Forum Moderators: buckworks
The site gets a good amount of traffic: anywhere from 150,000 to 210,000 visitors per month, and an average of 5 page views per visitor.
I currently have a banner advertiser on just seventeen of my pages; the others are open for advertising. I've tried a number of advertisers-- magazines, direct retailers--but none have been successful.
A close associate of mine suggested that I get into selling merchandise from the site. I researched various items, and have concluded that the item that would have the broadest appeal would be a certain blue widget.
These blue widgets usually cost between $60 and $300. I've found a manufacturer who's willing to sell them to me for $15 plus shipping. I've tested their product and have been satisfied. While not top-of-the-line, they do the job.
I have absolutely no experience with Ecommerce, so I hope that people will indulge me by answering some of the following questions:
1. How do you handle shipping? Do you just set up a separate FedEx/UPS account, print out the shipping labels, and call for a pickup? Whenever I use FedEx, I write out the airbill by hand. There must be a more efficient way for volume shipping.
2. What about people who, for whatever reason, want to return the item? There's a manufacturer warranty, but I really don't want to get into spitting contests with customers who don't like the product. Do you specify a "no-return" policy on your site?
3. Is your time worth the effort? I figure that the most I can charge for these products is a bit over $30. Anything over $35 would likely make a customer consider spending a bit more for one of the name brand. So, it could be that I'd make perhaps $10 per order.
If anyone has any comments or suggestions, I'd appreciate hearing them.
[edited by: lorax at 1:55 pm (utc) on Dec. 22, 2006]
[edit reason] widgetized [/edit]
Yet, nobody wants to respond.
I'm not asking for your secrets to successful sales of cell phones.
All I'm asking for is advice, advice based upon real-world e-ecommerce experiences.
I've been very successful in SEO, and I've given every newbie my best advice. And the majority of my advice comes from Brett Tabke's simple steps to becoming successful on Google.
Brett's steps have been free of charge.
If everyone here closes up like a clam, then there's no help to the newcomers.
And, if it reaches that point, there's really no reason for this forum.
Brett gives, I give, you give. Without that, what is this all about?
Besides,
The site gets a good amount of traffic: anywhere from 150,000 to 210,000 visitors per month
Maybe everyone figures you're doing fine and are jealous. :-)
Personally we have integrated UPS and USPS shipping into the cart directly on our site - that is, based on the item volume and weight of the total order, our site queries the UPS or USPS sites with an XML query and receives a response that we use for shipping. Most canned shopping carts have this. I programmed this one myself, so it's a highly customized solution.
If your items are light and a quantifiable weight, I can tell you this - you are very likely going to see many more sales by increasing price to compensate and offering free shipping. As mentioned above, our shipping is charged barely over the direct queries of the shipping service, but we still get hate-mails about "how much WE charge for shipping." If someone thinks they are getting something free, they are more likely to buy.
Returns, "it depends." Do you want to develop good customer service or are your items good enough, if someone can't figure it out from the pictures on your site, too bad? How much time can you afford to dedicate to returns? IMO allowing some returns is a necessary PITA.
Our return policy was quite forgiving and the bottom line is people just plain abused it, like it's a dressing room delivered to their doorstep. So we've updated ours to NO returns on fabric articles, and you MUST contact us before returning any other items, period. (Not in those words of course. :-) )
In any case, your business policies should be clearly spelled out on your site, as well as privacy and usage policies.
I currently have a banner advertiser on just seventeen of my pages; the others are open for advertising. I've tried a number of advertisers--magazines, direct retailers--but none have been successful.
Have you tried using Adsense on all of your pages?
1. How do you handle shipping?
It's probably different for everybody. Most of our customers choose the straight postal option, we print out labels when the order comes in. If they request FedEx we fill in the slip by hand.
2. What about people who, for whatever reason, want to return the item? I really don't want to get into spitting contests with customers who don't like the product. Do you specify a "no-return" policy on your site?
For a physical item you really should have a return policy. If you're feeling like you don't ever want to have to deal with customer service issues you should probably not get into ecommerce.
3. Is your time worth the effort?
Yes.
If you're asking if your time will be worth the effort according to your profit margin then, in my opnion, it seems like you would need a lot of sales to make it worth your while.
Maybe start with a simple Paypal eccomerce setup just to see if there is a market there. If you start getting lots of interest step up to a merchant account / cc gateway system.
[edited by: lorax at 1:57 pm (utc) on Dec. 22, 2006]
[edit reason] widgetized [/edit]
1600 pages that are mostly devoted to featuring products from a variety of manufacturers.
The site gets a good amount of traffic: anywhere from 150,000 to 210,000 visitors a month
Why the silence? Maybe most of us can't understand why such a blockbuster site would settle for selling [insert drum roll] $30 blue widgets whatever those are. LOL
[edited by: lorax at 1:58 pm (utc) on Dec. 22, 2006]
[edit reason] widgetized [/edit]
rocknbil, I very much appreciate yours as well.
