mayberavenclaw:doujingo:The pricing of this book is estimated to be $34.90 SGD to $37.90 SGD, in

mayberavenclaw: doujingo: The pricing of this book is estimated to be $34.90 SGD to $37.90 SGD, inclusive of shipping. I won’t know the weight of the book till I get my own copy. But it probably won’t weigh more than 350g. For locals (Singaporeans), as shipping is free, it will be $28.90 SGD for you guys. Once again, I must emphasize, this is not professional work. I’m not a professional image editor, translator or scanlator. I do not know how to translate onomatopoeia nor how to typeset like what you see in your weekly manga updates. I’m just doing this to practice my use of English and Chinese.The pricing is calculated using the usual DoujinGO method, applied for all products. I’m not charging extra for the English Because really, why am I charging for my not really professional translation. This doujin is absolutely beautiful, I’ve ordered it already. However, it’s only 35rmb on taobao that I can see (~S$7.8) and even if you ship it alone with taobao’s own forwarders to Singapore, it would just be 70rmb (~S$15) which is more than S$10 less than your price of S$28. Shipping one book? Not that expensive. 350g, your estimation, is S$1.15-S$1.70.You’re not actually giving back to the artist here, you’re making so much more money than they are over their beautiful book, and they don’t deserve it. Hi,Good question, I shall tackle the question of the pricing here. But, first, please take a look at this post, to understand where most of the profits go to and I shall go on to explain how I set pricings.The money does go back to the doujin creator. Whatever you see is “earned“ is actually all going towards the costs of running the whole DoujinGOFirst of all, let’s set the exchange rate of RMB to SGD at around 4.4. Yes, it’s an estimation, but that’s because exchange rates always fluctuates. Please do not use XE currency rate, because it is different from the banks. I know the currency rate is roughly between 4.4 to 4.5, because I do regular purchases.Secondly, please note that for me to do a pricing for any products, I have to take into account the higher price or higher currency rate to ensure I don’t make a loss. If you are saying that the loss doesn’t make a big difference, I beg to differ, as sometimes in a good month, I do make large purchases of up to 1000RMB - 1500RMB. So add all those up, it’s a big loss.Very VERY VERY long and detailed explanation post.What I’m going to do here is calculate the TOTAL cost of me purchasing books off TB and then using my final Product Price to deduct that off and showing you how much I really “earn“.Note: I work alone. From curating, photoshop, packaging, shipping, it is all done by me. Even when my mum offers to help, I flatly refuse it, because I believe that DoujinGO’ss my project, I should be the one putting in all the hard work in it. (I don’t share my profit with her, so she shouldn’t have any obligations to help)I have a full time job, I come home and actually spend all my weekday nights (like now) doing DoujinGO related-work. 1) Product Price: 35RMB / $7.95 SGD (using currency rates of 4.4)Please do not forget that there is a domestic shipping fees of between 10RMB or 12RMB, depending on where you get it from. Let’s just take 10 RMB (2.27) as the lowest value. Yes, if I do a group order, the domestic shipping is distributed among the orders. So okay, during the PreOrder period (maybe 3-5 books), I save like maybe $2 for the entire order. (That’s $0.40 per book.)But what if someone purchase the item past the PreOrder period individually? So you see, I can’t not count the domestic shipping into the individual product pricing.So, I add an additional $2 to the $7.95 (using the currency rate of 4.4), making it $9.95 SGD.$7.95 + $2 = $9.95 SGD2) Credit Card VS eNets(For people who use TB, you will know there are now 2 methods of payment).For small value purchases, I use CC, because the currency rate is actually better than you using eNets. As I won’t know how many orders of the book there will actually be, I make the assumption that I will be paying by CC. Which adds an additional 3% to the total price. That’s an additional $0.24 SGD.But fine, we won’t add that in, because for large purchases, I use eNets. There’s a handling fee of $1.00 SGD for eNets. But because this is negligible, so I won’t add that into the price.3) Shipping from China to SingaporeAs you pointed out, the shipping, if individually, it’s roughly 43 RMB ($9.78 SGD). As I work on group orders and consolidate shipping to save on costs, let’s put the shipping of a single book at around $2 SGD.