Projects started & finished this week:
Launched my new Blog, BikeTrailerBlog.com
Worked on our PayPal account: lower rates, earning a return, PayPal Shops listing.
Put Xtracycle Stuff on Sale
Listed new Ortlieb Panniers & the Pet Trailer, the Burley Tail Wagon
It was a busy week of fine tuning BikeTrailerShop.com for the rapidly approaching spring. With the sales from BikeTrailerShop.com keeping the business afloat, I’ve been focusing plenty of time on this division of the business.
The BikeTrailerBlog.com is underway as part of the marketing effort for BikeTrailerShop.com. Have a look at this Blog where I will be publishing content discussing every possible angle concerning bike cargo trailers. This Blog should also prove to be a useful marketing instrument for Wandertec as well as it will be an opportunity to showcase the CELLO and other Wandertec products in relation to other similar products on the market.
To keep the budget tight, I was doing some work on my PayPal account. Once reaching a minimum of $3000/month in transactions, PayPal charges 2.5% per transaction instead of 2.9%. As part of this effort I switched my Wandertec payment processing over to PayPal as well so all Wandertec sales will go into the same pool of transactions as the BikeTrailerShop.com. I also discovered that I could have my PayPal balance set up as a money market fund. Rather than just sitting latent, it will now be collecting 5% in interest for me. By switching over to PayPal’s money market, I was also enrolled in the PayPal Shops directory keeping the path of spreading out onto the web underway.
With this week of tightening the belt, I decided to look into switching my checking to free checking. My current Banker, B of A, told me they’d waive my fee on my account after I threatened to close it. The only catch is I have to call back every year to get them to extend this waiver. They did it for my personal account. It makes me wonder why I was paying $18/month all this time on my two accounts.
Winter months seem to have more variations in sales volume than do the warmer parts of the year. To move some inventory at the BikeTrailerShop.com, I’ve been putting some items on sale. The Xtracycles haven’t been doing well this winter so I launched a sale. I’ve also seen a dramatic drop in Ortlieb sales, so while adding more Ortlieb products to our inventory, I’ve also been putting many of these items on sale.
As spring approaches, I plan on adding more bike cargo trailers to the mix. From the US I’m hoping to start selling Kool Stop Trailers. There are quite a few trailers out of Europe that I will be looking at. These include the Koga Chela, the Extrawheel, the Weber Monoporter and the Carry Freedom. Look for all these bike cargo trailers to begin appearing at the BikeTrailerShop.com between this coming March and April.
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