Coupons

Everybody loves coupons, especially on the Internet. I can't tell you how many times I go to check out on an Internet shopping site and I see a little box that says, "Enter Coupon Code" and I immediately ask the Google and it politely responds with a relavent Coupon Code thus saving me some $. I've looked into how to add coupon(s) code(s) to my own site and Paypal (my payment Pimp), has been promising coupon code like functionality for payment processing at least 3+ years, but has yet to deliver. So...it leaves people such as myself, the option of either going out and using a 3rd party shopping cart application which does support coupons, or rolling my own. I opted for the latter. So...if and when I ever finish the 115 boards currently in the work queue, select boards will have a little Coupon Code box next to the "Add Item to Cart" button. I will offer the coupon code as some type of certificate towards future purchases for anyone buying a board, once I start completing the current set of boards and offering them for sale. And for those of you who happen to be reading this, I will reveal one of the 3 coupon codes now. You can probably guess the other 2! :-> The code is "envmero-10" which will give 10% off the price of selected boards (i.e. those boards with a coupon code box next to the "Add to Cart" button). The other 2 coupon codes will be for 20% off and 30% off. *** REMEMBER - you have to enter the coupon code, click the "APPLY COUPON" Button AND then add the item to the cart. When you go to checkout via Paypal, the discount should be reflected in the checkout price (or view cart). The coupon will only apply to select boards.

Have Cribbage Board Will Travel and Saving $ on Supplies

Now that I've seemed to reached the Saturation Point of selling templates on ebay, I am focusing my attention on back on drilling cribbage boards. I'm about 1/2 way through drilling the 100+ boards currently in the work queue. Some of the smaller boards which would have been relegated to the classic 2 pass, 2 street, no continuous track layout, have instead gotten a new continuous layout. I'm calling this new drill pattern a 2 or 3 player continuous track layout in a convenient travel size.

I actually got the idea to do a layout like this about a year or so ago when someone emailed me wanting a continuous track template layout for a board length of 12" or less. At the time I couldn't think of a way to do it, but recently, when thinking about new template layouts, I remembered the request and came up with the layout. The 2 player size length is actually less than 12". It's 10" long and about 3" wide. The 3 player travel size board is 10" long about 4" wide.

There seems to be a consistent pattern to supplies and running out of supplies. I have 5 items (not counting wood), that I have to restock from time to time. These include packaging tape, bubble wrap, complimentary frig magnets, template mounting screws and plastic cleaner/glazer. I hate running out, so I keep a look out for ways to save $ and stock up at the same time. Costco recently had a sale on packaging tape, so I stocked up on that. VistaPrint.com constantly wants to give me free magnets (I just pay a nominal shipping fee), so I stock up on those. I bought 2000 mounting screws from McFeely's, so I'm good with those for the next 200+ templates. To tackle the running low on the plastic glazer/cleaner problem, I'm going to pick up a gallon of the stuff next I'm at Tap Plastics. Finally, that leaves bubble wrap. Last time I bought it, I got a good deal on 4 100 ft rolls at ebay. And its almost time to buy some more.

19 Templates & Counting off to 29

So having settled on 19 template designs, I've mapped out the last 10 designs - which will give me a total of 29 template designs. It wasn't that hard to come up with another 10 designs. I actually came up with more than 10 designs, so I had to pare it down. The last 10 template designs will be as follows:

1) 2 Player CT Tournament Style - with half circles - 180 Degree curve every 10 points - kind of like a Sin Wave.
2) 3 Player CT Smaller/Compact Oval Design - similar to the existing oval design, but more compact
3) 3 Player CT Rectangle with an "S" Curve track orientable in either direction
4) 3 Player CT Square
5) 3 Player CT Triangle
6) 3 Player CT Star
7) 3 Player CT Full Circle - right now the circle template is a half template, that you flip to come full circle - assuming I get the plastic in this larger size
8) 3 Player CT Quasi Circle
9) 3 Player Spiral - Spiral inward - not outward
10) 3 Player CT - Board in the shape of a 29!

Ebay and the Mafia - they both skim 20% off the top

2009 marks ten years that I have been a buyer and seller on ebay. I like ebay for buying things, not so much for selling. I don't sell crib/chess boards on Ebay anymore. I prefer etsy.com for selling crib/chess boards as a supplemental selling channel to my website. By far, my biggest complaint about selling on Ebay are the high fees (as a percentage of the item sold). For me, it's approximately 20% of the cost of the item sold. (Insertion Fee + Final Value Fee (12%) + Paypal processing Fee (%6)). Ebay owns paypal.com BTW, so it's all going into ebay's pocket. In the end it adds up to about 20%. Ouch! So why bother? If you have something to sell on the Internet, ebay is still a viable way to sell it, despite the ridiculously high fees. That said, I'm testing the waters of selling crib templates on ebay. I've sold a lot of templates off the website, but I thought I'd test the ebay waters to see what kind of response I get.

