ShopInterest Aims for Pinterest-ed Ecommerce

Shopinterest.co (that's a top-level Colombian domain, and not a typo by yours truly) offers the vibrant Pinterest user base a way to become online sellers. Their service also works for anyone with images of items and a desire to sell to visitors.

Since Pinterest users already have pictures uploaded for the viewing pleasure of the audience, Shopinterest wants to be the mechanism that moves those users from passive entertainers to active ecommerce entrepreneurs. It's a competitive niche, one currently occupied by names like eBay and Etsy.

A little extra support for Shopinterest's foundation arrived in the form of an undisclosed amount of venture capital. TechCrunch cited the investment by Dave McClure's 500 Startups as one to help the firm get ready for the all-important holiday retail season.

Shopinterest will charge its users for the service after a trial period. Its sellers can opt to pay on a per-item basis or on a subscription model. Those fees will vary by sales volume and inventory.

The startup also noted on the Shopinterest blog how they will shift users of its Pintics analytics service to Pinfluencer.com, citing a need to better focus its resources as a small startup.

Pinterest certainly seems to have the traffic to make Shopinterest an interesting service to watch. Alexa rates Pinterest.com 38th in the world per its most recent three-month traffic rankings, while Etsy rated 180th globally. Converting a slice of the Pinterest base to sellers and some of that traffic to sales could be a sizable return for McClure and company's seeding.

About the Author
David A. Utter is a freelance writer based in Lexington, KY. Find him on LinkedIn.