Curio City recorded its first sale one year ago this weekend, on November 19, 2005. I held a stress-test party that night. Those who could come in person had a drink or two and some snacks, and shopped from the several computers we set up around the house. Those who couldn’t be here logged in from their own home. My friends and family bought about $850 worth of stuff that night.
Then, nothing happened for weeks as I sat back and waited for the search engines to index my pages and send the masses my way. Finally I bumbled into pay-per-click advertising the second week in December, and managed to pull off one decent week just before Christmas. That makes last year’s sales laughably easy to beat; in fact, Curio City really didn’t ramp up until Valentines Day.
In the past year, I learned (which is to say, "taught myself") how to set up a new business, how to run a website, how the gift business differs from the book business, and how online retailing differs from running a store. That's a lot of progress in one year. I feel like I have the foundations in place now.
My goals for Year Two are more modest: I will double Year One’s sales, I will record a profit for 2007 as a whole, and I will take out as much in salary as I invest as startup money. In other words, Curio City has to break even in 2007 after taking a substantial loss in 2006.
My next post will use Year One’s actual sales numbers to extrapolate what success looks like.
Other Forthcoming Topics:
- What Does Success Look Like?
- Possible Futures
- Credit Card Processing
- Planned features
No comments:
Post a Comment
What do you think? Leave a comment.