Training only has 33 items to stock & yea they can get creative & stock other items but I think some categories needs less. Maps/PB is another one if they're just stocking the most popular maps their shop will do better all on one page. I also have the Map/PB spot added in with my Gift spot & _perpette_ made me flashy map graphics for the petpet map so people could easily find them. Since they show on page 6 in my shop so many people would not go through my shop to find it. The day I put it in my sales for those petpet maps more than tripled that day. Check out my Faerie Shop: http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=texas_girl_95

Wow, what a great idea, Texas! I wonder if there's a way to apply that principal to my shop? I'll have to ponder it. :) As for many pages versus few, I'm sure that a lot of it depends on where your hits are coming from (so, shop size/exposure). If your hits are coming from the mall or hut or bookmarks, then you can afford to be selective (few pages) and you have more people *browsing* your shop, so you want it to look good. But, if all your hits are coming from the Wiz, then you need as much variety (many pages) as possible to bring them in, and your customers are jumping in for a specific item, not browsing pages. My hits almost all come from wiz and I have noticed a huge difference in traffic between having 10 pages stocked and when they drop by even 3 pages (to 7 pages). The more pages I have, the more hits I get, and the more items I sell. Since my customers rarely buy more than 1 item, I don't have to think about making their browsing experience better, because my statistics show that they are not browsing. So - if your shop is small and unexposed, you need as many pages as possible. If your shop is large and well exposed, then you can stock less pages and get creative with it. But I also do agree that people in a mall have an obligation to their mall members. If customers find shops too sparsely stocked, they may abandon that mall, which hurts everyone in it. I would hope that most mall members would stock at least 5 pages, because while it's true that nobody clicks through a zillion pages, I think most shoppers WILL click through 5 or 6. I think it also really helps to have page numbers on the top so they can click to the newer stuff at the end. I hate large shops without page numbers! ~ Love books? Please visit my bookshop. :) http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=lolooma

[quote=desperately_yours]See, I disagree. I stopped malling for a while to run a general store. I usually have 8 pages of stock and I usually sell about 2,000 items per week. I think if you're gonna be in a mall, that you could be considerate enough to fill to your maximum item allowed size. Not only would it be profitable but also it gives a variety of items and not the same old boring shop look.[/quote] I think you misunderstand me. My shop is stocked to (almost) capacity. I just have many multiples of items. And I rarely get SW hits because I don't wiz price, so I think we're playing very different ball games. I have high profit margin, low volume sales, and I imagine if you are wiz pricing then you have high volume, low profit sales. I RS from SSW, and I imagine you RS from neopets shops. Of course our strategies will be different, we're running different styles of shops. But I have no problem with you running your shop your way. And my mall has no problem with me running my shop my way :)

[quote=killercars5000][quote=_jaspeh_]When I started malling, I ran a bookshop. I concentrated on expanding my unique items all the time, wanting to eventually have all the buyable books in my shop and having a crazy # of pages. But now... if I wasnt doing training, but I had any other category... I wouldn't go for that goal at all. I'd probably try to have ~5-7 pages of stock, but I wouldnt keep growing unique items much past that. It seems like WAY too much work and effort for no reason. Like many people have mentioned... no would would actually go through all 20-30 pages of your stock, so why bother?? Keep it smaller and simple. Put awesome, unique looking items in there, maybe change your stock once in a while, getting rid of bad selling items and putting in new, fresh ones. But having a million pages of stock doesnt seem worth the effort to keep up with it[/quote] I find with wearables that as my stock grows, I get a lot more sales. Whether its just my category, I don't know. and, "having a million pages of stock doesnt seem worth the effort to keep up with it" if they don't sell, its no hassle to keep up with it :P[/quote] Same actually, I find the better stocked I am with wearables the better my sales. When my stock slips, my profits do too. Along with all the complimentary mails saying stuff like "woah, I had no idea there was so many np wearables, i've bookmarked you thanks"

Wow, it's pretty cool how many different opinions there are here. :o My mall requires us to have at least 2-3 pages of stock, provided our category has that many items. I sell Books, so that's not a problem at all. I'd like to have my shop filled with every buyable book, but that can get overwhelming, so I have maybe 10 pages of stock. Certain categories will work very well with large amounts of stock, like Books or Stamps/Cards. If someone is starting a collection, he wants as many different items as possible, and having that huge amount of stock will allow him to buy as much as he wants. Sometimes I'd like to switch categories with lower stock, but I'm pretty happy where I am now. :D