How to get customers here on Hipstamp?

Any ideas or tips on this? I have been sending a rubber stamp note on the packing to my buyers orders from other sites with the link here. i probably need to re word it. any advise on this from those doing similar or any tips on other methods? do you include a discount offer or? business card or? If each of us could get a few new buyers here each month it could help i suspect.

Comments

  • 27 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
  • You need to have a reason why they should come here as opposed to the other sites you are on. If you are doing the exact same thing on this site as you are doing on the other sites why should they come here?
  • edited November 2019 0 LikesVote Down
    well i have 1000 items here that are not listed elsewhere and great advise. I am not complaining as i do think this site has potential for me. I have a good customer base on other sites and i would like advise on how to go about getting them to come over here. I also would assume that Hipstamp knew what they were doing when they enabled the Sync on this site here, Saying that, most of my sales have been sync items but some otherwise also. about 75/25%

    I'm looking for advice to improve not so much concepts like don't sync. and also advice to get traffic here and not so much to improve my personal sales but traffic to help all of us. Buyers and sellers as both are needed to have a great site. Sales are important but first you need traffic


  • Every item I sell on eBay gets packed with a printed out sheet with the information on the purchase, along with links to my HipStamp and HipPostCard Stores, where I have more items listed than on eBay. I can only report limited success at this point.
  • At the moment Hipstamp is doing much better for me than .Feebay. I save emails addresses that come in from Paypal and try to send some sort of promotional email out every week or 2 that will get Feebay customers to this site . I have noticed a lot of Hipstamp advertising if I search for something like Great Britain stamps. Hiptamp is plugging away and I am getting new customers every week. I would like more customers , but who wouldn't. At least here there aren't daily "improvements" and/or foulups like there are at Feebay.
  • Jerry, perhaps mention the unparalleled information, stories, fabrications and banter found here on Hipstamps forums
  • edited November 2019 1 LikesVote Down
    Ron :-) lol -- Dennis and George ... Great Tips.

    I do think that the forums are important though i would not want the job of refereeing :-)
  • I include a flyer with all my customers wherever they buy.
    Advertising all 3 of my sites. Both hipstamps, postcards and eBay.
    Currently all ephemera and postcards are on eBay.
    Only some stamps are on eBay.
    Both my hip stores offer everyday deal of up to 40% off eBay prices (min purchases required).
    Also pointing out that my hipstamps store has stuff eBay does not have (due to high fees).
    Unless you are not in this to maximize sales you NEED eBay, if anything for advertising.
    Just beet the drums any which way you can.
    And yes, Michael is right. You have to give the customers a reason to come here.
    In my case the up to 40% off and the bigger selection in the stamps store.
    Don't be fooled though. No site will ever beat eBay.
    There is a huge PC seller on hippostcard. He has app 50,000 PCs on eBay and over 230,000 on Hip. His eBay sales are still 6 times or so as much as his hip sales in $$.

  • At the moment i have nothing listed with ebay. Mather of fact all the stamps i had listed on ebay i deleted.
    Stamps that were only 0.30 cents or or 0.10 ebay would not list anything lower than 0.99 cents.
    Some of my stamps being listed on ebay for about 3 years showed hundreds and thousands of views and non of them sold. In 3 years of listing stamps on ebay i sold 1 stamp.
    Is there an extra charge being in Sync with ebay? I appreciate your comments.
  • no extra charge
  • I personally see NO POINT listing anything for those prices.
    I have TONS of better stuff to list. Why bother w 30 cent stuff?
    That's called a hobby and not a business. So yeah, for that eBay is way too expensive.
    I just sold a stamp for $1.92 on eBay that I have listed here for 48 cents.
    I have a few hundred listed in that priuce range and just letting them ride right now.
    But I realized there is just no point in selling anything that cheap.
    I made some bulk listings/collections of stuff on ebay and here (synced). No sales there yet, but once they sell at least I make a few bucks. And nothing under $10 so I will make ok $$ when it sells and also can afford for it to sit on eBay for a couple years.
    I check my sales stats on ebay every month and once the fees are higher than the profit stuff gers deleted there and kept on hip only.
    Any yes, syncing is free anbd actually works very well.
  • edited December 2019 0 LikesVote Down
    I think most people are comfortable buying on ebay as they have the links and payments set up. a few are very excited about the ebay bucks but if you look at the returns it really is not so good overall. :-) pretty much 1%. One of the great advantages here is the price to list slow moving stock without paying $300+ a month for a store that will accommodate 1500+ items. The mid level store on ebay is $75 and it only allows 1000 BIN items + 500 auction per month.

    I do think it is a lot of constant work to get customers here but as inventory grows.. you have a huge plus factor to getting them here to visit. this should get better the longer the store is in place and the inventory grows because ebay charges the monthly $300+ for the next level store. Eventually one would think the inventories should attract buyers if the material is priced the same as when selling elsewhere. I do include a personal invitation to each buyer of other sites to visit here. hopefully it will get new buyers on this site.

