Week 6: Stripping the Shelves

Week 5 finished 10% behind LY. Week 6 needed to average a smidge over $500/day to equal or surpass that; the actual average through yesterday is $607, thanks to an $874 Panther Vision cap sale that came in out of the blue. That's the largest unexpected order that I can remember (although I've had many on that scale by pre-arrangement). Not to seem ungrateful or anything, but that cleaned out fully half of the merchandise that I'd hoped to sell over the next 10 days, and all of the debt that I racked up in October won't let me reorder anything until my credit card statement rolls over on Monday. Big sales like that also set up a big hurdle for next year; at the same time, it gives me some hope that I'll still be in business next year!

The number of orders is trailing off even as their average size gets a little better. I honestly don't see how it can keep up for nine more days (LY died on 12/20) when all of my good stuff is sold out. I still have way too much stuff that nobody seems to want...but nobody seems to want that. I'm starting to trim back the advertising costs that reached nearly 50% of gross sales yesterday. There's still a lot of hours between now and the end of the week; if pressed, I'd expect Week 6 to finish down 10%, just as Week 5 did. And as December goes, so goes the year. We've still got one more week to go, obviously, but my expectations for Week 7 are low.

The $1,833 that I invested in Metal Earth has now returned $1,593. Ignoring the cost of advertising them (around $20 yesterday alone), I could still break even.  

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More evidence that mobile phones are the worst thing that's ever happened to communication:

you have all the night lights listed on the samepage when you you get the nigh light and then order just the covers to switch them lateryour prices and items don't say if you are getting just a cover or both please let me know how to work your website

...um, what? (She got a polite response, of course.)