My £5k by Christmas challenge

cazmanian_minx

Right, I may be setting myself up for a publically embarrassing failure here, but I'm going to do it anyway :j

I re-opened my eBay shop on 9th October and from 9th - 31st turnover was £768. I'm challenging myself to make the total turnover from 9/10 to 25/12 £5,000 or more.

I went self-employed in September, doing a number of different things to earn a living, but eBay is where I'd like the bulk of it to come from, so I need to knuckle down a bit.

The average sale price for an item in the section I sell in is only about £3, so I need to find a way to ramp up volumes.

Wish me luck, and any advice is more than welcome :T

Caroline

apprentice_tycoon

I find that working to a target is the only way to stop me wandering off to do other *really* important things round the house, I set a target of how many listings I need to write each week and how much the weekly sales should be, sometimes I achieve them all and sometimes......


Good luck with it, please give updates! I'll be intrigued to see how you go on.

Agutka

I would love to join you, but I keep failing to list anything. So would be quite hard to get any turnover :rolleyes: . Although I do need the money.
I'll just watch you do it shall I?
And I don't mind if you don't get the whole 5k okay?


On the volume front, can you do offers? Is is something people buy in bulk?

cazmanian_minx

I did experiment with some bulk sales last month - I listed items I normally sell by the 100 in quantities of 200 - 500 and found that people don't seem to want to buy more than 300 in one go.

Multi-packs, however, with, say, 100 each of 5 different varieties may well be a goer - cheers! :beer:

Caroline

Agutka

Sound like you don't need too many buyers then.
Bulk lot of 300 at £3 each - £900
Therefore need 6 buyers to hit your target by Xmas.
That's not a challenge is it? Or am I missing something?

cazmanian_minx

Ahhhh, not quite - a pack of 100 is £2-3!

Agutka

That's more like it. I didn't doubt you, honest

Good luck with the variety experiment.

Do your buyers come back for more?

If not, then giving stuff away, like buy four get one free or something would be a way of increasing volume.

I have no idea what I'm talking about btw

cazmanian_minx

Yes, I do get loads of repeat custom My feedback score is currently 1493, 100% positive, total positives received 3328, so as you can see, I sell an average of 2 items per buyer. It's not uncommon for someone to spend £20-30 in a go and I've had people spend over £100 in one transaction before.

Will list some variety packs on auction format tomorrow (usually I'm a BIN-only girl) and see what they reach.

bythesea_2

Have you tried buying stock at a pound then reselling at 50p?

Bet that would help

cazmanian_minx

bythesea wrote:

Have you tried buying stock at a pound then reselling at 50p?

Bet that would help

:rotfl: :rotfl:

Only if I'm getting really desperate once the deadline approaches!!

cazmanian_minx

Okey dokey, multipacks. I'm going to start (subject to stock turning up on Monday) with a multipack of 10 different varieties, i.e. 1000 items altogether. If bought as individual packs, they'd cost the buyer £23.90. The stock costs me £10.68 so with listing fees, P&P etc. I need to make a minimum of £12.99 + £1.00 P&P to be in profit.

However, I'm leaning towards starting it at 99p - it should generate a lot of bids and multipacks in the category tend to sell well and average around £15.00, so it's not a giant risk.

I suppose I can always write it off to marketing costs if it goes wrong!

Thoughts?