If I could have my wishes, it would be that I would just send orders to the manufacturer, and the product would be dropped-shipped from there.
But, the manufacturer doesn't want to get into the drop-shipping end of things.
So, I can either buy a small quantity of his products and experiment, or just drop the idea entirely.
To my way of thinking, anything less than 10 orders that net me $10 each per day is just not worth my time. Really, I can make more money on other ventures that can and do bring in more dollars per day. Much more.
But I have personal reasons why I don't want to pursue those ventures anymore, and will gladly deal with more headaches from an online venture.
And that is why I'm asking advice from people who are probably ten or twenty or even thirty years my junior.
I'm not asking for your secret to your success. I'm just asking for a couple of pointers.
You might do well to offer a couple of suggestions on e-commerce, as I suspect at least a few here will ask questions over on the SEM forum about how to get their sites ranked well.
Don't think the world is beating a path for those things.
[edited by: lorax at 2:00 pm (utc) on Dec. 22, 2006]
[edit reason] widgetized [/edit]
If everyone here closes up like a clam, then there's no help to the newcomers.
You aren't getting a shortage of answers because people want to hide the secrets from you.
You aren't getting answers because the questions you are asking indicate that you've not done even the basics of research on your own.
The answers to your shipping questions can be found on the websites of the shipping companies. Or, failing that, by picking up the telephone and calling them.
You can discover the norms in returns & exchange policies by looking at some subset of the gazillion online stores out there. Even better, since you know your niche, focus on stores that already sell merchandise your visitors like to buy. You can do whatever you like with that newfound knowledge, but if your policies differ significantly from the baseline, there had better be a good reason for it. (e.g. "our strategy is to offer rock bottom prices. the trade off is that we don't accept returns or service of any kind.")
Is it going to be worth it? Who knows - how many earmuffs are you planning on selling?
I'm skeptical that selling a single product direct to your visitors is the optimal strategy for you -- though I know nothing of your site, niche or visitors. Presumably, you've tried the low hanging fruit of Adsense or affiliate model to monetize your traffic and found them lacking?
I am in a totally totally diffn. niche.
But I do sell very cheap widgets much below competition prices so maybe this will help.....
To survive and make money , I need
Big Volumes : So I did research the market to ensure that the demand for the product pre existed.
Low Shipping Cost: So I have negotiated very low shipping costs which vary between diffn. geographical areas of my country. I did not necessarily go to the Top Courier Companies but went to a relatively ' B' Local company who do the job well and offer online tracking.
Yes..the above enabled me to offer Free Shipping in most parts of my country...
I also offer a discount over a particular value to get bigger orders.
I keep my website very simple, have a customised simple Cart and just hand over the packed/ labelled package to the Courier agency, who fill in the AWB slips themselves. I keep minimal work for myself.
I donot offer a return policy. I clearly mention all articles on ' as is where is ' and 'first come first serve' basis.
I take all money in advance before I ship ;-)
I am sure, I donot live in your country. So these pointers may not work for you.
Before anyone says, that I offer a 'bad' service, let me explain, that I cannot fulfil demand on account of 'supply constraints'. My biz. runs on repeat orders which generate continued demand and I do have almost a 80 % repeat biz.
But I wonder if ' ear muffs' have that kind of demand and more importantly Repeat purchase/demand.
Hey ,, I forgot to metion, to defer costs of advertising , I have adSense ( one block) for disinterested visitors. This helps me defer 50/60% of my adWords cost.
and I have to stock the widgets in house.. :-(
You aren't getting answers because the questions you are asking indicate that you've not done even the basics of research on your own.
Where'd Mr. "clam up" go? Hell, I wasted 10 minutes doing HIS market research and he doesn't reply.
1. How do you handle shipping?
USPS has a service called Click N Ship. Priority Mail is probably the least expensive way to ship something quickly, they provide boxes and envelopes FREE of charge, and will pick up on request.
I also have accounts with FedEx and UPS, and all of my shipping documents are created through their online services.
I do a pretty good volume, averaging 40 shipments a day. OK, so it's not an Office Depot level, but I'm getting there.
BTW, the really big shippers get breaks on their rates,
2. What about people who, for whatever reason, want to return the item?
Depends. First, the customer is always right (even when they aren't). So plan to reimburse or replace. In my experience that is a rare occurance anyway. It helps to have a quality product.
If the cost of the item (my cost) is lower that the actual shipping cost to return the item then I'll tell the customer thay can keep it, throw it away, whatever. It's not worth my time or money in that situation. As my costs go up for a returned item I'll take the defect back and deal with my vendors.
