Can someone tell me how Hipstamp is doing? I am considering to open a store. But want to know how many stamps are sold. Can not see the montly sales on Hipstamps.
Weigh the cost against the selling? How many members has Shipstamps?
We are all DOING just fine. How about you? Hey- hang out awhile see whats going on and see what you've been missing. Lots of stamps being sold as thats all there is here. A basic store cost per month is about the same as 1- $10.00 listing on ebay. Not to mention Real Feedback, no scammers, a community that is kind, courteous and very helpful. Have a great day!! Ross https://www.hipstamp.com/store/ross-stamps
i was previously on bidstart a dealer and now hipstamps which is taking off thanks to marks hard work. also tired of feebay (ebay) and basically quit listing there for a couple years now since bidstart. hipstamps will only get better in my opinion. sales are picking up in leaps and bounds rescently.
Thank you kindly Lee! I also hold a Fulltime Job (well in Seeding & Harvest times, I am away for up to 16 hours / day too delivering Fuel to the Farms).
From the newsletters that Mark has been sending out more items are being sold on Hipstamp then were being sold on Bidstart before the 2 were combined. Even if that info was being seen it is limited as to what it will tell you. (All it can do is tell you what the site may be doing. It can NOT tell you how individual sellers are doing)
And you need to remember that Hipstamp has really only been up and running for about 4 months and Hipstamp and Bidstart were both combined and at the moment there are about 585 stores on Hipstamp.
Ross,
Some of the sellers are not doing well at all and are struggling. (Some of it has to do with certain business models that just will NOT work as well on Hipstamp,some differences in the buyer base,etc etc)
Some sellers like myself are doing fairly well in the sense that we are at least doing about the same as what we were doing on Bidstart. (I have a number of listings that just are not going to work on Hipstamp because of the way they were listed,and they were listed with Bidstart in mind and they worked well on Bidstart but they won't here)
Of course some sellers are doing very well.
I do think long term it will be better then either Ebay or what Bidstart was doing 4 years,in the short term it's most likely going to be both up and down. (I think once we get past the elections and with the Cubs in the World series things should start picking up a bit more then)
Michael Duehr, My response to C Vooijs was meant to be somewhat sarcastic. My second passion is fishing and every day on a couple of the forums there is someone asking for simple information but are to lazy to read the other posts and figure things out. As for selling going from an established platform to a NEW platform then expecting the same amount of sales in $$. It just aint going to happen and it s not going to fit everyone's needs. I too have items that wont fit here, but thats the challenge -how to make it work. But I also believe in the long term for stamps it will be the best platform out there. Ross https://www.hipstamp.com/store/ross-stamps https://www.hipstamp.com/store/ross-stamps
I don't see any venue EVER outperforming eBay, which from my reckoning, continues to rake in 95% of stamp sales. For the 5% of the market that's left to fight over, Delcampe is firmly entrenched in 2nd place. HipStamp should be able to claim 3rd spot once the software starts to mature and better caters for international sellers.
Michael & Andrea - Please note that we do not allow promotions for other websites where you can buy items within our forums.
With regards to your specific sales, it looks like in September on HipStamp you sold more Stamps (Value) than you had any other month on bidStart throughout all of 2016. However, looking at your inventory, you should certainly be doing more here. I'll ask Justin to reach out to you to see what we can do to help increase your sales here.
With regards to Sales, we're currently reviewing the most appropriate way for us to share this information with our members. One item I can share, and we'll provide further details after the end of the month:
October marks the first full month of HipStamp post merging bidStart into the platform. With regards to stamp sales combined between bidStart and HipStamp over the past 12 months, the average sales per month was $100,000. We're excited that for October, we've already passed the $100,000 mark - and October will be our biggest month (bidStart and HipStamp combined) in the past 12 months by a significant margin. We expect sales to continue to climb significantly each month, and we're looking forward to sharing this information with our members.
" I'll ask Justin to reach out to you to see what we can do to help increase your sales here." Mark, put me down for some of that as well if you would be so kind. I've had some sales here but nothing to write home about, and HipPostcards so far has been a non-starter for me. Any help you folks could provide would be appreciated !
