What kind of goals have you set for this year? Have you, like many others, set a goal of doubling your income. Or perhaps you have set a goal of adding 100 new items to your shop. Regardless of what goal you set, you are going to need to find a way to reach that goal.
For me, I have decided to set a goal of doubling my sales from 2012. I am pretty specific in my goals as well. I don't just want to double the number of items sold, I want to double the entire income of 2012. It is a pretty lofty goal but I think goals should be high. No reason to aim low when you can aim high!
Now, I have to come up with a plan to meet my goals and it doesn't just mean doubling my stock. In all actuality I probably need to triple my stock to double my sales. It is called diminishing returns. What is diminishing returns? A yield rate that after a certain point fails to increase proportionately to additional outlays of capital or investments of time and labor. In simple terms it means that when you get to a certain point you can no longer double your profits by doubling your stock. (Okay, it means much more than that, but that will do for now.)
So, for the next few articles I would like to talk about ways other than increasing your amount of items to achieve more sales. I do not have all the answers. In fact I probably only have a handful of answers in the grand scheme of things. So, I encourage you to share what you have done that has helped increase your sales. I also encourage you to share what didn't work!
That is all I have for today. Let me know your thoughts and questions with a comment or email me at MarketMyShop@gmail.com
What didn't work: free shipping.
ReplyDeleteNor did joining and posting in Etsy teams. The shop I did the least Team work had the most sales.
I'm sooooooo looking forward to what works for you!!!
Deb,
DeleteThat is very interesting. Thank you for sharing. I am very surprised that being in teams did not help your sales. How were you able to analyze and compare that? Free shipping worked fine for me. I did see an increase in sales initially but then it was hard to judge because of regular growth. I went back to paid shipping in November but it actually seemed to drop my sales a little. There again it is difficult to tell what the cause was.
As far as teams go, I find that I am in a lot more treasuries when I am active on my 28 teams. More treasuries means more exposure and more favorites in the long run. Which should increase sales over time.
I am actually blogging about some of this today. Perhaps it will be helpful.
My main experiment was with one of my four shops. It's in 12 teams, and for several months I posted every day with new listings and/or favorite-from-the-shop-above in each team. I got tons of views, and I'm in 54 treasuries. Nada.
DeleteI made most of my few sales AFTER I gave up on teams. Sigh.
I'm off to check your new post! :-)