    I seem to remember Delcampe having a huge seller's battle over less expensive stamps and fee changes that prevented listing them.. years back.. I do think Ebay price and selection is their advantage.
  • Jerry
    I completely agree with you.
    I have almost 8,000 in the anchor store for $300 / month and every listing after that will cost me a nickel a month.
    The nest store up enterprise is $3,000 for 100,000 listings. I think it makes sense to get that at around 65,000 listings.
    I keep track of the aged inventory every month. And if for a few months I make no money vs fees it gets dumped and only kept on hip and my own web store I am working on. That will happen in the next few months.
    I already advertise my hip postcard store with the same prices as eBay to all my buyers (mostly eBay of course) and they get 20% off for as little as 3 cards purchased together.
    No takers yet, but with my inventory growing it will likely happen eventually.
  • yes Martin, a very convenient place here. i tried the website, ecrater and even delcampe. this site is by far the 2nd best. I decided to list most items with an offer option.. i may remove that later.
  • Jerry
    I advertise my discounts as:
    MAKE YOUR OWN SALE
    The more you buy the more you save.
    Up to 50% off (for 100 cards, will not happen anytime soon, if ever).
    But I fully plan on being a full time paper seller in 5 years, postcards prob being the #1 line of oinventory, ephemera 2nd and stamps third. Might dump the stamps though. It is soooooooooo tedious to find the few keepers in a bulk purchase. In the same time I can literally list 100s of postcards.
    My system right now, I list almost 100 per hour ready scanned. Scanning takes me about 400 per hour. So in about 6 hours total I list 400+ cards.
  • very good info Martin. thanks for sharing .
  • Martin, how do you scan 400 per hour? That is pretty fast. Do you have some special software to crop & save the scans? Scanning is my limiter right now. I'm using the bulk lister here on Hipstamp.
  • I specialize in precancels and perfins. I setup pages on Instagram and Facebook on a whim just to see what would happen. The age demo is completely wrong, but there are some collectors there. As I followed other collectors there, I noticed they setup a linktree to forward people to their stores, since Instagram doesn't allow more than one link. You can see mine at www.precanceled.com I also put my Hipstamp store info in my eBay about me and store info. I just started full time, but my Hipstamp sales are going up every month as I list more Bureau Precancels here. It's still small potatoes, but progressing in the right direction and it's only been since October.
  • Michael
    send you private message
  • I do the same as you Jerry. I put a note in all my ebay orders with a link directing customers to Hipstamp. However it does not work, or some reason they still prefer to buy my items on ebay?

    Perhaps customers prefer ebay "buyer protection"? as all overseas sales get shipped using more expensive tracked & signed postage which here (to try and attract sales) I post all orders untracked.

    Sales for me on Hipstamp have been dire over the last 3 months. At least before the odd sale or two would cover my monthly subscription and pay for a few months in advance - but now even that is not happening? Low cost cheap stamps appear to sell well hear - but for me selling that type of stock is to much effort for very little return/profit.

    The few customers I do get here are mostly repeat customers - I'll just keep plugging away.
  • Tania.. I keep thinking there is a formula to using what we are doing now that should work to get them over here :-) at least more than are coming over on the notes , now.
  • Just to note that all purchases paid with PayPal (our default payment option) on HipStamp are covered by PayPal's Buyer Protection up to $2,500 per order - the same as ebay's.

    Also, in November, our Sellers sold over $1.2 Million in stamps here, with stamps ranging from $0.01 to $10,000+
  • Mark
    what are the numbers for hippostcard?
    I am primarily focusing on my PC biz over stamps.
    I also suggested you guys should offer free independent store fronts for us sellers.
    I don't mind bringing buyers over here from eBay, but seeing how ridiculous some sellers price their stuff is a little disheartening.
    I will def keep hip as I see a very nice potential here.
    However, I am also building my own shopify web site/store, where I do not have to compete with every lowballer/hobbyist on the planet.
    Not expecting ginormous sales there, but I am also offering huge #s of ephemera and ebay 8is getting too pricey after the initial sales of the popular stuff tapers off.
    Would love to use a freestanding hip store, if you ever offer that.
    Good luck. Love this site and am very happy I found it.
  • Hey Martin, some good suggestions and I would encourage you to even consider your own Hipstamps style website. That way you could filter out some lowballers and hobbyists.....I might even sign up but I would probably have to raise my prices to fit in ;-)
  • edited December 2019 1 LikesVote Down
    The problem with personal websites is traffic. there was a time -20 years ago... that people would go to a link to check things out. that is becoming a thing of the past. even ecrater that is free is an example. large site- almost zero sales and zero traffic. this site has a lot of potential and there are some sales and traffic. it is also pretty well designed. Google and Bing are big companies that control internet traffic and basically have completely taken over the internet. fighting this fact is difficult. :-) best to band together and try to attract buyers here. and then there is Delcampe.. :-) management is everything in a stamp site.
  • edited December 2019 1 LikesVote Down
    Jerry
    I totally agree. But that is where my flyers come in and give the buyer a real incentive to come to your site.
    First of all you need inventory. Prob will only work for sellers w/ tens of 1,000s of listings. Ideally more.
    Then give them a huge discount, the more they buy, the higher the discount.
    I just really get sick in my stomach when I see people literally give away their stuff. Nickel and even Penny stamps with free add. shipping. I mean what the freaking freak???
    And we are talking actual items for sale. Not even stock pics and multi quantity listings.
    If I have 100,000 postcards listed and get 5 buyers a month that buy average 10 cards for a reasonable [price 3-4 bucks a piece) then it would be worth it for me.
    I also have ephemera that won't sell well enough on eBay that I would put on there.
    Over the years build a several 100,000 inventory and eventually you get enough sales making it worth while.
  • My view point of Hipstamp is basically "diappointing but has potential" based on sales results.
    I'll stay as hopefully one day it might become more than just another form of advertising for me?

    https://www.hipstamp.com/store/stampsfirst-day-covers-and-curios
  • I LOVE HIP. WHEN I MAIL TO A BUYER, I SIMPLY WRITE A THANK YOU NOTE
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