E-Junkie Review. Is it good or just junk?

No longer do we live in the days where you open a corner store or “Mom n’ Pop” shop. The days of paying rent for a brick and mortar store are gone. Anyone with a laptop or computer can open up a store now.






You don’t have to hire a real estate agent or contractor or buy insurance. You turn on your computer, open an e-commerce site and boom! you have a business in minutes. A procrastinator who never leaves his couch (like me) can be an entrepreneur.

Ah, entrepreneur. That’s such a nice word to describe someone who doesn’t feel like leaving the house to go to a job. But that’s the very definition of it today. Most entrepreneurs are running a business from their own homes nowadays.

See, they want you to believe that either you work hard as a corporate slave or you work EVEN HARDER as an entrepreneur.

WRONGO!

Of course slave master wants freedom to look bad and will make the plantation sound like paradise.

“Look, it’s dangerous out there, it’s worse out there. You should stay here where you at least know you’re safe. You’ll lose out there. You’ll get kicked to the curb.”

They have all this propaganda out there to make you work hard and make the path to freedom look nearly impossible. Not only is it possible to escape the 9-5 grind, it’s also a hell of a lot easier than slaving away for 40+ years at the same desk.

Entrepreneurship has nothing to do with working hard, but just being brave enough to say “fuck it” I ain’t workin’ for anyone’s time or doing anything for anyone, except for myself. Entrepreneurship is euphemism for “ Professional Laziness;” it’s sweet talk for the method and mindset of being lazy and getting away with it.

The hardest part of entrepreneurship is: You literally have to rewire your brain from thinking you must follow orders and do what you are told and meet deadlines, objectives, and goals that someone else set up all for you into thinking you are free to be lazy and do whatever you actually enjoy. You’ve been trained, hypnotized not to actually enjoy things, but just recover a little so you can “get back to work. An entrepreneur is a lazy person that has mastered the art of enjoying oneself. They enjoy what they do and make a living off of it.



Entrepreneurship is having the courage to not care about failure. You are too lazy to care and too lazy to work on someone else’s schedule. You do things when you want, how you want. And failure doesn’t faze you because you’re at such a high level of “I don’t give a fuck” laziness that it doesn’t shake or break you or make you feel incompetent. It also takes a lot of focus. You know what you want. You’re focused on it. And you’ll get there, eventually.  That pizza is gettin’ eaten, damnit! That Platinum trophy is getting unlocked, damnit! That hobby of mine is gonna pay my bills.

Speaking of which, if you want to learn how Video Games can pay YOUR bills, check out this FREE e-book entitled “Self-Employed Gamer – 10 Days to Make Money Gaming” by clicking here

If you’re worried about the consequences of losing your job or failing your e-commerce site or whatever start up business, then you’re not truly lazy. Not yet, anyway. You’re too emotionally attached and “worked up” emotionally. You’re embracing an active mindset, not a Lazy one. You have to change your attitude; you have to relax and ease up a little. You have to be lazy and unwire your mind from being the hardworking yet fearful machine its been programmed to be. You have to abandon obligation in order to fulfill desire.

E-commerce is one of those paths to freedom, one of those methods of un-wiring your brain, truly detaching, and truly lying down in the bed of laziness and for once -- actually ENJOY yourself. The best part is, you don’t need an inventory of products or a giant warehouse or shipping supplies. You can sell DIGITAL products that have an unlimited inventory. Today, we’re talking about the basics of e-commerce and we’ll look at a couple options to get started, but first let’s dive into old school brick n’ mortar business just to sort of paint a metaphor here.

Business real estate experts will always tell you when choosing a place:

“location, location, location.

The strongest factor in determining your brick n’ mortar business’  success is its location. Having a porn store next to an elementary school is not the best idea. It’s neither appropriate or good for sales. Also, probably illegal. Putting a bakery next to a medical marrijuana faicility or selling girl scout cookies is just pure genius business sense.

Alongside with location, you must also stand out among competitors with unique branding and features.

Maybe you don’t necessarily have the store on the corner, but you’re the one with their bright neon lights and the  blow up Tyrannosaurus Rex out front, or maybe you just offer to do things “with pleasure” like at Chic-fil-a, or give a warm chocolate chip cookie as a welcome gift like Double Tree.


 In the online “real estate world, instead of location it’s:

“niche, niche, niche”

Similarly to when we talked about how the Affiliate Program that you promote on your website must be appropriate for the niche, it is also important for your own online product to be relevant and valuable to that niche. You must go, build your brand, your online building, where your audience is.

You must build your shop in the right part of town, so the right people are attracted to buy it. Then you must present a unique perspective or insight on said niche or create a memorable experience.. I don’t have a t-rex or a neon sign but I have a sloth and a Lazy island.


The first few questions that you want to ask before you create and try to market and sell any of your own products online is:

Is this something that provides value for my niche audience?

Does it provide a lesson or entertainment?

Does it create hope and/or provide actionable steps towards solving a problem?

Are you already receiving quality engagement with your audience?