A no-return policy is, IMO, bad. I wouldn't buy from anyone that offered me that choice.
3. Is your time worth the effort?
My time is never worth what I get from it. My lowest priced item is a mere 55 cents, and I produce that item myself. Considering the costs of my raw materials, the time that I use to make the product, the costs and time to label and package it and to produce a shipping document, I'm running a loss on that item. However, I rarely ever sell a single item. Usually I sell a boatload of them at a time. And typically I make them by the boatload, so using a single item as a reference point isn't valid. In other words, it depends. This year I've grossed nearly a quarter-mil. I'm not real happy with that. So what makes me happy? Satisfied customers. That is always worth the effort because they WILL come back again, and they will recommend me to their friends.
I very much appreciate all of the replies, including the critical ones.
It's sounding like Blue Widgets, or at least Blue Widgets alone, may not cut it. I guess the only way to find out is to buy a small quantity from the manufacturer and see how orders go. If they sell well, perhaps I can add other products.
As for the question of why I don't run Adsense, it's because sites related to guns are not allowed in the Adsense program.
Thanks again for the replies and, again, I'm sorry for the tone of my second post.
[edited by: lorax at 2:03 pm (utc) on Dec. 22, 2006]
[edit reason] widgetized [/edit]
If they sell well, perhaps I can add other products.
What other related items might sell well with those Blue Widgets? Offhand I can think of a few other widgets. I'm not knowledgeable about this market sector but those seem like relatively low cost items. The more options you can give a visitor the more likely they may purchase from you. That's been my experience. My inexpensive (notice I didn't say cheap - its top quality) widget draws people to my site, and once they start looking around they are impressed. I usually sell a more expensive item to go along with the widget I make.
Anyway, it might be a good exercise to determine what else those people would want.
[edited by: lorax at 2:04 pm (utc) on Dec. 22, 2006]
[edit reason] widgetized [/edit]
I'm sure there's other products out there I can sell. And you're right: the more products, the more likely I am to make a sale.
For now I'll experiment with the Blue Widgets. It may well be that I'll find ecommerce isn't for me.
shazer7, as I mentioned in an earlier post, Google doesn't allow sites in this market sector in the Adsense program.
[edited by: lorax at 2:06 pm (utc) on Dec. 22, 2006]
[edit reason] widgetized [/edit]
This will help you find specialty niches, which you can hopefully make some money on.
Good Luck.
Right now, I'm just digesting everything that's been posted on this thread, and trying to decide how to handle it. Or whether to even step into the ecommerce realm at all.
moose606, why do you recommend an item that retails for over $60? Is it because the return on anything lesser in price makes it not worth your time and effort?
Rather than turn this into one extremely long post, I'll reply to my own post and explain why I'm thinking about all of this.
Visitors to the site can search for a store using a whole host of different search criteria: brand names, various types of products or services, or simply searching for a store by a state map.
When I had the idea for the site back in late 2003, I had a lot of people in the industry saying it would never work. But I had even more people in the industry saying it was a great idea. There wasn't a site like mine back then, and there still isn't now. It's the only site like it out there.
The site has grown, and grown beyond my capabilities to manage it.
Industry magazines have run some great articles about the site, which has resulted in my getting at least two "new subscriber" requests per day. It takes me as long as an hour per new subscriber to get all of the info about the store to write an ad for it, put a star on the state map, etc.
Meanwhile, I have existing trial or paid subscribers whose subscription periods have expired. So, I need to call them, too.
Enough complaints, if you want to call them that. On to the next reply.
[edited by: lorax at 2:08 pm (utc) on Dec. 22, 2006]
[edit reason] widgetized [/edit]
And I have other manufacturers waiting in the wings, who already have agreed to have their products featured on my site. I'm talking hundreds or even thousands of pages of products, with each one requiring that a photo be sized properly, and the product description be formatted properly.
But I can't call the existing stores for paid renewals, call the new stores that want to be on the site, add new product pages, and do the necessary SEO work to keep this site ranking well.
IOW, I'm at the point where I need at least one full-timer to do some portion of the work.
Until the paid renewals are just about automatic (meaning the store owners just say "your site's working great, just invoice me"), I need another revenue stream.
That's why I've been considering selling items from the site. Will it add to my work hours? Yes. But, OTOH, I can't call a store owner at 10 pm to talk about renewals. My cutoff time for sales calls is usually around 3 pm in that store owner's time zone.
Any criticisms--positive or negative--about my thoughts above are much appreciated.
[edited by: lorax at 2:09 pm (utc) on Dec. 22, 2006]
[edit reason] removed specifics [/edit]
It sounds like you just want to test the waters. The very least you would need is 1) a secure server to perform transactions on and 2) some form of programming to take the order and perform processing functions.
