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.

************************ 

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.