Hi all!  Taking a break from production on father’s day cuff links to talk a little business.  As most of you know, I recently ran promotions for my shop (jerseymaids) on the daily deal sites for handmade goods: Heartsy and Quite Unique.  After a lot of private requests for information through facebook, Etsy, twitter and beyond, I’ve decided to post about my experiences on these sites to make it more accessible to folks seeking help and answers. With all the skepticism about these groupon-esque sites for handmade out there on the interwebs, I was terrified to have my deals go live and wished I had this kind of positive information before setting everything in motion.  So I hope this is beneficial to all who are considering a deal on Heartsy, Quite Unique, etc.  I’ve done both and have had a great experience with each.  This is a bit wordy, so hang tight!

Heartsy:

Some quick notes for people unfamiliar with how Heartsy works…
*Heartsy, at this time, does NOT keep any of the voucher money – it all goes to you.  The only exception to this is the specific deal that allows Heartsy to charge a bit more for the deal and keep a little off the top.  But this is only if you do not want to offer better deals to the VIP buyers. Update: At this time, Heartsy now has a new system of voucher payments. When the voucher is purchased, they will give you half of the voucher amount that was paid and keep the other half up until the customer uses the voucher or it expires.  If the customer uses their heartsy deal in your shop, you will receive the other half of the voucher, therefore keeping the full amount.  If the customer does NOT use the voucher before it expires, heartsy will keep their half.
*You need 60 “Yes, Definitely” votes in order to be eligible for a deal. By getting their minimum, this does not guarantee you the opportunity to offer a deal – this merely means you move into the next phase where the Heartsy administration reviews your offer and the voting results to decide whether or not it’s a good fit.
*If your deal goes live and a customer does not purchase something that is worth the entire value of the voucher, the remaining balance becomes store credit that is still good until the voucher’s expiration date.  It’s like a gift certificate, so whatever is left-over they are allowed to spend any time before it expires.

I submitted my deal of $9 for $25 store credit in late March. Went through the voting process (when it was still at 30 “Yes Definitely” votes needed to be considered) and wound up with 110 “Yes, Definitely” votes. What was supposed to take 3-11 days to get an answer from them took 2 1/2 weeks. And that was after I contacted them on live chat asking when I’d be hearing from them after 13 days had passed. After that, communication was still few and far between and it took almost another week and a half to settle on my deal. They suggested $19 for $50 store credit for regular heartsy customers, and $19 for $60 store credit for VIP’s (which was just starting to get rolled out at that time.) While it was a steeper and more risky deal than I had wanted, I was tired of waiting so just gave in. I expressed my concerns but their reasoning was that the deal needed to seem “irresistible” to have the best success. So, thinking from a buyer’s perspective and assuming they were probably right, I went with it. That was the most frustrating part of working with Heartsy, I feel the rest went uphill from here. I’m including  this part mainly because I’ve had quite a few people ask me how long it took to get the deal figured out after voting, as they have been waiting a long time like I did. So it’s more just a “be patient, it will happen” disclosure.  Things seem to be moving more smoothly now and people are getting responses quickly, I happened to come in during a huge site overhaul and the introduction the VIP program. So they were a bit busy :)

Now – on to the meaty stuff…

I sold a total of 72 vouchers, 9 of which were for VIP’s. So far, 59 of them have been used. They expire on July 25, so I’m sure my numbers below will change slightly…but it will at least give a semblance of an average.

*Total worth of vouchers sold (72 x $19) – $1,368
*Total sold value in my shop (at full retail prices) – $3,434.62
*Actual income brought in (voucher amount + amount spent over voucher amount) – $1,867.62
*Expenses (paypal fees, etsy fees, shipping and material costs) – $945.06
*Actual Net PROFIT (Income brought in – Expenses) – $925.34

And more important info, just for fun:
*Average amount per shopper spent over voucher – $9.54
*Percentage of new buyers – approximately 80%

From google analytics for April 25th (heartsy deal went live) through April 26th:
*2,160 Visits
*1,844 Absolute Unique Visitors
*16,110 Pageviews

This doesn’t include the additional $125 worth of sales I received from all the activity going on in my shop that day, or the number of customers who received their items quickly and were so happy they came back and purchased more items that same week. It also doesn’t include the increase in my positive feedback, the increased followers on my facebook page, the increased amount of people now receiving my newsletter, etc.  To me, I feel this deal was a GREAT success. I not only made a significant profit (around $1000 profit is stellar to me), but I have also grown my buyer base by another 70+ people (a few of whom have already come back, and many others have contacted me with gushing emails about how they’ll be back for gifts at the holidays) in just a few days. Even if I had broken even or lost a little money, 16,000 pageviews in 2 days is more than I ever got with paid advertising on facebook, blogs, or elsewhere… and I would gladly write it off as advertising costs with the amount of hearts and traffic I got. That alone is worth it to me.

