I've reached over 1M sales before. I think my highest was 1.2M or around that. This was back then when I used to do paintbrushes and all kind of stuff. Now that I only stick with my category, I only have reached a maximum of 900k a day. Although, my profits are half of that since I practically price all of my items, except 5 non-category items, double or triple their SSW price. However, I get these kind of profits because I advertise a lot in the shop boards. I think I see there often, as well so I'm not really sure what you are doing wrong. Foods is a tough category because the mark-up isn't as high as my maps and neggs category. However, I have a little suggestion that may work. Try pricing all of your food items that are 1-500NP to 1k and advertise this in shop boards that you have 1k NP deals. I used to do 1000NP deals but it just cluttered everything in my shop. But in your case, there are many items that are price at 300NP and by increasing more traffic in your shop, you can entice many customers to buy those 1k NP items. I think I used to sold 20-40 1K items a day. It really does work if you advertise it because many people think that they are getting a good deal. Anyways, that was long. I hope everything works out for you. There are many people here who is definitely more experienced than me so keep what I have in account and look out for advices from others as well.

I would suggest taking out an ad that isn't so expensive for yourself. (Maybe 5,000). Try to aim for the top of the page. Even if it's just for a few hours. If you only get one customer who buys 4-5 things, chances are that you've made that 5,000 back. Plus, it's likely that more than 1 person will see it, maybe they will bookmark it, etc. I would keep doing what you're doing in terms of stocking a lot of things and wiz price. Anything that is organic/pretty/faerie related, I would mark up quite a bit for pure aesthetic/social reasons. I'll come back and add more suggestions if I think of them.

I think Brian spammed the entire last page of the NB ad and got only like 10 hits from it so that's not a good idea =/ And i think 2m+ is very hard with food alone unless you wiz price massively.

I'm not sure I'm understanding you right - you want to hit 1 million in GROSS sales? You mean your shop till total, rather than your profit? Personally, I think it's the profit that matters, not the gross, but I hit 1-2 and even sometimes over 3 million a day in my shop till. Since my shop is so much smaller than yours, my guess is that it's because I'm selling more expensive items. I stock a lot of things in the 60k to 95k range, and sell quite a few of those per day. If you're just looking for a large shop till number, then expensive items would do it. I've never tried foods, but in all the other categories I've tried, I've found the expensive items actually sell faster for me than the cheap ones. Even now, with a cheap category like books, MOST of the items I sell each day are the ones over 20-30k each. The reason for this is because more expensive items have a much larger range in the prices on SSW, so I can profit several k each and still mark them lowest or near lowest on SSW. I get almost all my traffic from the wiz. There are, of course, expensive items that don't sell well, you just have to experiment. Sometimes I get stuck with an item and have to mark it down. That doesn't happen very often though, except with really new items. Anyway, if you are just going for shop till total, adding some more expensive items should do it. ;) ~ Love books? Please visit my bookshop. :) http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=lolooma

You need to add a second catagory like Kad foods, chocolate or snow foods or something. I price cheapie items at 1K (lowers sales but increases profit) and advertise that you have 1K deals. Good luck!

If you haven't downloaded the portal program, you should! I used to do food/gourmet and had the same issue with new releases until I realized that when I bought one at 95K and the next at 50K my price paid for those two was an average price of 72,500. If you bought one at a super high price, buy more so your "cost" goes down to a profitable level. Don't be afraid to buy 5-8 of something! Restocking from my SDB saves my time every day. As for SW/SSW pricing, you DO NOT have to be the lowest to get SW hits! I price just under the top 2/3 price on SSW and get 70+ SW hits daily. Usually a SW sale turns into more sales as many customers browse my shop when they get their item from SW because they trust my prices more. ( I guess?) Here is an example of how I play: These are the lowest prices on SSW: 47500 46000 45000 43000 38000 29000 12000 I would buy the three lowest so my cost for that item would be 26333. That is already a 16,667 profit if I price it at the now lowest SW price of 43000. But I don't want mine to sell the second I put it in my shop so I would price it at 44999 for a quick sale. But if I'd like to hold on to the item a while, I'd price it at 47,499. That is a profit of 21,666! You will have to try the 1K for items between 1-500NPs for yourself. I am not market size so I can hardly sell anything for 1K in my shop unless that is the SW price. I think many people think 1K items in malls can be bought cheaper somewhere else so they avoid them. Therefore I have a ton of items that are under 1K which are a pain to keep up with but I find that it does wonders for sales. Also, I have the Avatar/Packrat/Random category which could be little profit if I sold all the junk items there are but I don't stock the super cheap items because I think it makes my shop look cheap. If you sell items that are less familiar to players you can get by with charging more for them / making more profit. Example, the items on page 1, everyone knows about what these items cost -- milk, OJ, doughnuts, etc. Why not try skipping these items in your shop? I did the majority of my sales from page one too and I think that was because people don't want to click the next 80 items. I got so tired of selling 15 organic peaches every day and none of my items on page 4. Here are examples of cheap foods that people love and will pay more for because they aren't common: Tuskaninny Veggieloaf, Ink Pasta, Techo Garden Salad. I hope that helps, best of luck to you!! _____________________________________________________ ~ Mimi's Ménagerie Avatars ~ http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=temps_bons&misc

