SUBMITTED: Friday, August 12, 2005
POSTED: Friday, August 12, 2005
I was an SMC member for over a year before I did anything with it. As stated by others, the market is saturated with SMC "crap". I couldn't figure out how in the world to sell the stuff, and just let it sit for a while. I figured it would be useful for giftgiving seasons. Members get really good prices which are beneficial if you have a lot of collectors in the family.
I did try to sell on Ebay. I only listed a few items, and sold one. I was shocked by that, never expected to sell anything. Had to sell it so low though that I barely covered the expenses of the listings that didn't sell. Gave it a try. Ebay was just not for me.
I took the catalog to work (hair salon), and everyone looked through it, and liked a lot of the items. Nobody bought anything though even with my 20% discount offer. Catalog sales are not for me.
I make candles that I'm selling in a flea market. I would never pre-purchase anything from SMC and try to resell it there. So, selling the products in the flea market is out. On top of that, there are others that also sell the stuff. They know I have a membership, I display the catalog, but I don't stock the merchandise. If someone wants to order, they are free to, but I'm not prepaying for the stuff. SMC gives me that choice, and I take it. One of the other vendors is interested in buying from me so that he can resell. Since I paid my membership in full, I get an extra 5% discount off member cost, and can undercut the other members who sell in the flea market. So, although I won't make much, I'll make a few dollars for doing nothing more than letting someone take the catalog home, give me an order and money, and keying in a few numbers on the SMC website. It's worth it to me.
I would never even think of mail order. That's just outrageously stupid. You spend $3 per catalog, then pay for postage so that 99/100 of the catalogs will be thrown in the trash without being opened, and the one order you do get will be for $50.00. Come on. Nobody orders by mail. We have the world wide web at our disposal. Anything in a catalog can be found online for cheaper, doesn't cost 37 cents to mail, and doesn't require a person to find a pen to write the order down. Mail order is a definite no for me.
No money for a gift shop.
No money for an eCommerce Website. What a ripoff that is anyway. Anyone who pays for their websites is crazy, and to pay $300 a year for website submission is even crazier, if you don't also get website optimization, but especially considering you can do it yourself for free in as little as a couple of hours. You don't need to resubmit every year. Once it's there, as long as your website continues to exist, it will stay in the search engines, unless it is so horrible that it doesn't get recognized, in which case, the only way to get search engine placement is to pay for it. At least then you would get guaranteed rankings.
Anyway, I did nothing with it for a long time because I just couldn't figure out what to do with it. The things I tried didn't work.
SMC products are not going to make anyone rich. Anyone who was destined to get rich from it has already done so, and we are now left with scraps. There is too much saturation. The products aren't cheap enough to effectively compete with one another.
But you can make a little something with SMC products. There is a trick.
Don't attract people to SMC merchandise. Attract them to something else, and let that something else attract them to the merchandise.
I know this is long. But there is a point to be made here. First a story to set the mood.
As I said, I make candles, and sell them at a flea market. We just got a new vendor who makes quilts, and decided to sell her quilts at the flea market. I just moved to Michigan and I'm still settling in, so I haven't gone any further than the flea market with the candles. I need to market them everywhere I can in order to really make any money from them, I just don't have time. Well, the quilt maker came in and saw my candles, and told me of a lady who went to a "bologne fest" and sold candles. The quilt maker told me that lady sold the hell out of her candles, and she couldn't believe it. She told me I really need to get into the craft show arena because there is almost no competition and people buy them like crazy. Well, unfortunately, I'm only one person. I can't be at the flea market, and the craft show at the same time. She, on the other hand, can be at the craft show, and have her sister watch the flea market booth. So, she asked me to make up a lot of candles, and send them with her to sell at the craft show. She wants to sell them for free, and just return the leftover inventory and an envelope with the proceeds to me. I offered to pay her a percentage of the sales. She said no. She wants to take my candles because they attract people. She wants my candles because they will attract people to her quilts. She is paying for the craft show booth. She is going to put the time and effort into selling the products. She wants nothing from me except the ability to use my candles to attract people to her quilts.
Hopefully, this starts to make sense. Candles are more attractive than quilts, because they are cheap, smell good, and are a great impulse product. Quilts are more expensive, most everyone already has bedding, and is usually a planned purchase, so people walk right on by without even getting information so that when they do need a quilt, they know who to call.
How does this relate to SMC you ask. Here goes.
As I said, I didn't do anything with SMC for over a year because I couldn't figure out how to beat the competition without losing money. But I refused to go back to work for someone else. I was meant to run my own life, not have someone else run it for me.
