When Numbers Lie

September was Curio City's first loser month in quite some time, and yet it beat expectations for three reasons: 

(1) The first week should have been September's strongest. Instead, it took Turnkey four days to fix the shipping module that the latest USPS rate change broke. $835 of this month's $390 shortfall happened that week -- which is to say that I might have finished up by $445, all else being equal.


(2) I've been advertising on both AdWords and Google Shopping for years. I write my own ads and select my own keywords on AdWords, but a couple of years ago I turned bidding over to their algorithm. I had gradually winnowed out product groups until I was only advertising kites. This month, I finally shut those ads down, too. AdWords produced five sales in August at a cost of $33.85 per sale, costing me $170 to bring in $350. Hypothetically, this month's sales might have been higher by that amount, but in reality kite season peters out in September anyway, so all I can really say is that I saved some money and forfeited a few sales. Shopping, OTOH, is entirely computer-generated from a product data file that I upload each month. In August it brought in 21 sales at just $5.46 apiece.

As an unexpected bonus, junk phone calls fell off dramatically after I shut down AdWords.  
 
(3) As sales remain unexpectedly strong, I am slowly running out of appealing products to sell, and most of what I do still move is heavily discounted.

Anyway, here are September's numbers according to QuickBooks. Three Blue Hills projects that have been billed out, but not yet paid, threw the stats seriously out of whack -- especially payroll, since that's where 90% of Blue Hills revenue will go. 

September

Total income: +121.8%
Payroll: -79.8%

Marketing: -73.2%
Net Income (Profit) vs LY: +963.2% (+$3,566)

Actual Profit/Loss: +$3,195

2017 YTD

Total income: +70.1%
Total COGS: +8.5%
Payroll: +229.2%

Marketing: -28.1%
Net Income (Profit) vs LY: +355% (+$8,300)

Actual Profit/Loss: +$5,962

Excel says that Curio City came in $389 behind LY. With a day and a half to go, that could still shrink to nothing. 

October is historically one of the sleepiest months of the year as Christmas sales don't really start cooking until Halloween. Expectations are low.

I Can't Complain

Oh, sure I can...but I won't. The cathartic "Things I Hate" post that I've been picking away at will stay personal because:

1. It doesn't say anything I haven't said before;
2. Nobody likes a whiner;
3. It boils down to one word: "People"; and
4. Nuisance calls have dropped off noticeably since I shut down AdWords a few weeks ago.

This Monday's Curio City payday was so small -- $48.79 for two weeks, before taxes -- that I didn't even bother creating a check. I'll fold it into my next payday instead. I'm sure this has nothing to do with #4 above.

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MIT approved my invoice for the work that I did in early August. When that check lands, I will have earned twice as much this year as I did last year...with three months left to go. It's still chicken feed by normal people's reckoning, but having a lot more chicken feed is a big deal to me. 

A web publisher dangled a regular, 15-hour-per-week editing gig in front of me. It's the second time this year that he's approached me and then backed off after an initial conversation. I haven't worked regular hours in at least 13 years, so this would be a big deal to me, too. I won't give up near-complete control over my schedule unless the job feels right, and this one's "on-call" requirement beyond the regular hours makes me nervous. He's also under the impression that one can edit seven to 10 1,000-word articles in three hours. I can proofread that quickly, but nobody can properly edit 1,000 words in 20-25 minutes. I probably put him off when I said that it takes an hour to copy edit 1,000 words if fact-checking is included; that's realistic (in fact, I just spent 2.25 hours giving a 1,700-word article the full treatment), but I don't think it's what he wanted to hear.  

I'd sacrifice some of my autonomy to turn Blue Hills into a reliable paycheck, but I won't make a vaguely defined commitment or exaggerate my productivity. After a few emails he said that he's thinking about hiring a staff editor instead, and left with it "I'll be in touch," so that's the end of that...for now. If he does come back for a third round, I'm going to make sure it happens on my terms. 

The High Finance Life of a CEO

Every year we pass the date of our own death without knowing it. We're approaching exactly one year until Curio City's demise, although I don't know the exact date yet. I have to renew my SSL certificate by Sept. 16, and even though that's only $35, I don't see myself doing it again a year from now. Next year's SSL expiration date will probably be Curio City's, too.

A year is not long at all in some ways, and a very long time in other ways. Circumstances could convince me to keep it going beyond then (or to shut it down earlier). If this Christmas leaves me with a lot of stock still hanging around, and if it still brings in more money than it costs to sell it, then I might persuade myself to flog it through one more Christmas after this one. As long as I'm turning dead merchandise into money and generating a regular paycheck, it makes sense to keep going -- especially if I can restore payroll to its former level after I get out of debt. In my wildest fantasy, Curio City might even buy me a new phone or laptop before it goes toes-up.

Payroll's going to have to up its game, though. Between losing First Class shipping rates for five days and having to issue a large refund, Curio City turned in its worst week in 10 years. As of this morning this week's paycheck is $8.06 (before taxes!), and I had to put in more hours than normal to pack up four international shipments. That's not even a pack of smokes.

A Summer Miracle

Apparently "summer miracle" is an anime show, hence this week's cryptic picture. 

Miraculously, August was another winning month. I don't think I had any Blue Hills activity to throw off the numbers, so here they are in the traditional format. 

August

Total income: +5%
Payroll: -7.4%

Marketing: -35.1%
Net Income (Profit) vs LY: +93.7% (+$157)

Actual Profit/Loss: +$304

2017 YTD

Total income: +66%
Total COGS: +9.4%
Payroll: +263.6%

Marketing: -30.4%
Net Income (Profit) vs LY: +257.7% (+$5,072)

Actual Profit/Loss: +$3,104

I said "miraculously" because I am putting no effort whatsoever into marketing and I've cut my ad spend considerably. The fact that I beat LY anyway just shows you how badly I suck at self-promotion.

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Back in the day, I swore that I would never gouge my customers on shipping. If you've been around long enough, you have seen me debate nickel-and-dime handling fee hikes and cuts, always trying to cover my costs as accurately as possible. 

Times change. Now that so much of my stock is marked down to cost, postage overcharges are often the only place I make any money at all. I have come to rely on collecting anywhere from 50 cents to a few bucks more than it will cost me to fill orders.

And so it's a bigger deal than you might think that the USPS broke my shipping module (again) with yet another rate change. These USPS changes always catch Turnkey flat-footed. When I was more engaged, I used to proactively post on their forums to make sure that the modules would be updated promptly. Turnkey usually denied that any changes were required. Then, when the modules broke, they were at least be alerted to take quick action. 

This time the USPS broke First Class Package rates -- last time this happened, it was because they renamed First Class Parcels. Packages up to 13 ounces (nearly all of my non-kite sales, and probably half of my total business) can take advantage of these cheap rates. When they suddenly go away, so does a lot of my business. I suspect that they might have broken Priority Mail rate lookups, too; the last several packages that I shipped cost me more than I collected.
I hope that Turnkey will update Sunshop on Tuesday or Wednesday, and things should get back to normal. I used to get seriously bent out of shape when I lost three or four days' business to software problems, but as long as it gets fixed reasonably quickly I'm beyond caring very much.  

September ought to be a terrible month as kite sales fall to nothing. Ordinarily I'd see early Christmas orders starting this month, but I don't expect that to happen at all this year. Losing all of Labor Day weekend to a broken shipping module isn't going to help; in fact, the month's net sales are negative at the moment, and there is a $150 kite return hanging over my head. 

I am expecting one tiny Blue Hills paycheck this month and I should be able to bill out a more substantial job, although that won't pay off until October.