$9.95+ $2 = $11.95 SGD.4) Additional BonusesNot sure if you’ve shopped from DoujinGO before, but with EVERY single order, I put in an additional bonus of a postcard or any small doujin item (acrylic strap/pin badges/PVC cards, etc), made by either the same doujin group/creator or other doujin creators. These are usually items I feel cannot be put up on DoujinGO, simply no one would want to buy a small postcard or pin at $5.00 SGD PLUS shipping. (Once again I can’t put it any lower because of shipping, etc.)Please remember these items cost money, needs both domestic shipping and shipping to me. As the prices of these items fluctuates, I usually don’t add this to the cost of the items. But for calculation’s sake, let’s set this bonus item as an average $2 SGD.Why do I do this? It’s because I believe in letting all who shop at DoujinGO to receive an additional surprise when they receive products. To be honest, I’ve received really many nice and happy comments about how wonderfully surprised and happy they are to find the bonus item to be.If you think I shall abolish this whole additional bonus item policy to make the item perhaps $2 SGD cheaper, shall we agree to disagree. Because I will not budge on this policy. :P$11.95 + $2= $13.95 SGD5) Shipping (Packaging)First of all, packaging materials cost money. It’s not cheap to get packaging materials locally in small quantities, if you look around. Huge quantities, probably yes, but those are catered to businesses who ship out dozens of items every single day. DoujinGO at most process 80-100 orders per month, so I buy the packaging materials the old fashion and slightly expensive way.Packaging Materials include the following:Poly Mailer Bag - Definitely needed. Shipping Labels (the sticker kind, not just A4 paper) - I did use A4 paper once, but I found that it’s really way too time-consuming and uses up way too much tape.Bubble Wrap - Used to prevent orders from getting damaged due to bumps during transit. Again, not very cheap and I run through them VERY quickly, because almost everything shipped out (excluding shirts and books) out DoujinGO, I put in bubble wrap. Even rubber straps, because I really don’t want to run the risk of some weird ass thing happening during transit, and the item breaking as a result of no bubble-wrap. I used to bubble wrap books too, till my mum advised me not to, to save money and time. So far, no complaints. YET. (PHEW.)Tape. A LOT of it. I use up a 1000m roll almost every month, because of how much I have to tape. Also take note that the wide packaging tapes I use on the poly mailer are actually from doujin creators/groups. Once again, if you’ve bought from DoujinGO before, you would have noticed the (dare I say) unique packaging tape. Some customers have also pointed out that they like the tapes so much that they tear it out carefully and stick it somewhere else just to save it.Printer Ink - …As much as I hate it, I really have to add it in, because right now the printing tasks which use up most of my printer ink is the invoices and shipping labels for DoujinGO. I go to Challenger these days every three months to buy my laser jet cartidge. ($86 SGD, so that’s roughly $28.67 SGD per month).A4 Paper - Same reason as above, mainly for invoices. But sometimes instructions manuals are in Chinese, so I translate and print them out on paper as well.Cardboard Backing - Okay, free, kinda. But I do have to spend the time to forage for undamaged ones and then store them in the room. (They create a really bad smell by the way).Anyway, the above are too much to calculate individually and split among different orders. So let’s set it as $3.50 SGD per order. (I can assure you that it’s definitely going to be more than that.)$13.95 + $3= $16.95 SGD6) Actual Shipping FeesAll products shipped from DoujinGO is Registered Mail, aka there is a tracking number. So it’s definitely going to be more expensive than the $1.15 - $1.70SGD you quoted. Why registered? Because it can be tracked and it can be insured, so I can claim from SingPost if they screw up. And also if any dispute arises between the customer and I, I have shipping proof, tracking number, ask Singpost to investigate, etc. There can be no leeway here, as to me using Unregistered Mail instead.So let’s set the weight of the book at 350g (I’m not even counting in the weight of the cardboard backing, which is a MUST for books.). The shipping estimates are as below.Registered Mail’s at $3.94 SGD. SMS Mail’s at $2.77 SGD. For the benefit of this explanation and the price you said the book should be, we take the cheaper shipping price of $2.77 SGD$16.95 SGD + $2.77 = $19.72 SGDTransport Fees to Post Office (it is a cost, though it’s technically not added into the product price) : $0.79SGD (going there) + $0.29 (coming back) = $1.08SGD per trip.