Running a shop

Also, I am going to explain how to sell items for a profit, how to market, what to buy, and how to make your shop look good. Not how to restock. We have a already restocking guide for that. Make sure your shop is a good size (if you're over size 4 your perfectly fine). Personally, I make roughly 90% of my income from my shop and the rest from the lovely stock market.

Shop Graphics and description
Before we get into pricing and all of that, it's important that you decide how to make your shop look good. A lot of people automatically run off to get the next best shop layout and the music code for their favorite song but this is NOT what you should do. Firstly, never put music in your shop. It takes forever to load, and it will be quite hard to find a song that is generally accepted. Even if you put in an old hit like "we will rock you", it will still be a pain to many of your customers since they might be trying to multi-task and is already listening to something else.

Shop layouts are only advisable if they load extremely fast and are a light background color, otherwise shoppers won't be able to see the prices without highlighting the text which makes them feel like you're trying to rip them off. Your shop should, however, have a blog because... well... its almost "n00bish" nowadays not to have a blog in your shop. Nothing that takes forever to load though.

Now for the text in your shop. Posting about how you're saving up for a lab ray is not that interesting. Generally, no one is going to care that you are saving for the lab ray. Also, the phrase "welcome to my shop!" is extremely overused and generally gets on the nerves of people and just reflects your lack of creativity. Try a story, roleplay or something that interests people. Make it original and interesting.

Basically, when you think about it, why do you visit the shops of other people? Because they have a cool shop layout? I hope not. Chances are you visit because you need a certain item and their shop happens to be the cheapest. That brings us to my next point - attracting visitors

Customers and prices
The first, and simplest way of getting more customers is to stock more items. Also, stock a diversity of items. There is absolutely no point whatsoever in choosing a theme - people are not going to come to your shop because of your theme. I can only repeat myself in saying that they will come to your shop because you happen to stock an item that they nee, not because of your shop layout or because you have a certain theme. It is very rare that a person will buy 2 different items from your shop unless your items are extremely underpriced. This is because most Neopians just search the Shop Wizard for the cheapest items, they don't go looking in certain shops. Therefore, your product is what will make you popular.

A normal restock in my shop of 30 or 40 items is usually sold out within 10 minutes. If not, I re-check the price and make sure it's cheap. Always ensure that your price is 3np under average. Also, never make it a "clean" number such as 2,000 NP. Go for 1994 NP instead. The 6 neopoints are next to nothing and you will sell your items a lot faster. Restock whenever you have enough items to be worth the bother (I actually like to restock at 10 items already because that gives me the money to buy more items to restock with). Don't feel pressured to restock at a certain time (some people like to restock on the hour or whatever but there's just no point to that). Restock when you want, how much you want and you'll be fine.

By having small "10 minute" restocks you should not feel pressured to increase your shop size. Once you can stock 50 items there is no reason out there why you would need a bigger shop. I usually can't buy items fast enough to make up for the spaces I gain in my shop from the sold items. Hence my shop is empty 80% of the time while I still make an enormous profit. Shop sizes are a waste of money if you don't plan on haveing one of those enormous, overpriced shops that no one likes.

Of course, some items are easier to sell than others. You will be able to get rid of very popular items such as Petpets, Codestones, Faeries, Paintbrushes, Lay Ray maps ect very fast. The more difficult items are things such as painted petpets, petpetpetps, expensive plushies ect. However, patience is the key - make sure your items is the cheapest on the wizard and recheck this every hour or so. Even hard to sell items are usually sold within a day or two if your price is right. Do not make your prices ridicullously low - you're cutting away your own profit and there is no reason to do that.

Afterword
I hope this guide has helped you in some way or another. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions feel free to e-mail me at Kathrin433@yahoo.com. I'd absolutely love to hear from you :) It would help a ton to have your feedback. Also, please note that this guide is writen for the average neopian, hence somebody who runs a small cheap shop at the side while enjoying the rest of neopia. For the serious shop owner, a bigger shop with more expensive items is, of course, a possibility. I, for one, just like to see my cash on my hand fast. If you have time, you can wait several days for your products to be bought.

~Kathrin