Confused and Confuzzled. Any advice?

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Sun, 30/08/2009 - 8:30pm
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playful
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Confused and Confuzzled. Any advice?
I was just looking at the shop calculator, trying to figure out my next shop upgrade, and suddenly I feel lost and confused. I think I might be on the brink of an awkward stage that could ruin me, but I'm not sure, so I'd like some advice from those who have gone before me. My shop is size 362. I upgraded about 30 sizes a few days ago, and have been thinking I need to raise my prices because I've been selling too many items. Since this is a recent upgrade, I don't know if that is because of the new shop size or just a fluke. Anyway, because of the new avie price frenzy this weekend, I now have enough np to make another large leap - to around size 430 or so. Now, here's my problem: Since most of my hits (almost all of them) come from Shopwiz, if I raise my prices, I won't be on shopwiz, so I loose all that traffic. BUT upgrading all I can will not put me into the Main Marketplace, so I won't get any hits from there, either. It looks like there is this awkward shop size no-mans-land where you loose your wiz hits, but still don't qualify for hut hits. If that is the case, then it would be better for me to not upgrade at all until I can jump into main marketplace. I just saw that that leap would cost 23 million - so about another year of working toward it. And when/if I do make that leap, it would only put me in the worst hut. Now I feel lost, like maybe my goals were unrealistic. How can I raise my prices yet still get all my hits from wiz? And if I don't get my hits from wiz, then where will they come from, if I'm not in the main market? I only get 1-5 hits a day from my hut, and only about 3-10 each day from my mall. I get about 80-110 from wiz. So, what do I do? Is there an awkward stage where you're just stuck, or am I over-thinking this too much? What happens if I increase in size to 430? Will everything change? What happens when you go there? *unsure* *peeks through crack in door* Thanks in advance for your help. ;) I see that with every penny I have (and will have anytime soon) I could st
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Sun, 30/08/2009 - 8:35pm
playful
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Oops! Sorry for the typo. I left a deleted sentence at the bottom of the page by mistake. :* ~ Love books? Please visit my bookshop. :) http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=lolooma
~ Love books? Please visit my bookshop. :) http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=lolooma
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Sun, 30/08/2009 - 9:01pm
Artemis
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I'm kinda stuck too :/ I may not be the best advice giver, but here's what I think. Increase the price on *some* of your items. The ones that get the most hits, just leave them be. Those that get less, raise them a bit. I'd use some of your avvie craze np to buy extras of your best sellers then upgrade to about 420 or so. I get no hits from being size 489. You're lucky you're getting as much as you do (compared to me anyway).
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Sun, 30/08/2009 - 9:02pm
spunky_munky_gal
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I am in that no-man's land at the moment. I'm size 470 and in a pertty good hut (most of the time) in island. I get a couple of hut hits a day, but most of my traffic comes from my mall members. The trade off is that they know all my NPs are going into me getting into main, which means more business for everyone. I have no idea what your mall is like, but at this point, unless you want to spend your life restocking, you probably need to look at riding on the coat tails of your mall members for a while. If you don't have any main mall members, perhaps start looking for a mall that will take you. Good luck!
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Sun, 30/08/2009 - 9:05pm
kermat13
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My shop has most hits from wiz also. Next most hits is "other" followed by mall. Now I am size 611. Total hits today 276--from my hut 5. I know raising my prices has a HUGE negative effect on wiz hits and sales. I say raise some of your prices a little to have things slow a bit--do your upgrades and see how sales go from there. Books! Reasonable Prices!! http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=kermat13&misc
Food! Reasonable Prices!! http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=kermat13&misc
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Sun, 30/08/2009 - 9:08pm
abrar13
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playful how much profit do you make daily tho? O.o? cus i think im like...getting barely anythign now....because i barely get any counter hits(75-100) but im making 40 k profit on avg daily...so how much profit are you making? Come check it out: http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=abrar1646&misc
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Sun, 30/08/2009 - 10:15pm
mayarend
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~ May ~ I see you people talking and I was wondering I get a VERY small amount of hits daily... Averaging 57 for August, altho lately I've been getting more (60 to 70) and I had a couple of days with 100 with a NB ad peaking.. But I do not get a low profit, I think I get a rather good profit, mostly from small items, I sell like 10 items over 1k and 90 under 1k everyday but on each of those 90 I get 300, 400% profit (up to 3k% profit) seeing as I can buy some for 1 - 5np and sell for 300 or more... xD What I was thinking was... If I get more hits will my profit increase? (sorry for hyjacking the thread Playful!)
~ May ~
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Sun, 30/08/2009 - 10:48pm
seanaf
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It's really your choice if you want to get to MM slowly or make the big leap but I prefer slowly. If you increase your prices you will definitely lose out on most of those SW hits and sell less items. But if you keep the items at SW you will have to restock a lot which i am assuming you dont like to. You are either going to have to sacrifice time or profits. But there are some options to get out of this ordeal. Books is a very unpopular category which is why you are getting very little hits from your mall and hut. Maybe changing categories or moving to a bigger mall is one of your options. But other then that it's all a decision up to you of either saving time or rather getting the big profits.
