What listing a store on Topsy actually involves

Most shop owners considering a delivery platform have the same two questions: how much work is this to set up, and when do I see the money. Everything else is detail.

Registration

You register the store, provide the details that identify the business, and go through review. This is a real review rather than a formality, because a customer ordering from a listed store is trusting Topsy that the store exists and will deliver.

Have your business details to hand and photograph documents in daylight with all four corners in frame. The same advice we give drivers applies here, and for the same reason: most delays are unreadable photographs rather than ineligible businesses.

The catalogue

Your products, with prices and categories. This is the part that takes actual time, and it is worth doing properly rather than quickly. A catalogue with vague names and no categories converts badly, because customers search rather than browse.

Start with what sells rather than everything you stock. A tight catalogue of your best items, listed accurately, outperforms a large one full of things that are usually out of stock.

Orders

Orders arrive and you accept and prepare them. Delivery is handed to the same courier pool that carries Topsy Send, so you are not recruiting or managing riders yourself.

The discipline that matters here is stock accuracy. An order accepted and then cancelled because the item is not actually available is the single worst experience for a customer and the fastest way to lose one.

Payouts

Order payments settle to your store account and pay out on a schedule you can see, with the detail behind each amount. As with driver earnings, the reason it is itemised is so it can be checked rather than trusted.

What it does not do

It does not create demand on its own. Being listed makes you findable to people already ordering; it does not by itself make people order. Merchants who do well treat the listing as a channel to promote, not a shop window that fills itself.

Local activations run in the same towns Topsy serves, and merchant sign-ups happen alongside rider campaigns for exactly this reason.