December Update
December 6th, 2011 by KenricThis update is a little late because I’ve been fairly busy with Xmas stuff. November turned out to be decent, but I was hoping for more. I think my expectations are increasing too fast now.
STORES
Ebiz “A” and Ebiz “E” were neck and neck and both ended up being within $50 profit to each other.
Ebiz “G” - This blocker store had a few sales making a mere $130. One day I’ll do something with it.
Ebiz “H” & Ebiz “I” – Winter must not be the season for this niche because it again dropped in sales. It looks like this product peaks in August and September. I’ll be ready for this next year. That being said, both of these stores still made $2k last month total.
Ebiz “K”- Again, made about $250. Slow and steady. Traffic is increasing and it’s now solidly on the front page of google. Again, next year I’ll be ready and I predict it will be a $50k year site.
Ebiz “L” – 1 sale which made about $30. I don’t know if this niche is going to work. The products are always being discontinued or out of stock. I’m just sitting on this site and will revisit it next year.
Ebiz “M” – No new news. It sits there get 5 hits a day. This is how most people open up stores BTW and then wonder why they get no sales.
Ebiz “N” – Haven’t done much with this store.
DEDICATED SERVER
I ended up cancelling my $200/mo dedicated server and staying on the shared hosting. Basically what happened was that the migration was a nightmare and I couldn’t risk cutting over a store just before Black Friday. So I cancelled the server and moved everything back. So far so good.
I did order a VPS for $30 a month that I’m messing with now. I can stomach wasting a server for $30/mo while I figure things out, but I couldn’t do that for $200/mo.
CUSTOMS
I have a huge shipment stuck in customs for the past two weeks. This is stressing me out because I already have about 75 backorders to fill from this shipment. The shipment contains about $70,000 worth of product of which I’ve sold $6400 of it. I really believe that I could possibly sell 50% of it in the next 2 weeks. If this shipment gets rejected or delayed longer I’ll probably be kissing goodbye about $25,000 in profit for the month.
GOALS
I’ve been trying to figure out what a good goal would be for 2012. I’ve come up with the following goals. Let me know what you think.
“I will increase my net profits by $50,000 in 2012″
“I will pay off one of my rental properties in 2012″
The first goal should in theory be easy if I open up 2 more stores. But I’m sort of
tired of opening stores right now. It’s not exciting anymore.
The second goal is a good doable goal, but the problem is that all my rental properties have interest rates below 3%. The loans are about $110,000 on each one. It’s probably not a great use of cash, but paying off a property always feels good to me.
CYCLES
Ebiz for me seems to have a clear cycle. I notice that in the 4th quarter, where you make the most money, you are also the most motivated to open more stores. This is probably because you see money coming in. This is the worst time to open a store, it’s too late.
Then January comes around and your motivation goes out the window and you do nothing. However this is the best time to open stores because you have 10 months to build them up before the big shopping season hits.
So you should be building stores and SEOing them from January to September, and then sitting back and collecting money from October to December. I think that’s the proper cycle and I’ll try to follow it in 2012.
EMPLOYEES’ STORES
I am proud to say that both of my employees now have their own stores! I am sure they will start making money very soon.
Posted in Ebiz | 7 Comments »
Stumble it!
The “proper cycle” is similar to the bricks and mortar retail approach. Their favored building schedule opens a new store at the beginning of October. That allows the store to become established in time for Christmas.
In your shoes, I would have two goals. I would keep the goal of increasing profits by $50,000 in 2012. I would add the goal of buying a well-located rental property generating what you believe to be an acceptable return for $110,000 cash by the end of 2012.
By Another Investor on Dec 7, 2011
Have you thought about using Amazon’s AWS for hosting? I will be honest, it has a significant learning curve to the point that I still have not moved my stuff to it, but it does have the advantage that once you are there, it is trivial to grow your underlying systems when you have increased demand and shrink them again when you don’t.
By qbrain on Dec 7, 2011
How much do you work on Ebiz K?
And, have you tried Servint as a VPS? I’ve heard great things about it.
By Emily on Dec 8, 2011
You were in Mexico this time last year. Are you taking a pre-Christmas vacation this year? It’s a little scary not to be “hands on” with a lot of revenue at stake.
What happened with the shipment stuck in customs? Was the problem paperwork? Is the problem resolved?
By Another Investor on Dec 12, 2011
I don’t spend alot of time on Ebiz K. I should be doing more on it but have not. I will start working on it more in 2012.
By Kenric on Dec 12, 2011
AI, no December vacation this year. I got my shipment out of customs on the 8th and shipped out everything the same day. The issue was that customs wanted to verify the duty tax code that my products were under.
By Kenric on Dec 12, 2011
Your last Christmas deliveries should be on their way or just about to go out the door. How was your Christmas season and have you achieved all of your seasonal and 2011 goals?
By Another Investor on Dec 23, 2011