Monetizing Ideas Needed

Purely hypothetical, ok

Say you have an online retail shop and you have all #1's you could wish for. Hence getting pretty much all search engine traffic there is. There's really not much more traffic to squeeze out of the SE's (other channels not really promoted). There's no way around this site when searching for anything related.

Now picture this shop in an industry with a lot of bedroom merchants and price slash monkeys. So margins are squeezed and you basically don't want to go any lower because you'll be busy but not making anything. Others do have lower prices because they have stock or buy bulk from abroad and just flog their 4 models and nothing else.

So in short, you get SHITLOADS of traffic but not many sales at all and you know why; pricing.

It's a real specific topic (hence good rankings).

What would you do? (Stocking it and dropping price is not an option, buying others out isn't either.)

I've been playing with the idea of adding a forum. All other forums on this subject are pretty shite and like I said, we get loads of traffic. But is there any money in running a forum? I'm not interested in 3 figure monthly numbers. 4 in the early days perhaps but definitely 5 long run. Is it worth the effort (moderating/branding an out of the box VB for instance etc.)

Could also convert it into a portal type of idea. Keep the best products and use affiliate links for all the ones we can't be bothered with. Add a forum and content and be the nation's #1 place to go on the matter. Then you could also look into service based stuff instead of retail only.

What would be best in your humble/expert opinion?

 

Can you tell us what the keyword is or what it is you are selling? I would think different strategies would apply based on what it was

 

Now, your price is high for some product but you cannot sell others..

- Why not drop the price... even if you're only making a couple bucks, its better than not selling at all.

- Join their affiliate programs and promote the products of theirs you don't have.

 

Wendy, I won't be disclosing that. Thanks though!

Because margins are already cut to a stage where I don't them any lower. Remember the effort of processing picking, packing and sending stuff (we stock a fraction of the range). It's not worth it being busy for $5 where you have other shops running where you send a drop ship email in 1 minute and make $300. It's a matter of choice. I want to make money, not be busy. Both at the same time is fine.

Yes, that's more something I was after. Is anyone else actually retailing and running affiliate stuff alongside it?

About the forum idea I have to say that the products are for a certain hobby done by millions. So the forum wouldn't be so much about the products but more about the hobby + the products and how they can be used within the hobby.

Is serious business possible at all on a themed portal type of idea? Considering ads on forums normally don't yield much I'm wondering where the money would come from... Paid for services? Anyone experience in a similar sort of setting?

 

TOPS, I am in the same boat as you. We have a few retail sites that used to make boatloads of money compared to what they make today. It is the sad reality of the internet. It seems that once a product gains enough popularity it becomes a commodity on the internet. Once it hits ebay, the price will deteriorate to the point where only scavengers will be the ones selling it. Sucks from a merchant's point of view, but great for consumers. I too have struggled with what to do, and have settled on leaving the prices where they are and trying to add a few very high margin products to the offerings. I thought about adding a forum to a couple of the sites, but don't really see the upside in doing so. The only benefit I see there is if you have a product that must be used over and over again and there is a benefit to building customer loyalty.

Funny how things work, but we stubled across an opportunity last week to add a product we can sell at a 50% margin...they key being that it wholesales for $400. After a little initial resitance, the wholesaler is now going to drop ship it for us for $15 so it is a great deal. I think that finding complimentary products where you can set up drop ship deals may be the way to go. And, of course these are not the easiest things to find/set up. You do, however, have some good leverage as you have good traffic and a track record of sales.

Would be happy to brainstorm with you as it sounds like we are in the same boat.

 

Chachi, very trye. The product life cycle seems to become shorter and shorter and you are so true about ebay. As soon as a new product hits the masses, it's been on BidTV or whatever then it will go on eBay and the merchants are screwed.

Also with Paypal etc. everybody can start an online store nowdays. You don't need a merchant account so many barriers of entry are taken away.

I don't mind the short product cycle and would drop a underperforming shop in a second as just yet another business decision but it's the rankings and traffic that makes me wonder whther there's other ways to use this site.

Selling is always a good exit strategy as well but we're just not done with this site yet.

I'll let you know when something pops up in my mind and we'll have a look at it together.

 

Ok, well as an avid hobbier who buys a lot of stuff online, I would have to say that I tend to purchase more from places that have info sites as well. For example, there is one place i buy stuff that has a huge section on craft ideas, recipes, etc. They offer a newsletter (and it only comes every 2 months, so i actually read it - it's not annoying). Most of the ideas that they have on the site are reader submissions which is nice.

