Forum Moderators: buckworks
I was just wondering what is everyone's average daily number of orders?
I know all different niches will have a different number specific to their industry, but just interested in this stat.
My sales have slowed down drastically. I don't know what the cause of this is; if it's the economy, summer, more competitors, etc... I'm currently at 4-5 daily orders on average.
olimits7
Longer term I'd like to see perhaps 20 orders a day. At that I could afford to hire a helper and live a little better.
Digmen... If I was you, I'd focus on a campaign aiming at multiple sales with the custom printing to businesses. I think that's where you might do OK. But that would take a traditional sales effort. Either that, or maybe think about new models with a gimmick of some sort.
Going back to my post, our product is under $10.00, so 1 or 2 sales from Facebook is very poor. (So I need to do a lot more work)
Going back to my post, our product is under $10.00, so 1 or 2 sales from Facebook is very poor. (So I need to do a lot more work)
Most items on my site run about $200 to $300. My profit is usually in the $25 to $30 area. My short-term goal has been to average four sales per day, which gives me $3000 net profit per month. With the other revenues the site brings in, that provides a decent income.
I hope to expand the site significantly next year, and would like to reach the point where I can have employees. Then I can take a vacation. ;)
I actually lose money on some items just to be competitive on pricing. Some of the bigger boys out there get much better deals from manufactures and sell below what I can get the item for.
So far, it's been hard to make a buck. But this is something that ties into a hobby for me and I enjoy it.
I have other sources of income with my sites, and make more with that than the actual sales these days.
Just curious about a couple of posters above, what are recharges?
This year it's been 33.33% gross profit; 35.95% month-to-date.
Just curious about a couple of posters above, what are recharges?
I think they are, most likely, referring to subscription fees, membership dues, or other ongoing service payments.
I know nothing about what you are selling, but if it's retail than I have a feeling you are undercutting your competition pretty severely. If you are interested in actually maintaining a healthy profit margin (and not putting everyone else out of business in your sector) you may want to think about increasing your margins a bit. Again though I know nothing about what you're selling, but I do know the web is exploding with sub-retail sites full of people just looking to get business at whatever price to there entire industry. Price wars will only benefit the consumer in the end. Not you and your own.
In my niche, the markup in brick and mortar stores is usually 10-15%. The ones that go 20% or more are the subject of complaints on internet forums for being "thieves."
On the internet, many of the established retailers are working on margins of 10% or less. Then there's the people who do this at night, and have margins of 5% or less.
In my niche, the markup in brick and mortar stores is usually 10-15%. The ones that go 20% or more are the subject of complaints on internet forums for being "thieves."
Don't you love that? I see that stuff all the time and it infuriates me. People don't like some little thing about somebody's business... So instead of just showing them by spending their money somewhere else, they instead launch some sort of bizarre campaign against the people, to try and ruin them. I had a guy do that to me a while back... Bought one thing and asked if he could get a discount. I have no reason why he thought he deserved a discount, but I guess he thought he was special. I politely explained we couldn't do that. So he goes on a forum and starts talking trash about us. If he bought something from Amazon, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't email them and ask for a discount. Mainly because he knows they'd just laugh at him. So I'm not sure why it's supposed to be different for people who are about .01% the size of Amazon. I also like the people that say stuff like... "Oh, well I guess they don't need the sale in these difficult times, otherwise they'd sell it to me for the price I want". I'm sure those people would be really happy if their boss walked in and told them... 'Hey, I think you should work for less money all this week, because it's really difficult times out there, so if you really want your job, you'll do it.' Everybody loves being extorted.
As for people complaining on forums, I saw one online retailer in my niche play the situation beautifully. Someone on a niche-related forum started a thread to complain about a problem with an order. The owner of the online store registered as a member of the forum under the name example.com (ie his website address), and addressed the customer's complaint. Other members started asking questions, and the owner logged on every night to answer questions. Soon people were talking about how great example.com's service was. Free advertising, and all of it word of mouth. Brilliant.