Numbers aren’t as important as quality engagement. You may have thousands of listeners, viewers, or readers but that doesn’t matter if they’re only reading the first paragraph or only watching/listening to the first few seconds. You know you’re ready when you have an audience that follows simple calls to action like “share, subscribe, like”. If they”buy” into your calls of actions, then they’ll be more likely to buy your actual product.  If they’re paying you with attention, then they’ll be warm enough to pay you with their wallet. You establish yourself as an authority that people go to and trust and would be willing to pay for “more” of your content.


If you answered no to one or more of these then it’s probably not worth selling. Don’t waste your time. Procrastinate and wait until later.

If you answered yes, then you’re ready to be a lazy person that makes money doing what they want err -- e-commerce entrepreneur.


All it takes is creating a website, opening up an e-commerce account, then integrating it into said website. Easy.
There are plenty of options out there: E-Junkie, SquareSpace, Shopify, BigCommerce, Wix, Weebly, WooCommerce, the list goes on.

As a bit of a disclaimer, I had a recent interview with Robin Singh, the founder of E-Junkie.  I made it clear that I didn’t want the interview to turn into an infomercial for his site. He agreed and we focused the conversation entirely on the Lazy Mindset. He shared his story of how laziness literally was the foundation for his entire business.

I’ll be publishing it as a little Halloween ProcrastiN8r Podcast treat for you all in a future episode next week so stay tuned for that. There will be a special offer ONLY FOR LISTENERS. It will NOT be posted or published anywhere else, so be sure NOT to miss that episode and listen. It won’t even be in the show notes, so you’ll have to tune in and listen!

I also told him I’d give an honest review of E-Junkie. I wasn’t going to just blow sunshine up his ass. I could have shit all over this and hated it. I could have thrown it against the wall and sprayed it with graffiti. I really have complete leeway to demolish this thing if I hate it.

I really could flush it down the toilet and say whatever I want about. So, how does E-Junkie fair in the world of e-commerce, is it worth a praise or does it deserve every ounce of hate I could give it? Is it awesome or complete junk? Let’s take a look.


E-junkie is short for“electronic junkie”. A junkie, of course being someone addicted to something.

We’re all junkies and procrastinators here. We’re addicted to video games or movies or whatever hobby and sitting all day in front of our computers or lying on the couch, talking about and enjoying said indulgences online.

Makes sense to make a living off our lazy lifestyle rather than let it consume us. Embracing our addiction and laziness is the pathway to freedom and success. We have passion. Passion is just a cute word for addiction, of course.

Right off the bat, E-Junkie wins points because there’s no installation or programming necessary. Just copy and paste a button and put it anywhere.

This is a beautiful thing. I’m too lazy to program, personally.

It’s not something I’m interested in. It’s too tedious for my tastes, so I don’t do it. Laziness is about putting off obligation to do what you want. If you put off other things to do programming and it’s something you actually enjoy, then go for it. For me personally though, I’m gonna have to take a pass on that.

If you think of programming  as some sort of puzzle-solving fun or a relaxing way to spend your time, then by all means, do it.

I’m saying don’t work on programming or learn it if you’re lazy about it. Find something else to do that makes you feel leisure. If you feel like programming (or anything for that matter) is work, then don’t do it.

The button is customizable, but you’ll need to do a bit of coding yourself to do it; there’s unfortunately, as of writing, no way to customize colors in an easy interface.

There are free options out there for you programmers. Namely CubeCart. It’s totally 100% free open source e-commerce platform. There’s no license to purchase or monthly subscription fee. Plus, since it is open source, there are lots of extensions (including PayPal) and plenty of customization options. However, you’ll need to feel comfortable installing and editing scripts in your website.

Woo Commerce is now a free plugin for WordPress sites, with some paid features you can purchase at a one time fee (memberships, subscriptions, bookings). It integrates with Stripe, and while Woo won’t charge you any additional fees for transactions, there is a fee that Stripe

Woo e-commerce on WordPress is actually pretty easy to set up and is powering over 30% of online stores.

E-Junkie is hella cheap (I mean it’s a bit more expensive than free), but it’s just 5 bucks a month. This is the cheapest option in the world of e-commerce. (Second closest is Shopify at $9 per month.) You’re also not limited to just WordPress sites and can put it anywhere, including eBay.

E-Junkie lets you upload digital products, put them in a store and instantly send them to customers to their inbox the minute they hit “pay now". There’s plenty of payment options to choose from that E-Junkie supports, including PayPal, Stripe, Clickbank, and Braintree.  Just like Woo, you are sitll responsible for paying the payment processor fees

You can even sell software or subscription based content and create trial keys for people to test the waters with your product.

You can create custom coupons and make limited sales and promotions. It’ll also calculate taxes and what not. There are some options to sell physical products, such as shipping calculation and inventory management/tracking.

You can send custom “Thank you” e-mails that trigger upon a sale and also integrate Google analytics and a Facebook pixel to keep track of customers that click a link, add to cart or follow through with a purchase.

They also have a newsletter option, but charge you a fee per e-mail sent.