(If you also live in Singapore, you know the transport fees WILL rise again the next year NO MATTER what the government say or how much we complain about it, but prices on DoujinGO don’t increase on a yearly basis.)$19.72 + $1.08  = $20.80 SGDDo note this is for Local/Domestic Shipping, which is FOC for locals. Most of DoujinGO’s customers are from overseas, so let’s take a look at international shipping, shall we? People in Region 3 pay $9 SGD for an item of 350g.($20.95+$15.35) - $9 =$27.30But since we’re talking about Product Price for locals, let’s just ignore the International Shipping part.7) How much do I really earn?$28.90 - $20.80 SGD = $8.10 SGD per book.(Do note, this is only for local shoppers. I don’t earn that much from international shoppers, simply because of the way more expensive shipping fees.)You may still go “LOOK, IT’S STILL $8.10 SGD PER BOOK!”. It’s still a freaking huge margin. Multiply that by the dozens! I’m reeling in thousands of dollars. Nope, I’m sorry, you may think DoujinGO has a lot of orders. But in the 2 years of running DoujinGO, the most amount of orders I have is for the Touken Ranbu 舞 Fanbook from Comic Valley, in which a grand total of 13 books were purchased during the PreOrder Round. I earned an average of 7.30 SGD per book. No single month in the history of DoujinGO have more than a thousand dollars in earnings. If you want a screenshot of the financial file as proof, drop me a message with your email and I’ll send you the screenshot. On average, it’s roughly $500- $555 SGD per month, with an average of 75-80 orders. On a good month, with roughly 100 orders, then it may shoot up to $800-$860 SGD per month.But please do remember what other hidden costs that I did not include above, because they’re really hard to calculate precisely or they are intangible. However they still need to get paid by me nonetheless:a) Webhosting FeesYearly Bluehost Fees, Yearly SSL certificate fees, Yearly SiteLock Security fees. The paid template I use on DoujinGO. The dozens of paid extensions I spent on DoujinGO. The time spent on other extensions that I programmed myself.b) Fees for ResendDoesn’t matter regularly, but it does happen from time to time. The item gets sent back to me because of inaccurate address or it wasn’t picked up after an extended period of time. In theory, the customer is supposed to pay for the shipping fees for the resend. But if it is the first time that this has happened, I resend it for free because I believed that you’ve already paid quite a bit on the product, don’t spend more than necessary for just a small mistake. Those who have items resent to me will know that I offer to pay for the shipping fees upon the FIRST resend. The shipping fees for resend basically not only negates the profit earned on that particular order, it basically puts me in the red (making a loss) as well.Of course, if it’s the 2nd or 3rd time, they will have to pay. I’m not Mother Theresa.c) Admin / Maintenance TimeWeekday nights are most solely used for processing orders, keeping a financial excel file on every order, so that I can keep track of spending, writing up new write ups for products every PreOrder Round, answering queries, sometimes dealing with problems like lost mail, damaged goods,etc.d) Time spent curating and photoshopping the products. I work alone as stated in the beginning. There’s an average of 15-18 products every 15 days. Including, find products, setting product pricing, photoshopping, translation of the Chinese on the products, writing write-ups of the products, social media posting. I spend the last hour of each day, on my bed, with phone in hand and bookmarking interesting products or checking Weibo for latest products from the more popular doujin groups.e) Time spent in packaging the products and readying the products for shipping. I come home from work,eat dinner, etc, and get settled down by 8pm. Have you ever spent time from 8pm all the way to 4am in the morning, packing items for 80+ orders. Including arranging for shipping, printing product labels, pasting them, weighing them, etc. And then needing to wake up at 7am the next day? (Seriously, packing orders is the WORST part of DoujinGO. I absolutely, absolutely hate it. But it’s necessary.)f) Time spent in translating doujinshis.Yes, I said I’m not charging a single cent for it, and I’m not. But it doesn’t mean that the time spent in photoshopping and translating a 64-paged doujinshi isn’t