I’ve managed to roll into the second quarter without selling anything so it’s time to get serious about making a profit from the model horses—and that means getting serious about marketing!
The Model Horse Sales Pages (MH$P) website is the default sales/listing arena for the model horse hobby. No matter where or how people are selling, they post an ad here. The galleries contain everything from eBay auctions to direct sales, making MH$P one of the first places buyers visit.
This is assuming my potential customers are in the hobby (a good portion of them aren’t), but I have to start somewhere, so avast!
Listing Stablemates
Right now the Stablemate/Chips gallery (plastics) has 341 listings and there’s a better than good chance that whatever I list will be bumped off the first page before the day is over (sometimes within minutes). I’ve been listing horses in 2 month rotations, but I need to get my butt in gear and kick that up to one horse a day.
Listing Micro Minis
The Micro Mini gallery (plastics) on the other hand has 8 listings and is pretty much a wasteland. This means that any of the Mini Whinnies that I finish and list will remain on the first page indefinitely unless something changes. The Artist’s Resins is even worse off at 5… so I’d better get working on those Maggie’s micro WiPs!
Rotation Options
There are four duration options for a MH$P listing: 1, 2, 4 and 8 week rotations.
This means in order to list a horse a day I would need 7, 14, 28 or 32 horses.
Right now I only have one finished micro mini, so I’m going to move her to a weekly rotation. It might be a smidge of overkill since her gallery doesn’t change much, but at least it will pop her to the top of the list.
- Gesundheit
- —
- —
- —
- —
- —
- —
I have seven finished Stablemates on Etsy now and another four horses (plus one misplaced foal ((darnit))) in the wings, so I can move to a two week rotation on the Stablemates. As I finish and list more horses I’ll have to decide if I want to take the plunge a move to the four week cycle and have more empty days, or if I want to double-up on my daily postings. *ponders*
- Thingamapony
- Midnight Rose
- Little Miss Margins
- Money to Burn
- D’Lembrança
- Feuertänzer – SOLD!
- Poptop
- Nocte Rex – SOLD!
- Suicide Kings
- Ha’penny
- Frost on the Vine
- Cloudburst (MiA)
- —
- —
Commission Slot Listings
Starting this month I am also going to start listing the open commission slots as well as donations slots (for the NaNoWriMo fundraisers). While this might not drum up business as of yet, I figure it will another way to grab some attention.
I’m going to put each of these on a monthly rotation so that each slot comes up once.
- Custom Stablemate Listing – No Pattern
- Custom Stablemate Listing – Pattern
- Custom Stablemate Listing – Doodle Pony
- Custom Stablemate Listing – Resculpting
- Custom Micro Mini Listing (plastics)
- Custom Micro Mini Listing (artist resins)
- Donation Slot Listing (Stablemates)