Established AllAmericanWagons.com Drop Ship Toy Site

[merlix]

I am selling AllAmericanWagons.com

The domain was registered two years ago. We operated it for a very short amount of time before selling another internet toy business that we ran for five years for six figures. We signed a non-compete and we shut this site down during that time. We have turned it back on so that we can sell it. You can go to eBay and bid on it...
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7528986743

If someone has a good enough offer, I would consider ending the auction early and selling it outright.

The domain is with Dotster and we just renewed it, so it is good for another year.

The site has just been turned back on, so there are no stats on it. For the five years we were in the online toy business, we sold in excess of $250,000 per year with two domains. So that should give you an idea of what a toy business is capable of. Half of your annual sales will take place in November and December. The products have a good markup and the manufacturer is awesome to deal with.

The site is hosted on a Windows server. You can move it to your own server or keep it where it is at. Hosting is $7.95 per month if you choose to keep it where it is.

 

[gamex]

Quick question: why are you selling the site if you make that much per year?

 

[merlix]

We sold another toy site in the fall of 2003 that made that much. This one was only in operation for a few months in 2003. Due to a non-compete agreement, we aren't allowed to sell toys. The other site sold for six figures because it made $250,000+ per year. This one will probably sell in the hundreds because it wasn't in operation long enough to yield those kind of revenues. The other site was mentioned as a comparison to show what kind of money can be made. These are the same products that we sold on our original toy site.

 

[jeter4982]

Would you mind sharing the url of the original website?

Tom

 

[merlix]

There were two sites. Due to confidentiality, I can't reveal the one we sold in 2003. The other site was RedWagon.com. We still own it, but we aren't allowed to sell toys on it; however, we are allowed to link to other sites that sell toys. We earn several hundred dollars per month in affiliate revenue. RedWagon.com is currently under contract and will close this week or next making it the 11th highest domain sale for this year. Check Archive.org to see the original site. It was in operation from 1998 through 2003.

 

[merlix]

5 days left on the auction. A great opportunity to get into the toy business and deal directly with the manufacturer rather than a distributor.

Do a little bit of Google AdWords in November and December and you should be able to generate several thousand dollars during the Christmas season.

Happy bidding!

 

[andum]

Please clarify

It appears that redwagon.com does sell toys or at least the same wagons (and more) found on allamericanwagons - you stated that you are not allowed to sell toys. Please clarify.

How are returns handled? What is the mark-up for the wagons? What is your estimate for the percent of sales that take place during the Xmas season for this product line?

 

[merlix]

As I mentioned in a previous post, we have signed a non-compete agreement for three years. We cannot sell toys; we can only link to other toy sites. If you click on any of the links on RedWagon.com, they take you to other toy sites using an affiliate link.

RedWagon.com will be changing ownership this week or next. We are just waiting for the completed contract and a check They are just buying the domain. It will be pointing to the new owners site once the deal is sealed.

How we did returns was we charged a 15% restocking fee plus the shipping charge. This discourages returns. If someone wanted to return something, they would send it to us and we would eBay it with the knowledge that we would break even or make a small profit. We only had around 2 returns per year at the volume we were selling. If a product was damaged or defective, the manufacturer would issue a call tag and send a new one to replace it. We would have a damaged item about once every two or three months at the volume we were selling. I can only remember one defective item during our five year period of selling.

Our sales for fourth quarter almost were the same as the sales of first through third quarter combined. January and February are slow since these are outside toys. But, they start picking up in spring and do well all through summer and fall.

I have to be honest with you. The two domains (RedWagon.com and ????) that we used were both keyword domains and we never had to do any marketing. We received all of our traffic from direct type ins. With this site, I'm sure you will have to do some marketing with Google AdWords and Overture/Yahoo during Christmas season. Keep in mind that we sold the other site for six figures and RedWagon.com will be the 11th highest sale for a domain for this year per DNJournal's domain sales. I expect that this site will sell for somewhere in the hundreds. We sold $250,000 per year in toys with our other two sites with no marketing using two keyword domains. With a little marketing, I would expect that someone could run this in a few minutes each day and sell $50,000 per year. It only took us 15 minutes each day to process orders and 60 to 90 minutes each day during Christmas season for RedWagon.com and our other site.

If anyone has any questions, please don't hesitate to ask me.
The toy business is a fun business to be in. I have two boys and they always thought it was the coolest having a dad that owned these