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Grow My Profits StudyListen to what Tim says about how he uses HammerTap to Decide What to Sell
September 28, 2006
October 6, 2006 This has been a very busy week for me. I am completing the switch over of my auction management software. Now I will have more time to research for new, hot, profitable products, and hopefully locate some good reliable sources. First calls with Jen, Tisha and the group this week and I found all very advantageous to my business. On the call with Jen, I was shown how to use Hammertap to search for products using different strategies. Since the call was only a couple of days ago I have not been able to fully test the new techniques. Using the LSR(listing sell rate) and ASP(average sale price) will help determine a product that both sells at a high rate but also has a decent margin, both critical in growing my business in volume and profit. Another thing that I haven’t spent a lot of time on in the past, is looking at how sellers were listing, or products were selling in the past. This functionality in Hammertap should be very useful, especially going into the holiday season. I can see what products were big sellers last year and if other eBay sellers used any special techniques to increase sales during the holidays. A third thing I learned from Jen was how to use Hammertap to find hot products, and keywords that I can use in my auctions to increase sales. These are all techniques that I will be testing this week. I also learned quite a bit about sourcing new products. One thing I have not fully exploited are local distributors. Tisha pointed out that right here in Dallas is a possible gold mine, The Dallas Market Center. She also pointed out that a must is visiting tradeshows, something I have neglected to do in the past, but will now be exploring. Of course this isn’t going to guarantee any kind of success, but with a lot of emails and phone calls, and some negotiating techniques, my chances of finding a good reliable, trustworthy source for the products that I find using Hammertap should increase. This is very important to me as I have had issues with vendors, especially in the past couple of weeks. We also took a quick tour of the World Wide Brands website, which is also very promising for find new producst. Narrowing down the search should help speed up the process. I am only testing the site and have not joined, but have already sent out some emails. Hopefully I will have more on this next week. Last but not least in our group meeting, Bryan made a great point on using traffic reports to help determine if any changes you make to an auction actually brings more traffic and hopefully more sales. In the past I have only used the traffic reports to find out where the traffic was coming from, and which items were getting the most traffic. Bryan has a great idea that I will be testing next week. October 13, 2006 What an appropriate way for this week to end, Friday the 13th. I heard a guy on the radio this morning say that when he was a kid his school bus crashed and almost went off a cliff on Friday the 13th, but nobody was hurt so he thought that Friday the 13th was a lucky day. I am still standing to fight another day so I guess Friday the 13th must be lucky for me to. I had some issues with accessing HammerTap3 this week so I didn’t get to use the program as much as I wanted. I did get use it to do some research. I came up with an idea for a product to sell during the holidays, and used the history option of HammerTap3 to see if the product was selling during the holiday season 2005 and if it would be profitable to sell. All my questions were answered. New product will be going up this weekend. Also found a very good way to narrow the search for a product, using keywords and the filters that are in HammerTap3. It is an excellent way to narrow the search for a product and make sure that your results are not skewed by too broad of a search. An example would be searching for a particular computer processor, but the search is skewed by the sale of a couple of laptops. This also helps find keywords that are relevant and will hopefully provide a higher LSR and greater margin. This week I had the opportunity to explore a new webiste, TSNN.Com, a website that list all the tradeshows going on in the country. There is a lot of information on this website, will need to spend more time evaluating it, but have already found a tradeshow I am going to attend. Wish me luck. Business was skewed a little this week and last by moving to the new auction management software. Will put in place what I learned this week and see how sales go. October 27, 2006 This was both a good and a bad week for my business. The use of HammerTap3 is becoming profitable for me. I have been going through my current products and doing two things. I am finding out where the product is in their life cycle and I am researching keywords that I can use in my auctions. From the research on product life cycle I have found that I have made some poor choices, or better poor timing, on when I have made some of my purchases. I no longer just purchase a product just because it is hot. It has been a very enlightening experience. The second thing, researching keywords has had a very profitable effect. Because of this research, I have been able to increase my ASP and increase my margins and improve my LSR. I have also found out some things about the products that I sell that I did not know, like some functionality that I was not aware of. Now for the bad stuff. I did not find any new vendors but had to remove a vendor from my vendor list. A lesson learned from this is that it is wise to investigate a vendor before purchasing from them, and to periodically check them out. One way to purchase from a trusted vendor would be to join World Wide Brands and choose known trusted vendors. Vendors can also be checkout through D&B, BBB or the Bad Business Bureau.
HammerTap is a different issue. I was using sparingly HammerTap before I started this study. Under utilizing HammerTap you might say. HammerTap is a rich resource and I am learning every week new and better ways of researching information on my products and auctions. HammerTap has become a very useful tool in my toolbox. I have started using new auction management software so that also has had an effect on my business, but I can directly correlate progress in my business to HammerTap. My gross revenue is up over 40% since joining this study, the number of listings that I have has decreased by about 50%. This is partially due to the change over in software but HammerTap has helped me to determine what to cutback on, what to increase and what time of day and week to list. HammerTap has also given insight into what special features and keywords to use. This has increased my margins (on some products by as much as 30%) and decreased my fees. Because I have been able to cut back on the number of auctions I am managing, I have had more time to research product life cycle, new products, and my competition. I look forward to the second half of this study and fully implementing all that I have learned and what I am about to learn. I have found HammerTap to be a base tool that I think is a must in everyone’s toolbox.
On Trending
On Finding New Products On Making the Most on Every Listing On Watching the Competition This study is being conducted by HammerTapTM and Worldwide BrandsTM. Not all qualified applicants will be accepted for participation. |
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