Thanks for Nothing, Santa

Unsurprisingly, this is going to be the worst December ever by a large margin. The volume of orders crept up to five or six a day from the usual one to three, but their average value fell from $40 to under $15. Just looking at numbers, you wouldn't even know that Christmas had come and gone. 2017 entered December with a comfortable lead over LY's annual sales and it's going to close with a loss. Those not-awful December paychecks that I was looking forward to? Yeah, didn't happen.

I didn't expect good numbers, although I did hope they'd be better than they were. I had modest success clearing out old stock. As usual, people didn't buy the stuff I wanted them to buy -- I was surprised that they didn't snap up marked-down Panther Vision products, and the usual brief Christmas rush on Metal Earth models didn't happen at all. But I did get rid of a few big boxes. If I consolidate some leftovers, I'll get rid of a few more. Write-offs will eliminate a few more. But my fantasies of being picked clean remain fantastical. There is still a lot of stuff downstairs and it is, by definition, the stuff that people want least. 

Well. I held costs close to zero, so I'll finish with money in the bank and no debt. Now I face the more pleasant chore of deciding what to do with that. That's going to depend upon (1) how much money there really is, and (2) my intentions for the future of Curio City.

Despite this month's drop, Kraken Enterprises is still showing a profit for the year (thanks mostly to Blue Hills, which has nearly zero costs), and that means I'm going to have to pay taxes on it. I can reduce it a little by writing off some dead, bulky stock that won't move at any price because it costs too much to ship. 

It looks like I'm going to end up with around $2,200 in the bank.

Kraken's first obligation is paying me enough to cover the taxes on a $5,000 profit. That's going to jack up my personal income taxes by $1,000, so I'll have to pull that much out.

Its second obligation is to cover the annual costs of being a corporation: Excise tax, my CPA's tax return preparation fee, and whatever the hell the Secretary of State gets $109 for. Together these add up to $1,200.

Oh, look: There goes $2,200. There's no need to think about my intentions for the future unless that cash hoard grows and/or the profit shrinks meaningfully. so I'll leave planning for a future post.

Burning Bridges...Too Soon?

Getting out of debt was the only thing on my mind for so long that I'm a little lost now that it's done. The next order of business is deciding whether or not to stay in business. Christmas sales will play a role in that decision.

Christmas might go one of two ways: Either I'll enjoy the usual spike in overall traffic and people will snap up boxes full of bargain-priced merchandise; or few shoppers will find me, and those who do will pass up buying leftovers. The first scenario frees up some space in the cellar and parks some bucks in the bank, giving me options and encouragement. The second scenario leaves me broke and sitting on piles of picked-over stuff, changing nothing.

So far, it looks like a bust. Today I'm starting on my first email newsletter since last January -- I don't think there's any point in sending it out until the hoopla of Black Friday is over. The last thing I paid my developer to do was implement a newsletter signup dialog to replace a plugin that Turnkey dropped from Sunshop. Over the past 10 months, only 10 people subscribed via the conventional method (ticking a box on the checkout page) while a whopping 39 (plus one obvious spambot) used my new custom dialog. That's impressive. I stopped writing newsletters when I stopped ordering new products, but it will be valuable if I decide to start again.  

Meanwhile, Turnkey wants $125 to renew my Sunshop license. Failure to do so cuts me off from updates and support. My software will still work just fine, but it will be frozen in time, two versions behind the present. If I do revive Curio City next year, updating my shopping cart will be a high priority. So I can spend $125 now, just in case, or I can spend $250 on a new license when I'm sure that I'll need support.   

I am inclined to save the cash now, especially since it looks like Christmas is not going to bring a windfall. I have until the 29th to decide, and I can download the current version before then. I wish I had another month.

On a brighter note, I found out that I can renew my UPS box for six months. Doing that is more expensive than the yearly rate, but it would bump a point-of-no-return decision from spring to fall. Changing Kraken Enterprises' address after 13 years would be a very big deal, and forfeiting the mail drop will also sacrifice my ability to receive shipments. Vendors won't ship to residences.  

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Blue Hills Editorial Services is the keystone. Will it ever provide a regular paycheck, or enough irregular paychecks to bridge the gaps between them? 

A web publisher has been teasing me about a regular copy editing gig for a year now. It would be 15 reliable hours per week, plus occasional "overtime" on weekends. While that income would make closing Curio City an easy decision, I have some misgivings about the job itself. First, the volume of copy that this guy wants to push through in three hours each day is sweatshop-level work: 10,000 words in three hours is more than twice as fast as the 1,500 words per hour that most editors consider reasonable, and I'm not sure that I can do it at all, much less want to do it. Second, I don't like the idea of being "on call" every weekend. Third, after having controlled my own schedule for the past 13 years, the idea of working fixed hours for somebody else chafes. I don't mind working 15 hours a week if I can pick the hours and work at a realistic pace. Asking advance permission to take a day off? That feels like going back to elementary school. Fourth, it would compromise my ability to take on other large projects. I only had two of those last year, but they were both quite lucrative, and they both monopolized my time for a couple of weeks.

