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.

[dipmicro]

Absolutely, Saskatchewanite or any other province can join.

Let's move this challenge to the Q1/2011 as suggested above. So we are trying to maximize sales over January-March 2011 and achieve at least 2x gross sales of the same period in 2010.

[nan*55]

I'm in 🙂

[dipmicro]

Happy New Year to everyone !

The Q1/2011 already started and so my challenge commences. There has been some growth in 2010 so instead of referencing same period year ago, I am going to set my reference month Nov. 2010.

Everyone sets their own goal and mine is for March 2011 gross sales to be twice the gross sales in Nov. 2010.

Some thoughts about increasing eBay sales:

* Auctions work well as marketing engine. Continue to keep approx 10% of eBay listings as auctions.

* Free shipping does not seem to make any difference in placement. I slowly phase out free shipped items. They are also pain when setting up a sale as I only want to discount the item, not the shipping that's included. Another problem with free shipping items is on returns, need to refund entire amount.

* Quantity listings work better when available number of lots is maintained low even if huge quantity is available. Currently doing this by hand (check sold listings once a day and relist manually) but it would be nice to have this automated based on the real inventory levels.

* Competing with others on the price seems to be ineffective and attracts lot of unwanted sales especially on low price items. Higher priced items have different dynamics.

* Undercharging shipping cost proven to be ineffective in attracting sales. However there is big confusion among customers in combining as we combine by weight and many customers end up overpaying the shipping and I end up wasting about 1-2 manhours weekly on refunding those who overpaid.

The best solution seems to be to adding weight component into price (say $0.01/g) and charge flat shipping, which can be fairly easily automated by eBay shipping rules. Effectively, the flat shipping rate may be more attractive to buyers and will increase sales.

* Unpaid Item Assistant seems to be working well saving me lot of time. I do not bother with UID anymore, let eBay handle it automatically. Only when I need temporarily boost daily cashflow, I send payment reminders manually.

[dipmicro]

One more thing, not directly related to increasing the sales.

The USD seems to be going to the tubes. I am considering switching back to CAD or at least increase my CAD sales since I also need to maintain USD coming. Currently only about 10-15% of my receivables are in CAD but at least 30-40% (wages, expenses, etc).

I am going to make CAD default currency on my website, that might help a bit especially now when CAD prices are lower than USD prices. Will think about eBay ...

[plasmaco]

OK, technical meeting stuff...

Why don't you guys open a free online forum (proboards comes to mind...) and require passwords to post and view posts ? That way only "controlled" peeps peep inside...

I know, not another bloody forum... BUT, it's the perfect format...
I could set it up, and turn over control to Dip... just sayin'...

As far as the challenge goes, I am happy to announce that my sales in the past 2 days were more than the total month of December.

And December was an above average month for me... Than again, I could find no rhyme or reason as to why sometimes something works and then it stops working altogether...

So as far as fulfilling the challenge of doubling sales, it might be possible, but then again, I could half them instead... ?:|

[axe_n_gear_music]

* Undercharging shipping cost proven to be ineffective in attracting sales. However there is big confusion among customers in combining as we combine by weight and many customers end up overpaying the shipping and I end up wasting about 1-2 manhours weekly on refunding those who overpaid.

The best solution seems to be to adding weight component into price (say $0.01/g) and charge flat shipping, which can be fairly easily automated by eBay shipping rules. Effectively, the flat shipping rate may be more attractive to buyers and will increase sales.

Dip, I find your combined shipping very confusing. Just an idea, wouldn't it be easier for you (especially when you are dealing with very small items) to set your combined shipping to FREE shipping for additional items? You could increase your standard rate to 4.95, say, and additional items ship free.
I find it works well, and also have a look at Bernie's listings- same thing- its attractive to the buyer, and easy to work with.
Just a thought....

Cheers,
AXE

[dipmicro]

You are right, some things are not politically correct to discuss here. We will set something up, I registered a name for this challenge (.com are on sale at 1&1 right now) but it will take few days to get setup. In the meantime, start doubling.

My December sales were lower because I scaled them down, that's why I want to beat the November, which may be actually the best month so far.

[dipmicro]

Dip, I find your combined shipping very confusing. Just an idea, wouldn't it be easier for you (especially when you are dealing with very small items) to set your combined shipping to FREE shipping for additional items? You could increase your standard rate to 4.95, say, and additional items ship free.
I find it works well, and also have a look at Bernie's listings- same thing- its attractive to the buyer, and easy to work with.
Just a thought....

Cheers,
AXE

You are right, I noticed the '+' math is too high-tech for some eBay buyers.

Your idea of free for additional items is basically same as mine. For example, I have an item that is priced $10 and weights 0.11kg

Under my current terms, it would cost $4 ($3 base rate + $1 for the weight).

With the weight component added to the price, the new price would be $11.10 and buyer pays only $3 shipping regardless how many items. Cash in my pocket stays the same but without high-tech math involved.

[axe_n_gear_music]

Yeah, and I know customers don't really care or understand about weight and only want an easy way to know how much the transaction is going to cost them. Do away with the weights and simply charge more for each item, and any extras are free. (In most cases you will profit slightly, some you will lose on a bit, but overall in the end, you should still enjoy enough profit to cover shipping time and materials, etc).
The nice thing with your items is that most are quite small, so combining is easier. I wish my stuff was of a more consistant size for that. Pretty tough to ship one guitar for 40 bucks, and then add a second one for free! But it works nicely when someone buys an instrument and then wants to add parts or tuners, straps, strings, etc, because those are easy to ship for free along with the large instrument.

AXE

[dipmicro]

Why don't you guys open a free online forum (proboards comes to mind...) and require passwords to post and view posts ? That way only "controlled" peeps peep inside...

TwiceSales.com

[bighillbargains1]

I'd love to join!

[liquidation-savings]

Hello, you make six figures? is this just with ebay stores?

Red

[axe_n_gear_music]

Hi Red,
Yes, we are well into the 6 figures, which is with our eBay stores and website sales combined. My goal with this part time biz is to spend my time more wisely (less is more???) and less time sitting in front of a computer - I wish, lol, - and I want to try to up the website sales. The eBay DSR and keeping customers happy by babysitting with emails thing is turning this into a full time job.
I'd like to see eBay change some of their lofty, unattainable goals for their sellers, but as usual that always falls on deaf ears. But...gotta keep things positive!
If you've ever made a website sale and felt how much less pressure you have on you (no worries about shipping time, and DSR's, etc, etc) you would appreciate the difference in selling on eBay, where buyers always seem to have a gun against your head.
That being said, of course with website sales, we still ship same day, and give the same customer service, etc, but the pressure is so much less..... Just my take.

Cheers,
AXE

[dipmicro]

Every Gold level is in six figures even without off-eBay sales.

My short term sales goal is seven figures.

[eureka9988]

I would like to be part of this group too!
Renee

[dipmicro]

As we talked about, it would be good if we did a weekly report on how the challenge is going and what has been done.

My gross sales in November 2010 divided by 30, multiplied by 7 is my reference weekly sales.

Jan 1-7, 2010: 50.35% down
Jan, 2010: 29.97% down
Nov, 2010: 100% (it's reference month)
Dec, 2010: 18.06% down

Obviously, I selected one of the best months in 2010.

Jan 1-7, 2011: 2.29% up

Nothing specific was done this week to increase sales, we only cought up after holidays and shipped 200+ orders that were waiting on Jan 2. In fact we are running only half of items right now, so listing everything back on eBay is a marketing priority.