea. They seem to believe that you will go up in the search engines quicker if you have the actual name of your product in the domain name.
What I like about it is that I am in control and don’t have to ask someone else to make my changes on the front page. I take care of uploading al product and pictures I just can’t get them to teach me how to do the front page.
If you prefer to e-mail me direct you can e-mail me at servant@feedmysheep.biz
I could still cancel my plan because I have 3 days. Would you advise me to do so?
Thanks for the help and advise.
Marie
[Reply]
on September 28th, 2007 at 10:03 am
My husband and I went to the siminar last Friday and wanted to learn more so we went to the all day siminar this past Monday and was sold hook line and sinker. We bought 6 sites for 5698.00. My alarms went off when the salesman said we should use our 401K to finance this, but we went ahead. We are in debt and I didnt want to get any further into debt. After a sleepless night we TRIED to cancel this past Tuesday. What a joke. The fax number was busy all day. When I called they said they could not talk to me because my husband was the primary owner of the site. Yet it was ME the wife who signed all the paper work first. Finally yesterday we got our fax to go thru. In fact I faxed it 2 times from different locations, plus I emailed them. Luckly I was able to cancel the 5698 off my visa with no hassel.
Looking back, once I asked about the cancelation polilcy we were treated differently and told to put it on our credit card.
I see from reading from the above comments we were all offered different package prices. We had no option to buy 3 sites. Either one for 2700 or 6 for 5698
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on September 28th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Ripoffs.com is NOT a complaint website. They sell brand name Ripoffs electronics. Would love to find when that site went too.
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on October 12th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
It is easy. You just call them and they will help you through the process step by step. I have set up two very effective sites and am making a very healthy side profit because of them. Don’t stress, they have a whole customer service department there to help.
[Reply]
on October 12th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Hi Jessica, will you mind sharing with the rest of us your two sites?
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on October 12th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
okay….just got back for a seminar and yes even tho my gut was SCREAMING NOOOOOO my husband and i gave our credit card for a down payment and also signed agreement for credit terms. I immediately regretted our decision and all the way home kicked my own butt. So i did a search and here i am feeling more anxious as i read all these comments. There is NO cancellation policy on the BLANK back side of the yellow form. I did call the finance carrier and was told i must send a registered letter of cancellation within 10 days directly to SOL as well as a copy to the carrier, one for ourselves and one to Canada’s Dept of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. We are protected under a policy known as the “10 day cooling off period”.
So i am preparing my letter tonite, will send it off first thing monday morning. Unfortunatley, My MC rep told me they cannot remove the charge without vendor authorization, even though i called in my request to do so 2 hours after signing the forms. This is the first time we have ever bought into such a “scheme” only because we thought the Personal invitation was through a referral from our economic development officer we were working with to get a small bussiness loan. Unfortunately he is on vacation til end of october so we made our decision without consulting with him first. Needless to say , we are both regretting not checking the company out more thoroughly before we signed on. We are on very shaky ground financially due to my current disability from a car accident and my husbands losing his full time job a while back. Our hopes are to build an online business that we can take with us where ever we go since we have families on both sides of the continent, 7 grandchildren and helping our daughter still in college. So much for that eh!
so my question for diane is this: how did you manage to get your full visa refund?
[Reply]
on October 12th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
PS…My gratitude to all who have been so candid (with both pos and neg feedback). Too bad i did not find this site a few days ago when i did a quick SOL search before deciding to attend the workshop today.
[Reply]
on October 12th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Mdeussa….I just called my credit card co and had no problem. You mentioned Canada. I live in the states. Maybe its different. Since cancelling I did get my credit card bill and it was removed. SOL have not contacted us yet for the stuff back.
I still want to get a business up and running.
Since posting this and now looking back….I had so many questions, and we were rushed out at the end.
[Reply]
on October 13th, 2007 at 7:37 am
I e-mailed and faxed my cancellation within the 3 day period. My card was refunded within 5 days and the contract cancelled. They even sent the check that I wrote for a downpayment back to me. They called and tried to lower my package to 3 websites for $3100 instead of 6 for $5600. I explained that I felt that it was a waste of money for me when I already know how to build a website. That I thought we were mislead in many respects. We were told that we would learn how to get our sites up in the search engines for free and all that talked about was pay per click, we were also told that we would get a list of drop shippers and all we got were 2 websites to go where you have to find your own dropshippers. He said that the reason that they could not distribute that kind of information was because they are selling software, not a business opportunity, and the laws concerning those things would not allow them to present that information. I believe that this SOL could be a good thing for some people, it just wasn’t for me at this time.
Marie
[Reply]
on October 13th, 2007 at 11:00 am
We bought the 6 site package, never felt pressured, in fact my gut told me it was time to tak an enourmous leap of faith. I am a programmer, and didnt find the waters so smooth to sail. Perhaps my experience made me look for things that just werent there. Most troubling was that you are not allowed to alter your html, a very key ingredient to any web site.
I am the only one working, my wifes health has headed south, so i am like the one guy at a snipe hunt “im holding the bag”. I have done my absolute best, and I have gotten nothing but good reviews on the site appearance and prices. but my health is starting to suffer the consequences of the stress. weve been thru a chapter 7 bk, so my thoughts are that our credit couldnt get much worse anyway. guess im just gonna have to try to sell off the unused licenses and blow off the rest as best i can. first thing i do is cancel the auto payment, and make it an annual payment thing.
it is a knife store by the way.
[Reply]
on October 13th, 2007 at 11:55 am
Thank you diane and marie. As stated in previous post, our yellow copy does not have cancellation policy on back side. Can you please give me relevant info such as email, fax or phone number since none of this info is posted on the SOL contacts page. Thank you so much
[Reply]
on October 13th, 2007 at 11:56 am
PS today is day 2 so i need this info asap. thanks again.
[Reply]
on October 13th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
fax-801-812-8453
email cxIrequest@myquickresponse.com
stores online inc
754 East Technology Ave
Orem, UT 84097
good luck
[Reply]
on October 13th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
in spite of reading all the above comments, i am still considering giving the program a shot rather than freak out based on heresay. We just purchased the program yesterday but realize we may be in over our heads due to our limited tek skills. Since we do not have a cancellation policy with our recieipts, i need to know: if we open the kit and try to install the programs and have as much problems as we are reading here….can we get a refund if we return the kit/softwares within 10 days of purchase (according to canada regs)
[Reply]
on October 13th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
I am not sure what the Canda regulations are. You should open the kit and try it out before your time is up. I worked with setting up a site before I cancelled. It wasn’t too bad but I have already built one site. I do believe that they will be very helpful and answer all your questions and guide you through the set up. I think, if you have the time, that you can make money. Read the above posts, not everyone is saying that SOL are bad. it ust was not good timing for me, that is why I cancelled. I have an online business and I can hardly kep up with the orders and the setting up that I have to do right now. I just could not affford the time to set up 6 new sites. Keeping your site and products current and submitting to search engines is a full time job with 2 sites I knew there was no way I could handle 6. If Canda has a 10 day cancellation I would take the time to check it out.
[Reply]
on October 13th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
TY again diane. well here is some info i found in doing more research before i bail: very interesting indeed. i post this with intent that anyone considering doing business with SOL will have more info to consider before taking that leap of (blind) faith such as we did. If you just recently purchased a program you DO have 10 days to bail if in Canada and if i am not mistaken, only 3 days if in US.
http://www.maine.gov/pfr/securities/consent_agreements/StoresOnline_CA.pdf
http://www.spokane.bbb.org/alerts/alerts.html?newsid=626&newstype=1
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=storesonline+and+utah+government+order+to+cease+and+desist&ei=utf-8&fr=b1ie7
wishing success to all who are dealing with trying to reclaim their investment losses
[Reply]
on October 13th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
lil’ol’me,
Honestly speaking, I feel that the pricing of the product makes it extremely difficult for the newcomer to succeed. Building a successful website does take time and your expenses are going to be a big stumbling block.
