Downsizer shop ideas?

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Downsizer shop ideas?
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jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28118
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Wed Sep 14, 05 8:32 am Post subject:

ken69 wrote:

The strongest element on this site is the forum with it's free tips and hints. As a potential customer, what would I be expected to BUY? Surely downsizing and self sufficiency means spending less. whether in shops or the internet. And spending local reduces environment impact.Or have I got it all wrong.!!

there is certainly a food miles issue with what we do

But whilst reduction is part of the site ethos, so is promoting the idea that ethical suppliers should be encouraged, and by trading together we all become stronger.

RoryD

Joined: 02 Jun 2005
Posts: 692
Location: West Yorkshire

Posted: Wed Sep 14, 05 9:03 am Post subject:

Lots of thoughts, and an embrionic offer;

1. I think that the shop front window is a good one. At this stage we have no real idea of the likely take up of this scheme from our members, so going out and setting up a whole new payment system seems to be getting ahead of ourselves.

2. The thing that will stop us is the online payment mechanism. People wanting to trade on this small scale, will not want to pay large set-up fee's or a monthly charge. Conversely, sending cheques/emails as orders is not a fantastic way to do online business. We need a balance between something that looks professional, and that is cheap and easy to administer.

3. If we had a shop front on downsizer, as has been suggested, then when people clicked on an advert it clicked through to here https://www.saltpepper.co.uk/index.php?cPath=44 . Here, we could set up a mini shop for each individual trader to sell online. This would allow people to use my Worldpay payment system, with no set-up fees, or monthly costs. I'd take the order's, and email them through to the relevant person who would post it all out.

4. Issues with this idea off the top of my head;
a. Yes, its not ideal, but it's cheap and easy to set up, and if it worked, we could always move it out to a seperate site then.
b. I'd be happy to do all of the work involved in taking orders, and creating peoples mini shops, etc
c. People would need to commit to send out good quality product, on time, as its my name that's above the shop.
d. Postage would be an issue. You'd probably need to build in the cost of the postage to the product itself, as how would we manage it if we had an order for Bug's Barmcakes, and Tahir's Toasted Teacakes from the same person?
e. There is an enormous issue with trust here. But if we (as a community) could not overcome it, then who could?
f. I'd take a flat rate/ or fixed % of every sale to pay for the Worldpay transaction charges, and the cost of sending out cheques every month to cover your sales. If you sell nothing, it costs you nothing.

I'll leave the section on my site up for a day or so, then I'll take it down, unless I get any urgent requests to remove it from the downsizer elders- in which case I'll do it immediately.

Any views?

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28118
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Wed Sep 14, 05 9:17 am Post subject:
That is a fantastic offer I for one am inclined to welcome it with open arms If it does take off and become a lot of work, then we would of course do it ourselves, but as a solution for people with a need to sell now, this could be very beneficial.

Jonnyboy

Joined: 29 Oct 2004
Posts: 23956
Location: under some rain.

Posted: Wed Sep 14, 05 9:21 am Post subject:
Thumbs up from me, It's a very generous offer. Many thanks.

ken69

Joined: 17 Jul 2005
Posts: 316
Location: Norfolk

Posted: Wed Sep 14, 05 9:33 am Post subject:
Don't lose the 'nooks and crannies' whatever you do. It's what kept me on the site for that critical first week..(secret gardens, as it were).Money Saving Expert has a lot of those and is now in the top 5000 in the world. Never seen a mentoring system in use on messageboards, you would have thought it obvious to get a new poster over the first hurdles.

joanne

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 7100
Location: Morecambe, Lancashire

Posted: Wed Sep 14, 05 9:40 am Post subject:

Having stayed out of this so far - though been reading the thread with a great deal of interest - Could I suggest we just step back from it a moment and try and clearly define what we are trying to create.

As I see it what we are effectively trying to create here is an online Farmers Market - people bringing their goods to market as and when they have them to sell under the umbrella of the Downsizer site.

I'm not too worried about the issue of small numbers of traders - Lots of Farmers markets started small and built up - Our biggest issue is that many of those traders we are trying to encourage don't have a web presence anyway and are terrified of being online. The concept of it being an online Farmers Market would I think help sell the idea to people.

Rory's idea is a very good one and a very generous offer and one that in order to get something up and running in the short term would be an excellent solution but I do think the tech team should throw some ideas around and see what they can come up with.

I suspect if we do this right - the framework that we build may have an application in lots of different areas. I've got quite a few ideas fermenting in my head already.

The main issue as Rory quite rightly says is always going to be the back end payment system and divving up the postage but this is something that Amazon and Ebay do quite well already and we could look at their billing models as a starting point.

