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Every Friday, I post a small insight into running Curio City and/or Blue Hills Editorial Services. My most recent posts are directly below. You can also start with the first post, or use the subject labels to the right to home in on particular topics. Feel free to comment on anything that interests you.
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Friday, August 02, 2013

July: More of the Same




July would have been the first black month of this year if the Corn-n-Taters deal had produced the sales that I was led to expect. Instead of the 40 bags that I "should" have sold, I moved exactly 0. I don’t think the fault is mine because I’m not seeing any traffic coming from the manufacturer’s link. Maybe that will still turn around if he does the television that he was talking about for August.

On Sunday the USPS renamed Express Mail and broke my shipping modules. I shut down my advertising and put my site in stasis until midday on Monday. Sales never picked up again after that. The mod that I was using to grab “online” postal rates instead of the higher default counter rates stopped working when my USPS modules were replaced. I just got updated code to fix that today, but I don’t expect it to make any difference. 

July

Total income: -24.4%
Total COGS: -12.2%
Payroll: -19.7%
Marketing: +9.6%
Net Income (Profit): -71.8% (-$203)

Year to Date: 

Total income: -22.1%
Total COGS: -30.7%
Payroll: -19.7%
Marketing: -21.5%
Net Income (Profit): +6.6% (+$115)

Almost everything that I’ve tried this year has failed. I spent $840 on Solar Powered Panther Vision caps and sold 0. I spent $480 on Lighted Visors and sold two. Another few hundred bucks on miscellaneous small stuff brought in maybe $50. So nearly $2,000 worth of new product brought in less than $100 and left me unable to buy anything else –the fall Switchables designs knocked my open to buy down to -$217. Meanwhile, Christmas catalogs are starting to trickle in.  
  
Next week I’m going to see if I can revert my Google advertising to the old bidding process wherein I set bids manually for each keyword rather than letting their algorithm figure it out. It probably won’t help but it can’t hurt…much.

2 comments:

  1. Matrix2:05 AM

    Just quick look, i already know at least partially why it havent sold.

    a) First Link on his site to "where to buy" (where 90% of people will click) leads to dead page. His 4th link is buy online, which leads to your page. But as someone who done a lot of user flow testing, i can guarantee that vast majority people wont click it after dead end page.
    Also he needs to promote and vouche for you on his site, and you need to do the same on your COrn and tater landing page. There should be only one link on his page to your site, and it should say: Buy Corn-and-tater at CurioCity . Now "where to buy" generic link.

    What you guys are having is leakage, he is doing bad join of sending people to you. And even those few who find you, dont know if you are official sales person or not. They might try to go on online and find better price, they wont find it, but they might also lose interest in buying.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the feedback. All of those points should be easily fixed if the mfr will cooperate.

    ReplyDelete

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