Challenge: Double your Sales in 3 Months

[dipmicro]

Challenge will start on December 1 and ends on February 28 and sales will be self-compared with same period last year and everyone will do self-evaluation.

Anyone willing to join the challenge, send me a PM. You are expected to bust your butt to meet the challenge, be brutally honest with yourself, if necessary work 16hr/day and help other members of the challenge. The reward will be something you perhaps would have hard time achieving alone, like a marathon, where people are unlikely to finish it but as a member of the bigger effort they push themselves beyond their limit to complete.

If you accept the challenge, you are expected to show-up EVERY DAY for a brainstorm and day-log. If the challenge is successful, those who remained to the end will have the right to publish the daylog in a book format and split the proceeds.

[marcopoloca]

Way to go, something positive for a change!

I'd like to accept the challenge except that i'll be away couple times in the next 3 months.

I already work as hard as i could but i need more product and that's why i will visit the las vegas consumer electronic show in january to see if i can dig up some worthwhile product to sell.

[axe_n_gear_music]

Work 16 hours a day for eBay?... yer kidding, right?
I admire your enthusiasm, but there's a lot more to life for me than eBay. Even 8 hours a day is a stretch, when you think of it as a 7 day a week venture ('cause we all know, the internet never closes).

But I wish you the best of luck in your quest!

My New Years resolution is to spend 1/2 the time I do now with my eBay stores and website stores (I'm at about an average of 50 hours/week right now because of Xmas), and still make well into the 6 figures. 😉

AXE

[dipmicro]

Work 16 hours a day for eBay?... yer kidding, right?

I did not say double the eBay sales. While eBay works most of the time, I really detest the myriad of little glitches with the platform, like the infamous record vanishing we both experienced.

Once we have the team, we can take it out of this forum. It is necessary because some strategies discussed may not be inappropriate for posting here.

I rethought my original idea of daily show-up. It would be better if members of the challenge would have a weekly status log.

Axe, if you can expand the sales and work 1/2 time, you are welcome to join the challenge. I have administrative issue - while my pick&pack it's below half capacity and has room to double, there is tasks I am doing personally that need optimized otherwise we would crash and burn by scaling up. Some areas I need to optimise are customer support and inventory control.

My niche is pretty huge and crowded, so it should be possible to scale via marketing (and take bit of share from other vendors). However, if your niche is small and you saturated it already, you may need to expand to other areas (for example you are selling pajamas for cats and market demand is 100pcs/month and you are covering 90pcs yourself, then you may need to look into market of dog pajamas to double).

[axe_n_gear_music]

Yes weekly sounds more appropriate, and I'm all ears when you want to send more details. I'm always anxious to streamline biz techniques and up the sales in all venues. Keep me posted,
thanks,
AXE

[marcopoloca]

Outside of the forum, like thinking out of the box?

that's a great idea 🙂

may be we don't really need to "meet" as often, we can do the collaboration in cyber space like cloud computing.

Each of us can post, edit, review result and strategy 7/24 no matter where you are.

I am ready for this challenge, please count me in! I am all ears 🙂

[dipmicro]

Everybody knows their bottlenecks. The challenge is to mainly stimulate yourself to get the right things done.

For example I have $2000 worth of new items piled up in my office that have not been inventoried for weeks. I have to shoot bunch of pictures and process them.

Also have two new supplier contracts to follow-up on for yet another inventory expansion. Both are for very popular product lines.

And I should setup a newsletter.

And yes, I just noticed my website URL is not on invoices. Yesterday a returning customer was picking up his eBay purchase and I go why don't you go check on my website - what website, you have one? I look at the invoice - this on..., dang, it was there before and disappeared 😞 This gets fixed right away.

[dipmicro]

Anyone else wants to join the challenge ?

[axe_n_gear_music]

Just a thought, would this type of thing receive more interest after Christmas?
I know I am pretty busy at the moment, and likely will be for the next three weeks. Most sellers have items that see greatly accelerated sales for Christmas, and as such maybe cannot devote the time and energy to something like this at the moment.

In the New Year, it would be nice have a fresh start to re-focus and build after the Christmas rush. I know some of the sellers here do not sell gift specific items so much, and they dont see (or have to deal with!!) this crazy Christmas rush.

That being said, in mid January, I'm off to Jamaica for a week, so personally for me, the end of Jan would be much better. But don't let me hold up anything, I just thought I would share these thoughts...

