Product: Covert Store Builder
Overall Ranking: 40 out of 100 or 2/5 stars
Price: $47
Owner: IM Wealth Builders
Website: http://covertstorebuilder.com/
The Covert Store Builder (CSB) is promoted with a lot of hype as you can see below. I must admit seeing claims like this make me suspicious and certainly doesn’t encourage me to look more deeply into this program. However, for the sake of this review, I will continue.
The owners claim their store builder is a self-optimizing, intelligent WordPress theme that allows you to create an affiliate store in a matter of minutes. In this review, we will see if these assertions are real.
Background
At the beginning of 2013 after seeing some of the “Amazon affiliate themes” and not being impressed, IM Wealth Builders started looking at the largest e-commerce sites to see if they had similarities that could in part be the reason for their success.
After 6 months, applying what they had found, they came up with Covert Store Builder. At least that’s the story. Apparently IM Wealth Builders have sold more than 10,000 copies of their store builder software.
What is Covert Store Builder?
This is a product that will enable you to build an online affiliate store very rapidly. It is a WordPress theme, so all you need to install this, is a domain name and hosting. You can use the theme to create an affiliate store in any niche or multiple niches.
Using an affiliate store theme like this you can market products sold by Amazon, eBay, Commission Junction and others.
Who is this for?
CSB is aimed at anyone who is interested in making an affiliate store. Although it is made to look very easy to set up and could be easy for a newbie to get started, the problem, as with many other programs, comes a little later. How will you get traffic?
You will be in a very competitive market, so you will need a great deal of traffic to earn money. This is where most people will fail.
The theme
The store builder theme is like many other WordPress themes and it can be customized easily from the theme options page. The difference with the Covert Store Builder is that it allows you to rapidly add products from an affiliate network. In fact, you are told you can have your store up and running in 5 minutes.
You choose the product you want to promote, the network and the number of products you require. The theme then returns a list of products. You select the products you wish to include and the category. The products can then be saved as drafts that you can edit later or posts that will go live immediately.
As you can see it’s possible to add products to your store very quickly. One of the advantages stated by the owners of Covert Store Builder is that you can add products without having to write a single word of content.
However, if you use the automated content that is imported with your products, you will not see any traffic from organic search results. To rank well in the search engines you will have to write some unique content. Creating original content will take time and work, consequently, the 5-minute promise cannot be achieved.
The method of acquiring traffic that is promoted with this theme is from social media and they don’t really mention any other traffic. Unless you have a huge following on social media I have difficulty imagining that this will give you enough traffic and sales to have a successful store.
When the theme was released there was a problem with the price updates on Amazon not being imported into your store. This meant your store could be displaying a price different from Amazon. Thankfully, this seems to have been remedied in one of the updates.
Useful features
The store builder theme has some useful features:
- self-optimizing – the theme tracks impressions and clicks and will show the most popular products of your store at the top of your first page.
- add to wish list – when a visitor clicks on the add to wish list link, they will be asked to sign in or create an account.
- sharing wish lists – when your members have built a wish list they can easily share this on social media which in turn can drive new clients to your store.
- automatic welcome emails to new members
- members automatically added to your autoresponder list
- visitors can comment on your products using Facebook comments
Pros & Cons
Pros
- good looking theme
- some good functions
- some training on setting up your site
- 45-day money-back guarantee
- unlimited license
Cons
- no training on getting traffic
- too much hype
- 5 minutes to build a website – not possible
- highly competitive market
- setting up your store rapidly you will be using content that is not unique
- no free trial
- you don’t get the support expected from a paid theme
Tools and training
There are some limited training documents and videos you are given when you sign up:
- a PDF step-by-step guide to help you build your store
- a help file explaining the different settings and functions
- tutorial videos showing how to install the theme
Training to get traffic is not included, you will have to obtain this training elsewhere.
Support
There is very little in the way of support. There is a knowledge base with just 2 articles relating to Covert Store Builder. For any other questions, you will have to create a ticket and wait for the reply.