Quite Unique

Quite unique works a bit differently than Heartsy, as there is no voting process in the public.  Everything is entirely up to the Quite Unique administration.  However, they were very communicative and quick to respond, quite helpful and really friendly.  I felt comfortable going into an agreement with them from the very beginning and they run their deals for a few days instead of just one (which is another nice perk.)  There were 2 choices with Quite Unique: I could open up a pop-up shop or do a voucher.

With a pop-up shop, you curate 5-15 of your best selling items to offer to the Quite Unique subscriber list. They say to have seen sales anywhere from $50 to over $1000 depending on the product. They handle the payment processing and send the orders and packing slip over to you via email. You then ship the product and send the tracking numbers back to Quite Unique. They send you payment the same day they receive the tracking numbers. The Quite Unique fee for a pop-up shop is 30% of total revenue.

With a voucher, the process is similar to that of Heartsy.  The subscriber list has the opportunity to purchase a discounted certificate to my shop (I went for a $19 for $40 store credit option) and use it in your shop like a gift certificate.  At the time of my deal, they were not taking any cut out of the money from the vouchers, but handled the payment process. I was just given an update by them that they are now charging $2 per voucher sold and have a new voucher management system that has received rave reviews! (More info can be seen here: http://www.etsy.com/teams/8380/heartsy-help/discuss/7612252/) More adjustments may be made, but time will tell. At the end of each day, I would get a payment automatically deposited in my Paypal account from Quite Unique and a spreadsheet of the voucher numbers, customer name and date of sale for my records.  The average number of vouchers sold at that time was around 15, with the best selling voucher they ever ran topping out at 50 sold, but there was no limit to the amount you could offer.  The voucher is not sent to the customer immediately – it is emailed to them within 24 hours of their purchase.

My deal, $19 for $40 store credit, went live on Thursday May 12 and ran through Monday May 16 in the morning.  I sold a total of 32 vouchers, 19 of which have been used so far.

*Total worth of vouchers sold (32x $19) – $608
*Total sold value in my shop (at full retail prices) – $936.50
*Actual income brought in (voucher amount + amount spent over voucher amount) – $861.50
*Expenses (paypal fees, etsy fees, shipping and material costs) – $314.21
*Actual Net PROFIT (Income brought in – Expenses) – $547.29

And more important info, just for fun:
*Average amount per shopper spent over voucher – $10.27
*Percentage of new buyers – approximately 85%

From google analytics for May 12-16 (duration of Quite Unique deal)
*2,391 Visits
*1,498 Absolute Unique Visitors
*10,740 Pageviews

In my opinion… Another great success!

For anyone who has an upcoming deal, here are a few tips that I found helpful:
*Another etsian I am friends with, Meghan, had this VERY helpful spreadsheet to keep track of heartsy deals. I made a few tweaks to it for myself (which aren’t included in the download), but it’s a good base: www.mediafire.com/?x3ul7j43jgp418o.  She also had a few brilliant blog posts that break down the process of her experience as well, starting here.
*Use the new paypal invoice system to request payments. This will make your life a thousand times easier for keeping track of who has and has not paid, you can easily send reminders if they drag their feet, and it looks much more professional.
*Take at least the day your deal goes live off work, and probably the day after as well. I planned my deal around 2 days I already had off and was able to get 60% of the packages out the day after they ordered. This has helped people recognize how dedicated I am to customer service and making sure they are my top priority.
*These types of deals are not for everyone. Make sure that your shipping prices are accurate and your pricing is done well (a good tip is to figure out how much profit you would make if you cut your price in half, seeing if it’s wholesale-able… if your profit is still at a comfortable level for you, then you are probably in good shape!  If you’d like some advice on helpful pricing equations, please let me know.  I work fluently in both wholesale and retail.)  This might not be beneficial for folks who have a lot of one-of-a-kind pieces or extremely heavy items, but it merely depends on your pricing structure and the deal you offer. Just keep those things in mind.

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I hope this is helpful! If anyone has any questions, please feel free to email me or respond here.

xoxo
Lauren