The Attic - A New Hope

Okay, Okay, Okay...so I just couldn't resist the temptation to use a the title of one of my favorite movie series (Star Wars - A New Hope) in my title. But that is just how I feel - I have a "new hope" that the changes we are about to make on our site over the next few months, will breathe in some new profit for this site...and for our business.

This "experitment" (if you will) in creating, from concept to market place, OUR first e-commerce site; has been less than stellar. In fact, it has not even made one sale (well actually, I DID buy from my own site). Over the past 10 months, I have created, changed, tweeked: and with all of the work I have put into it; I still can't seem to get the traffic I need; or even get anyone interested enough in making a purchase with us. I haven't even been able to "give-away" my own money in our monthly drawings. In over three months of running our promotion where we were giving away a $50 gift certificate to our site, we only had one winner (that actually claimed the prize); but she has yet to make a purchase. Part of the reason for that (I believe) is that she is from Canada, and most of our suppliers will not ship out of the US. This means that we would have to have our international customer's orders shipped to us, and then re-ship it out of the country.

So here we sit, with a site that is costing us money to run, update, and try to get visitors, but without generating any revenue. True, all while doing this site, I have been "functionally" unemployed: another words for self-employed. Because I have not had ANY revenue coming in from this venture, I have not been able to spend much in the ways of marketing and advertising. They say that when you don't have, you have to become creative: and that is what I have tried to do. I had also created a "sister site" on eBay: and she has done much better (but not enought to retire on yet). That site, Grandma's Bargain Attic (http://stores.ebay.com/Grandmas-Bargain-Attic), has benefited mostly from the large market place of eBay itself. We currently have over 30 products that are being listed (some are duplicates under different listing formats). We also started an e-book marketing test at the beginning of the month. Since that start (6/3/06), our positive feed back has increassed dramatically from about 36 to 109 as of this writing. It took 9-10 months to obtain the 36 score, and then in less than a months time, we have more than doubled our score.

Almost all of that increase in score was from one book. And I guess you can say that the price was right, at only ONE Penny. I am not making any money off of it, as PayPal has charged me a penny to collect my penny: but I am getting some great feedback; and I am getting people to my eBay store as well. Additionally, I now have the e-book "coded" with my information: so that way if someone who has my copy of this book, and they click on a link in the book: I will get credit (paid) for them doing so. I am in the process of "rebranding" several other e-books that I have as well. I have also figured that if I sell an e-book, I won't see any profit until after about 35 cents (with the eBay & PayPal fees); but anything after that point is pure profit. And if I sell them on my site...?!

Well, that is where our planned changes are going to take place. Over the next few months, we will be eliminating our third party suppliers (at least for the most part); down play or eliminate most if not all of our sellers (people who are selling through our site); and then just concentrate on books, e-books, audio books and book supplies. We will then also be able to eek out a niche target market; and have all of our advertising and marketing efforts for the site even more tightly focused. Our banner ads (such as Google & CJ ads) will be targeted specifically to a particular product or subject; and we will work to create more content rich pages.

You sell, we came to this decision: not on a whim, but on solid evaluation of what we have been doing, what we are doing now; what we want to be doing, and where we want to be financially in the next fiscal year (FY 2007, starts 8/06). I never want it to be said that this was just a "hobby". We have taken this venture very seriously, and we intend to see that either it starts turning a profit...or we will let it go. As hard as that is for me to say, I know it is the right thing to do.

So, if there is anything that you want, please stop by now, and get them while we still have them. Visit Grandma's Attic now, and we will give you an extra 10% off on your next order (discount code: DkeD57) We are also considering opening up several other sites, that are specific to each of the catalogs we are currently running...but that will be some time from now. For now, we will start the transitions, and may the force be with us...ALWAYS!!