High Volume vs High Ticket Sales - Which is Better?

[spectrejoe]

Hello everyone, I'm caught in a bit of a dilemma. (Choosing a new niche).

What do you think is better?

Selling lots of small items ($10 profit per sale for example) or selling something expensive with a big markup ($1000 profit per sale?)

I do both, 20-30$ items and 100-400$ items.
20-30$ has roughly the same volume as the 100-400$ items atm and the 100-400$ items are making me about 80-85% of my revenue.

Based on this, I'd calculate the price differences & how much more volume we talking about

 

[SirLouen]

It depends if you can sell 120 items faster and easier than just 1 item of the other

Generally volume involves higher issues, and extra management fees (for example, stock, returns...), so if you can afford an extra 20% for issue margin then volume will be adequate.

This is why most gurus recommend ticket blindly. It is the easy way to go.

The only thing I like about volume, is that increasing the price without the cost, increases the margin by a huge amount. So basically it's not the same of pricing from 20 to 21 than pricing from 1000 to 1001.

Many sellers put volume prices low at first and then gradually increases according to demand making huge profits for volume sales. This is the magic of volume strategies that you will never find on ticket ones.

But remember a +20% extra you will need (or reduce a virtual 20% on your margins to calculate the real potential profits). Some would say even higher than 20%.

 

[homeriscool]

I do both, 20-30$ items and 100-400$ items.
20-30$ has roughly the same volume as the 100-400$ items atm and the 100-400$ items are making me about 80-85% of my revenue.

Based on this, I'd calculate the price differences & how much more volume we talking about

There's the 80/20 rule right there!

 

[ExperimentalSEO]

If you could only choose between the two It really depends on a few factors.

Are you doing all the work yourself?
How big is the market for the $ product vs the $$$$ product?
What is the profit margin for either product?

Basically which is going to give you the highest income for yourself adjusted to a 40 hour work week.

 

[MJAMZ]

Why not both? If selling on a marketplace, the lower ticket items help mitigate negative reviews affecting your account as well as giving you a constant stream of revenue and the higher ticket are more lucrative. I've been selling on amazon for years and I tried only low ticket but eventually it leads to more expenses because of the increased volume ( labor-wise I was shipping them myself/employees ) and on another account I tried only high ticket items which was great at first until you get hit with a negative feedback or a claim. 1/10 orders are bad doesn't give you a good image. So I've seen you need the best of both worlds.

 

[Ababba2]

+1 for high ticket items
but you need a solid strategy behind

 

[getivan]

Definitely Volume.
The level of expectation and liability you bring to yourself, with high-ticket items, is substantially greater.
Diversification is Key.
There's no comparison... volume methods are in a whole other league, on multiple levels.

 

[homeriscool]

Definitely Volume.
The level of expectation and liability you bring to yourself, with high-ticket items, is substantially greater.
Diversification is Key.
There's no comparison... volume methods are in a whole other league, on multiple levels.

This is my biggest turn off with a high ticket service. The expectation is very high, and the risk of something going wrong could have disastrous consequences.

 

[homeriscool]

+1 for high ticket items
but you need a solid strategy behind

My high ticket is a service not a physical item. My low ticket is a physical item.

Still have the opinion?

 

[homeriscool]

It depends if you can sell 120 items faster and easier than just 1 item of the other

Generally volume involves higher issues, and extra management fees (for example, stock, returns...), so if you can afford an extra 20% for issue margin then volume will be adequate.

This is why most gurus recommend ticket blindly. It is the easy way to go.

The only thing I like about volume, is that increasing the price without the cost, increases the margin by a huge amount. So basically it's not the same of pricing from 20 to 21 than pricing from 1000 to 1001.

Many sellers put volume prices low at first and then gradually increases according to demand making huge profits for volume sales. This is the magic of volume strategies that you will never find on ticket ones.

This is my plan. Keep margins low and as I build traffic and regular customers worldwide slowly raise my margins. A $2 increase in price spread out over 10000+ returning customers would be a nice boost in REGULAR income.

