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Candy Japan April Income Report

candyjapan.com

11–20 of 80 posts

Re: Candy Japan April Income Report

#11
post #10

Anyone tried the same idea but with Asian stationery? There's always been a huge array of crazy stuff when I've browsed stationery sections of department stores in Thailand, China, etc. I'd try it myself, but I think there'd need to be someone on the ground with direct, cheap access sourcing the product. Lightweight, should be cheap to ship, etc.

Crazy stuff at stationery sections? What do you mean exactly?

Re: Candy Japan April Income Report

#12
post #10

Anyone tried the same idea but with Asian stationery? There's always been a huge array of crazy stuff when I've browsed stationery sections of department stores in Thailand, China, etc. I'd try it myself, but I think there'd need to be someone on the ground with direct, cheap access sourcing the product. Lightweight, should be cheap to ship, etc.

Jetpens.com does this but not as a subscription model.

Re: Candy Japan April Income Report

#13
I was surprised not be greeted with high quality photos of examples of past candy. To see any of your product I need to find the 'past candy' link then decide on which unfamiliar product to click on.

Re: Candy Japan April Income Report

#14
post #13

I was surprised not be greeted with high quality photos of examples of past candy. To see any of your product I need to find the 'past candy' link then decide on which unfamiliar product to click on.

Yes, also intuitively to me it would make sense to have such photos, but I found the same thing as Manpacks did (http://mixergy.com/manpacks-ken-johnson-interview/) that showing product photos on the main page lowers conversions. It seems people are in it for the surprise factor.

Re: Candy Japan April Income Report

#15
post #10

Anyone tried the same idea but with Asian stationery? There's always been a huge array of crazy stuff when I've browsed stationery sections of department stores in Thailand, China, etc. I'd try it myself, but I think there'd need to be someone on the ground with direct, cheap access sourcing the product. Lightweight, should be cheap to ship, etc.

Hey cool, that's a great idea for another subscription club I could launch off the current code/customerbase.

Re: Candy Japan April Income Report

#16
$2k per month profit (before tax) is not bad. There are some costs that cannot be avoided per order but imagine as volume grows, so will efficiencies. This model looks like the mens shaver business. Can see this working for any niche - shavers, stationary, fruit, nuts...

How can we see earlier blog posts?.

Re: Candy Japan April Income Report

#17
I'd say you could do some serious work on your site. I have no idea what amazing candy could be sent. Your site is very bland for a site about CANDY. I really like the idea and I think you would totally increase conversion if you actually did some selling of what you're giving (GIANT PICTURES OF CANDY LOOK AT THIS AMAZING CANDY IT COULD BE YOURS TWICE A MONTH). Videos are cool, but I don't see a single beautiful picture of candy on your site.

Also, based on the demographic of people who will want candy from Japan, perhaps toy with the 8-bit nyan-cat-anime-retro geek-style vibe? Cute rainbows and hello kitty and all giant eyes and all that. Perhaps do huge detailed 8-bit renditions OF THE CANDY.

Re: Candy Japan April Income Report

#18

$2k per month profit (before tax) is not bad. There are some costs that cannot be avoided per order but imagine as volume grows, so will efficiencies. This model looks like the mens shaver business. Can see this working for any niche - shavers, stationary, fruit, nuts... How can we see earlier blog posts?.

I started this to learn and to provide some basic source of income in addition to software, so it has worked well for that purpose. It has involved writing more software than I expected, though!

Earlier posts are at http://www.bemmu.com/ with currently no easy way to see only the Candy Japan related things. I was still feeling a bit undecided where to put them, wondering if it's a good idea to expose customers to income-related posts.

Re: Candy Japan April Income Report

#19

I'd say you could do some serious work on your site. I have no idea what amazing candy could be sent. Your site is very bland for a site about CANDY. I really like the idea and I think you would totally increase conversion if you actually did some selling of what you're giving (GIANT PICTURES OF CANDY LOOK AT THIS AMAZING CANDY IT COULD BE YOURS TWICE A MONTH). Videos are cool, but I don't see a single beautiful pict…

Thanks a lot for the feedback. I agree that might be cool, although would need to test it against current. If you know someone who could such a mockup for me, let me know. The current site was just designed by myself, I wanted to do more cute / sweet style design, but couldn't come up with one that I was satisfied with. You definitely have a point here.

Update: added some example pics

Re: Candy Japan April Income Report

#20
post #7
post #2

'What a great subscription based business' is always my very first thought when I read news from Candy Japan. And every time I try to come up with a similar idea matching my region but I don't find any. And these income reports are clever Marketing.

It's true there is marketing benefit from HN. Not just directly, but many bloggers read HN and sometimes feature the service because of that (btw. if you're thinking of doing that, you can reach me@bemmu.com).

For what it's worth I hadn't heard of you guys until this post and I just signed up. I imagine I'm not the only one.
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