Here is a BUYER'S view point. I have purchased more on Hipstamps over the last 10 days than I have from any other site in an awfully long time. I have been processing more orders and adding more items to my shopping cart (650 items as of last count!), now that many of the bugs have been resolved, AND as I get more familiar with the system (annoyances and good points and all).
I have also been eliminating many items I had been watching and had placed in my shopping cart because.
1. Prices are no longer competitive. (more buyers listing the same items at lower prices, some times significantly, so I delete your item from my shopping cart. So take a look at some of your prices relative to others. I suspect that those who are not doing well are overpricing their products! Once it is out of my shopping cart, I will not purchase it from you!
2. Your shipping and additional per item charges are a TURN OFF. This is personal, but I don't like the additional per item charges, and I have deleted all your shopping cart items when your S/H are out of line..and I have found out the specifics (which Hipstamp has made, or so it seems, every possible way to conceal from me!!!), no matter how many items of yours I had in my cart, or how much time I had invested. (truly it is a turn off). I do NOT pay 10c extra per stamp..no matter what! I hesitate at 5c per stamp, and favor those that price stamps faily for side by side price comparison, without hiding their true prices. So put your extra costs in the stamp value and not in the S/H fees..I think it is more ethical.
3. When your S/H charges are low (I aim at no more than 10% of my purchase total) I process more of your orders more often. So for my favorite sellers who charge ~49c flat fee (or whatever), I will process orders under $10 more often, but I will also favor you over all others when pricing for comparative items are nearly alike (I will pay a small premium). (For S/H, I also respect the extra costs for international sellers, but don't force me to pay for your gold plated over packaging and self serving shipping methods).
If your S/H fee is say $2.00, I need to build up a total in excess of $20 to process.....and if it takes time, it will give me plenty of time to eliminate items I had previously wanted and noted, but ended up purchasing elsewhere, because the wait was too long, and I found a better deal. so help yourself by not making it too hard to process an order from your shop!
4. I DEFINITELY do comparative pricing using the computer on EVERY purchase, so when I pick an item, I will search on it here, and even on ebay and Delcampe, and look at all offers for the same product. (I often open several windows at the same time). If yours is not competitive I will select from someone else, and it is the one item that goes in my shopping cart! If you repeatedly come way too high (some price differentials are as much as 400% or more!), I will block you for good. Look at your prices, relative to others!
5. I am a sucker for all good sales. So when you offer me a large selection at (well) reduced prices (I consider 10% off a negligible sales offer, and will not bother), I will look immediately through your store, select items, and if the total adds up (with S/H considered in the equation) I will close a purchase much sooner rather than later. I respond well to personal emails announcing your sales.
Now this is all personal, but it may serve some of you who complain about slow sales, because I don't think I am unique as a buyer! So, please look at your prices and look at your S/H charges. If they are not competitive, you are not likely to improve your sales outlook much, no matter how many items you have on sales..well not with me. Most stamps are commodities available from multiple sources.
Of course if selling a very unique item, the above rules don't apply, but how many are really that truly unique among the 2 million items on sale here?
So to summarize. Make sure your prices are competitive. Make sure your S/H is as low as you can set it with no per extra item charges. Thanks for listening.
Ralph - Thank you for your poignant post. Speaking strictly for myself, before I post items for sale, I do the same thing you do ie I look at all the other listings to see what the price range is offered by other sellers. I use these to set my prices, which generally are at or lower than the lower listed price for the same item offered by others. My S&H is $0.90, period. If a buyer buys one or a thousand items, this doesn't change or increase. So.....there must be other reasons why my store here is slow (while sales are at a healthy level on 'that other site'). Other factors likely include number of lots posted (I add almost daily and have crossed the 1000 mark, but other sellers have way, way more listings, and the variety of items listed. That said, I'm keeping the faith that this site will eventually take off for me as its well-developed and the fees are more than reasonable. Time will tell...