When you use a paid theme you expect to have great support, unfortunately, with CSB, this isn’t the case. A knowledgebase with just 2 articles is ridiculous. Take a look at the knowledge base at WooCommerce to see what a good knowledge base should look like.
How much does it cost?
Covert Store Builder costs $47 and you can use it for multiple sites. The owners say the price is going up to $97 later, although it’s been at this price since its release.
There is a 45-day money-back guarantee.
In addition to the price of the theme, you will also need a domain name and hosting.
My final opinion
The Covert Store Builder provides a good looking theme and has some useful features built-in. Nonetheless, there are a few things that I don’t like.
The constant hype about the theme, making it seem easy to make sales, get traffic and all this on autopilot. This just isn’t true.
There is a big issue with using copied content to fill your site. Using content that is already published online, you will always have difficulty to rank well in the search engines. Therefore, little traffic and no or very few sales.
You don’t get the support I would expect from a paid theme. Not providing good support makes me think they don’t really care about their customers.
Covert Store Builder is not a scam, but anyone buying this theme will have great trouble getting traffic and will probably give up after a short while.
Verdict: Not recommended
If you are thinking of starting an online store or any other internet business, I think it is a very good idea to obtain some training before you get started. This will be very beneficial to you. After the education I received from my #1 recommendation, I have achieved a page 1 position in Google for several articles.
The knowledge gained through the training at Wealthy Affiliate will help you bring traffic to your store if you do decide to go down this road. But be warned, you must be prepared to work hard probably over a period of several months before you see your first results. The 5-minute wonders as mentioned in CSB just don’t exist.
If you want to compare Wealthy Affiliate to Covert Store Builder, have a look at the chart below. You will see what a great training platform really is like.
Thanks for reading, if you have any questions, comments or experience with Covert Store Builder let me know below.
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Covert Store Builder Review
Summary
Description: Covert Site Builder is a WordPress theme for building an affiliate store. Includes some useful features and you are led to believe your store can be set up in just 5 minutes.
Price:$47
My opinion: CSB provides a decent looking theme and includes some useful functions which could help you to make sales. The worst thing about this program is all the hype telling you how easy it is to set up your store and make money. They reality will be very different, you will struggle to get traffic and sales.
Website: http://covertstorebuilder.com/
This is a terrible product. All premium WordPress plugin should come with a good support team and platform. Plus, they are really full of unrealistic hype. Thank you for exposing this!
I bought and paid for and installed CSB and exactly what you said happened. No traffic.
I found the theme very fun to operate, very simple to play around with. I played around with it on Web Matrix building heaps of different sites on local host. The theme is simple to learn and easy to navigate.
My wife summed it all up in a nutshell and said “why wouldn’t they just go to Amazon”,
and that is where it all stopped.
But if you are a gun internet marketer you could make it work with a ton of work.
My review of CSB is that it piggy backs off the main sales sites and is not really a true affiliate program. It is not to be taken serious because of the traffic problems.
I paid 47 I think and it was worth it for the little training and experience. I spend that to see a movie with my wife.
Hi Greg,
I think the worst thing about Covert Store Builder is all the hype making it seem easy to make money once you use this theme. The theme does have some useful features and with a lot of work you could make a successful site but you shouldn’t use copied content. Anyway, I’m glad you think it was worth $47, as you say it does provide a little training, it’s just a shame they don’t show you how to obtain good search engines rankings and get organic traffic.
Thanks for your comment,
Peter
hi peter, your advice here is quite impressive but i have a problem, i have bought the product before seen this post and am still working around it. but with all this negative comments am seen now here and on warrior forum I’m beginning to be afraid because this is my first time to do this kind of business and get to know about the store builder in my quest to find good way to sell amazon products from the guy at nichehacks.com, so what can i do now? please your advice is highly needed. http://www.greatfittings.com is the site where i have the store builder installed. please i need your sincere review on it. thanks.
