I had a period of my life where I sold honey via the website - it was going to be an experiment for the logbook section on MARKETING your honey. I did really well and actually ran out of product quite quickly.
I had:
1/2 pint jars going for $4.95
Pint Jars going for $8.95
Quart size $16.95
Plus shipping (which frankly was as much as the product.)
Now.... (with all humblenessity meant) I know these prices seemed outragious, but afterall, Beemaster's Honey was a BRAND NAME and had a relatively SMALL volume to sell. There was both supply and demand - the market place allowed me to name my price :)
I sold mostly 1/2 pint and pint jars (decorative glass) and shipped via US Postal Service and sold a total of 11 gallons in 9 weeks via the website. I won't do the math here, but it was pretty darned impressive.
My point being, you need to create a product base, make your honey something GREATER than "Honey" itself - and you can name your price. Labeling is a great inexpensive way to increase price - nothing beats a country looking homemade label on a jar of honey.
Also, working with local road-side vegatable stands or farm markets can be a great source of sales. It THIS case a quality made sign over your products can greatly boost the price of every ounce you sell.
The biggest thing you can do to increase sales though (in a roadside marketing site) is choice of product. Have different sized jars, cut-comb, and other products including candles (even if the candles are bought wholesale and added to your product line) no one says you are stuck with just your own products, although it is best to do so.
Selling through the web though is tough. I got lucky only because of a good placement on the search engines. I set up an account with Paypal, so the money was always in the bank before I bothered jarring the product. Shipping was tough to get around, going plastic jars over glass jars HELPED cut cost to the consumer, but was NOT enough of a savings over using "Decorative Glass Jars" in my ads.
Creating a product name the best single way to increase revenue and every penny per ounce counts. Quality is number one, because no matter how good the name, if you give people crap - you will never see them again.
Thought I'd share this with everyone. I rarely speak of the days when I attempted to have commercial sales on my site - it was exciting, I did really really good, but it was NOT what I wanted to do.
After all the honey was gone, I had a site that was STILL set up to go and I had to disable the sales page (meanwhile people were looking to order more honey - yes, I had several repeat customers who loved the decorative jars for gift giving) but once I ran out of honey, telling the customer that it would be 6 months before I had more honey JUST didn't cut it - so I closed up shop RATHER than go commercial.
There was even a suggestion that I have "Beemaster's Premium Blend" a mix of quality New Jersey (The Garden State) finest honey - where a small amount of the "Blend" was mine and the rest from local beekeepers. The idea (suggested to me by a local grower sounded interesting, but I didn't wan't to mislead anyone into thinking it was a "SEASONAL MIX" of my own best honey flavors, which I think it would have done.
And at that point where does it stop? Literally, one drop of Beemaster's honey to a quart of generic NJ Honey - ugh. So I never went with the PREMIUM BLEND idea.
There is my tale. It was fun and for nearly three months I was making multiple trips to Staples for boxes and bubblewrap and to the post office to ship. But honey sales by mail is tough if only for the weight factor. Now.... only if you could sell FREEZE DRIED HONEY, hmmmmm there's an idea :shock:
