mrh

Set up a site as a test a while back, in 5 months it's made £22. Ok so I've done zero SEO or put in any effort.. Anyway that's not the point.

All the revenue and visitors came in 1 month, and then nothing zero visitors and zero revenue for the other months, not even 1p or 1 visitor. I'm convinced the stats are crap and they are skimming from the top.

Also if you put any links in the footer from an SB store remove them, the sites are seen as spam sites and googles panda will devalue your other sites thanks to these links.

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Lovekraft

i hate to say it but i've concluded the same myself.

Viewing figures are just made up. Put the same domains on another system and you will see what i mean.

All my revenue came over a couple of months and then nothing... even tested a couple of friends to buy through a couple of my sites and the sales weren't even recorded which says it all really. They definately clicked through from my site as i was there with them which leads me to believe any sales i might have had in the last while have all been like this.

Sent an email to him a couple of weeks ago and got no reply, just like my last email i sent to him a few months ago went unanswered.

Tried to get him to pay me the remaining credit in my account so i can close it but surprise surprise no answer.

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boxerdog

I must admit that the "visitor numbers" are very high for most of my stores and I`m sure there is a problem there.
Sales on some of them do seem to just stop for a while, maybe there is something going on there or maybe its just people are not buying I really dont know and I see no way of ever finding that out.
I have had a few sales come from family and friends and they have all gone through without a problem.
As for replies to any questions I have asked I always had a good response.

I do think it`s a shame Dave doesn`t come on here more often though to answer any questions or explain what`s going on as it seems that a lot of people have had enough.

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Alien

I had a couple of sites on SB quite a while ago now, they did OK but it was difficult to properly track things. But that was long before this Panda business came hopping along...

Be interesting to see how Fresh Store Builder compares really.

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crabfoot

I don't know if the "cash on start-up, then nothing" effects noticed by mrh and Lovekraft are anything to do with the Panda. Sounds like the old sandbox effect to me.

OTOH the Panda has definitely bitten.
I've got two sites on Storeburst that I did some SEO work on once, .co.uk and .org.uk of a rather badly chosen keyword.

Back when it was MyAffSite, one of them made about £3. When I went to check at a later date, I found that they were showing no products - so I set them up properly and put some low-grade links in to them.

Now, these sites were on the first page for the badly chosen keyword for ages before the Panda came along. The .co.uk actually had prospects - PR1, MozRank over 4, no.1 on Google. Still didn't make any sales, but had some genuine verifiable traffic before Storeburst messed up the Webmasters tracking.

Now the PR is 0 or 1 depending on how you interpret it, MozRank is under 3, and the site doesn't show in the first 12 pages of Google for its keyword. It is still no.1 and no.3 on Yahoo, and the .org.uk is no.2 .

I don't see that there's much that can be done.

One thing I found a while back is that if you put articles on a Storeburst site, Google does not appear to index them - so adding content is unlikely to improve matters.

I've made naff all, and like others I was suspicious, especially when a couple of sites were getting a bit of traffic. OTOH I was happy enough with no income - the dozen or so sites I have on Storeburst were all "purchasing mistakes" in one way or another, Storeburst seemed to be an effective way of neglecting them until I decided to drop them or do something with them.

Now, it appears that the few that had acquired some kudos are going downhill. Working on an exit plan, but I can't say I like that Fresh Store thing - the sites load too slowly, to my mind.

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Skinner

All these automated systems have similar issues, the only way to get around it is get your hands dirty or get you wallet out and buy the system.

My traffic and sales have been whack since summer, I was making between £1-50 per site over a few dozen sites, now some make 0 some make £5 per day, but max daily for any single site since aug/sept has been £12 while the same one averaged £40+ for most of the year.

I am hopeful that come feb they will pick up and its just been the gloom

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crabfoot

Not quite true, but it depends on your objectives.

Every once in a while I find what I can only describe as a complete junk site in a search. An autoblog with content which has been auto-spun into total unintelligability (coo, a word with 8 syllables), no advertising, and no obvious purpose. The site's an SEO tool, the links out take you somewhere sane if you can be bothered to find them buried in the text (they're not highlighted).

As you say, get working - but a link from one of those junk sites can give you a hell of a start. The junk site has garbage for content, but it was put up before the Panda got going, so it has lots of unique pages, PR, Mozrank, traffic and links in. Those things "glow in the dark" - they're useless to users, but they have a lot of value for SEO.

You can't do that these days, the Panda bites the PR off before the domains drop, and the latest WSO has the world and his wife scraping anything with PR out of GoDaddy's bargain bin quicker than you can run the program yourself.

The panda's not the answer to a complete stop on automation and junk sites. People have been getting around Google's lack of generosity for a few years now, they will find ways again.

I don't think it's going to happen.
The Panda is supposed to get the drivel out of search results, and promote sites with good original content. It is not going to achieve that objective, because Google is still using "popularity" as the measure of quality.

Put a site up with very useful and totally original content - if you don't promote it with SEO tactics, you might as well be selling the best coffee in the world on the summit of Kanchenjunga - no traffic.

What the panda is actually doing is promoting the interests of the medium to large operators who have networks of established sites, without obvious paid links.

Cracking down on thin content aff sites should not be the objective. A good thin content aff site gives people a pleasant choice across the range of things they seek, WITHOUT any bullshit, spurious padding or "fluff" content.
Amazon would be a good example if they were less fond of dumping user reviews with negative content.

What is worse - no content, or drivel to fool Google? The Panda is just making things harder for small people to get started into web biz easily.

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ratboy

Storeburst was great in the summer and the system was making me £300 on a good day via around 300 sites - you can't fault that!

Panda is to blame. But then most sites with datafeeds have been nailed i'd guess - mine have.

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boxerdog

Looks like the life support may have been switched off! All stores and SB have been down for along time now.

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davedevelopment

My remaining stores are still up? As is the Storeburst site?

While I agree that Storeburst has bit the dust (I'd rather sling up Fresh Store Builder sites now), Dave responded to my support query last week very quickly, so can't knock that.

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