Zip, Zam, Zowie and SWOOSH!

An SSL certificate ("cert") is one of those techie things that I just have to have. Secure Socket Layer is the encryption that turns your payment info into gibberish to anyone intercepting a data transmission and the cert is what enables the encryption between my server and the bank. Here's a full explanation if you want to know more. 

The most basic GeoTrust certificate sets me back $35. The fancy cert that comes with a dynamic seal and turns the address bar green is $179. Upgrading to flashy security might sway a few more customers, but certs expire after one year and $179 is a big cash flow commitment. I can afford a $35 renewal no matter how lousy sales get. $179 would be a real hardship if it were due right now.

The annual renewal email makes me cringe every fall because, in addition to $35, the issuing authority wants an hour of my time to buy, request, generate, and install a new cert. If I screw up one of the steps fixing it can stretch to several hours, so I block out an afternoon for this chore. This year, though, MDD Hosting offers an automated quick installer. Lo and behold, I installed the new cert just minutes after plugging some basic info into a web form. Hallelujah! 

Now I only pray that it satisfies the new standards that PayPal's going to insist on beginning next month. PayPal keeps sending me scary emails about how they're trying to kill me. MDD assured me back in May that their new certs comply with the latest and greatest requirements and that I only needed to replace mine before October. Mission accomplished; now we shall see. Curio City is so fragile at the moment that it wouldn't take much to polish it off.

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Speaking of sales turning lousy... Curio City had just four sales worth a whopping $80 from Sunday through yesterday. I'd expected at least $300. Things always crash after I do the vacation shutdown/revival; I suspect that Google punishes me for suspending my ads. The new SSL cert raised the prospect that something technical went wrong. A test transaction went through with no problems and I got a couple of small orders this morning, so... (shrug). Slumps happen. When they happen back to back, they yield a two-week paycheck that won't even reach $100.  

Blips like this one always pass sooner or later, but they hurt while they're happening. 

No disasters befell me or my computer during last week's mini-vacation. As usual, I'd gotten myself all worked up over nothing. Shutting down in September isn't something I ever intend to repeat, but it shouldn't prove fatal.    

Telephone Spam

I've never been a telephone yakker. The family telephone was a business tool for my salesman father, and off limits to children. Calls were kept short and direct when I had to make them at all; calling people "just to talk" (as if I would ever want to do that) was forbidden outright. I've always hated the intrusive and obnoxious nature of telephone intruders so I was happy when the eventual invention of answering machines meant that I never had to answer the telephone again. If it's important, leave a message; if it's not, just go away. (Hint: It's almost never important.)

Fifty years later, my telephone is still primarily a business tool. I didn't mind sharing my business number with my personal phone when I had an old flip cell phone because I never make or answer personal phone calls, and the phone always stayed tethered to my desk as if it were a landline. That changed when I got my first smartphone last spring. The allure of having the internet and my music collection in my pocket (and my wife's expectation of prompt replies to her text messages) has gradually led me to start carrying my phone around with me, making the spammers and scammers harder to ignore. 

Telemarketers send the noise-to-signal ratio so high that at least 75% of incoming calls are garbage. Like everyone else, I ignore calls from 800 and 888 exchanges and "restricted" numbers, so most salespeople are savvy enough to hide behind innocent-looking phone numbers. When I see an unfamiliar one, I google it to see if it's been reported for abuse. If it has been, I add the number to either my Scammer or Dickhead contact, depending on whether the abuser looks more like a crook or a telemarketer. If the number doesn't have any registered complaints and the caller tries a second time, I have to answer it; maybe half of these calls turn out to be customers. Real customers usually leave a voicemail message, and I return those promptly and politely.

Do I have a point? Actually, no: I've probably written about this before. I just wanted to blow off some steam about telephone spam overwhelming legitimate business. At least email spam is easy to filter and ignore.

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Bird Kite Lady finally disappeared entirely with her phantom $1,000. This week I struck up a new dance with a Golf Ball Lady who asked about ordering eight dozen loose balls. I invited her to call me.    

Lipstick On a Pig?

Massachusetts enjoyed a beautiful, if late, summer: slightly drier and cooler than normal, it reminded me what my favorite season was like before global warming turned it into a sweat lodge. Curio City had a decent summer, too, beating LY's dismal numbers despite being on autopilot. Next week's numbers will reveal a solid August, if not a hot one.