[Reply]
on October 13th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
thank you marie. we are not going to keep the program we have decided not to waste time with it. so back to SOL land it goes! we appreciate the insights and experiences shared here by all.
[Reply]
on October 13th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
thank you martin. your comments helped us make our decision.
[Reply]
on October 15th, 2007 at 12:33 am
Oh man I just spent $5698 on my six sites just yesterday at their conference and now hearing all of your comments, I am scared shitless. Even though I know html code etc, what good is it with SOL if I will not be allowed to “tweek”
my sites a little.
However - funny this sounds - my gut is telling me to “work it ” and make it into something big (big enough to pay back what $ I am putting into it and then some). I have always been an entrepreneur at heart. I have tried and bought so many different programs over the years and “ditched” them all really because they make it sound so easy to make money and then to find out it is not. Just like anything else - it just is going to take real hard work to “make” it work. Since I am unemployed due to injury and basically gave SOL a large chunk of my “hopes and dreams” money that I had left in savings, I am determined to make this work.
I know I still have time to bail, but I am tired of working for large corporations and now that I am limited to what kind of work I can do. I want to make this work so that I can be in business for myself for once. I am still scared, but I feel I gotta start somewhere. I am so glad you guys posted your comments here. I don’t feel so lost and alone in this anymore.
For those of us that are going to stick it out for the long haul- we should continue to share what we learn with each other. We also should get together a list of 100 ways to “not” give a seminar and give it to SOL (and they claim to have so much integrity -lol). We could also create an ” All the things you need 2 know B4 you buy SOL” list. I almost bailed today after re-reading my signed agreements, and reading their -non informative dropshipping tips. After spending all day online today- I found out that basically if you google long enough you’ll find what you need for most any thing that SOL didn’t tell us. (SOL listed tips are not all that great) I have also bugged customer service 3 times today already- (so far they are pretty good and knowledgeable) So I guess I will stick it out until I strike gold. I hope this will be easier than building a site from scratch (html coding can be a pain too) it better be easier, for all that money you pay! I guess I will find out!
[Reply]
on October 15th, 2007 at 8:04 am
Jennifer,
I think you can make it work but it will take some long hours and effort on your part.
I found that researching what to sell was taking a ton of time. I am still researching drop shippers for product to sell on E-Bay and my website. What I am finding is that everyone is selling the same things and the competition is fierce.I found quite a few through Alibaba. Almost got hooked on a few scams on that as well. Stay away from Simplx.com they want hundreds of dollars and won’t even show you the products that you would be selling or the prices that you would be getting. Don’t go with any drop shipers that will not show the product or pricing beforehand. They WILL NOT refund any money.Be sure and check out any and all dropshippers by doing a ton of searching about the company on Google. All the supposed “great” info that SOL gave for “free” I found free on the internet anyway. They are just serving as a finder of “free” info.
Whatever your decision, may God Bless your endeavor.
Marie
[Reply]
on October 15th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
hello everyone.
first i want to say to Jennifer: “power to you and your determination”! IF we were not so up against the wall financially we would have probably stuck with it. but as it is…..with a kid still in college, 5 fatherless grandchildren and our own health issues….we just could not take such a risk after reading of all the difficulties others have experienced—especially the technical frustrations and extra costs.
We would rather invest those funds into helping our children and grandchildren—the “collective our” true future!
On another note…..i made phone contact with SOL today. They were very polite and cooperative about honoring our refund with no hassle. I am glad we initiated that immediately because i am not so sure they would have been so accomodating once our “time” expired.
I am awaiting someone to contact me with instructions in regards to returning the merchandise.
So all i can suggest to anyone with butterfly bellies and ice cold feet…DO NOT procrastinate. get your request in immediately. I e-mailed mine to
cxlrequest@myquickresponse.com
I got confirmation by auto response almost immeditely. but just to be safe i called first thing this morning and as i said, they were very courteous.
thank you again Diane for the info you shared on how to contact by email.
for any Canadian newbies here is something else. Read your merchant’s packet immediately and very carefully. we noticed a few things like the fact that our license agreement was never given to us so there fore we never signed it. It was in the little portfolio along with the chat license and ECI merchant acct info. that is another thing to check…..it is tucked away in back of other materials.
