Earlier quoted context omitted.
http://member.ly/ (no affiliation)
I'm a designer at Memberly — this is precisely what we do. If anyone has any questions/interest, feel free to contact me (email in profile)!
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Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy
71–80 of 131 posts
Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know how to navigate the regulations to get a bulk amount of edible product into the US. Any ideas?
"Are you a small business with questions about your FDA-regulated product? Or, do you wonder if your product needs to be approved by the FDA? Contact us!" http://www.fda.gov/ForIndustry/SmallBusinessAssistance/Small...
I sent this question to the mentioned e-mail address industry@fda.gov last August, but never got a response. Retrying.
Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, that could be useful and I could consider switching to such a service if it was available. I would worry though about giving total control over my subscribers to some outer service that might hike up their prices suddenly. It would be nice though if someone else dealt with all the different payment buttons, subscription management and just wired me a lump sum monthly and sent the PDF for address labels that I ne…
Do you have any more options to reduce shipping costs? If its your largest expense, you can do more profit with less customers.
I could use a cheaper sending option and that would really boost the profit. That would introduce an initial delay for the subscription start, but of course after that it would not be noticeable for the subscriber.
One time I was experimenting with sending first package using airmail and subsequent packages simultaneously using the cheaper shipping option that was supposed to be 2 weeks slower. But in reality the slower one arrived first and the faster one a day later, leaving subscribers confused.
Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
http://member.ly/ (no affiliation)
I'm a designer at Memberly — this is precisely what we do. If anyone has any questions/interest, feel free to contact me (email in profile)!
On your website there are five subscription services listed. Is there any way to browse for more?
Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, that's been on my mind, especially since I keep having candy left over because there is a difference between the bulk amounts I buy (which have to be divisible by 60 generally) and the amount of subscribers I have. I have to be careful though, since it does actually cost a bit to send a package. Another thing I considered was starting some page similar to http://duckduckgo.com/spread.html and reward the most hel…
What kind of marketing are you doing to increase subscribers? Do you send out press releases to bloggers, magazines and news sites?
Thanks for the email template, I plan on using it as a base for reaching out to bloggers. Is there something that can help with this, besides hiring an expensive PR agency?
I mean finding bloggers, contacting them with personally crafted messages and keeping in touch with them. I'm terrible at following up on emails when I happen to be in the coding zone.
Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have any more options to reduce shipping costs? If its your largest expense, you can do more profit with less customers.
I could use a cheaper sending option and that would really boost the profit. That would introduce an initial delay for the subscription start, but of course after that it would not be noticeable for the subscriber. One time I was experimenting with sending first package using airmail and subsequent packages simultaneously using the cheaper shipping option that was supposed to be 2 weeks slower. But in reality the slo…
Try switching a quarter of your subscribers to it and see what the reaction is. If its not bad, move all of them over.
Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy
#77On the traffic and subscribers front, I'd recommend reading everything that patio11 has written about Bingo Card Creator: http://www.kalzumeus.com/
I'm a big fan of patio11, read his posts and even went to see his talk in Osaka. The idea of scalable content creation was interesting and I have been thinking about how to apply it here. I'm starting by having individual pages for each candy, for example http://www.candyjapan.com/chelsea-butter-scotch Not sure if that will really be applicable to this, though. I should go back and re-read his posts.
Great start. You probably have too little content -- consensus says 300 - 1,000 words.
Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks! Perhaps other countries could be added and there could also be an overall subscription to get from any country, it's a good idea. I do feel I should get this working well for Japan before expanding.
Also, the price is a bit high for candy... have you tried a one envelope a month subscription?
I second the once a month idea, you'd have me as a buyer.
Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy
#79On the traffic and subscribers front, I'd recommend reading everything that patio11 has written about Bingo Card Creator: http://www.kalzumeus.com/
I'm a big fan of patio11, read his posts and even went to see his talk in Osaka. The idea of scalable content creation was interesting and I have been thinking about how to apply it here. I'm starting by having individual pages for each candy, for example http://www.candyjapan.com/chelsea-butter-scotch Not sure if that will really be applicable to this, though. I should go back and re-read his posts.
I'd say a good goal would be to rank #1 for long tail searches like "where can I buy FOO_CANDY in the US?" for the top 50 best selling Japanese candies.
Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a designer at Memberly — this is precisely what we do. If anyone has any questions/interest, feel free to contact me (email in profile)!
On your website there are five subscription services listed. Is there any way to browse for more?
Not yet, we're focused on the provider workflow side of hte product at the moment. The discovery end will come later, when we have more momentum. We're only working with providers that drive their own traffic right now.