Joanne

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28118
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Wed Sep 14, 05 9:52 am Post subject:

I think on a tech level if we wanted to do it we could, and since we have money in the bank, the startup costs are a lot less daunting to us that they would be to a small trader.

BUT

We are not even an "entity" yet. In all legal senses we are still a part of MarsJupiter LTD, which is not what we want to be if we are talking about setting up shop.

As such the shop issue cuts to the heart of what we want "legally" to be.

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45433
Location: Essex

Posted: Wed Sep 14, 05 9:56 am Post subject:
Lot of good ideas there, I'm a bit too busy to be realistically involved in this but I'd love to see some sort of trading setup on here, so please don't let it die.

cab

Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 32429

Posted: Wed Sep 14, 05 10:00 am Post subject:
Rory, that's a plan with no immediately obvious drawbacks that you haven't already hilighted. I need to mull it over, but it's a superb and generous offer, thank you.

RoryD

Joined: 02 Jun 2005
Posts: 692
Location: West Yorkshire

Posted: Wed Sep 14, 05 10:42 am Post subject:
Some more thoughts; 1. I think Jo is right, its not ideal- but it is a model we could trial on a low risk basis for a while. 2. And that would be my suggestion, to link up with a couple of members and trial it perhaps for a month. If it works, agree some best practice guidelines/ a contract for the arrangement. If not, step back from it and have a rethink- what have we lost?

RoryD

Joined: 02 Jun 2005
Posts: 692
Location: West Yorkshire

Posted: Wed Sep 14, 05 11:11 am Post subject:

Two more things. I really should organise my thoughts better.

1. We've got a piece on our Salt blends (I am told) in Rose Prince's column in the Saturday Telegraph a week on Saturday. Last time we had national coverage, we had a 500% up turn in sales. So if we did want to trial it, then getting something up by a week on Saturday would be good.

2.I'm due to go live with Affiliate Marketing people Paid on Results next week. This means a. My site will be advertised on a network of websites and b. If I make a sale through my site, as a result of someone visiting this banner and clicking through to me, then I pay 13% of the value of that sale.

So 2 things here. Firstly, we need to be thinking that most of the downsizer sales will come from the trading adverts on the front of the Downsizer.net site (see the earlier posts on this, because I agree that this is a great way to do it). Accordingly, unless Jema signs up downsizer.net as an affiliate (which would be mean quite frankly!) the majority of sales would not attract this additional 13% cost.) However, if someone did make a sale through a downsizer shop on my site that originated with an affiliate click on an alternate site, then they would be liable for the 13% too. On the one hand, you get lots of free advertising. On the other, you need to have decent marging on your product, or be prepared to give it up sometimes in return for a higher volume of sale for some of the sales. I'm not trying to put people off- just to be upfront.

If thats not clear say so and I'll have another go at explaining.

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28118
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Wed Sep 14, 05 11:22 am Post subject:
Do you have a link on the affiliate marketing we could look at?

RoryD

Joined: 02 Jun 2005
Posts: 692
Location: West Yorkshire

Posted: Wed Sep 14, 05 11:39 am Post subject:
There is an overview of Affiliate Marketing here. https://www.paidonresults.com/overview.html I don't have my banners up and out anywhere yet, as I'm still in the sign up stage, but hope to go live with the scheme in the next couple of weeks.

Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Wed Sep 14, 05 11:44 am Post subject:

RoryD wrote:

Lots of good ideas. Its late and I'm going to bed, but will contribute more in the morning.

One useful thing would be to get an idea of just who is able/ interested in selling what. Whats the best way of doing this? Emailing
to tradingpost@downsizer.net as per Treac's post? . I've been meaning to do it for ages and never got round to it. Our plans for a downsizer hypermarket might be a little different if we found that we are just selling jam, pigs and free range eggs.

I've just started trying to get a few more traders from the members posting. Adverts have been emailed to the ed or PMed to various people so I thought I'd set up the tradingpost one. It will come to me and Bugs can also see it so that's probably the best thing to do.

I will add a sticky about this with some words when I get a moment and then start bugging the hell out of people who may fancy an advert.

So to get things started, Rory, how's about sending in an advert for the main site? A bit of info, some pictures, links etc?

Would anyone else like to have an advert?

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28118
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Wed Sep 14, 05 11:49 am Post subject:

RoryD wrote:

There is an overview of Affiliate Marketing here.

https://www.paidonresults.com/overview.html

I don't have my banners up and out anywhere yet, as I'm still in the sign up stage, but hope to go live with the scheme in the next couple of weeks.

What i cannot really see in their info is how the system is kept honest. it is one thing tracking cookies, quite another registering that a sale has taken place. This requires a level in integration into either your online shop, or it means you have to use theirs.

I used to run a few affiliate marketing adverts on another site, and I know dman well that I did not get paid for all sales.

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