The place may be more expensive then others, but to be honest, i never shopped around. The place has all the how to's, ideas, etc that i want, and it's just easier to buy there.

So i guess my long rambling is you may want to add informational stuff related to the products and crafts.

hope that helps

 

Yes Wendy, that does help. I like the idea.

We already achieved a status where people are willing the pay a somewhat higher price but perception is only worth so much even when customer service etc. is top notch. You keep fighting against lower prices... I guess you could further improve perceived quality and customer experience by offering quality content alongside.

You could even make it available for 'customers only' i.e. not paid for but only accessible once you've ordered something. Well, partly because you also want to convince the first time buyers.

 

The site I visit has two sections - one for anyone, and one for members/customers.

I know you're ranked top for the keywords, but perhaps the added content would list you for other keywords you weren't expecting. I know that i got to the site i'm talking about by looking for a craft idea, not the product itself.

good luck!

ps - i know you don't want to say what it is, but i'm a hobby junkie and now you have me all curious lol

 

T0PS, I run a store and sell products side by side- works well in my case.

 

What's the revenue ratio? Retail vs Aff?

 

I am in a hobby/art area/genre and have great traffic however my income mainly came from adsense and I had to create a product which is probably the reverse from you. My product now triples my income, are there any innovations in the field that you could somehow monopolise on or due to your excellent rankings look for genre related products that will only be supplied to your "members/visitors" at that special deal.

Its hard to say really without knowing what you are talking about, ie what product.
Best of luck"

 

Ya pls do tell. This is something that I am interested in. I am always looking for other products to sell even if aff products as long as it generates more sales of my own product.

best of luck TOPS30, i am lucky in that no one other than my wholesale customers can resell my particular product within the exception of a 1 other competitor based out of europe. That allows some room to play with the margins, which arent the best but alright since like yourself we do all of the packaging, and shipping directly out of our warehouse.

 

Most of the cost cutters I use to compete with are now gone. We had to wait it out a couple of years. The thing is we are dealing with higher quality items that may cost twice as much but people come to us for the quality. Sure we don't get the sales for the $30-$70 version the competitors sell, but let them deal with junk, returns, unsatified customers and the like.

Find the best there is to offer in the line you are attacking.

 

I like the ideas people have for adding more content/a community, it certainly ads to a site when they look like there is a well formed community. But that is work in itself.

I'd recommend the Aff and direct sales route. You can provide Aff for products you can't compete price wise for with an exclusive company, or do eBay affil.
With the eBay affil you wont return a whole lot of money per sale, because of it only being $0.10 per bid/BiT, but you'd be surprised at how many people aren't signed up with eBay and you get $20 per signup now.
Unfortunately depending on your audience they may see eBay as low brow/they can will lessen your authority. But there are many crafty audiences that see eBay as very good because it feels more personal and like you are interacting with other crafty people.

Plus there is always sneaking small adsense ads into your pages. If the keyphrases are worth it. This will get all those visitors that can't avoid your site due to top SE placement, but are looking for the lowest prices to exit from your site in a profitable way.

Then again if you could setup drop shipments AND provide the lowest prices that might be best.

 

Good ideas, thanks.

Basically the products in this market come from 3 large nation-wide wholesalers. They all carry pretty much the same range hence each brick and mortar as well as online shop sells the same stuff. Hard to diversify. Hard to get innovative or unique stuff unless you import yourself but you're back to the stocking issue which we'd like to avoid.

I was thinking of bundeling stuff up / cross sell more to increase number of items per order which makes overall shipping cheaper. Anyone any feedback on whether an active cross sell promotional campaign worked out the way they'd hoped for?

Already looking into getting added avlue through content now. Seems like all these ideas combined will result in a sort of portal anyway with forum, chat, FAQ, perhaps price comparisons, affiliate sales and own sales.

Did I mention we get about 2K uniques, 12K impressions a day? Would that be a nice figure to try a forum?

 

Started doing this already. Not very prominent yet. AdSense seems to have potential. Even more so when I implement a geotargeting system as I have on other sites where the page gets plastered with ads if the visitor is from the US (where we don't ship). This way 'useless' traffic won't go to waste. With tons of #1's you automatically get world wide traffic it seems.

Next to eBay and AdSense I'm also playing with amazon which has about 1000 books on this subject/hobby and related products without selling the products (prbably one of the few they don't sell yet!). This dribbles along nicely as well but again, not positioned very prominently.

Thanks so much all you guys and girls for the joint brainstorming. Seems like it should go into the direction of a one-stop-shop-and-info community portal type of deal where I can push advertising and aff deals more next to current offering.