I use to sell books and I loved it. It used to be pretty popular, I was always told it was one of the spots that never opens :P But I guess no one wants their pets to be smart anymore... its all about looking good *lol*

Hmmm that's a tough one to say. Weapons by itself is not that good but with magic its not bad.

[quote=playful][quote] Seanaf: 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. [/quote] Yea, I'm on the waiting list to change categories, but nobody wants to leave a good category. :P I used to have a weapons shop, and that spot did come open, but I heard someone here say weapons is a terrible category, so I let it slide. I actually did really well when I had a weapons shop, but since there was about a year gap before I changed to books, I can't compare which was better. Books totally sucks from what I can tell, but I'm making it work. I do sell more off-category items in an average day than I sell books, but once in awhile I get a high-volume buyer that will buy 100 titles or so, so it evens out. I'd really love a wearables category... Which other categories are good? Is weapons better or worse than books? ~ Love books? Please visit my bookshop. :) http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=lolooma[/quote] I must tell you that weapons is AMAZING. Haha I use to do weapons/defense/magic a long time ago and I made TONNES of profit. Only negative side I saw to it was that I had to spend ALOT of time on Neopets daily(I consider over 2-3 hours a long time :D)...when i was simply size 50 or so I switched to Weapons and I made my account balance go from 200 k to 2.7 mil in simply 2 months. I also managed to upgrade from size 50 to 105 with ease in those 2 months. To conclude my never-ending babbling...yes...weapons is kind of better than books :P i did both...i prefer books because your shop looks all neat and tidy :D but if you want money...weapons is the way to go...;) edit-all the money was earned from my shop and about 300 k was from stock markets...0 from games...bleh...hate games :P Come check it out: http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=abrar1646&misc

Well ya. All of that is just my opinion. Some people like books, some people like weapons. I like books, I recommend weapons. Books profits are garbage. :P Come check it out: http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=abrar1646&misc

Reading all these posts makes me wonder how much time you guys spend restocking your shops. I run a different system than most, merely by the fact of having a retired item shop. All my items are retired which means the best profit I can make is via buying as many items as I can and stashing them in my SDB. When I sell something, if it's at a price higher than the shop wiz, I'll buy another to replace it. If not, I dip into my SDB to replace it and up the price a little (thereby increasing the potential profit from the rest of the items in my SDB). In all, it's a nice system that requires no actual restocking; just bulk buying from cheap shops. If I see a shop selling items at far less than what I sold for, I'll multi-buy and stash those away for the future as well. This system creates a cycle of items in-out that generally increases the hoard I've got in my SDB. In time, some retired items reach unbuyable status and I can sell them via the trades. This is where the hoard I've collected over the years brings its true benefit. Items I've only spent 10k on sell for 300k and more. Eventually, this will reach into the millions. Back to the shop and mall: What this means is that it's hard for me to price via shop wiz properly; if the shop wiz has items lower than I'm selling for, I can simply buy up those items and store them away, or (as usually happens) I wait it out and the prices eventually go back up. For those that don't know; retired items typically only go up in price over time. How I generate extra hits for myself and the mall members is via 1np items. I'm not entirely sure how much benefit there is, but each time I check my sales history, I rebuy those items (or replace them) and take a quick look at the shops I visit in turn. Any items selling for 1np, I buy. Every so often, I'll place those hundreds of items in my shop for 1np. This generates a heap of hits (I even made the top of the list here for a time). In time, I'm hoping that my retired items will produce such a profit in the trades that I'll be able to upgrade quickly to the main marketplace. But for the moment, my contribution to the mall is via the 1np items, and being one of the largest shops in my mall. So, I don't get many hits from any location, but I do make a very good profit from those sales. It's always nice selling an item for 50k when you paid 1% of that price; and knowing you've got hundreds more of that item stored away and better profits to come.

