Frustrating Sales

A week or so ago, I looked through my older listings, and decided to put two dozen or so up for auction. Near all had starting bids of $1. Received nary a bid. Not looking for sympathy or advice. Just venting, and starting to consider whether I am using the wrong venue. Lots and lots of hours building my store...not large, but over 600 listings.

Comments

  • 19 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
  • John, are you using the marketing newsletters through HS? If not send an email to support and they will get their marketing folks to send out newsletters to you past customers. It helps. And I know you have puts hours into building your store...most of us have and not just hours but years. I know I've said this before but just keep building quality inventory with fair pricing and of course great customer service. It will come.

    And I along with many with similar type stores to yours sometimes go several days without much if any sales. But then all of the sudden, a bunch of orders come in. As some of my colleagues can attest, a little private bitching and complaining about sales almost always results in instant sales. Don't know why but it works.
  • John, how do I find your store?
  • Phil search for troutbum in stores.
  • Oh, yeah, I forgot.
  • John - It takes a bit of time to build a good customer base. Repeat customers are the base of any business survival and it just takes time to build that repeat customer base.
    Someone above mentioned the Hipstamp marketing letters. They are good - sometimes great sales after they go out and sometimes nothing. You can also build your own email list from customers that pay you via Paypal. . I have not found % off sales to be that productive, but you could try a sale on all or part of your inventory. If you have customers from different souces, i.s Feebay, the Boys in Belguium, old fashioned mail order, etc make sure that you put something in your shipments to them directing them to your Hipstamp store.
    My final thought - We had a bit of a boom when there were lots of covid restrictions. With those restrictions relaxed and disappearing a lot of collectors are not stuck st home looking at their stamps, and they are finding other ways to spend their money.
  • "...and they are finding other ways to spend their money."
    Yeah, like for food and gasoline...
  • edited September 2022 0 LikesVote Down
    Yeah, mebbe so. But we have always had to buy gas and groceries and, well frankly, those focused on gas and groceries would never have bought collectibles in good times or bad times.
  • Nah. You're conflating two distinct entities: life necessities vs discretionary spending. If someone has a finite, x-amount of money, as the price for necessities goes up, there's simply less remaining to use for playtime.
  • I'll just eat all my 5c stamps. Good roughage!!!!!! LOL! Nom nom nom!
  • Greg,

    You have to keep up with the fiber in our advanced years.
    Myself I like the liquid kind that all good Germans use. LoL
  • Is that the kind with lots of hops and barley? I have a lot of Alsacian in me so I think that is good medicine myself.
  • Ya know....rereading my original post, it does look like I'm whining. Sniff!
  • edited September 2022 0 LikesVote Down
    Whining works...ya just gotta know how to do it right and to whom. Had a bunch of nice orders yesterday after whining about sales two days ago. Keep grinding.....
  • John, I like your store. But one thing, you do have a few listings like this one: https://www.hipstamp.com/listing/australia-sg-40/45799720
    That have "less than desirable" photos. Most of them are well edited, and have just a hint of border, but now and then you have some that are really bad. I think if you cleaned up those it would help with sales.
    Just some constructive feedback. For the most part, you have one of the nicer set of listings I've seen.
  • Thanks Scott....point well taken. I actually started the process of replacing photos over a month ago, but only got one country done. Damn time consuming, but it has to be done. I accidentally left the vast majority of inventory of my stamps up at our cabin about 10 days ago. So....no ability to rephoto, and, worse yet, can't ship orders. Back up there this weekend. Weather is supposed to suck til midweek so I'll use that non fishing time to get back to cleaning up the store. Also, thanks for the kudos as well.
  • Hello everyone hope all is well, as far as my sales go sites dead to me been 3 months since I sold anything, so I am doing my own business else where now and getting 50-150 sales daily and they pay more then hipstamp buyers too many low ballers here not enough deep pockets needlessly to say I been doing really well glad I switched to selling else where example sold 50 wine Revenues for $50 then sold many Civil War Revenues for $10 each here those sell for .25-$1 each smh personally Live Auctions face to face kinda deal is worth more then a rather bleek auction site what I mean is when you can use your voice to explain a stamp rather then writing it gives alot more of a personal connection and the passion behind the voice tells them what's good!
    Most descriptions are not very personal but more so a guide of how to find the stamp and the condition if it was more from the heart think sales here would maybe pick up it's about connecting with your customers on a personal basis not just making a sale!
  • And what site would that be?
  • Oh no George! Don't egg him on.

    Brett, you can't piss on our legs and tell us it's raining. You have 11 items listed in your "store". You have a, let's just say, sub-par feedback rating. Your listings are of very common stamps with poor images and even worse descriptions. And you are asking exorbitant prices for those listings. I, and others here, have tried in good faith to help you improve and be successful here ever since your first opened a store but you have always refused to take any advice or make any effort to improve. So....good for you on your new platform, wherever that may be...real or imagined. Goodbye.
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