As we're sure you have various questions and concerns, we've taken the time to cover most if not all of them:
Is GBAtemp running this shop?
No, this is not a GBAtemp owned or operated shop. What it is is an independent e-commerce business, based in Hong-Kong. We were contacted by a reliable associate whom we have personally known and dealt with for years, who has also worked within this industry for a very long time and wanted to start a new business. He asked us if we would like us to be partners. We then worked out a deal that would be advantageous to both parties.
ShopTemp will supply us with a permanent source of income that will benefit us in a lot of ways in exchange for all the advertising/affiliation that ensues, we get a share of the benefits made by the store. On top of that we helped them choose the products, come up with a great site design, wrote the product descriptions and thought of all sorts of features for the shop.
How will this affect the members?
On a superficial level, it won't. There will be virtually no difference between how we operated with our previous affiliates and how we operate now. The core difference is that we'll occasionally post GBAtemp exclusive deals and updates for members to take advantage of, such as the Supercard DSTWO timed-exclusivity deal we mentioned in the above post.
Where does the money go?
The same place it has always gone with the previous affiliates: towards the site. Except this being on a larger scale allowing us to improve and stabilize the quality of this site. For more specific usages:
1) This will be a stable income that will fund our server & technical costs once and for all.
2) This allows us to never have to rely on 3rd parties for holding contests & competitions any more. Remember WikiNDS? they never shipped out those prizes...
3) Depending on the income that it generates we aim at becoming a more professional website. We would like to expand our editorial content: more news, more articles, more reviews, etc.
Also, as a result of this partnership, the site will be ad-free again. There will be links to Shoptemp products & deals, but it will be more like part of the site general content.
Legally, I'm a little worried about what this might cause!
The business itself is completely based in Hong-Kong, their staff is in Hong-Kong, the server is in Canada (where most flashcart store websites are hosted), the only risk we ever may face is that we have to stop advertising Shoptemp. However, we've always advertised flashcart selling vendors, so why would we have problems with this one? Besides, GBAtemp and ShopTemp are actually separate entities. Nothing legally ties both, except for the advertising partnership.
So the support I get will be your typical Chingrish (difficult-to-read Chinese English)?
Absolutely not! We're very proud of the support staff that will be dealing with ShopTemp support/queries/website content etc. They are actually native English speakers and have an extremely detailed knowledge of their products and our operations! There will be no communication trouble, and if you take a look at ShopTemp, we're sure you'll find it a nice change to see a store that is full of useful and well-written information.
Will GBAtemp lose its objectivity and become biased?
Absolutely not. Everything will be the same as before. We will never influence a review for any kind of reason.
Actually, the opposite will happen. We first review the product on GBAtemp and if it's good, we'll tell the guys at ShopTemp to sell and promote said product.
We've asked that ShopTemp only carry the best and most popular carts and modchips that we have personally verified as being of quality. We will also be taking measures to make sure the customer makes informed decisions. Besides, no one could pull the wool over this community's eyes! You're a well-informed group that would be all to aware if someone tried to fudge the facts.
You can also check the review tab of any product to see customer reviews and even a score of professional reviews sampled from all over the web!
Will we be creating a forum section for ShopTemp?
Actually yes. Not because we necessarily want to make this a feature, but... simply because if we don't, people will post topics anyway. There will be topics all over the boards for any kind of question. People will post in the Site Discussions forum, in the Off-topic Area, even maybe in the Trading Forum. We need a place to consolidate all those topics. It's that simple. We won't be doing any official customer support on there, but we may report some stuff every now and then, like promotions, deals and all... Its more like a public place where people will post questions or feedback that the Shoptemp guys and ourselves will answer.
Will ShopTemp provide GBAtemp-themed merchandise?
In the future, we might be able to offer branded merchandise such as shirts, cups, and much more. The good thing is, they'll be much much better than our current ones, and hopefully more affordable.
Visit the shop, purchase
The shop's already open, and you can place orders at any time:
ShopTemp.com. Every purchase goes towards making GBAtemp and ShopTemp better. On our end we'll be able to improve the forums, and on theirs they'll be able to provide a wider range of products.
I'm worried about counterfeit flash carts or "clones", what will ShopTemp be doing to avoid that?
You can purchase your favourite flash carts from ShopTemp safe in the knowledge that they are all 100% legit, manufacturer made, flash carts. ShopTemp will absolutely not be selling counterfeit flash carts.
ShopTemp is so slow!? The server seems sluggish.
ShopTemp is currently hosted on a temporary server and the staff is well aware of this issue, fear not, it will be sorted soon!
Thanks for reading all of this, feel free to ask anything about this situation that wasn't covered here, within reason of course.