a cost. It is. That is why I prefer to do a survey first to gauge interest. Because if interest isn’t that great, I can save this cost and spend it somewhere else.Okay, let’s say I earn $81 SGD for the entire order of the doujnshi (let’s assume 10 books and all of them are local buyers. Haha, this is impossible.). I buy 2 PS3 games for myself, get back perhaps 20-30 hours of my life (provided that I even have the time to play). But how much time did I really take to curate, photoshop, put the product up and translate the doujinshi? I don’t exactly know, but I’m sure it’s more than 30 hours. You don’t translate a 64-paged single doujinshi in less than 2 days.g) Damaged Items / Wrong ItemsAgain, just like the Shipping Fees for resending. This doesn’t not happen that frequently, but it does happen. Items sent over are either damaged (even if it’s a slight damage, I still can’t send it out to the customer, because it doesn’t feel right) or the doujin creator messed up and sent me the wrong strap.Very often, when I tell them about it, they will request me to send the items back for an exchange. But they don’t accept Registered Mail there for some reason, so the fees for sending a book or a strap back is like $80.00 SGD, simply because somehow we have to use courier mail.So what’s the point of sending back the item? So I simply just purchase a new book/strap again, and once again that negates the profits and puts me back in the red for that particular order. I don’t charge the customer more because I have to purchase a second book. The cost is factored into whatever I “earned“ that month.h) Medical CostsWhile DoujinGO is not the sole factor, but it is definitely a major contributing factor to me aggravating my back problems during April to June, in which I was hospitalised. This is mainly due to the fact that I’ve been carrying around 5-6kg worth of things (orders+ laptop + my work bag) back and fro from my home to the office, then to the post office almost every single day, shipping out all the orders. So what about the hidden medical costs as well?8) Last ThoughtsAll I’m saying is that, running any kind of business or project really isn’t as easy as it looks. There is a need to look at the big picture and all the hidden/intangible costs. It gets VERY tiring after a while, and money IS one big motivator. If you still can’t find it reasonable that this is how DoujinGO works and how I price products, and that this is still severely overpriced, then please go ahead and get the book on TB. Really, I don’t mind.I’ve actually seen reblogs of the translated posts I put up and putting tags like “YAY, finally it got translated, time to get it on TB.“. Do I earn anything back from this particular user? Definitely not, but yet my translation has helped the other doujin creator in hopefully having a new customer. So hey, it’s fine as well.Sometimes a customer from HongKong may actually place an order on DoujinGO, and I immediately email them back and tell them “Hey, it’s WAY cheaper to get it yourself on TaoBao using the forwarding serivce provided. Don’t overspend your money here. Here’s the URL.“. And they do and I cancel their order, without taking a single cent from them. It’s as simple as that. I don’t force people to buy from DoujinGO. I don’t go around saying that this is the ONLY avenue to get all these items. I even emphasise (almost all the time) that DoujinGO doesn’t produce the items and it only acts a a kinda curator-proxy.If you find the price unreasonable, and can get it cheaper by yourself. Please go right ahead, because I do know the prices I set are not cheap. But it is that way because of all the visible and hidden costs. There are other hidden costs which I have not mentioned, but those of you, who have shopped from DoujinGO, will know how I run DoujinGO and the level of service you can get from DoujinGO. I wouldn’t say it’s the best, but I have confidence that it is definitely among the better ones.When the day comes and I find that people are able to get all these products on their own at a cheaper price and setting up DoujinGO is no longer a viable option, in terms of time and money, then it will simply be shut down.Until then, if someone still needs my service and still think the products are at a reasonable pricing, DoujinGO will still continue.Thank you very much for reading through this shit-ass long post and thank you for visiting DoujinGO. Even if you have not or maybe will never buy from DoujinGO, I still hope that DoujinGO has or will be of help to you in the future in finding quality doujin items. -- source link
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