This week I found out that we are losing the opportunity to onboard a new client, because they can save much, much more money by signing up directly through Shopify. So all the hard work we did to bring them to Shopify is going to amount to nothing for us. This simply is not fair and it’s not good business to incentivize the public with deals that far exceed anything they can get, by using us as a partner. Here’s how the scenario plays out for us:
-We try to land a new client for Shopify…We tell them how great Shopify is and what a great fit for their business it is.
-They do their due diligence on researching Shopify’s pricing and say, “Great! Looks like there’s some good incentives for us to sign up with Shopify.”
-Then we say, “Yes, but you can’t get that 1% back up to $7500 if you go with us though”.
-Client says, “Ok, I won’t go with you then, I’ll just sign up directly through Shopify.”
-Now, client gets their incentives, Shopify gets a new store and we get nothing!!!
How is this fair to us? This is exactly what is happening with the current client that we’ve been working with. They are not going to accept our client transfer store (that we already put tons of work into) and they are going to sign up directly with Shopify instead. We may be able to re-coop the data migration credit and apparently there is this other Shopify Affiliates program, that will give us a one-time $150 payout. This client is a well established retail store, with 4 POS locations and a website. So we stood to do pretty well off of the referral commissions…A lot better than the one-time $150 we might be able to get now.
I would be interested to hear if someone can explain how it makes any sense to offer customers incentives that translate to THOUSANDS of dollars, if they forego using a Shopify Partner and sign up directly, instead. This seriously handcuffs our ability to attract clients to Shopify, while still getting our fair shake.