I found my niche. I make candles. I make money doing it. But I actually make more money selling SMC and do less work than making candles. After a while of making candles and selling them to friends and family, I created a website, Especially Candles. It sucked, but it existed.
I got a copy of Frontpage 2003 (free from a relative) and started with a real crappy preset theme, and a few webpages with candles. I used paypal as my gateway and merchant since I already had a business account from previous Ebay sales (haircare products). It took six months of hard work, learning code, and website optimization to get the site together, and get it found on the search engines. I decided to put the SMC candleholders into the website for the sole purpose of adding pages and content so that it would be considered "more important", and get higher rankings. Once it hit the top 10 rankings for my keywords, I started getting orders for the SMC candle holders that I sell on my "handmade candle" website. I make more money from Google advertisements and SMC candleholders/oil warmers than I do my candles. I am just fine with that. It's a lot easier to get paid for someone to click on an ad to another candlemakers site, than it is to make the candles myself. It's a lot easier to collect payment for an order, and use a portion of that payment to pay for the products and have them shipped than it is to keep candle supplies on hand, and make candles.
My costs:
$350 for the membership + $29.95 per year renewal.
$5.50 a month for my website hosting (first month was free, and domain name was free, and I own it since I've been with the same hosting provider for a year.)
My website builder was free for me.
My gateway/merchant account and shopping cart were free. I now have a shopping cart that i pay $229 a year for but I still use paypal as my merchant/gateway.
I've made $600 from SMC this year (after cost of shipping and my product cost, and have no stale inventory to deal with.)
I've made just under $600 from my advertising space.
I've lost money on my candles because I had to prepurchase supplies in bulk, and haven't made all the costs back yet. (Fortunately my husband makes enough money for me to afford this.)
I spent about 60 hours altogether adding the SMC products to my website, and about 5 hours total dealing with the orders.
Now that my website is in place, and has top rankings in the search engines, I spend about 8 hours every three months updating the products/prices/photos/availability.
The sales increase a little bit every month, with each new thing I do to the site. Work gets easier, payoff gets bigger. Can you beat that?
Other than that, I do nothing but accept and fill orders.
I have never paid for internet advertising.
I have never purchased catalogs or brochures.
I have never paid for shipping. My customers pay for it.
I have never touched an SMC product. I have never stocked SMC products. I have never prepaid for SMC products.
I have had two broken products, and SMC has rapidly replaced the products with no problems at all. Every time I have called SMC I have had to wait forever to get someone on the phone, but I have always spoken with an English speaking CSR, and have always been treated with respect.
SMC is not a money maker. It is a supplement. I wouldn't make anything if I relied solely on SMC, but I'd have to pull out of candlemaking if I didn't sell SMC, because I just wouldn't be able to afford the supplies.
Since I sell candles, and SMC, and advertising space, and since I work offline in flea markets, and I have others willing to pay my expenses, and peddle my products for me, I make money.
My suggestion is to never use eCommerce as your website builder/hoster/merchant/gateway provider. They are a ripoff. But SMC products, and the membership, and all that jazz is useful insofar as it can be, all things considered.
Because I don't have to carry inventory, or prepurchase the products, all my SMC profits are profits, and I can use them and my advertising space to absorb the cost of in stock candle inventory/supplies. It is useful, and the membership fee was money well spent in my opinion. It has paid for itself and for my "real business", and it is still growing, which makes things better.
My suggestion to others who are not sure whether or not to get an SMC membership. Find an SMC member, and become a "wholesaler" for that member. You won't get member prices (just a little more), but you will be able to get the merchandising material, and you will be able to get an idea of how the business will work for you. You may have to pay for the initial materials, but not near as much as the SMC membership. You can look through the catalogs, purchase the products, and try to market them. If things work, then you can get a membership (more benefits than wholesaling through a member). If they don't work, you didn't lose $350. As stated by someone else, just do a search for "world of products". contact the webmaster of those sites, and see what you can work out.
Once you get an idea, find a way to market the products. The most important suggestion I can make is find a niche, and find a way to incorporate SMC into that niche. Don't try to sell SMC products all on their own. You'll have to sell for pennies above cost to make it work.
Personally, I sell the products for full suggested retail, and the customers pay the shipping costs. I do offer a volume discount, and I absorb some of the shipping cost with larger orders. But I make money off every order.
I can do this because I focus on one product. People aren't comparing my "SMC prices" to other "SMC prices". They are comparing my candleholder prices to other candleholder prices. They are searching for candles and candleholders, not "gifts" not "collectibles". I'm optimized for candle related keywords, and my competition is not nearly as high as the competition of someone trying to sell only the entire line of SMC products and nothing else.
Find a niche, and incorporate. Give it a test drive.