The retired items generally double in price each year. Some go much higher, a select few do go down; so there is a large variation in there. The last year or so has seen a lessened improvement, I think partly due to avatars not being released. I'm expecting things to improve now that Bonju has been discovered. I do make other sales in with those 1np items. Not many.. but enough to make the effort worthwhile. I think the real benefit of it is getting a large hit of visitors like this is having a select few of them like what they see and bookmark the shop. Hut visits are one thing, but a loyal customer base is what truly matters. I much prefer repeat customers. [edit: I should say that some retired items do much better than others. Mostly one use items do better; books, stamps, and some foods. Collectible and wearable items do fairly well. And reusable items such as toys don't do well. Avatar items do extremely (EXTREMELY) well provided they are one use, otherwise they have a short burst of impressiveness before dropping back to something between double to ten times its original price. Advent calendar items follow the same rules, but the rate at which they improve is severely diminished. My 'double each year' rule includes the advent calendar items. As a general rule, you can expect all retired items to go up in price. Some of my items have gone up 10x its price in a matter of weeks. Other items can take some years to even double. Buying a large range of items increases the chance of you getting the right item, and the chance of you picking an item that is used to obtain an avatar; which is what you're really after. I try to collect at least 100 of each item. Some I have more than 1000 of. So my hope is that one day, one of these items will reach into the millions of NP each. This system in conjunction with the stock market has made me well over 150 million NP. But I should say that much of that 'value' is in items and the stock market (rather than pure NP).]

I had my own weapon / magic store for a couple of years. When TNT released all those plots with BD-challengers, you could make millions. But that was it really. I had to keep my prices SW range, to make sure I got enough visitors. But those people do buy bulk most of the times. But that was a year ago, so I don't know how it's right now. Magic is okay, because you have earth faerie quests. And you can make a good profit on stocking nova's, nanka bottle, starlight bottle,.. from the magic store. Now I'm doing toys and I'm enjoying it. I get a lot of visitors, and they usually spend an avarage of 1.2k in my shop. So they buy more then 1 item, as my avarage price per item is only 600 nps. I do need to advertise more, but that doesn't bother me. Any category will do well if you advertise well. When I'm online, I have my topic on the shop ad boards the whole time. That gets me about 10 - 25 visitors per hour, and half of them buys stuff. And they give me best profit. Since I moved to MI, I get an avarage of 5 - 10 huthits per day (and I'm not even on top of my hut). So take some time to make a good shopbanner! It does help. To answer the very first question.. I had the same problem when starting out with toys a few weeks ago. I gradually raised prices with 100 np a time on my cheapest items. My more expensive items are mostly SW priced. It gets me hits, and I still get nice profit on them. Those people usually buy cheap items aswell, so more profit. But don't overprice to much. Very popular items are priced at SWprice aswell, as they give me good profit anyways. And it generates more SW hits. I stock those in bulk, so they don't sell out. I would upgrade gradually and find a hut I like. Save up until I can do a big leap when I can to get into a great hut. (I'm at size 400) So, my advice would be; - decide how much time you want to spend restocking per day - raise prices on avarage selling items, so you don't have to restock as much - buy SW priced items in bulk, and make sure you price them so they never sell out, but still sell well - when you still have to restock to much, raise some more prices - advertise on the shop ad boards. have a catchy title and link your shop in the first post, and tell a tiny thing about your shop. Make sure you keep it on first page. - having a good mall helps lots aswell!

~ May ~ Kieke I always love to see you around since there are so little toys mallers around :P In my opinion, anything CAN be good, if you work with it... Of course, some cattegories require more effort than others, but then again, if you start working with a cattegory you don't like, the small effort needed will be a major pain... I like toys and I know some other cattegories are much easier or more profitable, but I can't seem to sell anything else, I feel lost xD So there's no use in trying to sell other things, waste all that time learning about the cattegory just to get a small extra profit - if you use that time in advertising you can get the same extra profit, I believe... That's just MY idea