You’re better off using the free account at Mailchimp for newsletters, to be honest. Since assuming you’re tracking the purchase through some sort of tracking software, you can easily target customers in a list or tag later. We’ll dive into specifics of e-mail marketing in a later post.

There are also premium upgrades that cost a bit more. Below is a list of all the packages available.

$5/month

    Number of products: 10
    Download Storage: 200 MB
    Unlimited Sales
    Unlimited Downloads

$10/month

    Number of products: 20
    Download Storage: 2 GB
    Unlimited Sales
    Unlimited Downloads

$20/month

    Number of products: 60
    Download Storage: 6 GB
    Pull remote files
    Unlimited Sales
    Unlimited Downloads

$40/month

    Number of products: 250
    Download Storage: 20 GB
    Pull remote files
    Unlimited Sales
    Unlimited Downloads



Nothing beats their $5 entry price (unless you’re using the open source options). However, there cheaper options out there once you get past the initial 10 products (starter level). But there are NO TRANSACTION fees and, quite frankly, those fees that other e-commerce sites charge can be a HUGE cut into your profits.

As a matter of fact, transaction fees are the bulk of your  “Do It At Home Business” expense.

Spreesy, for example, while at the low low price of “free” has a flat 3% transaction fee on a per sale (Shopify has a 2.4-2.9%That 3% may not sound like much, especially fi you’re only making a few dollars,  but it adds up once you start getting a lot of customers. Just imagine when you’re making thousands and take a cut of 3%, well now you’re paying hundreds if not thousands just in fees alone.

Now that number of 3% in particular is rather high, but transaction fees from e-commerce platforms tend to range from 1-4% in addition to whatever fees the credit card company or payment provider (eg. PayPal) charge.

If you want an easy way to increase your profits, eliminate fees wherever possible. Instead of looking to sell more and work harder to drive more sales, just cut your expenses. It’s one of the easiest business practices you can do to make more money. E-Junkie by not charging any transaction fees accelerates your profits easily. Big Commerce also charges no transaction fees, but costs a whopping $30 in its cheapest package.



But we can’t ignore how Woo is doing the same thing but for free. However, the free version of Woo only supports basic products and does not include subscription based products or an affiliate system. You must browse through the plugin store and purchase it in order to add these type of features. The plugins are rather costly; the “memberships”, plugin for example is $150 and the “subscription” plugin is $200, and you have to purchase a separate license for each individual site you want to put it on. E-Junkie includes these things in the $5 monthly subscription fee and allows you to integrate the store, cart,  and all of its feature with an unlimited amount of sites. You don’t have to pay separate licensing/subscription fees for each site when using E-Junkie.Woo commerce may be cheaper in the long run though because it is a one time fee that you pay up front.  Use your discretion


In E-Junkie, the amount of storage space you get for digital files is rather low (200MB) and will fill up quickly, especially if you’re selling video webinars or premium podcasts or any sort of media file. You can probably have a solid library of e-books, which don’t take up much space, before reaching anywhere near that limit, though.

However, other sites offer “unlimited” storage space,  will charge you transaction fees on top of a monthly fee. If you think about it, you’re basically paying for the extra storage each time you make a sale. You’re purchasing the megabytes.


While I haven’t experienced this personally, some customers on Trust Pilot report that their e-mails weren’t being automatically sent to customers and there was “nothing they could do”.  I imagine perhaps the e-mail provider blocked the e-mail in their spam filter. .I would make it VERY CLEAR on my sales page to please check spam folders to avoid this sort of thing.



You can even create your own affiliate program and offer commission to people who promote and sell your product.

You do have to pay out the commissions manually though and there’s no option to set up automatic payments. This can be a tedious task to juggle if you have hundreds if not thousands of clients. You cna use something like PayPal’s mass pay option, but still, that’s an extra bit of steps in the process. I would much rather have a system that automatically pays my affiliates so I don’t have to do any maintence.


The plus side of this is that the service isn’t charging you any sort of fee, but it does require extra work, which as a procrastinator, I’m not too fond of either of those two words: “extra” and “work”.


Overall, I would give E-Junkie a Procrasti 7/8


If you want a cheap place place to start e-commerce without the hassle of learning (or dealing with) programming, e-junkie makes it easy to dive in, packs it with a plethora of built-in features, and most importantly, doesn’t break the bank. Some of the features, like the whole Affiliate program system should be automatic, but requires extra manual labor to have running.


Visit E-Junkie

Check out all the features:

https://www.e-junkie.com/wiki/features


By the way, subscribe to the newsletter and check back for when I do a full review of these other e-commerce platforms I mention.

Also, you may be thinking “Nate, you haven’t even covered how to create content yet and you’re already discussing selling e-products. WTF?” Well, look I am the ProcrastiN8r. You shouldn’t expect any sort of structure here. I do things when I want. Patience, fellow procrastinator, I’ll cover how to create website content in the most easy lazy fashion possible...eventually.

As a matter of fact, it may be the topic in this week’s podcast on Friday, ya know, if I feel like it.

Then we’ll dive into some mindset tricks with Robin Singh next week as a little Halloween treat!