Hello Costumer! It's April Numbers Time

April would have easily topped the 2010 record if any of the large-order inquiries that I've been narrating for the past several posts had panned out. Instead, it sailed past LY for the #2 spot. With a day and a half left to go I'm within striking distance of plan and even showing a very rare profit in a non-Christmas month. The odds that another $100 will make this the best April ever are looking good.  

The usual school vacation week die-back didn't disappoint at disappointing and Google's mobilegeddon made me nervous for a few days, even though my site passed their mobile-friendly check (see why Curio City bought me a smartphone last year?). But the best week of the year-to-date easily made up for that lousy one. 

April 

Total income: +17.1%
Total COGS: +20.0%
Payroll: +50.8%

Marketing: -43.8%
Net Income (Profit) vs LY: +124.7% (+$758)

Actual Profit/Loss: +$150

Year to Date

Total income: -6.2%
Total COGS: -3.4%
Payroll: -2.8%

Marketing: -3.2%
Net Income (Profit) vs LY: +22% (+$258)

Actual Profit/Loss: -$918

I finally paid off my Mastercard balance with a few days to spare. Now if I can squirrel away my CPA's fee I'll finally be in the clear just in time for the summer die-off.

April had a statistical leg up on its competition. Dividing each month into full Sunday-through-Saturday weeks gives me good week-to-week comparisons in Excel at the expense of monthly matchups. Most months have 28 days (four full weeks). A few pork up to 35 days. Those five-week months drift with the calendar from year to year. This April stole March 29-31 and May 1-2 to flesh out its partial first and last weeks. Next year, March will poach April's first few days to fill out its last week and steal the five-week crown.

Repairing formulas and links after I cut a week from one month and paste it into another is a pain in the ass, but the resulting weekly snapshots are more useful to me than monthly comparisons. I use QuickBooks for the numbers that get reported here.

May's targets are intimidating. I need to average more than $1,000 per week to turn in another black month (April averaged $850). Dropshipped kites drive Spring business, meaning that my Mastercard bill rises in lockstep with revenue, so it's not all kittens and unicorns.    

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My favorite phishing attempt this week was supposedly from Amazon:

Hello Costumer,

We detect unusual activity on your account so that we disable your account temporarily for security of your account and to avoid fraud is often the case , to recover your account entirely please confirm for sure that this is true you .

You know what's sad? If they sent 100,000 copies of that linguistic disaster, two or three "costumers" will undoubtedly click the link. The illiterate prey on the stupid.

Oh, and last week's post about spam drew a comment from a spambot. I'll admit that I chuckled.

Somebody tried to call me five times on Wednesday and four times on Thursday, without ever leaving a message. That's either a salesman or a lunatic; either way, there's zero chance that I'll answer that number.