As mentioned payPal is a good solution for managing both, but it requires a little fiddling with to get it set up if you're not savvy to programming. The real down-side here is many shoppers simply **hate** payPal and to some, it gives an unprofessional impression - if you don't have you're own secure server and can't take my CC info directly, you can't be serious about my sale.
The degree to which this would affect your sales is only speculation on my part, but this is my impression from years of building shopping carts for clients.
Since you want to just try it out, this is the way I would go. Your only costs would be your first order on the products and someone to set it up for you. If it works out, then graduate into your own secure server and maybe a full blown shopping cart that would allow you to go from one product to thousands.
From reading over your posts, I would add that $30 is not enough of a selling price, but I could be wrong. What are your competitors selling them for? I would go with a slightly higher unit price. I'd also hound your supplier for a discount on volume purchases. :-)
Additionally I would simplify your shipping with a flat rate. 1 - $5, 3-5 $2, 8 or more free shipping. The higher markup would cover the shipping costs.
At the end of the day, I'd be out the cost of experimentation and stuck with my first order of muffs if it didn't work out, but that's what I'd do.
As for my own thoughts. I'd skip trying to sell something. You'd likely be viewed as competing with your advertisers. With the traffic you're getting there is no good reason you can't monetize that traffic - even without Adsense. I'd look more closely at your advertising strategy and seek to find the reasons why it's not working as well as you had hoped.
Yes, .0001%. I've had one customer in the last 3 years return simply because it was "just didn't like it". And then I simply refunded, no return required. Usually when someone doesn't like my product it is because of a manufacturing or packaging error, and I offer a replacement. The bigger problem of mine is a lack of manufacturing lead time, customer gets antsy, and goes elsewhere. "Fresh" and internet sales, with expected delivery on tomorrow, don't always work hand in hand. My disclaimers about 10 days until delivery go unnoticed.
<add>
Sincere apologies lorax. I know better too.
</add>
To answer the question of why I'd want to sell a $30 widget: this widget would appeal to pretty much every visitor to my site. It's something that's universally used. Actually, it's usually required equipment.
The $30 widget is much less than other brands, which can cost hundreds. So, it's an entry-level widget.
There's a time window during the day when I can call advertisers on my site. Usually anytime after 3 pm in their time zone is too late, as they're swamped with customers. So, I can use the time to process orders and make additional money.
And, as I said, if I could get to the point of having enough money coming in from widget sales, I could afford to hire another person to help with the phone calls.
As for selling advertising on the site, I've tried. For whatever reason, the advertisers in my niche don't have a broad enough appeal. That, or they simply can't afford to pay what I'd want. My current 17-page advertiser is the lone exception.
moose606, if the $30 widget sold well enough, I could approach one of the better-known widget manufacturers and negotiate a volume-based deal on more expensive widgets.
For now, I'm just thinking of this as an experiment.
Regarding the suggestion of a secure server and a shopping cart, if I saw good results from this trial, I'd go immediately to that system. For now, though, I can't justify the cost.
Is it possible for you to get that second person involved now - giving them an area such as selling advertising and/or finding new subscribers (that is, something that would be considered "selling" so could be paid primarily on a commission basis)?
Also, there are other ad networks besides AdSense. I don't know what their requirements are, but it might be worth checking out.
Would the widget stores see those items as competition? I can't say for sure, but my gut tells me no. If I got a sense from the advertisers they took issue with the items then, yes, it would be a problem. But the stores pay just $100 per year to be on my site. In the scheme of things, it's chump change for most of them. The stores that continue to pay to be on my site do so because they've seen new customers, customers who've actually said "I saw your store on widget.com."
If I could bring another person on right now, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But the financial situation won't allow for it. I'm doing freelance SEO work for a hosting company, working a few days a month as a freelance shooter for a photo studio in town, and trying to keep my widget.com site growing.
When I set out to create my website, I had everything planned: how I would get the site ranked well on the SE's, how much traffic the site would get within given time periods, etc. Everything evolved exactly as planned, except for one thing. The phone calling. I didn't anticipate that it would take so long, didn't anticipate the "call me back next week, next month" responses.
In order to bring on another person to help, I need another revenue source.
Will selling a few widgets be that additional revenue source? I honestly don't know. But the one thing I've learned about developing a business is that you learn to adapt, and to change. Expand upon what's successful, and abandon what is not.
There are two areas of my site that do not perform well in terms of visitors. One deals with political issues, and the other with technical advice. These were sections that I'd set up specifically to run programs like Adsense on. But, given that they're not performing, I need to jettison them and give my visitors something else.
I appreciate all of the replies, and I'm not being so hard-headed as to discount any of them. Heck, I may read this post tomorrow and decide that I disagree with everything I've written above. ;)
If I could bring another person on right now, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