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Sun, 30/08/2009 - 10:51pm
seanaf
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[quote=mayarend]~ May ~ I see you people talking and I was wondering I get a VERY small amount of hits daily... Averaging 57 for August, altho lately I've been getting more (60 to 70) and I had a couple of days with 100 with a NB ad peaking.. But I do not get a low profit, I think I get a rather good profit, mostly from small items, I sell like 10 items over 1k and 90 under 1k everyday but on each of those 90 I get 300, 400% profit (up to 3k% profit) seeing as I can buy some for 1 - 5np and sell for 300 or more... xD What I was thinking was... If I get more hits will my profit increase? (sorry for hyjacking the thread Playful!)[/quote] It's really up to you if you want more hits thus selling more items but for less profit each or getting less hits thus selling less items but getting more profit for each. What people try to do is find a balance between the two in order to obtain maximum profits.
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Mon, 31/08/2009 - 4:13pm
playful
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Answers to questions: [quote] abrar13: playful how much profit do you make daily tho? O.o? Cus i think im like...getting barely anythign now... [/quote] Abrar, your shop is only size 105, so for your size you are actually doing quite well! I think your profits are pretty good for your shop size. If you want to make more profit, the way to do it would be to restock a lot of fast selling items that you can price lowest on SSW and still make a good profit. Like find an item where the lowest price is 3k below every other price, buy that one, and mark it just under the next highest one. That way it will sell within an hour or so and you make 3k on one item. I do that a lot. You'll have to experiment to see which items sell best for you, and it may change week to week, but stocking fast-sellers at the lowest price and restocking many times a day will maximize what your shop can produce. In answer to your question, I make about 100k a day average, with huge fluctuations. Some days I make 50k, some days I make 300k, it just depends on the traffic that day, how often I was able to restock, and how many good bargains I found. I normally sell between 50 - 300 items a day, and most are marked up 1k each. [quote] May: I get a VERY small amount of hits daily... Averaging 57 for August, altho lately I've been getting more (60 to 70)....But I do not get a low profit, ...What I was thinking was... If I get more hits will my profit increase? (sorry for hyjacking the thread Playful!) [/quote] First off, you are welcome in my thread anytime, May! :) I generally get at least 100 hits a day, double that if the 4mil NB ad is in a good spot. Below are the hits from my shop counter stats for the last 5 days. The first number is low because it's for today and today is not over yet. This is for a period when I'm NOT in a 4mil NB ad (just a normal week). Total Hits: 94 257 170 142 152 137 Anyway, as to your question, I don't think number of hits increases sales all by itself, it depends on whether those hits end up buying. I've read the hit counters on some of the larger shops (higher profit markup) and seen those same people mention what percentage of their hits are buying and most of them are pretty low percentage, compared to me. Most of my hits do buy. I'm basing that on the number of items I sell per day to a (unique) buyer compared to the number of hits I get. Some days I sell more items than the number of hits I got (like 140 hits but sold 250 items), other times it's maybe 50-80% of my hits that are buying. I think the percentage of hits that buy is high for me because a lot of my prices are lowest (or within 3rd lowest) on SSW when I put the item in my shop. I've only been in a 4mil NB ad a few times, and so far it seems to increase my hits by 50-100%. The sales per hit have been about the same. I never mark my items up by percentage, I mark everything up a flat 1k, but mark it up more than that if the wiz prices are far enough apart to support that. There are a few cheap items (paid 200 - 300 np) that I just sell at 1k flat rate. What always surprises me is how many items I sell that have nothing to do with their price. For example, books below 3k, you know I'm adding 1k to the price, and if a book costs 600 np and I'm selling it for 1600 np, I'm sure they didn't find me on wiz. LOL! The funny thing is, I sell a lot of such books and a lot of them are to unique buyers (not volume buyers) so I've never understood how they found my shop or why they were willing to pay such a high price for that book. I sell a very mixed range when it comes to cheap or expensive items. I sell just as many mid-range (15k to 35k) items as I do cheap (below 3k) ones, and every day a few of the expensive ones (50k-80k), too. I guess most of my sales are the mid-range items. Anyway, that's all I know. I hope some of this was helpful. :) And for the record, I actually LOVE restocking, but I've had to cut way back because I'm really suffering from pain in my hand and arms (from mouse clicking) to the point where it's just too painful to restock. I can barely do my RL job these days because the pain is so bad. It never goes away anymore. :( I need a new arm. :o ~ Love books? Please visit my bookshop. :) http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=lolooma
~ Love books? Please visit my bookshop. :) http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=lolooma
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Mon, 31/08/2009 - 4:21pm
abrar13
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well then if you're making 100k+ im not doing so bad after all :D i only get good profits because paintbrushes sell REALLY good...and i only have about 5 PBs in my store :P (atleast 6 k profit from them daily :D) and ya ima stock low cost items below SSW :D like in magic store nanka potions and such sell for much lower than SSW...so i can just RS them and sell em cheap in my store ^^ Come check it out: http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=abrar1646&misc
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