Hi Emmanuel,
Had a quick look at your site, it looks okay, but are you getting any traffic? Here are a few comments I would make; you could have a more professional logo, this would increase the trust of your visitors, I wouldn’t have all the products you sell on the home page, the slideshow is good, but after that I would include something like search by category or featured products. Then to be ranked in the search engines you need some unique content, an article on the home page about the products they can buy from you and why you promote these products and also a unique description of each product.
That’s just a few guidelines, for more ideas you could consult the site https://storecoach.com/ which has some great info on setting up a store.
Success won’t come overnight, keep on working and best of luck.
Peter
Hi Peter.
This piece was really informative to me, thanks. I’ve a question concerning duplicate contents being blacklisted. If i post so many free videos of different authors on my website and write on each of these videos my own unique reviews will i have a chance of being black-hat (blacklisted) ?
Will really appreciate your response and that of others….
Hi Abayomi,
Using videos created by others means that someone else owns the copyright. Having said that if you use YouTube videos, the owner has the option to share the videos or not. So in theory, if the owner of the video allows shares it’s okay to use the video. One thing to check, is that it was the owner of the copyright who posted the video. There is a chance the video was uploaded to YouTube illegally by a third party and this could cause you some problems.
If the video comes from another source, you will have to check with the owner and he will give you permission or not.
Writing your own unique reviews of the videos is a good idea and doing this you shouldn’t have any problems.
Let me know if I can be of any further help.
Peter
Hi Peter,
I really enjoyed reading your review of Covert Store Builder. Nice job of pointing out what Convert Store Builder doesn’t want people to know… Duplicate content will get you blacklisted from search engines and without traffic, you’ll have ZERO success.
One other thing I wondered, do they include autoresponders with their service? That would have some value if that’s the case. Interesting product, but falls short of a little bit of education on SEO. Which is one of the things Wealthy Affiliate does so well.
Thanks for the review and have a great week, look forward to the next one.
Todd
Hi Todd,
You’re right duplicate content is certainly a bad idea. It can be quick and easy to set up a store this way, but if you are giving people the same information they find on Amazon or elsewhere they are not getting any added value from your site. Not to mention the search engines who will not rank your site.
In answer to your question, autoresponders are not included with their service. Unfortunately, as with many programs I feel you don’t receive all the information you need to be successful online and they make it sound too easy to be successful.
Thanks as always for your comment.
Peter
Hi Peter,
You pointed out two things which make CSB lack as a store builder;
1) Importing content rather than writing content – I think this promotes bad habits because if something as important as content is automated, it will make you a lazy marketer. And from buyers point of view, you just sound like anything else they read on Amazon. You are not giving personal opinions about the products.
2) Lack of knowledge base – This feature is becoming apparent as I research and compare product reviews. The size of a product information tells you a lot about how much the vendor is willing to share with you publicly. If your user experience is in their best interest, they would make it convenient rather than asking you to send a support ticket for every small inquiries.
This is not a reliable vendor and hopefully your review will educate more people about it.
Hi Cathy,
Yes, you pointed out two reasons amongst others, as to why this isn’t a good choice to build an affiliate store. Using the copied content from Amazon you will not be providing your readers with any added value. That’s without mentioning the problems you will have to get ranked in the search engines.
The knowledge base is a complete waste of time. When you buy a theme you expect excellent support and with Covert Store Builder there is very little in this department.
However, for me the biggest problem will be getting traffic, I think it’s always best to start with some good training which will stand you in good stead, once your store is online.
Thanks for your visit,
Peter
Good morning Peter,
I haven’t heard of the covert store builder before, I learned something new today! I really like how informative your review is on this product, this will help someone who is searching for more information for this product. I am a member of wealthy affiliate they offer everything I need to build a successful online business, the training is fantastic as they teach you how to gain natural organic traffic which is what you want for most website.
Keep up the great work, love your website!
Hi Jennifer,
Covert Store Builder has been around a while and to be honest, if you haven’t seen this theme before I don’t think you’ve missed much.
I think there are better ways to build an affiliate store, but most important is getting some good training before starting. The best training platform I have found is, as you say, Wealthy Affiliate. There you are taught everything you need to know about building an online business and it’s possible to try for free.
Thanks for stopping by,
Peter