Ralph, WOW thank you for all the great info. I am with you on figuring out all the bells and whistles, as a seller I'm finding some of the new procedures daunting. Also the number of click through are quite time consuming when processing orders ie shipping and feedback are on separate pages. I also check to see what others are selling at but generally list between 10-20% of my Scott/Unitrade(2011) and a couple of other catalogs. I am also planning to run monthly sales' I am currently waiting for an answer to a question I posed. My shipping is $1.00 for the first 10 items I ship each item in its own 102b card then calculate from there but its usually just a few cents more . Also free shipping domestically for $10.00 and over. George, Very nice liberal shipping you have offered but doesn't a #10 envelope get crowed with a 1000 stamps in it!!(LOL). Nice to your double signature links-I think it helps. Ross https://www.hipstamp.com/store/ross-stamps
Quote: ""Also the number of click through are quite time consuming""
Yes Ross, my biggest and number one objection to the new system is the number of clicks required to get anything done. Some has to do with page layout, some with software design, some with computer capacity I guess, and some with the lack of sticky controls. We backtracked from bitstart on many items...but I guess we just have to wait until they can be re programmed here.
Most of all, a lot of the information that is only available after multiple multiple clicks should be provided on the page! In time, I hope that Mark find the time to resolve this efficiency issue. Meanwhile we all suffer through it, and tolerate it as part of the growing pains. But I did set hipstamp aside for over a month once before, and I wonder how many potential buyers are waiting for the system to settle down into a more user friendly and efficient one. Patience!
You are leaving out a few things that tend to skew things one way or another and those things need to be factored in also.
First you have to factor in that most of the sellers posting in the forums generally speaking have a tendency to be the smaller sellers. (It is what it is,even on Ebay you had the same thing on their forums) So that will skew what the sales are doing. Now if the moderate and larger sellers are mostly maintaining what they did on Bidstart or growing that is a good sign. (I am in that group and as my sales are as least maintaining what we were doing on Bidtstart is a very good sign)
Second and more importantly is that when some of them come in and just ask how the sales are they leave out a lot of information. (IE What they are selling,number of items they are looking at listing,price range they are looking at selling,are they collectors trying to sell off some of their duplicates,etc,etc,etc)
Now to say that a new platform can't do what the old platform did very quickly is not quite accurate. A number of the sellers are doing at least as well on Hipstamp as they were on Bidstart. (I am one of them,but I have noticed a big change in the type of items I am selling. It's a different mix then what was sold on Bidstart. Not as many sales but the average sale is larger then what they were on Bidstart. (Factor in that it's only been about 2 months since Bidstart and Hipstamp merged and there have been over 300 sellers added to Hipstamp,I think things are looking very good at this point that Hipstamp will become a very very good site for sales)
I don't think it's going to take long before Hipstamp gets to the point of doing better then what Bidstart was doing 4 years ago.
Now why some of the sellers are having problems,for some it's becomes very clear when you look at their stores as to WHY they are struggling. (Some have few pictures,some are trying to sell low values stamps with big hunks out of them for 50% of cat or better,or a huge amount of listings with very little variety in the material that they are selling,or surcharges on the postage and handling, and of course some other factors)
Just walked in from work...I only charge 0.50 for shipping. I only list at ten percent of cat. Things will pick up...700 items listed with more coming. The thing that kills me, is the time it takes to scan the stamps...I scan the item I am selling and ship that item...I hope other seller are doing the same... Well, ok look up and not down...sell stamps!!
Fill a stock sheet with the stamps you want to scan and use a stamp bursting application. If you have 40 stamps on a sheet you may have to "fix" 3 or 4 of them but the rest will be fine. It's free - just google "Stamp Image Bursting Application". It runs on unrestricted access and publisher is shown as unknown so you will get a warning box each time. It was recommended by APS and I have had no problems in several years of use except once in awhile you have to reload it and I believe Java has to turned on (not sure).
I have been intrigued with Ralph's comments above and while I am not primarily a seller (I only have about 2700 items listed) I would have agreed with everything you said, Ralph. But when I started to sell some duplicates it was a real eye opener. Lee Coen above charges 50 cents for shipping. Ralph mentioned 49 cents (I guess I am greedy at $1.50). But while we all can buy postage below face the value of stamps when I put them on the simplest size six envelope is still 47 cents. So at 50 cents shipping I would be paying 47 cents to the postal service. 4 cents to HipStamp and 1.5 cents to PayPal. That simply makes no sense to me.
