| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| Rob R |
Would you buy River Cottage products from Rosewood Farms?As I have some of my favourite recipes from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on our site, I wondered if you would think it a good idea to stock the books or other media/products of the River Cottage brand in the Rosewood Farms shop? |
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| jema |
Nothing wrong with the products, I just don't see you would make consistant sales from there. | ||||
| Treacodactyl |
Do you know if people who visit you farm shop would already have the items and can you compete with Amazon prices for the books/CDs?
For a minute I thought you were going to sell a HFW cook-in-sauce. 
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| Rob R |
Not with amazon on price (who can??), although certain items I could, if I wanted to. Yes, I do get quite a few people asking about recipes who don't have the books though, that's what made me ask. And no, all my sauces are exclusively Bracken Hill 
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| Jonnyboy |
Is there an affiliate programme with amazon where if you provide links to their site and people buy that way, you get commission?
Otherwise I wouldn't bother, but if you do, why restrict it to HFW, you could offer useful small holders and recipe books? |
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| Milo |
Hey, Rob, that's a tricky one for me........... 
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| Penny Outskirts |
That's a good idea, better IMHO than just doing HFW. |
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| nettie |
I can't see that you would make much out of it....why not put together your own recipe book for your own (and your suppliers') goodies? I bet they'd have a few recipes to give you in the name of shifting a few more of their wares. A lot more work but I bet you'd shift a few 
We did a charity cookbook last year on another site that I frequent, people emailed in their faves and the book was produced cheaply (spiral bound) and sold for a fiver. I bet if you did something similar and gave a % to charity you'd make a few bob (and I'd be happy to volunteer some recipes!) |
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| Rob R |
Was thinking about something like that, a little further down the line maybe. I wouldn't restrict it to just HFW, but as my favourite meat recipes come from him, it was a fairly logical place to start. (I'd also put my friend's books on here too, but they aren't food as such, just smallholding stories, but only if I decided books/other media were a good idea at all). Anyone on here written anything? And Milo- of course, I wouldn't expect you to buy the meat book at all 
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| Rob R |
I wouldn't be able to do that- part of the copyright permissions I have for publishing anything by HFW online is a link to rivercottage.net (and I think one to Amazon would infringe that). |
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| Sarah D |
How about stocking books etc local to Yorkshire - cookery books, gardening, local smallholding, etc. | ||||
| bagpuss |
I don't think it would You can sign up with amazon and get like 0.01% or some ridiculously small sum of any sale which comes through your site. This is just in effect amazon paying for advertising rather than anything else which may be copyrightable |
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| RoryD |
Can I ask what sort of traffic you are getting to the site? Any type of cross selling/ affiliate marketing has a massive relationship with volume. If you are at 50 unique visits a day, the chances of enticing a customer into a bit of cross selling are significantly lower than if you have 2,3,400 a day. Might sound obvious, but I'd hate you to invest in stock which you'll struggle to shift.
If you are trying to lever more out of the site, then JB's affiliate idea is interesting. Oddbins for example do 5% of order value through their affiliate scheme, which when you consider average order is probably £50 is probably worth having. |
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| sean |
Average order through the Oddbins website is over £100. | ||||
| Rob R |
No, I don't think I explained it clearly enough- I currently have permission to use extracts from the River Cottage books on my site. I am pretty sure that offering a link to another website for sales of these books would put me in breech of my copyright permissions, so I wouldn't be able to publish the recipes, which in turn would make the whole idea of offering a link to a sales website completely pointless (as I wouldn't be recommending the recipes on the site). | ||||
| RoryD |
Are you sure you'd be in breach of copyrite? Having an option to buy the books through Amazon/someone with an affiliate scheme I don't think would breach your cr. Someone shout for Bugs, she'll know.
Another way might be to try to get stock on sale or return. I think what I'm worried about is you carrying lots of stock that you can't shift. "Bugs oh BUUGGSSS" |
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| Rob R |
As I understand it I have reproduced copyrighted material from River Cottage books on my site, for which I needed the owner's (Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's) permission. I have been granted permission to use recipes from the books on the condition that I link back to his site. I think that I might have that permission removed should I start linking to cut-price book retailers. |
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| RoryD |
aaah I see. But the permissions would not be affected if you were to try to sell the books yourself? | ||||
| Rob R |
No, that's right.
I used to sell River Cottage books & DVDs on ebay, the DVD's were always better sellers, but there were high & low periods with all such media items. |
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| Bugs |
Me sir, I know noooothing, we just publish and hope on this site  But we ask nicely and say thank you first. My only comment on the copyright is that the only opinion worth having is that of the people with the money, so it is worth checking with whoever gave you the permission from River Cottage Enterprises or whatever they are called these days.
Regarding whether they would sell; I personally would be unlikely to buy them from you unless the price wasn't too far off what I could get elsewhere. Yep, that's right, I'm an evil capitalist tart, you can snip off my 2star Downsizer badge now if you like However I do really like the idea of something alternative that you can't get elsewhere; local recipes, your own recipes/comments, that kind of thing. Have you seen Sally's article on self-publishing?
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| Blue Sky |
I used to have all the amazon associates stuff on some of my websites when I was in the UK. (search boxes, banner adds etc.) For what you actually make out of it I would say that it's not worth bothering. Unless that is, you think that you will sell a heck of alot of books etc. One of my (redundant) websites still has the banners: http://homepage.virgin.net/s.heslop/bones/bones.htm More info on the amazon associates scheme here: http://associates.amazon.co.uk/gp/associates/join/main.html/026-2343925-1218028 |
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| Rob R |
Thanks for all the replies on this subject guys. As you may have seen I ended up stocking the River Cottage DVDs & will add some books to that in time. I can't compete on price with the likes of Amazon (not even River Cottage can do that), but we do have the USP that all stock (apart from Beyond River Cottage) is signed and anyone buying from me knows that the extra you pay over Amazon is going to support the small scale producer/retailer who is supporting the local economy (ie me). |