Our eBay (and Etsy) Month - July 2012

Just coasting along......

July was our best month this year, at least as far as net profits went.  As far as I'm concerned, net is what counts, and our net profits for the month were very good.  I know what happened, but I really don't know why it happened. 

Our postcard and photo sales were both close to the most we've sold in a single month period all year, and when that happens we have a good month.  We've had months where we've sold more of one or the other, but not where both were this good - at least not this year. 

Also, for some reason we sold an extraordinary amount internationally - I believe international sales accounted for almost 1/3rd or our sales, and that is a lot for us.  I believe this this is the most we've ever sold internationally in a month, but I've only been tracking that for a couple of years now.  eBay has been tracking it for us since day 1, however, so I can report with a fair amount of accuracy that in the 6 years and 3 days we've had this business going, international sales have accounted for roughly 12.5% of our total sales.  I don't know if that is good, bad, or otherwise, but it is what it is.

I like international sales, I hope it keeps up.

Sometimes you have a good month because you find some special inventory.  We did have some good inventory this month, but nothing spectacularly out of the ordinary.  But we had some items which were unique, and which sold quickly for a decent profit - but even without that it still would have been a very good month.  So I don't really know how to explain it.

Our Etsy sales were decent, but not that much better than in June.

Traditionally the summer months are slower - June, July & August.  Well this year May and June were terrible, so I figured we were in for a slow 5 months.  So I'll very happily take a good July. 

I was worried that sales might be slower, because we're no longer have top rated seller status.  This is because eBay changed their criteria, and we felt the costs outweighed the benefits of trying to meet it.  So we made a business decision to stay the course so to speak. 

Well that's not quite true - we moved part of our business to Etsy, and it seems to be working ok. 

August has started out ok for us, but we're in the hole a bit because of some business expenses we had to make.   Costs money to make money as the say.