[quote=greatwhitenorth398] Thanks :) I have been using the portal for a long time now. The first page items are half of my profits. I do a lot of testing on the front page, and see what sells and what hasn't. In the two months that I have been in foods Ultimate Burger has been my best seller. I've sold 565k worth at a cost of 171k - so there's quite the mark up. The problem with stocking cheap foods that people love is where in my shop they go. It's all ordered in the shop by item number so something I might want on the first page will be on the 5th page. I stock about 400 different items so there's a high chance it won't fall on the first page. I'm pretty happy with my front page so that's not my concern - It's mostly with the expensive items on page 2+ I did price my expensive items the way you suggested, but half the time It didn't work in my favour - they just kept falling down in price instead of rising up to my shop price, but I have been keeping price data and will get used to the price fluctuations. When you buy the three items do you keep 2 of them in your sdb and only sell one at a time or do you put all 3 in at once?[/quote] I only price one at a time. I find that if I have more than one of an item it stays in my shop longer (unless it is on the first page or a big seller that I don't worry about it being low on SW) Also, with gourmet the prices can fluctuate so quickly that I like selling one at a time so I can mark up each time I put a new one in. Another strategy I use for gourmet is price about 25 at SW (high sw). If someone searches a gourmet food they may look in your shop for others. All of my gourmet foods end with 1 in the price so they are easy to find. I know I felt horrible when I had several gourmet foods that tarla & key quest gave out but I just stock piled them at their cheapest prices and sell them for whatever I want. The Dark Chocolate Covered Toffee was over 5K before key quest so I took a hit on that -- that price will take years if it ever recovers. Now I just buy them cheap and mark them up, code them with a 1 and feel good about it because I am letting shoppers know it's not junk, it's gourmet! If you don't have the cheapest gourmet foods let me know and I'll send you a list. These are less than 1K so you can make a good profit on them when you sell them. I know what you mean about trying to get people to look through your shop. This is where I am lucky because people have to look through my shop to find all the 8 orange and 10 dung items they need. When I sold food I ran 1 np sales and put them on every page so people would have to look through my shop to find them. When I added page numbers I saw my sales increase too -- maybe because they could move around easier. I meant to say this earlier too: advertise on the Shop Ads board. I cannot believe the difference I have in sales when I do that! Put together an eye-catching ad that you save so you can paste it in other people's topics. Also, you may want to put the prices on items on page 2-3-4 that are well priced on that ad so people will have to look through your shop to find them. I saw a huge jump in sales when I started stocking good-looking items that aren't super common and only 1 of them. I get the most opportunity to get a SW hit by having more different items. I also started selling more when I had sets of items. That purple poogle cake (can't remember what the name of it is) that is super cheap doesn't sell for much when it's alone but when I put the other 3 cakes next to it it sold for more. The same thing with the trifles. I think having good looking items makes people feel better about paying a little more for items. I will spend more for an item (which means I won't SW the price) when the shop has really good items and no junk. This really costs a lot to do but it has always been my goal to have a quality shop vs. a ton of items or having every item in a category. Sorry I am writing so much but I know that I want people to give me real examples and practical advice when I have a question and that takes a while to write. _____________________________________________________ ~ Mimi's Ménagerie Avatars ~ http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=temps_bons&misc