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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, April 28, 2017

The Last of the Real Clean Numbers






This will be the last month that QuickBooks gives me good year-over-year numbers. Because there was no "Curio City" class LY, I can only get numbers for Kraken Enterprises as a whole until next February, when the separate classes came into being. As soon as Blue Hills revenue starts coming in, general Kraken numbers will be ridiculously skewed -- I expect Blue Hills to book five figures in May. From an accounting standpoint, the two companies are not remotely similar. Whereas >90% of Curio City's revenue goes to costs, 90% of Blue Hills income will go to payroll.  

Does that make you wonder why I still even bother with Curio City? There are a lot of reasons. None of them are very convincing alone, but taken together they make a good case for Curio City's continued existence...for now. For one thing, Curio City reliably delivers at least a small paycheck every other week. Even though Blue Hills formally launched in February, it hasn't actually landed a single dime yet, and it's going to remain erratic for at least the next several months. That five-figure project that I alluded to above was a one-time thing that might or might not be repeated next spring. But this is grist for another post.

April

Total income: +10.9%
Total COGS: +11.2%
Payroll: -23.6%
Marketing: -49.9%
Net Income (Profit) vs LY: +699% (+$630)
Actual Profit/Loss: +$540

2017 YTD

Total income: +0.6%
Total COGS: +2.2%
Payroll: -54.9%
Marketing: -44.6%
Net Income (Profit) vs LY: +109.8% (+$2,120)
Actual Profit/Loss: +$189

An  unexpectedly good week made this an unexpectedly good month, considering that I pay little attention to Curio City beyond simply filling orders. Tuesday alone was better than most days in last December. As far as Excel is concerned, the YTD is actually running $43 ahead of LY (for once, QuickBooks' $72 gain is more optimistic). This was the sixth-best (seventh-worst) April ever, and another $73 in the next day and a half would bump it to fifth-best.

Last Tuesday I got a flurry of Metal Earth orders amounting to $182, almost all of them for Star Wars models. As I've lamented over and over, Metal Earth never sells outside of Christmas. A cluster like that means that there's got to be a random act of media involved. One customer used the "how did you find us?" pulldown to say "You were linked in a blog post or online article," while another one said "Searching for something on Google." IDK if a post about Metal Earth sent people running to Google, or if it directly linked to my store. My best guess is that it was a Star Wars fan site.  

Also, Dove kites started to move this week, so I presume the Christians are having another holiday -- Pentecost, maybe?

May should come in more-or-less flat to LY. I just signed my first contract for ongoing work as Blue Hills, so I expect more writing work next month, and I know there's at least one editing job coming.

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