How's your business this month?

[luckychucky]

There was a great little thread going a while back. Someone complained about how awful his sales were for the month of June, and a bunch of people replied with... pretty much the same.

As a solo entrepreneur it's really comforting and useful to read what others are going through. So-- in that spirit, just wanna find out where I am, and how others are doing:

June sucked for me, July's a little better. Kinda sporadic, mostly. Like, 3 days no orders, then an all-out overload of orders, then a flatline ghost town again. Strange, unpredicable behavior. It sort of coincides with the traffic Google sends my way, but there is not always a correllation. Sometimes traffic is fine but sales suck. Sometimes traffic is low but sales are strong. Like, all in all it sputters and coughs along but by the end of the month I've survived. This is a recent phenom; long term, sales have always been steadier and generally more predictable.

BTW, anybody know of a site where you can find out how small businesses are really doing, not just fed & corporate interest-rate/employment stats blather? [Sometimes I think it would be cool to start a site called howsyourbusiness(dot)com or similar--you can steal my idea if you promise to make it a good one].

Anyway, feel free to let us know how you are doing lately, OK?
Thanks

[luckychucky]

Can you really make a living with products under $4? How many do you sell in a month?

[ecommerceprofit]

I wonder if the Olympics will create "more" business for everyone selling on the net? I forgot what happened to us during the last Olympics but my theory is more people are at home watching tv while surfing the net here and there...

[Miop]

We sell jewellery too, and business has more than doubled this month. Last August was good too, but not like this!

[Raymond]

So, Olympic has started, notice anything changed?

Probably still early to say, but our traffic somewhat remains at an ok level, but sales was completely dead.

[pdivi]

Since yesterday, traffic is down and sales have fallen off a cliff.

[blaze]

Yikes! Sales dropped pretty bad saturday.

[luckychucky]

Pardon the dumb question, but how would the Olympics hurt online sales--everyone too glued to the TV to go online and shop? I mean, the Olympics aren't actually draining anyone's spending cash, are they?

[blaze]

Everyone has only so much discretionary time. If you're selling discretionary products or have discretionary content, then Olympics are going to cut into your sales..

[Raymond]

Probably the Hurricane diaster has something to do with it too. People are just not in the mood of buying online when such tragedy is happening to their country.

Wish the people who have lost their family members and their homes well.

[Miop]

I'm finding weekdays and sundays busy, saturdays absolutely dead. I did wonder if that's becasue that's the day that people tend to to and fro from their hols.

[Lovejoy]

HiLuckychucky,

Sure you can, if you have enough of them going ;~). My product range is from $1.39-$18.95, the best part is there's no shipping, inventory or much overhead once they're set up its just a matter of checking the pages, updating information and replying to email. I sell enough that it's now my sole means of support, I'm not getting rich but I have reached my goal in life to, " go to work in my underwear".

[aleatrix]

I agree that level of sales in any given season depends on what you're selling.
Here's our summer sales experience: This August is better than last August. Over all, so far this entire year has been better than last year. June was slow; July was a little slow, but I got one humongeous sale that put this entire quarter over the top.

[Sunshyn]

Sales were oddly slow at the beginning of August. Then, it being mid-month AND having read quite a few expectation of very low sales during the Olympics, I figured I was safe for when my partner is away on vacation this coming week. It's kind of important to me since my injury leaves me mostly unable to leave my chair and certainly unable to be running around getting things, packaging or shipping.

So what happens? We get slammed with orders from Wednesday last week and doubly so today, Sunday! Not only orders, but a fair amount of rush orders as well as International or otherwise difficult to process ones.

Notices that we're going on vacation have been up on my order pages, and I somehow figured those would deter orders. ::sigh:: I could really use that vacation in actual fact. I know... it'll be a good thing when the money comes in, but man is it going to be a rough week.

[luckychucky]

Feast and famine baby,
often alternating daily...

[Sunshyn]

There's always much talk about sales trends but has anyone here had their trends hold up for any length of time? Every time I think I've identified one, like more orders coming in during the first week of the month, mid-week or even during a particular month, my theory gets spectacularly blown away for no apparent reason. The main way to cause this to happen seems to be by making plans around the apparent trends - like this month.

Maybe it's a conspiracy... ;-)

[blaze]

It's hard, but very very necessary. As you tweak and change you need to develop an intuitive feel for what is increasing your sales and what is killing them.

This is probably the #1 skill set any business person must develop.

[Sunshyn]

Blaze, after running my business for over 12 years, I've come to the conclusion that there's no sure way to know anything of the sort. One can try for an educated guess based on past experiences, but in practice, it's counting on that guess too much which is more likely to ruin a business. I guess it's possible that this isn't at all true when dealing with less specific niches.

You'd think a guess based on 8 years running experience would be fairly dependable, such as late October being much of our overall income all year. Nope. Last year's October sales were almost the lowest all year, but September's sales suddenly went sky high. No reason for it. It's like everyone who was going big for Halloween actually got together and decided to give us breathing space to make their orders.

[blaze]

No matter what, you'll never be able to predict the future however you should always be able to say something like "well if the weather is sunny, it will have this impact on my business".

Knowing exactly what goes on in the mind of your customer is (at least to me) the most important talent you'll every have as a business person.

Developing the product, writing up the text, contacting the marketing channels, etc .. you can always hire someone for those.

But really understanding your customer and what turns them on or off is the #1 skill.