Why we PAY for stan.store vs a link-in-bio software.

By Lyndon

Update April 25, 2023: Follow up blog What We’ve Earned Using Stan Store

I’d be willing to bet money that you have gone to someone’s profile on Instagram or TikTok just to follow the links found in their bio. This has basically become the industry standard at this point. A quick google search will return multiple options like linktree or milkshake that almost universally have free options.

This raises the question: why would we then choose to pay $30 a month for stan.store that serves the same purpose at first glance.

Simple answer: convenience and higher conversions.

Let’s go back a couple of steps

Up until last week we’ve been loyal milkshake users. It served its purpose well for us: 1) it was easy to configure, 2) it looked good, 3) we could have as many links as we wanted, and 4) our audience liked it.

Then on a cool summer day, Jo was sitting under the AC in our apartment casually scrolling through TikTok and started noticing people saying “check out my stan.store” rather than “link-in-bio”. Apparently users were saying that unlike buzzwords like”’link-in-bi”’, TikTok wasn’t banning the phrase “stan.store” which led to higher conversions and profile visits (we’ve tried to confirm this and have yet to know how exactly to know which words/phrases are actually banned on tiktok but that’s how we were first alerted to it).

And just like that, we began our journey into seeing if we needed to switch to what all the cool kids were using these days.

At first glance, it did look just like all the other link-in-bio service providers, but once we started looking closer it differentiated itself in a couple of simple ways that started making it much more valuable – and worth the monthly subscription.

What even is stan.store?

Stan.store operates similar to other link-in-bio service providers. It’s a single link that you have where you’re able to place multiple things that you would like to draw people’s attention to.

What differentiates stan.store, is the “things” are not limited to just links. As stated in the name stan.store is a storefront that you’re able to put links in. In the single link (stan.store/joelleelizabethandco) you get you’re able to

• Sell digital products
• Schedule meetings to your calendar
• Sign people up for courses
• Opt in to a freebie email sequence
• All while collecting payment though stripe
• 👇 breaks down the features

Most people that have tried to sell things understand that the more steps it takes to buy things (especially low dollar products) the less likely people will be to convert.

By enabling people to buy without ever leaving the Instagram or TikTok app, it greatly reduces steps and makes it easy for people to follow through with checking out before they get interrupted and forget to come back.

Back to why we switched

If you go to our stan.store as of writing this, we’re using it effectively just for links to our other pages. The natural question would be – so why are we paying for it?

We chose to switch because when we looked at what we’re working towards in Q3, we needed something that would support a couple of things we were doing that were currently inefficient or impossible. The inefficiently supported goals were:

• Add a few digital products: we moved away from using Shopify a few months ago since we weren’t selling enough to justify the monthly service fee. To restart selling digital products we needed some form of store and payment processing service
• A bigger push on our coaching offerings: the entry point for many of our coaching clients has been with our one-off 90 min coaching sessions. If we can make it even easier to book this would (in theory) increase the number of sales
• Offering our masterclasses as one-time purchases: every month we offer a masterclass included in our membership. In June we made the decision to also offer it for purchase as a stand alone product. We ended up hosting a sales page through teachable, but in all reality, it wasn’t very seamless and a little cumbersome to check out for our customers. We wanted something simpler.

Once we looked through our goals it because obvious that we didn’t currently have the tools to reach those goals. But, rather than adding one more tool/software we wanted to see if we could replace or simplify our process.

Should you switch?

At the end of the day, that answer truly depends on what your needs are. In setting up stan.store so far I’ve been impressed with how simple and easy it is to use their drag and drop designer for making your page. I think it’ll be pretty easy to add the things for sale once we start launching them publicly. And I personally think as a user it ends up being a much nicer experience than some of the free link-in-bio options currently available.

On the flip side, I think for $30 a month some of what stan.store offers is pretty limited. They don’t have integrations with very many other apps, relying mostly on zappier for almost everything. Meaning if you truly want to be a power user you’ll probably be setting up a bunch of zaps just to integrate stan.store into your existing workflows. And I think it’d be awesome if they had options to sell physical products in a simple intuitive way all in one place with everything else you’re selling.

For us the benefits outweighed the draw backs and we took the leap to at least set it up. In a couple of months once we’ve started selling more things and leveraging the “store” part, we’ll have a much better picture of how well it actually works. But in our attempt to be ahead of the game, we love trying out new products and then grow with them as they start adding more features over time.

Interested in signing up for a free 14-day trial, we’d appreciate if you used our link. Or shoot us a DM on Insta @joandlyndon to ask any follow up question you may have.