If the affiliate currently sells products or services online yes.
ECA stores require focus, service, and promotion and entering retail for the first time will require a ton of learning and time to be good at it. You can't just throw up a store before you even know what your product is going to be or how to price it, or what a margin is etc..
I see fellow SFI members make the mistake of trying to turn every PSA into a ECA. The end result is usually the PSA quits both SFI and TripleClicks because they become overwhelmed and don't make any serious money in either of their businesses.
I am an ECA as well as an affiliate but I have over 10 years retail experience including management and currently manufacture most of our products here at home, keeping my cost low and profits tidy.
If I were to have tried to learn affiliate marketing at the same time I learned retail sales I would have struggled with both and most likely failed in both. As it is my time for SFI takes away from my promotion of sales at my ECA Store and my ECA store promotions take Money away from promoting SFI.
A big thing most respondents have missed is that if the PSA is not already in retail they will not get a free store and will have to pay $40 for a ECA License.
SFI started this practice to stem the flow of people becoming ECA because their sponsor said they needed to and then abandoning their stores because they didn't know anything about pricing within the market, factoring cost into your margin to define what is profit, or how to pay themselves first so their business can grow.
Instead of success these inexperienced ECA price too high for the market, make mistakes that cause them to sell items at a loss, or they have issues writing compelling item descriptions that invoke a buy now reaction from the visitor to their store.
Your PSA have enough to worry about being good affiliates and overloading them is bad business. Setting your team up for maximum results requires getting them focused on their Affiliate Marketing Business, not on being both retailer and retail affiliate. 95% of them will not make it in a tough retail market and will resent you for pushing them into something they aren't really that interested in doing.
Getting 10% of the CV on Zero Sales and losing an Active PSA doesn't make sense no matter how you frame it.
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If the affiliate currently sells products or services online yes.
ECA stores require focus, service, and promotion and entering retail for the first time will require a ton of learning and time to be good at it. You can't just throw up a store before you even know what your product is going to be or how to price it, or what a margin is etc..
I see fellow SFI members make the mistake of trying to turn every PSA into a ECA. The end result is usually the PSA quits both SFI and
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