Holiday Doldrums - And Looking to New Year

My tracking software I use to show unique hits per day on the website, showed a high traffic peak in Early December, and then it tapered off for the rest of the month. Since I had planned to have 100+ new boards ready in time for the Holidays (and I didn't), I figured I would just settle in and wait for the next Holiday Season. January rolled in and order for Templates picked up quite a bit. So...right now I offer 19 different style of templates with plans for 10 more styles of templates. Templates have proven to be an interesting little side business. Obviously, a lot less time and effort goes into making a template than a board. Whereas I spend 2-4 hours on a given board, I typically spend 15 minutes (or less) to drill a template and about 15 minutes cleaning, packaging and shipping the template. But, given the strong sales of templates, it's pretty clear people enjoy making their own cribbage boards. Sales seemed to peak in Mid January when I shipped 10 templates in one week. I think offering a discount on shipping of multiple templates help encourage people to buy more than one template.

Looking into the new year, I should be able to finish all the items that are in my work queue at the moment. As always, I think the boards I'm working on now and better than boards I've done in the past - which is the way it should be. I'm trying to come up with a new and clever way to sell more boards - maybe offer a free cribbage template, if you buy a cribbage board. :-> Etsy is definitely a Holiday Place for shopping. I won't expect sales from it until next Holiday Season. I still don't know if I will ever figure out the magic formula for pricing my boards.

My very own State of the State Address for 2008

It’s been an interesting year for selling cribbage and chess boards (and now plastic drilling templates as well). There were many firsts for me this year. 2009 will mark my 3rd year of selling cribbage and chess boards.

I sold my first Tournament Size Chess boards this past year.

I sold a Cribbage board for over a $100. Granted, this was a personally significant board, but still…for a guy who started selling boards for $3, this was a personal milestone. This board sold on esty.com, by the way. If you have handmade wares to sell, etsy.com is the way to go.

I stopped using my metal templates to drill with and now I drill boards with the plastic template clones (just like the ones I sell). There are a couple of reasons I did this. One, it’s a lot easier to drill a board with an 8 ounce plastic template mounted on it, instead of a 3 pound rolled steel metal template. It cuts down on tear-out on the board since I can get the template really tight against the board. And since I’m using clear plastic, I can position the template somewhat in case the board pattern/wood grain pattern nicely compliment each other.

I sold 33 plastic drilling templates in just 6 months. I now sell 12 different styles of cribbage board templates, done in various kinds of plastic (chemcast, poly-carbonate, and the blue plastic backed kind). Hopefully, I will increase the number of templates I sell to 19 different types in 2009.

My website started showing up on the first page of Google/Yahoo/MSN search results, when searched on the words, “Cribbage board(s)”. It doesn’t consistently show up on the first page – it’s more of an intermittent thing.

The number of unique (new) visitors per day to my website finally got out of the single digit range. In the month of December, I saw 30-50 unique (new) visitors to the website per day.

I started selling cribbage and chess boards on etsy.com with some success. I abandoned my first etsy handle (“19pointhand”) and went back to the more familiar "enumerocribbageboard". I would have added an “s”, but etsy.com has a 20 character limit on names.

I learned that people really, really like the 3 player continuous track style board and I will be making a lot more boards in that style (just a soon as I finish drilling the 80+ tournament style boards), I have the queue right now.

I’m finally started to feel (after completing about 200 boards) that my self-imposed apprenticeship in board making is coming to an end. I’m looking forward to taking what I’ve learned thus far and carrying it forward.

PolyCarbonate and Google Searches

It would appear that after 2+ years of selling cribbage boards on the Internet, my website is starting to show up on the first page of google.com search results under the very generic terms, "Cribbage boards" and "cribbage board". I've been as high as position #4 on the first page of google.com results. I wish I could say being in such a high position has sent sales through the roof, but it hasn't. I'm not surprised. I know from first hand experience my cribbage boards sell much better when the buyer can see them up close and personal, touch them, look at the different kinds of boards, rattle the boards and hear the metal pegs rolling around in the peg storage department. I will say that etsy.com has been helpful in selling boards. Buyers go to etsy.com looking for artisan quality hand made items.

On a different note, my little side business of selling crib templates is humming along. Making a board template involves little more effort than simply drilling the holes, so they are pretty straight forward to make. Right now I offer 11 different templates for sale (and counting).

I was fortunate enough to get a decent supply of Polycarbonate plastic from my local Tap Plastics. I now use 3 different kinds of plastic for cribbage board templates: resin cast (the blue plastic backed plastic), chemcast (the paper backed plastic) and now the "bullet-proof" polycarbonate plastic. The polycarbonate plastic seems pretty indestructible.