My post here is prompted by a strip of modern stamps I am putting up tonight. So, of course I look to see what others are selling the strip for. One seller has it put up for face value and $1 shipping. Realizing again that he may have obtained them below face and the postage on his envelope below face. it still makes no sense to me. Considering the minimum actual value is at least face and counting in the fees from HipStamp and PayPal his price for the strip plus the dollar for shipping means IMHO that he is losing 8 cents on that sale. How is such a practice sustainable? Oh, other sellers who have this strip of stamps have it at 35 cents to $2.95 over face.
While your piece is veryw well written, ebb and flow; in comes the orders and cash and away go the stamps. I like cash. More orders=more customers. I like to look at shipping as a 'loss leader'. Get the customer in the door to look around. Looks like I better raise my asking prices up to 12-15% of cat now. I still think Hip is going grow...
I've used (and still use) the Stamp Image Bursting software, and can tell you it SIGNIFICANTLY changed how quickly I can get stamps scanned and loaded. I'm not saying that it is now push-button, but creating the individual images is much easier now than it was before.
I can also tell you from personal experience that the developer is open to enhancement requests. He doesn't charge a fixed price for the enhancements, but is open to taking stamps in exchange for the development. In my case, I offered $x worth of stamps from my bidStart store, which he accepted. He let me know what he wanted, I pulled them from the store, and sent them.
I just tried to download it three times--then need java update-tried again and again--silly me getting my hopes up. Darn it, darn it!!!!! Save to desk top won't get past 'java update'--(I'll wait a day and try one more time)
Comments
Have a great day!!
Ross
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/ross-stamps
Here is a link to your store so folks know how to find you directly from your forum post.
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/ll-stamp-and-coin
James,
Here is the link to your store.
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/jls-collectables
Happy Stamping Folks
Ross
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/ross-stamps
Michael & Andrea
LickinGoodStamps!
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/lickingoodstamps
My Stamps are but just a Hobby for me!
Michael
From the newsletters that Mark has been sending out more items are being sold on Hipstamp then were being sold on Bidstart before the 2 were combined. Even if that info was being seen it is limited as to what it will tell you. (All it can do is tell you what the site may be doing. It can NOT tell you how individual sellers are doing)
And you need to remember that Hipstamp has really only been up and running for about 4 months and Hipstamp and Bidstart were both combined and at the moment there are about 585 stores on Hipstamp.
Ross,
Some of the sellers are not doing well at all and are struggling. (Some of it has to do with certain business models that just will NOT work as well on Hipstamp,some differences in the buyer base,etc etc)
Some sellers like myself are doing fairly well in the sense that we are at least doing about the same as what we were doing on Bidstart. (I have a number of listings that just are not going to work on Hipstamp because of the way they were listed,and they were listed with Bidstart in mind and they worked well on Bidstart but they won't here)
Of course some sellers are doing very well.
I do think long term it will be better then either Ebay or what Bidstart was doing 4 years,in the short term it's most likely going to be both up and down. (I think once we get past the elections and with the Cubs in the World series things should start picking up a bit more then)
Michael
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/cals-and-friends-stamps
My response to C Vooijs was meant to be somewhat sarcastic. My second passion is fishing and every day on a couple of the forums there is someone asking for simple information but are to lazy to read the other posts and figure things out.
As for selling going from an established platform to a NEW platform then expecting the same amount of sales in $$. It just aint going to happen and it s not going to fit everyone's needs. I too have items that wont fit here, but thats the challenge -how to make it work.
But I also believe in the long term for stamps it will be the best platform out there.
Ross
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/ross-stamps
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/ross-stamps
With regards to your specific sales, it looks like in September on HipStamp you sold more Stamps (Value) than you had any other month on bidStart throughout all of 2016. However, looking at your inventory, you should certainly be doing more here. I'll ask Justin to reach out to you to see what we can do to help increase your sales here.
October marks the first full month of HipStamp post merging bidStart into the platform. With regards to stamp sales combined between bidStart and HipStamp over the past 12 months, the average sales per month was $100,000. We're excited that for October, we've already passed the $100,000 mark - and October will be our biggest month (bidStart and HipStamp combined) in the past 12 months by a significant margin. We expect sales to continue to climb significantly each month, and we're looking forward to sharing this information with our members.
Mark, put me down for some of that as well if you would be so kind. I've had some sales here but nothing to write home about, and HipPostcards so far has been a non-starter for me. Any help you folks could provide would be appreciated !