I hate change in general, and I especially hate to perturb things that are ticking along nicely. Alas, with Christmas right around the corner it's time to take control again. Next week I'm finally going to hire Turnkey to upgrade Sunshop, as I've been threatening to do all year. That's a gamble in itself. I've always paid a contractor for upgrades in order to preserve the many customizations that have accumulated over the years, but Turnkey will do a plain-vanilla job for a lot less money. What scares me is abandoning the "Modern Black" theme that I've used for a decade in favor of a new standard template -- one that, most critically, is mobile-friendly. 

Depending on how long it takes to massage the new template to my liking, and on how fussy I am, business might plunge and turn August from another modest money-maker into a loser. When it's done, it will be the same old Sunshop underneath with a dramatically new look on the surface. The so-called "responsive theme" should more than make up for the hiccup as I'm able to court mobile users instead of trying to avoid them. When I finally get through this transition I can bring in some new products -- something that I haven't done all year -- just as Christmas starts ramping up.

It's going to be OK. Isn't it? Somebody please tell me that it's going to be OK.  

It's Always Something

Massachusetts’ Secretary of State got his $109 “annual report” fee a few days before the deadline. Hours later an email from my CPA corrected my assumption that I had another month to scrape up the $456 state minimum tax; it’s all due on March 17. Suddenly, my taxes are paid and my bank account is $565 lighter. Fortunately, March business has been so strong that I’ll still be able to pay my credit card bills.

Paying my CPA will be my first April priority; that will finally slay the tax beast for another year. The second priority is going to be a lot more challenging: Microsoft is cutting Windows XP loose. My five-year-old computer will have a big "hack me" sign taped to its back after that deadline passes. I’d like to spend $800-ish on a new Win 7 laptop that will serve me for four or five years, but I might have to settle for a barebones machine for half that price and plan on replacing it sooner. We’ll see if sales hold up and just how dire the security threat looks. I will most likely need some new software, too; Quickbooks 2009 is getting a little long in the tooth.

If Microsoft didn't have a gun to my head I’d upgrade my website first. The "responsive theme" will make it more mobile-friendly and that could improve sales. It only costs $75 up front, but customization and support could add hundreds to the price tag, and sales often tank for a few days after a software upgrade. That pushes it into May unless I decide to postpone the computer and take my chances with the bad guys for a month or two. 

In June I can knock off the last capital expense on my list: A new office chair. Staples has a good selection in the $100-200 range. I don’t want to skimp on this since my butt spends 75% of its waking hours parked in this chair. A $200 expense in June, when sales typically peter out, is substantial. 

If all of that spending is in the rearview mirror by July I can finally start bringing in a few of the Spring products that started crossing my desk in February. Even though I won’t have any money for merchandise until July, I will still attend the annual Cavalcade of Crap (or the Boston Gift Show, as it prefers to be called) in a couple of weeks. 

The computer and the chair, plus the smartphone that I already bought, will doom 2014 to being another year with no profit…but at least I’ll have a phone, a computer, and a chair that won’t need replacing next year!

Forward Into the Past!

Staples advertised the Samsung Galaxy S4 for a penny because the S5 is due out next month. My wife insisted that I get a Galaxy because that’s what she has – and what do I know about it? -- so I’ve been watching the price ever since Best Buy offered it for free over Christmas. One cent was close enough to free; I finally leapt into the 21^st century with a newly-obsolete smartphone!

Staples turned that 1-cent telephone into a $231 Amex charge. The mobile phone business ranks right up there with car dealers and mattress salesmen for opaque accounting and must-have add-ons (Case! Screen protector! Extra memory! Accident insurance!). After all rebates and refunds are applied, and not counting the ink cartridge that I tacked on, that $231 shrinks to $91. But Amex isn’t going to see it that way.

How does Massachusetts get away with collecting sales tax on the nominal $600 retail price? Staples listed a $49.99 retail with a $49.98 credit on the receipt. Even though I only paid a penny, I can understand paying tax on its true $50 value. But $600? Come on. Has anybody ever really paid $600 for this phone? AFAIK the state doesn’t tax the pre-discount prices of any other merchandise.  

Verizon’s going to get a cut, too. Our phone bill increases by $35 a month after some hocus-pocus with the account. Curio City’s phone bill just went from $15 to $50/mo.  

Of course, now I’m $231 farther away from paying the corporate registration and tax prep fees that were this month’s goals. The phone was at the bottom of my list of needs for this year. But hey, it was only a penny!

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Google says my top social referrer last month was Pinterest, followed by Facebook, Blogger (that’s you!), Naver (?), and Ning (??). That reinforces last week’s conclusion that I really have to invest some time in understanding Pinterest, as much as I cringe every time I think about it.