But remember a +20% extra you will need (or reduce a virtual 20% on your margins to calculate the real potential profits). Some would say even higher than 20%.

 

[homeriscool]

If you could only choose between the two It really depends on a few factors.

Are you doing all the work yourself?
How big is the market for the $ product vs the $$$$ product?
What is the profit margin for either product?

Basically which is going to give you the highest income for yourself adjusted to a 40 hour work week.

For the low ticket item I would be doing all of the work myself because all I'm doing is selling 1 niche product from my own website (drop shipping).

The high ticket service I would be pulling other people in because the workload would be too much for 1 person (providing I can sell my high ticket service).

Low ticket profit margin approx $10 per sale.

High ticket $1000+ per sale

The low ticket product is something most people need and will buy it over and over again. So the lifetime value of 1 new customer could be in the $100's whereas the lifetime value of the service could be $1000 +

 

[upick3]

High ticket item has higher rewards but the risk sounds much higher than the rewards.

For me personally, I'm not in for greed, if you don't think your high ticket item will produce the quality of service that people would expect or there's a pretty large risk of not delivering on your word, then don't do it.
Reputation is not built over night but easily lost over night.

 

[getivan]

This is my biggest turn off with a high ticket service. The expectation is very high, and the risk of something going wrong could have disastrous consequences.

It's just not even worth it.
If you have a full agency team of guys just sitting-around to clickity-clack for some high-end client, then that's basically the only way it can be done as a profitable business.
There's a certain entitlement that comes with packages of that level.
You wanna articulate hard limits to what's involved, but when you are dealing with big retainers, that's hard to do, and clients often push for more and more all the time.

You're also talking about a much smaller market, which is harder to acquire, and hard to retain.
As someone who has been working to provide SEO retainers for the last several years, one of the best business decisions I ever made was to stop looking for new clients with that model.
When I started doing microservices on Fiverr, the ROI for the dollar dramatically increased.
Orders have hard limits, they get finished quickly, I get the earnings, and everybody moves on. (so much better)

I still do client work and consulting, but it's much more limited than what I used to try and do.
I'm very cautious about what I take-on, these days.
Simple services and products pay WAY better, and don't enslave your time and energy.

That being said, I do think tiny-retainers have a lot of potential.
For example, and I said this recently in a couple other threads you might've seen, a $100/mo blogging retainer is a great precursor to a full SEO retainer, and the market for site owners that can do it is much higher.
With something like that, you could build your client's content base, without breaking their bank, and it can be easily outsourced to your VA to manage each month.
Given a little time, long-tail posts will rank, and their sites will have more authority to increase the retainer for either more content, or for link-building campaigns.

Building trust and rapport, and justifying your retainer, in my experience, is 1000x better than just leaping into a large retainer with unrealistic expectations and risks.
So, I do think a high-ticket retainer model can be pleasant, but you basically have to build it from scratch over a long period of time.
I'm mainly speaking from an SEO standpoint, so it'll vary a bit with other retainers, but this approach makes more sense than everything except selling leads from your own assets.

Not sure the two exact models you're looking-at, but I'd say... just keep-it-simple, dude...
If you have a way to make cash at-scale with a volume method... even if it's less... just go with that.
Your time and peace will allow you to develop other things at-scale, and you'll be glad for it.
I did a video on building assets, recently, if you'd like to check-it-out... just shoot me a message.
Best to you, sir...

 

[schttrj]

High ticket affiliate marketing seems to be the latest fad in the market.

From what I have seen so far, most of them use TikTok to get leads and then use messenger and Zoom calls to make the sales.

As you can understand, that requires a bit of work.

It's just like you are a salesperson for an e-learning company or whatever you are selling. The only difference is, the company provides you leads when you operate as an employee, and in this case, you are generating your own leads. Which one makes more sense depends upon you.

Forget about creating a site, SEO-ing the heck out of it and then watching sales roll in. That's now how HTAM works.

That only works for low or medium ticket affiliate marketing.

NOTE: even if you are not acting as an affiliate, this theory still applies.