If i understand the ECI packet info correctly, Just to set up a credit card will cost 999.00 in CAD funds. then you will have all the other extras: MONTHLY charges as well as transaction and charge back charges etc. According to their terms charges will begin immediately upon confirming the account. also the ECI fees are PER SITE not PER package (”under certain circumstances”). HMMMM. i do not remember that little detail being mentioned.
If they mentioned this little detail in the workshop we either missed it or it just got jumbled up with everything else we were trying to absorb.
another thing…..DO NOT sign anything before you read it. Really. I have been in business for most of my adult life….i KNOW this. but still blindly signed what was handed to me….i was so overwhelmed i guess….not to mention spaced out from dental related pain meds. I just wanted to get out of there! I should have skipped the workshop…..
So read everything. DO not let them push or rush you into signing anything. read first….thoroughly!!!! We noticed after the fact things like we would have to abide by calif law and therefore attend court in calif if there were any litigations(from either party)……we live in nova scotia! THAT is insane!
Also……be sure you read the bottom line. In our case we were told the TOTAL price would be $2700 for the single site deal. But after signing then reviewing the copy we were given we saw that there was an additional 14% tax added bringing our balance to 3078.00 which increased our agreed upon monthly payment by $11. the amt we agreed on was already pushing our budget to the edge and that $11 DID make a difference.
when i asked the young man to remove the tax since we were told $2700 was the total cost. Tax included was never mentioned. Since We were NOT advised of this fee i told him i did not feel we should pay it! he said he could not do that. we would have to take it up with SOL.
So just be VERY careful of what you sign.
OH and per advise from legal counsel: if you put any payment on your Checking account, shadow checks or CC and also agreed to have monthly auto pays against either of them….when you cancel be sure to notify(by phone and in writing) your banks and CC company and make it very clear that you DO NOT authorize future debits against your account from SOL or any co associated with them. This is very important.
i sure hope this saves someone from getting into any hardships as a result of making a committment that you really are not willing or able to honor.
Good luck to all of you. I would love to hear of any of your successes.
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on October 16th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
I just wanted to let everyone know that if you do sign on with Stores on Line, I hope that you already own a home. My husband and I were strong armed about three years ago into buying a startup kit for 3 sites. We were told that we could get out of it but that was a lie. They called us and I told them repeatedly that I did not want their services. I thought I was buying one thing but when I got home with the start up packet, it was not what they had told us it would be. My husband spent our last bit of money on those things and had us on a payment plan for the remainder of the money. I was outraged when recently we began to get financing together for a house and have a collection on our credit report from them. When I told them three years ago that I didn’t want their services, they stopped contacting me after a few months. I was under the impression that I was out the initial money but at least they would not get any more of my money. Now they are the reason that we cannot get financed on a house. THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS and if the attorney general would do anything about it, it would be too late now. I don’t have any recourse now since we left the state we bought them in. All I can say is DON’T GO! DON’T BE SUCKERED IN BY THEIR SMOOTH TALK! I did not want to do this, my husband did and thought that nothing bad could come of it. We could use it as a ministry tool, he said. Now he is really kicking himself. And if you think that it is over, it is not. All of you who say that you got your money back…please take time in the next few months to check your credit report. They are not so ready to let go as they seem to be.
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on October 18th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
wow lisa. that is terrible. I really feel for you and your husband. I sure hope this does not mess up our credit.
and we thought it will be over as soon as SOL credits our CC acct.
I just spoke with someone about the possiblity of this happening to us. I was told NOT in Canada.
