What is Stan Store, how it works + my review
What is Stan Store, how it works + my review
Stan Store is the new kid on the block in terms of monetisation for content creators, offering shopping for digital products and courses that integrates seamlessly with platforms like TikTok, Facebook and Instagram. And costing from $29 a month with no commission, it’s no wonder you’ll find Stan Stores used by some of the biggest influencers. Here’s a breakdown of what Stan Store is, who might use it and my experience of setting it up.
This page includes affiliate links. If you click and purchase or sign-up, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. I recommend only those tools I have tested and like.
WHAT IS STAN STORE AND WHAT DOES IT DO?
Stan Store is an e-commerce shop that allows creators to sell their digital products, host and sell online courses and memberships, sign-up for email lists and book meetings. Creators add Stan Store to their profile link and when visitors click through, the shop looks like part of the platform they’ve just been using, whether that’s Instagram or TikTok.
Stan Store has a minimal interface, so options to buy, book an appointment or sign-up for an email list are clear. Effectively, it’s the Swiss army knife of monetisation for content creators.
STAN STORE PRICING: HOW MUCH IS STAN STORE?
You can try Stan Store with a 14-day trial, after which it costs $29 at Creator level or $99 a month for Creator Pro. (Pricing correct in November 2023). Both options include the mobile-optimised store, calendar bookings, courses, subscriptions and email sign-up. Creator Pro also has email marketing, funnels, discount codes and upsells, payment plans, affiliate commissions and pixel tracking.
So if you want to sell digital products, have people join your email list, book 1:1 meetings or offer courses/memberships, the $29 Creator option is going to do all that for you. You also have the option of saving on the monthly fee by paying $300 for the annual plan. The Creator Plan annual plan is $948 a year.
One of the huge advantages of Stan Store is that the monthly fee is the only cost. It does not take transaction fees like Stripe or Paypal do. Typically, Stripe charges around 3% of the transaction and a 30c fee per transaction, depending on where you’re located and Paypal charges a similar transaction percentage. With Stan Store, you’re keeping 100% of what you sell; the only cost is the monthly fee.
Click here for a free 14-day trial of Stan Store.
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO SET UP STAN STORE?
I set up my Stan Store in less than 17 minutes, including:
- adding my email address + profile photo
- writing my bio
- adding social media profiles
- adding a branding colour
- setting up Stripe’s payment system; and
- creating my first product.
I call that nothing short of a miracle, in comparison to having spent DAYS setting up WooCommerce on my WordPress website and the Stripe part of that probably taking an hour or more of multiple steps. Even setting up an Etsy shop took much, much longer and there are fees to pay every time you list a new product. The Stan team has certainly made the experience of setting up a store easier than I thought it was possible to do and I’m impressed.
STAN STORE VERSUS ETSY
Prior to Stan Store, many creators were using Etsy to sell their digital products. As a creative marketplace, Etsy works well to sell digital and physical products, but there’s a major drawback: the moment you send someone to your Etsy store, you’re immediately taking them to your competitors. You’re giving a potential buyer access to similar products from others, which is not good for your sales.
Cost wise, the two have different approaches. Etsy charges a listing fee of 20c every time you create a new product or renew a product listing and 6.5% of all sales. Stan Store does not charge listing or transaction fees – just its one monthly fee of $29 or $99, depending on the level you choose.
While Etsy does have its own traffic, it’s competitive to rank for popular products and requires substantial work on your product title, description and visuals so it’s found in Etsy’s search. Stan Store is designed for traffic that you’ve built on your social channels.
The only time I can see Etsy being the better choice over Stan Store, would be if you were offering a large number of products, which might overwhelm the minimally-designed Stan Store. And even then, if you have significant traffic from one or more social platforms, you might want to move away from Etsy to your own store on something like Shopify or WooCommerce.
HOW DOES STAN STORE COMPARE TO WOOCOMMERCE?
I have a WooCommerce e-commerce store built on my WordPress website and chose to add a Stan Store to use with Instagram and TikTok because of how well it integrates with them. It feels like I’m staying on the original app when I visit the store. In contrast, clicking the link to my website’s WooCommerce product opens up in another window and involves more clicks to get to the checkout than Stan Store. It’s just clunkier and less likely to convert click-throughs into sales because of the extra steps.
WHO USES STAN STORE?
Anyone who monetises their social platforms with digital products, 1:1 appointments or runs courses or memberships would be a good fit for Stan Store. It could also work well for someone with a large following who wants email sign-ups, as the integration with social platforms is so seamless, it is likely to give a better sign-up rate over other options such as a regular website form. You can also use it for external links such as your website if you want.
