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Vent: Stopped chasing Shopify partner badges and my agency is actually doing better now
Three years ago I was all in on getting that Shopify Plus partner badge. Spent probably 6 months jumping through hoops for them, took their quizzes, followed their playbooks. Last month I finally dropped out of the whole partner program entirely. Here's the thing - my team of 4 was spending like 20% of our week on partner requirements and training that had nothing to do with what our actual clients needed. One client in Austin asked me why we kept pushing them toward Shopify Flow when all they wanted was a simple product filter. I had no good answer. Since we stepped back, our project turnaround went from 3 weeks to 1.5 weeks. Has anyone else found that partner programs just slow you down?
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the_piper23d agoProlific Poster
The partner program stuff feels like it's built for Shopify's benefit, not ours. Those badges are just a way for them to get free labor and brainwashing from agencies that could be doing real work. Your client in Austin totally called it right, that's the kind of thing that makes you stop and think "why are we even doing this?" The fact that your turnaround time cut in half tells you everything about where the real value is at. I'm seeing more shops quietly drop out of these programs and nobody's missing them.
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the_piper23d agoProlific Poster
Funny you mention badges, I knew a guy who spent six months grinding for one and his dog ate it off his laptop.
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