In This post

1) Building The Business
2) How I Get My Traffic (Alex Jeffreys Competition)
3) Networking Again


BUILDING THE BUSINESS

Following last weeks suspension from eBay on Wednesday this weeks was bound to be better.
eBay allow multiple accounts and I have access to a few, but only the main one has a shop (store) and selling manager pro.

I have decided to leave eBay until the suspension is over and concentrate on Amazon.
For a few years this has been a much bigger source of sales than eBay but had been dropping.
The contribution margin* on our mail order sales from Amazon was fairly low so my first step was to increase prices by about 20%.

(*Contribution margin is a measure of profit after removing fixed costs such as cost of items, postage, packing, amazon fees. It is the amount contributed towards are other costs such as wages. You cannot apportion staff costs per order without knowing how many orders you are sending out so we work on contribution)

This was risky as it would be likely to decrease orders, but on those we did get the margin would be multipled by three.

Having measured this for over a week the result was a decrease in sales of these items by approx 50%, BUT because we make 3 times as much on each the overall effect was 150% increase in contribution.

The second thing I did was to create more listings of big selling items. For this I used my own software that reads data from Amazon. There is still some manual work involved and I spend 3 days working on this.

The results are now a 50% of orders are coming from these new listings and I am still building up the business. A lot of new models of mobile phone have been release since I last updated the database so there is potential there.

We are also looking at different areas – we do not limit ourselves on what type of product we sell.

I am also working on my internet marketing business and in a couple of weeks have built a new list of well over 100 subscribers for my Free Backlinks

Generator and also sold a good number of the premium version.
I’ve added emails to my autoresponder giving away items, and also a couple of advertisements for related products which have brought in sales and traffic.

HOW I GET MY TRAFFIC

Alex Jeffreys is offering a prize for the student who gets the most traffic to their blog in a two week period, but we have to post how we are getting our traffic:

My main methods for getting traffic to my blog at the moments are by commenting on other peoples blogs and in forums, and also I am emailing my list and putting my blog URL under my name at the bottom.
Nothing spectacular, but it’s getting me traffic – not enough to claim Alex’s prize money but the aim is to build a long term business.

I have fallen behind with this side of the business in the last week or so and also am a bit behind with Alex Jeffreys Coaching Course. I aim to catch up this week if possible, but the modules are all recorded so I can go back to them if necessary.

NETWORKING AGAIN
Having said a couple of weeks ago that I live in a remote area and don’t get to meet other marketers much I’ve now attended 3 meetings in 5 weeks and have

another one coming up in 2 weeks time!

On Monday (3rd August) I travelled to Northallerton in North Yorkshire to Randy Smith’s meeting for the second time.

Randy has just released Guru Bypass which he produced with Anton Lomax who was at the July meeting.


Randy Smith

Randy Smith

Other attendees of the meeting where:


Mark Orr

Mark Orr of Morrwebvideo.com

Mark made the videos for Guru Bypass


Pete Crossman

Pete Crossman of WizardResponder.com

I’ve known Pete for a while via SSP Forum and once spoke to him on Skype until about 3pm about a PHP programming problem. Mark was online as well but I think he fell asleep :)


John Reed

John Reed of major-reviews.com

John was a Major in the British Army – hence his site name.


John Austwick

Terry Edwards of MarketingReadySites.com

Terry has a number of online projects including Marketing Ready Sites, where you can get your own ready fully working Ebook mini sales site.


John Austwick

John Austwick of JohnAustwick.com

John and I are members of a few of the same forums including http://websitewealthwizards.com


Mike Evans

Mike Evans of HealthyandActiveLife.com

Mike is one of the few people at the meeting who I didnt know via a forum.

UPDATE

I also got a possible product idea from the meeting.

I mentioned to Randy that he had earned commission on one of my products that I didnt know he was promoting.

But he said he didnt know either!  There is a simple explanation – can you guess which one it is?

1) Randy is a brilliant saleman and can sell things without even knowing it.

2) Randy had been drinking and forgotten he’d promoted it!

3) Another reason .

Please post your answers below!

Earning money from selling things you don’t know you are promoting sounds like a good plan – I can’t say anymore now but I am working on it.

Filed under: General

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