Cheers,
AXE

[marcopoloca]

Oh Christmas Rush, please come soon!

Business has been very slow lately since the re-opening of my ebay store 😞

Sales is so slow i will be very happy to have the same sales as before, let alone double.

[dipmicro]

Yesterday I added another 20 auctions. My experience is that if something is moving, it moves much better in auction format. I will add some more tonight, the results will be visible in approx a week.

Currently have average 80 auctions+BIN ending daily and trying to maintain the S/R at 30%. That gives me an average 24 auction sales per day. It was 19 auction sales yesterday and 28 today so far (it's 9:30pm) so it's approximately where I want it. Rest of the sales are FP sales - 55 total yesterday and 65 so far today.

I am ready to take this off this forum. Anyone has any idea where we can meet without big brother and the lurkers ? Message me.

[femmefan1946]

Just a thought, would this type of thing receive more interest after Christmas?

Not a bad thought. I for one don't see much Christmas action, and have even put my Store on vacation between Nov. 20 and Dec. 23 most years to avoid panic stricken late shoppers.

But December 26 ... woot!

Another question, if we are setting parameters, can I group all my sales without revealing all my IDs? I have several, post on two, and sell on five.

Can I just cross my heart and hope to get run over by a streetcar?

[marcopoloca]

yes we can do google talk or skype.

if you are using gmail, just add google talk.

you can download both gmail or skype free of charge, if you want me to send you an invite for gmail (google talk) please let me know.

both allow message to be send on and off line and you can also talk on the phone.

any other suggestions?

[femmefan1946]

Oh no--- more bloody social networking. ...

I am volunteering on a convention that uses some sort of Yahoo group to confer. Trouble is, it won't let me use my usual password which it considers too weak. So I am reduced to emailing the one member who actually does have a public email for this group and she kindly uploads my comments.

And I can't join discussions on Slate anymore because they want you to have a Facebook page or at lest be a Twitter twit.

I am going to get my magic goggles and blu-ray them all to a crisp.

[marcopoloca]

Google mail/talk is no social networking, no need to upload your profile, no need to join facebook or anyone else. We'd be a small group so no need for Yahoo group as all the talk/mail happen in real time (but you can respond when you have time).

I have never try multi party conversation yet (like in msn), wondering if that'd work?

A longer password would be the least of my concern right now,

[femmefan1946]

AAAH - I'm just a technodolt and sometimes I have to vent.

I will be interested in this experiment. Came home from a craft show today (no thrifting) and found I had three new sales from yesterday!

I guess I won't put the Store on vacation during the Christmas season.

There is some interesting chat about Revisions boosting sales on the Seller Board.

[axe_n_gear_music]

Wouldn't it be easier to just meet somewhere together? Looks like most interested parties are in Southern ON anyway, and only an hour or so away from each other....just a thought.

AXE

[dipmicro]

I am for the meetup, but cannot stand Toronto traffic. Perhaps pick a more scenic location. Niagara Falls comes to mind 🙂 Of course I would stay away from main tourist attractions, there is several nice places for a Sunday picnic I know, that have no admission. My know-how comes from occasional "where to take the kids" beside the dreaded falls.

Another nice place in Southern ON that me and my family like are the Thousand Islands area, we have not been there this year yet, perhaps I could convince the family to take a Sunday trip there.

As for the format, I personally like forum format but do not like the idea of big brother watching and lurking button pushers. I also stay away from Gmail, because of another "big brother". It may be the best thing in the world, but there is this thought of someone going through your emails and profiling you as if we don't have enough of that already from our bellowed leaders and some of their snoop-dog agencies. Email is generic enough if we setup a mailing list and always do "Reply All" - that might work too regardless if you use gmail or regular email.

I am surprised Bernie stayed away from this thread so far. I though Bernie was looking for expansion as well 🙂

[nan*55]

Can a Saskatchewanite join 🙂

[marcopoloca]

Going back old school and meet in person would be tough.

With cyberspace help, you can fire off question and response immediately or when you have time, it has that sense of urgency while the idea and thinking is still fresh in your mind.

Frankly i think we are too small potato to be notice, besides there's nothing sensitive about double your sales for a small (micro) business.

Or we can all get a blackberry (with their msn messenger service), all messages are encrypted.

Yes the blackberry ebay club 🙂

bb ebay!