Heard.
I have purchased more on Hipstamps over the last 10 days than I have from any other site in an awfully long time. I have been processing more orders and adding more items to my shopping cart (650 items as of last count!), now that many of the bugs have been resolved, AND as I get more familiar with the system (annoyances and good points and all).
I have also been eliminating many items I had been watching and had placed in my shopping cart because.
1. Prices are no longer competitive. (more buyers listing the same items at lower prices, some times significantly, so I delete your item from my shopping cart. So take a look at some of your prices relative to others. I suspect that those who are not doing well are overpricing their products! Once it is out of my shopping cart, I will not purchase it from you!
2. Your shipping and additional per item charges are a TURN OFF. This is personal, but I don't like the additional per item charges, and I have deleted all your shopping cart items when your S/H are out of line..and I have found out the specifics (which Hipstamp has made, or so it seems, every possible way to conceal from me!!!), no matter how many items of yours I had in my cart, or how much time I had invested. (truly it is a turn off).
I do NOT pay 10c extra per stamp..no matter what! I hesitate at 5c per stamp, and favor those that price stamps faily for side by side price comparison, without hiding their true prices.
So put your extra costs in the stamp value and not in the S/H fees..I think it is more ethical.
3. When your S/H charges are low (I aim at no more than 10% of my purchase total) I process more of your orders more often. So for my favorite sellers who charge ~49c flat fee (or whatever), I will process orders under $10 more often, but I will also favor you over all others when pricing for comparative items are nearly alike (I will pay a small premium). (For S/H, I also respect the extra costs for international sellers, but don't force me to pay for your gold plated over packaging and self serving shipping methods).
If your S/H fee is say $2.00, I need to build up a total in excess of $20 to process.....and if it takes time, it will give me plenty of time to eliminate items I had previously wanted and noted, but ended up purchasing elsewhere, because the wait was too long, and I found a better deal. so help yourself by not making it too hard to process an order from your shop!
4. I DEFINITELY do comparative pricing using the computer on EVERY purchase, so when I pick an item, I will search on it here, and even on ebay and Delcampe, and look at all offers for the same product. (I often open several windows at the same time). If yours is not competitive I will select from someone else, and it is the one item that goes in my shopping cart! If you repeatedly come way too high (some price differentials are as much as 400% or more!), I will block you for good. Look at your prices, relative to others!
5. I am a sucker for all good sales. So when you offer me a large selection at (well) reduced prices (I consider 10% off a negligible sales offer, and will not bother), I will look immediately through your store, select items, and if the total adds up (with S/H considered in the equation) I will close a purchase much sooner rather than later. I respond well to personal emails announcing your sales.
Now this is all personal, but it may serve some of you who complain about slow sales, because I don't think I am unique as a buyer!
So, please look at your prices and look at your S/H charges. If they are not competitive, you are not likely to improve your sales outlook much, no matter how many items you have on sales..well not with me. Most stamps are commodities available from multiple sources.
Of course if selling a very unique item, the above rules don't apply, but how many are really that truly unique among the 2 million items on sale here?
So to summarize. Make sure your prices are competitive. Make sure your S/H is as low as you can set it with no per extra item charges. Thanks for listening.
rrr...
Speaking strictly for myself, before I post items for sale, I do the same thing you do ie I look at all the other listings to see what the price range is offered by other sellers. I use these to set my prices, which generally are at or lower than the lower listed price for the same item offered by others.
My S&H is $0.90, period. If a buyer buys one or a thousand items, this doesn't change or increase.
So.....there must be other reasons why my store here is slow (while sales are at a healthy level on 'that other site'). Other factors likely include number of lots posted (I add almost daily and have crossed the 1000 mark, but other sellers have way, way more listings, and the variety of items listed.
That said, I'm keeping the faith that this site will eventually take off for me as its well-developed and the fees are more than reasonable. Time will tell...
George
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/docgfd-coversnstamps
https://www.hippostcard.com/store/docgfd-postcards
WOW thank you for all the great info. I am with you on figuring out all the bells and whistles, as a seller I'm finding some of the new procedures daunting. Also the number of click through are quite time consuming when processing orders ie shipping and feedback are on separate pages.
