ShopInterest is the Pinterest for eCommerce

The e-commerce site for pinners has announced its intentions to prolong its beta testing period for 6 more months before release of the company’s SMB-focused sales plan. Additionally, the company has also launched “ShopInterest Sales Network”,  marketing programs that allows vendor’s items to be sold through third-parties. The idea is to use Pinterest boards as individual, online stores.

Low Fees

Built through the company’s participation in the 500 startups program, there are now over 25,000 items listed for sale. With the announcement of the beta extension, the co-founder Francisco Guerrero talked of the company’s plan to maintain low sales fees in order to attract the SMB-sized seller base. Guerrero also refers to the changes and increase in fees at Amazon and Ebay, saying “While ebay and Amazon have been moving ‘upward’, they are less focused on the needs of SMB sellers, so we want to be their champion,”

While in beta, ShopInterest charges $1 per successful transaction.  Once beta is completed the fee will be between 1 and 3.5 percent, depending on the amount of the sale.

ShopInterest Sales Network

The other announcement was the addition of the ShopInterest Sales Network. This is an affiliate network which will allow resale of items from the ShopInterest stores. ShopInterest handles tracking and payments, and vendors get to set their own commissions per item.

Guerrero explains that handmade products such as jewelry and boutique good have been challenging to sell through affiliates, and he also mentions the fact that Etsy doesn’t offer the use of an affiliate network.

Because of Pinterests aversion to posting items with affiliate links in the sellers’ pins, the affiliate sales will take place outside of Pinterest. For more information about the ShopInterest Sales Network , go to their FAQ. If you are interested in signing up for ShopInterest, go to http://www.shopinterest.co/.

[Image via blog.shopinterest]