 

[homeriscool]

High ticket item has higher rewards but the risk sounds much higher than the rewards.

For me personally, I'm not in for greed, if you don't think your high ticket item will produce the quality of service that people would expect or there's a pretty large risk of not delivering on your word, then don't do it.
Reputation is not built over night but easily lost over night.

I love this response.

I'm not in it for greed either.

 

[homeriscool]

It's just not even worth it.
If you have a full agency team of guys just sitting-around to clickity-clack for some high-end client, then that's basically the only way it can be done as a profitable business.
There's a certain entitlement that comes with packages of that level.
You wanna articulate hard limits to what's involved, but when you are dealing with big retainers, that's hard to do, and clients often push for more and more all the time.

Yes I've read about how clients can become entitled and expect more and more. Before you know it, your working for nothing.

You're also talking about a much smaller market, which is harder to acquire, and hard to retain.
As someone who has been working to provide SEO retainers for the last several years, one of the best business decisions I ever made was to stop looking for new clients with that model.

Always good to speak to people who have been there and done it. Saves people like me having to learn the hard way. I have read that it helps to niche down?

When I started doing microservices on Fiverr, the ROI for the dollar dramatically increased.
Orders have hard limits, they get finished quickly, I get the earnings, and everybody moves on. (so much better)

Sounds like a winning strategy as long as you get a consistent flow of work.

I still do client work and consulting, but it's much more limited than what I used to try and do.
I'm very cautious about what I take-on, these days.

That's wise....pick your battles wisely.

Simple services and products pay WAY better, and don't enslave your time and energy.

This is great advice. You sound happy even when paying a good percentage of your earnings to Fiverr.

That being said, I do think tiny-retainers have a lot of potential.
For example, and I said this recently in a couple other threads you might've seen, a $100/mo blogging retainer is a great precursor to a full SEO retainer, and the market for site owners that can do it is much higher.
With something like that, you could build your client's content base, without breaking their bank, and it can be easily outsourced to your VA to manage each month.
Given a little time, long-tail posts will rank, and their sites will have more authority to increase the retainer for either more content, or for link-building campaigns.

Building trust and rapport, and justifying your retainer, in my experience, is 1000x better than just leaping into a large retainer with unrealistic expectations and risks.
So, I do think a high-ticket retainer model can be pleasant, but you basically have to build it from scratch over a long period of time.
I'm mainly speaking from an SEO standpoint, so it'll vary a bit with other retainers, but this approach makes more sense than everything except selling leads from your own assets.

I already do sell leads from my own assets rank and rent sites etc. Pretty straight forward as long as the clients can do the high volume of work.

Not sure the two exact models you're looking-at, but I'd say... just keep-it-simple, dude...
If you have a way to make cash at-scale with a volume method... even if it's less... just go with that.

This sounds like music to my ears I'm not a fan of stress or hard sales.

Your time and peace will allow you to develop other things at-scale, and you'll be glad for it.
I did a video on building assets, recently, if you'd like to check-it-out... just shoot me a message.
Best to you, sir...

Great advice - I will take it all on board. All of the comments on this thread have really made me think. It always helps from people who have been there and done it. P.s I would love to see the video you made on building assets. This what I have been doing....it's all the high volume business model too....

 

[HustleTong]

High ticket products as long as the quality is on point
Dealing with low ticket clients could be a headache

 

[Gogol]

If you can sell then of course high ticket item, it's a no brainer.

+1. Even better... List for 20% higher, and give them a 20% discount coupon in exchange of subscribing to email list.

 

[homeriscool]

High ticket affiliate marketing seems to be the latest fad in the market.

From what I have seen so far, most of them use TikTok to get leads and then use messenger and Zoom calls to make the sales.

As you can understand, that requires a bit of work.

I'm not a fan of all that stuff to be honest. It reminds me of cheesy youtubers pretending to be rich so they can sell all of their merch to the fanboys. That's not my scene ha ha

It's just like you are a salesperson for an e-learning company or whatever you are selling. The only difference is, the company provides you leads when you operate as an employee, and in this case, you are generating your own leads. Which one makes more sense depends upon you.

