lgn1 - 3:09 pm on May 26, 2012 (gmt 0)

If are are making the same profit selling 2 at $50, why go to the extra work to pack twice as many items to make the same profit.

Over the years, I have found that slow periods (after normalizing for seaonal trends), are just normal variation.


Ajustments due to new competitors, industry trends, discounters entering the market, does not result in sudden changes overnight. Erosion of market share takes time.

The best thing to do is to find your standard deviation of your sales over a long period of time, and weight the results based on seasonal trends.

65% of the time your sales will be 1 SD away from the mean average daily sales amount. (average days)

30% of the time your sales will be 2 SD away from the mean average daily sales amount (slow and good days).

5% of the time (3 SD), sales will be excetionally hot, or extremely slow.

1% of the time (4 SD), you will hit new records, or wish you never got out of bed in the morning.

Just like you have hots days, with greats sales, you in turn have slow days with poor sales. They all fall on the bell curve.

If you track sales on a daily basis, you will become maniac-depressive with wild mood swings. DON'T DO IT !

If you can't find any technical reason (website down or slow, etc) don't sweat it, its normal statistical variation.