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on October 20th, 2007 at 3:36 am
I believe SOL has to do several things to make their service better. First allow us to edit our sites at the HTML level. You can add almost any HTML in a text box, but it would be better if you could edit all the way down to the HTML level. Next they should allow PHP, ASP, and CGI scripts. Many link exchange programs have this and it makes it much easyer to exchange links. Exchanging links will increase your page rank. Next they should have an optimization service included with the package. To me this is the hardest part of SOL because I am always trying to acheive optimization for my sites in order to be higher on the search engine pages. The last thing is when you go to their show and tell sesion they should tell you that it is not easy to build a site and that it can take lots of time before you make any money. Many search engines take several weeks before your site is indexed after you submit your site to them and be prepaired to do lots of tweaking to your sites to acheive a higher ranking. Nothing is easy and to do any website you need some idea of how HTML and search engines work.
http://www.the-best-hot-sauce.com
http://www.selfdefenseequipment.biz
http://www.mysimplifynurse.com
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on October 20th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Thanks for all your veiws on StoresOnLine. I’ve been wanting to do drop shipping and using ebay as a way to advertise and sell. I am off the plymouth in a few days for the SOL seminar which I paid £20. I will take in their information but I will not be purchusing ant of there products.
Thank you to all of you for stopping me from making a big mistake.
It also goe’s to show, whatever you do don’t get hurried or pushed into it, and most of all always make sure you research your company and products, espcially if it involve a large amount of cash that you can’t afford to lose.
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on October 26th, 2007 at 10:37 am
I have been to the 8 hour seminar, It was interesting from what I could see of it as I was constantly pested by them trying to get me to purchase there sites. The sites and software are way over priced. for a reverse search engine. try overture.com, it’s free there. There is also very cheap web site building company’s, so save your self thousands and don’t sign up.
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on October 26th, 2007 at 10:55 am
For very a reasonable website prices check out the pricing on my website at http://www.feedmysheep.biz
Go to the FAQ’S page and click on the webhosting specials.
I have a very large shipping cart and very reasonable rates.
I have asked them to give discounted prices to people that come to them through my website, so you do save a little. I am not telling you this make money, only to give you a site to look at and save you some money. I have had other companies quote me 6 times what I am paying for the same size site.
Marie
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on October 26th, 2007 at 11:38 am
The overture keyword research tool is already not working. You can try the free and paid version of wordtracker.
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on October 26th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
I use the software and it is a lot of work, but I will say that it has made a bunch of money that I wouldn’t have made otherwise.
The software is a real good fit for a company who has a small product line, or is a reseller of a small product line.
I truly wish the best to you all. There might be a product out there that your neighbor has that will sell great online!
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on October 27th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
I went to one of storesonline work shop about a year ago and luckily I was not stupid to get caught up with all the sales pitch and smooth talks.They are very aggressive, and make you feel as though you are getting a deal of a lifetime.If anyone really wants residual or passive income they should check out http://www.noniusers.com/2552430.No regrets
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on November 4th, 2007 at 3:50 am
Thanks to all for your comments. I am attending a SOL workshop on 11/16 and will go more informed. Since my husband is not able to go with me, I will not be spending or committing our finances to anything before discussing with him. That’s just how we do things… neither commits big finances without discussing with the other. If we miss out on an opportunity that way, well, so be it. Big read warning flag is always when you must commit NOW!
I signed up for the workshop (a $20 commitment) with the thought that even if I have one or two new ideas of how to market a website, it would be worth the investment (free meal at a decent hotel in town). The introductory seminar I attended was very good in so much that it got me to thinking in a different direction.
I would welcome thoughts from those who know HTML, etc. but do not have as much marketing expertise… do you think the seminar is worth attending for gleaning additional marketing ideas, suggestions, etc.?
One thought about the organizer given away at the seminar… for a company that is supposed to be into technology, why give away a 1990s PAPER organizer? How about a cheap PDA even rather than the no-brand MP3 player? I just thought that was VERY odd…
Thanks again, and good luck to all in your ventures!
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on November 5th, 2007 at 7:29 am
The workshop I attended was $100 and they allowed you to bring your”partner.” We also were suppose to get a free MP3 player, which they happened to be out of and were suppose to ship it to us and we have never seen it yet. That has been over 2 moths ago. I also, thought that it would be “worth” the fee if we got some good ideas but most of the things they told us were either pay per click or already free on the ointernet anyway. I would not waste my time or money to go to anything like this again. Be careful!!
