Hillary DePiano's Blog, page 37

How discounted & free shipping offers effect consignment selling

Sell Their Stuff:

Any seller, consignment or not, will tell you that shipping is one of the biggest expensesof e-commerce. Which begs the question…

Photo by Aranami

Should your clientpay the shipping costs on their consignment items?

There are several scenarios when it comes to shipping, but no matter how you’re shipping your items, someone’s got to pay for the shipping. Will it be you or your client? Or is there a third option?

Most of us are already charging our buyers directly for the shi...

In a crisis, now it’s Facebook before fight or flight

I think I good test if you’re a millennial is, if a bear tries to get into your house, is your first reaction to scream and protect your toddler or take a selfie with it?

I chose the first and my friends on social media and off made fun of me which I think says a lot more about them than it does about me.

To recap, the toddler and I were just finishing up lunch on Tuesday when I heard a tap on our patio door behind me and turned to discover a HUGE FREAKING BEAR up against the glass. I screame...

Added some simple preferences to my newsletter. Here’s how to set them…

Listen, I’m the first to admit that I have no idea what I’m doing half the time. Maybe more than that.

I finally created a mailing list after all these years and then sat on it for a long while because I didn’t know what to send to it. Lord knows I don’t need more work and writing a newsletter on top of everything else I do did not seem appealing or useful.But then I discovered that MailChimp let me create an automatic campaign that was a digest of my blog posts and I was very excited. I alre...

40% off my vampire Santa Claus play, Polar Twilight, for a limited time

Every time I talk about this one on social media, people are always saying things like, “I MUST read that!” and now’s your chance because Playscripts has a special discount right now going on that only applies to holiday plays like Polar Twilight. To take advantage, just visit the play’s page on Playscripts (where you can also read all but the last few pages of the script for free if you want to know what you’re in for before committing), order scripts and then input the promo code HH15 at ch...

There’s someone out there who just loves what you’ve got for sale. Zero in on them!

It’s a rookie mistake to think that everyone in the world would love what you’ve got to sell. It’s always better to narrow your focus down to a few ideal customer groups than to waste your time and money trying to water your message down to appeal to everyone.

Identify your ideal customers

There’s someone out there who just loves what you’ve got for sale, and it’s time to zero in on them.

Here’s what to do:

Let’s start with your current customers. Who are they? Write up everything you know a...

Should the consignment seller cover all selling fees or pass them onto the client?

Sell Their Stuff:

Who pays the selling and payment processing fees on a consignmentsale?

No matter where you sell, most marketplaces and platforms charge fees per sale, and you’ll be paying those fees on your clients’ items. In the same way, every time you sell anything, you’ll end up paying your credit card processor transaction fees on that payment. While these fees are usually small, they can add up, especially as your sales volume increases.

Let’s say you just sold a client’s item on eBay...

Analytics & buyer tracking are the key to focusing your selling efforts

Who Even if you aren’t selling as much as you’d like right now, you’re selling something. Who’s buying your items now? The more you know about them, the more effectively you can work on satisfying them so they’ll help you increase sales. Everything you’d love to know about your buyers, from exactly who they are to the other websites they frequent and the keywords they used to find your site, is available to you. It’s time to start using that information to tailor what you’re doing and make su...

Make it easier to add a new habit by fitting it into the life you’re already living

There’s something right now that you want to be doing but you can’t seem to fit it into your life. Maybe it’s more writing time or maybe it’s something else but, whatever it is, the secret to forcing a new habit into your life is to line it up with what you’re already doing instead of trying to completely change your life around the new thing.

Let’s use exercise as a simple example. I have a real insomnia problem and regular physical activity helps mitigate it. But making exercise a regular h...

ConnectUp lets you organize & market to contacts across platforms & social networks

Have you heard about ConnectUp, the new service that helps you organize and maintain your contacts across a variety of platforms and social networks? Imagine your Outlook and Facebook contacts working in harmony, your LinkedIn connections right alongside your Google friends.There’s also some great marketing potential as ConnectUp lets you create groups, personalizedtemplates and targeted messagesto segments of your network that I knew my fellow sellers and authors would be interested in learn...

Who pays for what when selling for others on consignment?

Sell Their Stuff:

Distributing selling fees and shipping expenses

Once you have an idea of how you’ll profit from your service, you’ll want to take into account the fees and other costs associated with selling the item. Will your business take on all of these costs or will some of these be passed on to the buyers? It’s not as simple a question as it first seems.

Every cost your business covers is an additional feature to attract clients to your service but also another expense that leeches fr...