I think this depends on whether you would like a guaranteed income but accept less or a much higher income that's not guaranteed. Risk & reward basically.

Forget about creating a site, SEO-ing the heck out of it and then watching sales roll in. That's now how HTAM works.

That only works for low or medium ticket affiliate marketing.

NOTE: even if you are not acting as an affiliate, this theory still applies.

 

[getivan]

Yes I've read about how clients can become entitled and expect more and more. Before you know it, your working for nothing.

Yes, exactly. The longer you work on a project, the less you make, and the more strict you are about sticking to criteria, the less likely you are to retain that client.
Some relationships can be great, but it's 1% to 5% of the connections you make.

Always good to speak to people who have been there and done it. Saves people like me having to learn the hard way. I have read that it helps to niche down?

Yeah, it just depends... there is wisdom in many counsellors, but we gotta look at the angles, and determine who is telling the truth, and who is just talking. (LoL)
You can make money doing anything you can think of... someone out-there is getting rich off of selling animal manure, but that doesn't mean it's a great business model that you should doggedly pursue. (hah)
I never chose to niche-down, because the reality is that businesses who approach you are in all kinds of fields, and it's really more about who the business owner is, and what kind of person they are, rather than their niche.
The niche definitely has to be something where you feel you can be successful, of course.
If you niche-down to plumbers, though, for example, then you at-least need a sales page for plumbers, and there's some logic to building niche-specific referrals, and getting really confident on copy angles, etc.
There's no reason you couldn't niche-down sales pages, but it's not gonna allow you to side-step the problems with entitled customers or unrealistic expectations, etc.
That has more to do with your package and proposition, and then the types of people you are talking to and attracting with those packages.
There's a universal principle that says "you reap what you sow" or "the wolf you feed, is the one that grows".
Big ticket packages will attract big ticket expectations and big ego clients, etc...
Simple packages will attract simple clients, etc, etc, etc.
To get the kinds of clients and returns we want, we have to take the exact kind of action that will inversely reciprocate our desired response.
The logic is so simple, but so powerful.

Sounds like a winning strategy as long as you get a consistent flow of work.

The difficult part isn't the flow of work, but just figuring-out how to keep-up and scale it all!
The majority of the inquiries I receive are not the ideal customers, so it's more economical to decline the work.
Fiverr ranks your gigs, so the impressions are consistent.
Go from there, and make more gigs, or add gigs to Konker, Legiit, BHW Marketplace, Upwork, etc.
It's not hard at-all to get to a place where it's difficult to keep-up, and that's why elasticity of your packages and scale is so important.
Like I said before, you can make a certain amount of money doing just-about anything you can think of, but scaling is what it's all about!

That's wise....pick your battles wisely.

Yeah, out of necessity, because our time is VERY finite each day!

This is great advice. You sound happy even when paying a good percentage of your earnings to Fiverr.

Yeah, absolutely, dude... it's much more predictable work.
Microservices can make you a deceptively higher amount of cash than you'd think.

I'm pretty close to Top Seller status... (1.5yrs)
It's not my full income, but it's a facet of things that is really easy to do (takes very little time), and definitely one of the easiest things I do to make some good cash.
If I ever decide to add more gigs, though, it could definitely reach greater heights!

I already do sell leads from my own assets rank and rent sites etc. Pretty straight forward as long as the clients can do the high volume of work.

That's awesome, dude... I have some starting affiliate sites I make a little from, but I never got into the R&R stuff...
Great Model...

This sounds like music to my ears I'm not a fan of stress or hard sales.

Exactly, man, you can't scale yourself. (LoL)

Great advice - I will take it all on board. All of the comments on this thread have really made me think. It always helps from people who have been there and done it. P.s I would love to see the video you made on building assets. This what I have been doing....it's all the high volume business model too....

Fersher, man... per your request, I'll shoot you a message...
No strings, I just did this video the other day on how I was trying to restructure thoughts towards digital assets.
Keep me posted on how it goes with you! I wanna know how it turns-out!
Best to you, sir...