It would be a lot of money -- at least double what I made in Curio City's best year -- and that's tempting. And I'd regain the hours per day that Curio City sucks down even in its worst doldrums. 

The point is probably moot: the publisher hasn't responded since I told him that I can't start until after the first of the year. But he does have a habit of long silences between contacts, so he could still come back. I need to be ready with a decision if he does. If I were pressed to decide right now, I'd give it a try. But first let's see how Christmas treats Curio City.

Christmas Don't Be Late

Last October brought four Christmas orders of $250 or more. I haven't had any big sales yet this month. October's slow when you strip away the Christmas sales, so that puts me way more than $1,000 behind already.   

And yet, my credit card debt keeps ballooning with Christmas merchandise orders. Holiday sales don't shift into second gear until Halloween, so I'm not alarmed yet -- concerned, yes, but not alarmed. In three weeks I'll have nearly all of my holiday stuff in stock, whereupon I can stop shelling out money and start taking it in...I hope. It kind of has to work that way. It always has.

I just threw away a tempting pitch for a  business loan from an outfit called Funding Circle because they require $125,000 in annual revenues for a minimum loan of $25,000. I'm just too small and insignificant; Curio City probably won't even gross $60,000 this year and I only need $10,000 (although spending $25,000 could be fun). Their interest rate would have been about half of what American Express is going to start charging me in January, but their loan origination fee would have wiped out some of the benefit of refinancing, and I'd have been locked into regular payments.

So waiting for those Christmas orders is still the only plan I've got. If you haven't started your shopping yet, now would be good. 

When Doves Fly

The story this week was dove kites. Many Christians will celebrate Pentecost on May 15. The sect that I was raised in didn't observe that holiday and it isn't noted on my calendar, so Pentecost sneaks up on me. This year I decided to read up on what all the fuss is about.

The Internet says that it's a big deal in "liturgical churches," meaning those based on Catholic rituals. Originally a Jewish holiday of thanksgiving held 50 days after Passover (says the Internet), the Christians believe that 40 days after Easter the Holy Spirit descended to earth to possess the disciple Peter and his followers, literally inspiring the Christian church. Largely ignored in North America, Pentecost is a major feast day in traditional Old World sects, second in significance only to Easter and ahead of Christmas. Although that descent was in the form of possession, the Bible assigns the form of a dove to the invisible Spirit on some other occasions. So there: You learned something. 

What's important is that churches buy lots of doves -- more, even, than they buy for Easter. Before I figured out the Pentecost explanation, I thought Prince's death might have sold some kites since he had used them in his 2006 Superbowl halftime performance -- presumably a lot of Prince fans were watching video of that last week. Prince and football are less obscure than Pentecost to most Americans...but I have zero evidence for a Prince connection.

On the downside, most of those dove sales were dropships, meaning that I had to buy the merchandise. The resulting revenue won't reduce my debt by a whole lot more than buying the kites increased it. But if it's all about cash flow, as I keep saying, a lot of cash flowed this week.

Apart from that, this was the week before Mothers Day. I didn't market to that at all and have no reason to believe that it drove any sales.  
  
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It's almost time to give up on Bing ads again. Assuming that their tracking code is working -- it says that it is, but I'm skeptical -- I spent $74 there last month with no conversions. Since then I've paused everything except my new "shopping campaign." Those few clicks cost me less than $1 per day, but it hasn't recorded a single sale yet. If it doesn't show some results in the next couple of weeks I'll bag that, too.    

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That $250 chargeback hanging over my bank account delayed Monday's payday until I could raise enough money to pay myself on Wednesday. Thanks, thief! I wish PayPal would just take my money away and get it over with. I hate unresolved conflict. 

Happy Smegging Holidays

With Valentines Day and Presidents Day falling back to back, last weekend predictably sucked: Shutouts on Friday and Monday bracketed all of $20 worth of sales over four days. So when someone with no name or callback number left a voicemail on Monday night complaining that my website was borked, I scrambled to investigate. Everything looked hunky-dory, but I was anxious anyway. Surely I'd have a sale waiting on Tuesday morning.

Nope.

Well, OK then. This was supposed to be one of the year's worst weeks, but I really need at least some cash trickling in. Reluctantly, I stepped up my advertising. Spending more money when there's nothing coming in doesn't seem wise, but what else can I do?

Maybe it worked. After a couple of hours I landed a $150 sale -- more than enough to cover the $90 return that finally arrived at the same time. At least that's not hanging over my head anymore.

An hour-long phone consultation with Bing Ad Services (Microsoft) Tuesday afternoon yielded some potentially valuable tips, but it all has to start with making a snippet of Javascript appear on all of my pages. Bing's now-defunct tracking code only appeared on the checkout page. I don't know which PHP file should get that code and my plea for help on Turnkey's forum fell on deaf ears, so Bing is still turned off.

Oh well...today my long-awaited Metal Earth dropship arrangement is supposed to begin. I will soon know if it's going to amount to anything. A couple of Metal Earth sales last week gave me grounds for some cautious optimism.