Still Kicking

Well, here I am. PayPal didn't kill me after all. A couple of orders pushed last week's receipts over $100 after I posted, but it still won the Worst Week Since 2011 trophy. I'm sad/glad that nothing technical was wrong since I can eventually fix technical problems but I can't fix fickle shoppers. Advertising harder doesn't help when traffic is already running on the high side of normal.

My last six eagle kites (and virtually nothing else) sold out by Wednesday, propelling this week to triple last week's anemic sales. Jackite still doesn't have any eagles, falcons, blue jays, or create-a-birds. I presume that the supply chain is empty since shoppers only wash up on Curio City's shores after more popular stores are stripped bare. 

(I know that reporting weekly sales isn't riveting reading, but thought I should balance out last week's cry of despair. Sales are running on the high side of normal this week and I'd be cautiously optimistic if it weren't for the kite supply problem.)

Demand should be building up now since nobody else can get eagles, either, and there is no equivalent product on the market AFAIK. There's no rush on my last six falcons yet so other stores must also still have stock. That's likely to change within the next week, and then I won't have anything that anyone wants. Maybe some people will buy ospreys when the falcons are gone.  

I did put out a Switchables newsletter with a free shipping coupon. The results were predictable: 396 sent, 89 opened (beating the 19% industry average, so yay for that) 16 clicks, no conversions. Free shipping is supposed to encourage people to spend a little more than they otherwise would have in order to reach the threshold; that doesn't really happen very often -- most coupon redemptions are by people who were going to buy their stuff anyway. The one person who used the coupon to get an eagle kite shipped to Washington state for free (costing me $12) certainly would have bought the kite anyway. She isn't even a newsletter subscriber. I don't know where she found the code.  

My email list died when Turnkey removed the signup box from Sunshop's responsive themes, and I ran out of money before I could pay my contractor to re-implement it. We'll see if the Metal Earth newsletter going out tonight does any better. If not, issue #82 of the Curio City Chronicle will very likely be the last. I figure that those 16 clicks cost me $32. That's nuts.

Did PayPal Finally Manage to Kill Me?

This is Curio City's worst week since...well, ever. I should be doing around $600 a week. The first week of April last year nearly doubled that; this week might not even crack $100. You'd have to go back to 2007 to find a week that didn't break $100.

All systems, including daily traffic, look nominal; in fact, considerable ad tweaking has got visits up to 200+ per day, which ought to be reliably delivering two to four sales. People either just don't want what I'm selling or they don't want to buy it from me...or else there's something wrong with my website.

Yesterday a woman called to order one of my last five Eagle kites. Telephone sales are ordinarily a nuisance but I welcomed this opportunity to double this week's anemic sales. Her credit card was declined. Uh-oh...we know that PayPal's been trying to kill me for years; did they finally succeed? My site passed inspection, and it turned out that the lady had given me an inaccurate card number. Unfortunately, the corrected number was also declined, this time for an invalid CVV code. She swears that it's accurate, and maybe it is: The payment gateway, not PayPal, is rejecting the transaction. I tried bypassing my site by using PayPal's virtual terminal with no joy. I tried turning off the CVV requirement -- nope. Another test transaction went through just fine again. But a test transaction placed by me through my site on my computer using my credit card isn't a super-valid real-world test. 

I have no idea what's going on. Checkout trouble would explain it. I'm not seeing that, but getting just one legitimate transaction would make me feel better (it's been two days without any). If things don't turn around very quickly then this will be my final death spiral. I'm only going deeper into debt while I can't even cover daily expenses, and debt is the killer. 

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Constant Contact is raising their price from $16 to $22 per month. I was already thinking about canceling it at the old price. The six newsletters that I publish in a year effectively cost me $32 each (plus the trivial value of my time). Each issue produces zero to two sales, usually discounted. There is probably some small value in having a mailing list and insinuating myself into people's mailboxes periodically, but I don't know if that's worth $192 a year, much less $264. Is learning their new interface worth the bother or should I just pull the plug now?  

I'm going to crank out a couple of newsletters over the next two weeks and let the response to those determine whether there'll be any more after that. 

In Like a Lamb and Out Like Mutton

I wish that metaphor left me with a freezer full of delicious meat, but all I got was blood. This month turned a tiny YTD gain into a $1,800 deficit. I blame early Easter. Ordinarily I expect churchy people to buy around a dozen Dove kites; this year I sold all of two.

March

Total income: -37.2%
Total COGS: -36.7%
Payroll: -18.6%

Marketing: +91.4%
Net Income (Profit) vs LY: -446.2% (-$1,466)

Actual Profit/Loss: -$1,795

YTD

Total income: -14.5%
Total COGS: -12.8%
Payroll: -9.6%

Marketing: +2.2%
Net Income (Profit) vs LY: -77.2% (-$840)

Actual Profit/Loss: -$1,928

Last March was way better than average, so is the historical perspective any gentler? Nope. This was the worst March since 2008 and the fourth-worst (or the seventh-best, for you incurable optimists) in 11 years. The best thing I can say is that I set a really low bar for next year.

Since several bulk kite sales made April 2015 the best April ever, and since bird kites are likely to remain unavailable all month, I'll probably lose another $1,000 or more next month. That pretty much ensures that 2016 will extend my five-year losing trend.   

The new Bing "shopping campaign" is only getting one or two clicks a day. I turned my regular search ads on to test the new tracking code (see that huge jump in the March marketing number above?); they reported 12 conversions at a cost of just $115. Paying less than $10 for conversions that historically have cost me more than $18 would be swell, but I strongly suspect that the new script is double-counting. I was advised to insert it into two templates: One that affects all of my pages, as Bing requires, and one on the checkout page alone where conversions are actually counted, because the general template supposedly doesn't extend to the checkout page. But I really don't know. I ought to disable the code on the checkout page and see if Bing continues to report any conversions...but then I'd have to turn the ads back on again, and I can't afford to throw money at testing, especially while business is so slow that legitimate conversions can be a week apart.
  
I can end on two positive notes: I finally upgraded my laptop to Windows 10, turned off most of the Microsoft spyware, and installed the Win 7 skin this week. Designed as it is for touch screens, Win 10 is butt ugly and harder to use, but at least I'm up to date and everything works. 

American Express is rewarding my flawless payment history with a 0% APR for the rest of this year. It doesn't apply to balance transfers, so I can't move my $4,500 MasterCard balance over there and save $60 a month in interest. I use Amex for operating expenses and MC for merchandise, and most vendors don't take Amex due to high processing costs. But for the rest of the year I'll make the minimum Amex payment and throw what money I have at the MC. At the rate sales are going, even that modest shift will take three months.