CAN YOU BUILD A COURSE ON STAN STORE?
Your Stan Store can host courses with multiple modules, text, videos and downloads such as workbooks and checklist PDFs. Each course has its own landing page with an image, course description, reviews and price, to help convert browsers into buyers. The intuitive interface makes creating learning modules straightforward and quick.
IS STAN STORE BETTER THAN LINKTREE?
Linktree has one job: it’s a place for links that take the visitor away to other platforms. Stan Store, on the other hand, is a whole e-commerce package that keeps the visitor feeling as if they are still on the platform they came from. The functionality of the two is therefore very different, as is the experience of any visitors.
CAN STAN STORE REPLACE A WEBSITE?
To answer this question, we need to look at what a website is. Websites used to be the only option for finding out everything about a business or a person. Now that we have such active social platforms, sharing what a person or business offers, the combination of that with a Stan Store with its products, appointments and email sign-ups can replace a traditional website.
Another point in favour of social platforms combined with a Stan Store over a traditional website is the rise of platform search or SEO (search engine optimisation). Many people are using social platforms to search for things they may have once used Google for. It makes sense to search for a new London brunch spot or the best aesthetic matcha glasses on Instagram or TikTok over Google results: the results come from accounts that have people behind them we can see, hear and connect with. And with this kind of shift, we want to make the most of our content that may appear in social searches and monetise it.
Stan Store is the simplest, most integrated option for all the technical back-end of online sales. Rather than needing an appointment scheduler, an e-commerce store, a course or membership host and an email sign-up form, it’s all combined in one. Yay for someone dealing with all the technical headaches so easily! Also, with that taken care of, it’s easy to think about creating a mini-course or a PDF product when you can have it online in a few minutes. It allows creators to take action on inspiration in the moment, which can only be a good thing.
HOW TO USE STAN STORE
You start by creating your Stan Store. This took about 17 minutes including creating my first product – a 1:1 Strategy session complete with options to book particular days in my calendar. It starts by asking about your business or niche.
Once you have that and you have verified your email address, you can create as many or as few products as you wish. When you click ‘Add a product’, you’ll see these options:
The back end of your Stan Store allows you to see the number of daily click-throughs to your store, the store itself, so you can easily add new products and see immediately how they look in your store, all using a drag and drop builder. It has a separate page for income, listing product sales and email sign-ups, appointments and, if you’re on the Creator Pro level, email flows.
The layout is clean and easy to read and gives you all the numbers you could need to optimise your products and sales.
HOW MANY PRODUCTS CAN YOU SELL IN A STAN STORE?
Theoretically, you can sell an unlimited number of products in a Stan Store, however, any more than six can cause sales to drop. This is because a large number of choices can cause people to not buy at all, rather than make a choice, as this study with jam sales found.
If you have many products you would like to sell, here are three options you can test to find out what works best for your store and audience:
– Offer them all
– List only your best-sellers
– List up to six and test which ones bring in the most revenue / sales.
CAN YOU HAVE TWO STAN STORES?
Yes, you can have as many Stan Stores as you like, as long as you create each one with its own email address. Multiple Stan Stores would work well if you run more than one business or have very different audiences.
EMAILS AND EMAIL INTEGRATION
You can use Stan Store’s email sign-up in two ways. The first, is to use email flows that are available on the Creator Pro level. The other way is to integrate the sign-up with either built-in provider MailChimp or integrating it with other email providers with Zapier. I integrated the sign-up with my email provider Active Campaign, which I did with one click from a host of options inside Stan Store. So now, anyone signing up for my lead magnet inside Stan Store is automatically added to the right list inside Active Campaign and tagged, so I know where they came from.
IS STAN STORE WORTH IT?
In my opinion, if you have at least one low-priced ticket to sell and are active on at least one platform from Instagram, TikTok or Facebook, then yes. It’s so easy to use, your sales conversion rate is likely to be better than any other platform. It uses Stripe for its card transactions, a trusted name and there is no commission, which I don’t see being offered by any other shopping platform.
It could also be worth it alone if you want to make money from your email list. The email sign-up is so easy to use, that the monthly fee might be worth it for the increase in conversion rates over a regular website sign-up form. Certainly, it’s worth testing for at least the 14 days of the free trial to see if there is an improvement over your current sign-up rate.
To try Stan Store for free, click here for a 14-day trial.