I also check to see what others are selling at but generally list between 10-20% of my Scott/Unitrade(2011) and a couple of other catalogs. I am also planning to run monthly sales' I am currently waiting for an answer to a question I posed.
My shipping is $1.00 for the first 10 items I ship each item in its own 102b card then calculate from there but its usually just a few cents more . Also free shipping domestically for $10.00 and over.
George,
Very nice liberal shipping you have offered but doesn't a #10 envelope get crowed with a 1000 stamps in it!!(LOL). Nice to your double signature links-I think it helps.
Ross
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/ross-stamps
Yes Ross, my biggest and number one objection to the new system is the number of clicks required to get anything done. Some has to do with page layout, some with software design, some with computer capacity I guess, and some with the lack of sticky controls. We backtracked from bitstart on many items...but I guess we just have to wait until they can be re programmed here.
Most of all, a lot of the information that is only available after multiple multiple clicks should be provided on the page! In time, I hope that Mark find the time to resolve this efficiency issue. Meanwhile we all suffer through it, and tolerate it as part of the growing pains. But I did set hipstamp aside for over a month once before, and I wonder how many potential buyers are waiting for the system to settle down into a more user friendly and efficient one. Patience!
rrr...
You are leaving out a few things that tend to skew things one way or another and those things need to be factored in also.
First you have to factor in that most of the sellers posting in the forums generally speaking have a tendency to be the smaller sellers. (It is what it is,even on Ebay you had the same thing on their forums) So that will skew what the sales are doing. Now if the moderate and larger sellers are mostly maintaining what they did on Bidstart or growing that is a good sign. (I am in that group and as my sales are as least maintaining what we were doing on Bidtstart is a very good sign)
Second and more importantly is that when some of them come in and just ask how the sales are they leave out a lot of information. (IE What they are selling,number of items they are looking at listing,price range they are looking at selling,are they collectors trying to sell off some of their duplicates,etc,etc,etc)
Now to say that a new platform can't do what the old platform did very quickly is not quite accurate. A number of the sellers are doing at least as well on Hipstamp as they were on Bidstart. (I am one of them,but I have noticed a big change in the type of items I am selling. It's a different mix then what was sold on Bidstart. Not as many sales but the average sale is larger then what they were on Bidstart. (Factor in that it's only been about 2 months since Bidstart and Hipstamp merged and there have been over 300 sellers added to Hipstamp,I think things are looking very good at this point that Hipstamp will become a very very good site for sales)
I don't think it's going to take long before Hipstamp gets to the point of doing better then what Bidstart was doing 4 years ago.
Now why some of the sellers are having problems,for some it's becomes very clear when you look at their stores as to WHY they are struggling. (Some have few pictures,some are trying to sell low values stamps with big hunks out of them for 50% of cat or better,or a huge amount of listings with very little variety in the material that they are selling,or surcharges on the postage and handling, and of course some other factors)
The thing that kills me, is the time it takes to scan the stamps...I scan the item I am selling and ship that item...I hope other seller are doing the same...
Well, ok look up and not down...sell stamps!!
It's free - just google "Stamp Image Bursting Application".
It runs on unrestricted access and publisher is shown as unknown so you will get a warning box each time. It was recommended by APS and I have had no problems in several years of use except once in awhile you have to reload it and I believe Java has to turned on (not sure).
this how I've been scanning--oh well will give it a try and hope I can save millions of hours
Thanks!!!!
My post here is prompted by a strip of modern stamps I am putting up tonight. So, of course I look to see what others are selling the strip for. One seller has it put up for face value and $1 shipping. Realizing again that he may have obtained them below face and the postage on his envelope below face. it still makes no sense to me. Considering the minimum actual value is at least face and counting in the fees from HipStamp and PayPal his price for the strip plus the dollar for shipping means IMHO that he is losing 8 cents on that sale. How is such a practice sustainable?
Oh, other sellers who have this strip of stamps have it at 35 cents to $2.95 over face.
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/cedar-breeze-emporium/
I can also tell you from personal experience that the developer is open to enhancement requests. He doesn't charge a fixed price for the enhancements, but is open to taking stamps in exchange for the development. In my case, I offered $x worth of stamps from my bidStart store, which he accepted. He let me know what he wanted, I pulled them from the store, and sent them.
Rob
Cees