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on November 5th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
I went to the full day seminar (in Hedge End, Southampton, UK) on 29th Oct. They charge £20 for it over here - of course you can bring a guest free as well (if you are already convinced enough to pay £20 for a workshop, then you are likely to be a good person to do their recruiting for them!).
I am not sorry that I went to the seminar, because I did learn a lot about marketing web sites. This information is still to be checked out from other sources - I have around 25 years experience as a software engineer and a good friend who has been making and using web sites for commerce for more than 10 years - and even if not everything that we were told is quite as good as it sounds, at least, now, I know what to go searching for and the questions to ask.
The technical content of our seminar was presented by Brock Madsen: he did seem to really know his stuff and he was a very good presenter. Specifically, I learned about increasing your ranking in the search engines, the existence of pay-per-click search engines, link trading, how to use these last two as tools to increase your ranking in the relevancy search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc), affiliate marketing programmes, a bit about drop shipping, and a number of other things that I had no previous knowledge of. However, I had read half-way through this forum page before I went (I’d only found it the previous night) as well as all of http://beginnerinternetmarketing.wordpress.com/ (not the archives), and so I had gone with a firm resolve NOT TO BUY ANYTHING on the day - no matter how good they made it sound!!
Even with all that preparation, I was almost convinced that what they are selling could be worth the money - if you make good use of it! But I still don’t like their selling tactics.
Right at the beginning of the first session, the big sell began in earnest. Brock presented “Three major mistakes to avoid”.
1. Trying to control all of the eyeballs (people)
2. Having only one web site
3. Marketing dissimilar products or services on the same web site
The first is the reasonable observation that you need to target your marketing at your most likely buyers - and this theme was revisited many times during the day - how you achieve this in many different ways using the tools and statistics provided by an SOL site.
The second is, in my opinion, very questionable and clearly designed (along with the third) to convince you that buying six web sites straight off is the most reasonable strategy for success. To me it seems to fly on the face of both common sense and good business decision making to try to start six new businesses simultaneously - particularly if you have no previous experience of this method of selling. The most reasonable course of action seems to me to make a success of one new business first, and then - if you have time - proceed to work on another similar business, perhaps using some of what you have learned from the first.
The third ‘mistake’ may have some sense behind it, but I can envisage how you could easily use the same ‘payment engine’ web site as a back end to receive payments from several ’shop front’ web sites. This however would probably not work well using an SOL site as the back end, because then you would probably lose all benefit of the SOL statistical analysis of who clicked on what or searched for what keywords to get to your site and the stats for all your different products would be aggregated into one amorphous mass rather than telling you anything useful and specific to each product (line). So using web sites set up as SOL provides probably does lead to the third mistake being a reasonable thing to avoid.
Brock Madsen said that he was not an employee of Stores Online - that’s why he could get away without wearing a suit like all the SOL personnel around that day, but - he said - he was a “web marketing professional” who (enthusiastically) used Stores Online products to do his marketing (”I love drop shipping”). However, he later posed the question to himself why did he do these workshops? And he made it clear that - as well as getting a holiday away from his six kids - he was paid to do the presentation by SOL. So, while he might not be an employee of SOL it is really a matter of semantics - he actually does work for and get paid by SOL for doing these workshops – so much for the impression of independence that he and SOL wanted .to create.
At the penultimate session of the day, Brock opened the question/objection that he said he had been presented with by several delegates during the day: “I never make same day buying decisions.”
In response, Brock said, (my summary, not his exact words - we were forbidden to record) that this is not a same day decision: you have had a fortnight to do your research and any due diligence; you were told at the previous free seminar that there would be workshop day only special offers and what the prices would be.
My considered response to that is:
1. We were not told at the free seminar exactly what workshop offers would be. We were told at the free seminar (a) what the Stores Online ‘normal’ prices are: namely £2,0