Do You Shop Or Sell Products Online? A Must-read
Every day the emails arrive. “Rick, you have too many stores!!”, or “Rick, how in the world am I going to find what I want or need in all your shops?” etc. The general theme is “Why so many web stores?” I will do my best to answer.
At the risk of sounding like the elderly professor in the Xerox commercial regarding publishing is not done much because it costs “MONEY”, that is the first answer that comes to mind. We like making moolah. But that is our cynical side. We also like making people happy. No, really.
Also, one day, and I hope it is in my lifetime, I would love for you, the Internet surfer to google cartoons or funny gifts and two full products of just my stores appeared on your screen. How very neat, eh? Arrogant, sure, but very neat. I am told that in any given year there are approximately 10,000 cartoons on the Internet and out of those 10k cartoons only about 5 or so last longer than a year. This is our tenth year and to be honest, we didn’t even start to monetize the site with stores until 14 months ago; and even think about Google Adwords until a few years ago? Why? Because we really looked at the entire thing as a hobby and everyone was pitching in during our spare time. I remember around 2004 emails began pouring in from publishers worldwide wanting to buy permission rights for our cartoons. I hardly even remembered what that meant. Remember, it was all a hobby for me.
Though all our sites are free to visit, even the stores, our Londons Times Cartoon site is non-monetized except for the few Google Adsense ads. We did that on purpose. We built the largest offbeat cartoon site on the Internet and promised access to all cartoons for our fans. We’ve kept that promise for ten years, no membership, no credit card, just good laughs, and never a fee. Why? Laughing is more fun when it is free. You may think it might not be as funny with no charge. Not to worry, our stores make a profit and we keep the prices low. We want to always keep it that way; as, with 8500 original cartoons, mostly in color, we look at it as a cyber-museum of sorts, and to make it a membership site, as we once thought about doing, to us, would dampen the spirit of the whole idea of it. Why pay for the opportunity to have get out of breath from a great belly-laugh
Learning what sells in a marketplace that is untapped is not the easiest thing in the world. Nobody really knows in the cartoon world except other cartoonists and their licensing people. So one has to run down to Barnes and Nobles and find out what is selling well. And it turns out it’s not just t-shirts and coffee mugs anymore.
Other mass-sellers I’ve discovered are coasters, sweats, hoodies, aprons, clocks, infant wear, thongs, kids tees, sweats, and teddy bears, men’s women’s tops, baseball jerseys, tote bags and a number of other items that have surprised me.
Testing the market on the Internet is a little different than testing it in real life. In the blink of an eye, a popular blog may recommend something or trash it and you never know if your store is included in the inferno. Best to have several just in case.
Still, why so many stores you might ask? Many real life shoppers prefer botique shops to large mall stores. I am one of them. Sometimes I want to get in and get out, fast. That is why the niche botique stores in addition to the large online mall type stores. I like to give the customers a choice.
AThongInMyHeart.Com, our cartoon thong an boxer short store lures a large number of romantic shoppers who want something *really* different. Though they can get the same items at the same price at our mall stores, RickLondonCollection.com or Ricklondonwear.com simply because they don’t have to wade through other items and can find exactly what they want click, buy, and have it at their door within a few days or overseas in about a few weeks. In any of the stores, they know they will get a good deal, and a funny quality product.
The same is true for hoodies, mouse pads, greeting cards, mugs and steins, and other such online shopping stores in which we have narrowed it down to niche marketing. We do not charge any more for products that are in those stores, that are also in our larger stores, we simply offer an alternative quicker convenient buying method for those who do not want to “go shopping” but have a general or exact idea of the item for which they are seeking.
Whether buying or selling, we are just laying out common sense guidelines that might work for you. There are many other ways to “do it right”. All of this depends on your style of both shopping or buying. In any case, every time you create a transactin on the web, jobs are created and you are saving time and usually money. It’s good business.
We get a kick out of watching the stastics from sites that measure rankings and such and see how each site is doing. Generally they remain popular and gain in popularity as the days go by (thanks to you) and it keeps us motivated to keep our creative juices flowing.
If you are an Internet shopper, and enjoy it (as I do) because it is so nice to find items that are difficult if not impossible to find in real shopping malls, you may enjoy comparison shopping channels like Shop.com, Bizrate, Shopzilla, etc. I enjoy using those for home entertainment, computer equipment etc. But they really are not made for the niche shopper looking for that one-of-a-kind product that can only be bought in one store (and its affiliate stores) all at the same price.
My tendency is to investigate products at Ebay, Shopping.com etc. regularly, to see if a particular online store has items featured there. I check their rankings on Ebay particularly if they are. For instance, 3drose, our manufacturer, sells our products on Ebay, Shop.com, Amazon.com and various other shopping channels. I check their ratings. We are fortunate with 3drose. They have a 99.4% positive feedback rating with almost 12,000 transactions, being one of Ebay’s oldest and largest power-sellers. This helps with automatic quality-contol. The marketplace will give positive or negative feedback based on their experiences.
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