Can I Sell Stamps Without Giving Myself Away?

Over the past few weeks, I've received several emails from stamping business owners expressing the same concern:

 

Does a stamping business owner have to give everything away (their time, their classes, their profit, etc.) in order to sell catalog product?

The answer... absolutely not!

While there's certainly been a push toward this sort of "marketing" lately, I believe it's one of the worst ways to run your business... and completely unnecessary.

 

Whether you're doing this as a full-blown business, or just supporting your hobby, you've all spent significant time and money learning your craft.  Time and money you could have spent on and with your family, friends and other things you love.  You should NEVER devalue that sacrifice!

 

You are all experts in your field... and you should be treated as such...  But nobody is going to do that until you yourself demand it!

 

There is absolutely no reason to increase sales if it's going to decrease your profits. 

And you should never position yourself as the least important, most discountable part of your business.

 

Frankly, anyone who asks you to do that has simply run out of ideas.

 

Get paid what you're worth!  Demand it.  Be consistent.  And you WILL find customers who are more than happy to work with you!

 

To your success,

 

John

Comments

[Jan Brumbelow]

I became a catalog demonstrator of stamps because I wanted the discount for myself and because I loved the product. I'm a hobby demonstrator thinking about delving into the business side, simply because the availability is there. But, in all honesty, there are a ton of quality crafting products that I can buy and get a discount on (and a lot of times free shipping). How can you sell catalog stamps at full price, when I think about myself, that I would never buy these catalog products at full retail catalog price? It would probably have to be more about branding myself than the actual catalog product? Your thoughts?