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
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
I do think that the forums are important though i would not want the job of refereeing :-)
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 $$.
Stamps that were only 0.30 cents or or 0.10 ebay would not list anything lower than 0.99 cents.
Some of my stamps being listed on ebay for about 3 years showed hundreds and thousands of views and non of them sold. In 3 years of listing stamps on ebay i sold 1 stamp.
Is there an extra charge being in Sync with ebay? I appreciate your comments.
I have TONS of better stuff to list. Why bother w 30 cent stuff?
That's called a hobby and not a business. So yeah, for that eBay is way too expensive.
I just sold a stamp for $1.92 on eBay that I have listed here for 48 cents.
I have a few hundred listed in that priuce range and just letting them ride right now.
But I realized there is just no point in selling anything that cheap.
I made some bulk listings/collections of stuff on ebay and here (synced). No sales there yet, but once they sell at least I make a few bucks. And nothing under $10 so I will make ok $$ 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.
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.
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.
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.
send you private message
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.
Also, in November, our Sellers sold over $1.2 Million in stamps here, with stamps ranging from $0.01 to $10,000+
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.
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.
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