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Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Sales Pass $2,400 Mid Way Through June, And Other Developments

This is definitely a break-away month! Since my last post, the momentum has continued unabated, with new customers every single day, some of whom are spending significantly more than the average new customer has done. Now that I have another month of sales data, I thought it would be a good idea to look at  comparison of the results that I presented mid-way through last month, and for the first two weeks of this month.

The results that I tracked and presented last month, as of the 17th of May were:

Total number of stamps sold: 111
Total number of repeat customers: 19
Total number of stamps sold to new customers: 50
Total number of stamps sold to repeat customers: 61
Total sales dollars to repeat customers: $1,220
Total sales to new customers: $1,120
Average sales to repeat customers: $20
Average sales to new customers: $22.40

So far this month, as of June 15:

Total number of stamps sold: 247
Total number of repeat customers: 15
Total number of stamps sold to new customers: 61
Total number of stamps sold to repeat customers: 186
Total sales dollars to repeat customers: $1,671.69
Total sales to new customers: $733.94
Average sales to repeat customers: $8.98
Average sales to new customers: $12.03

The total sales level mid-month is about the same as what it was on the 17th of May, so it is a bit better overall this month. What is telling though is the volume: the total number of items sold so far this month is more than double last month. The average sales amount has fallen because many of the items we have listed over the last month are the less expensive items in the under $20 price range. However, these items are selling very well and the profit margins on them are excellent. What is ver encouraging is that we are now getting want lists sent to us to work on and fill, which we really weren't getting before. This is significant because it means that our regular customer base is beginning to regard us as their primary, trusted stamp dealer.

Looking at the blog, our traffic is way up also: we had 169 visits to the Canadian Philately blog today, which is one of our highest totals to date. The blog is now seeing daily traffic that numbers over 75 visitors a day, with more than 100 being common now compared to 30-50 just a couple of months ago. Most of the new posts that are going up are getting well over 100 visits as well. Our Adsense revenue is way up too. Just a few months ago we were lucky if we earned $1 in revenue per month, and now I am seeing around $7-$8 per month. It's not a significant amount of money, but it is money we are earning for content that we never expected any revenue from, and that revenue is growing. I am not sure if the cause of that growth is the increase in traffic, or if Google itself is getting more effective at choosing to display ads that my readers are likely to click on. Only time will tell.

Listings are proceeding noticebly more quickly than they were just this past month. I am now listing the Scroll issue of 1928-1929 and in one day I have listed over 50 items, which is excellent. I have close to 800 stamps to list from this set and I hope to complete that this week, or early next week. Fabio has nearly completed his identification and organization of the foreign and British Commonwealth material I had asked him to organize. So now the next major push will be to complete the successful conversion of all the U.S. dollar E-bay listings, which has to be completed by August 3 or the listings will not renew. Fortunately it appears that I now have a complete list of the all the listings with the original item numbers, so re-listing them and recording the new numbers should be fairly easy to do now. After that, it will be time to file the tax return for the company, which is due on July 31, and pay the tax that is owing on this year's sales.

Things are definitely looking better than at this time last month and it is nice to feel some momentum beginning to build that will take the business to the next level.

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