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Month In Review – Massive March!
This is the first month in review I’ve done, I thought I’d cover what was awesome, what was tough and then list key focus areas for the next month – which we’re already a week into!
So anyway, March… Wow, what a month! It was crazy. WASP Bags went more than a little nuts. With promotions in every capital city through Scoopon, WASP Bags had literally hundreds of new customers. Awesome, but oh so busy.
How busy? Well, below is a little graph showing the number of units that moved during March:
Crazy huh!?!
The Awesome Stuff
Reflecting, there were actually quite a few wins for March. So whilst it was busy, there was plenty of good stuff:
- Hundreds of new customers and thousands of people finding out about WASP Bags! This can only be a good thing for awareness and word of mouth. Whilst the bulk of these customers came through Scoopon, it was still the second best month ever in terms of website sales. So a really positive month momentum wise.
- Late February I commissioned a company to work on WASP Bags SEO. As I write this post, we’ve gone from something like the thirteenth page on Google for the best converting and highest traffic key word to the top of the second page! Awesome. With more SEO work being done now, should see continued improvement – hopefully cracking the first page is not far off…
- I received samples from my manufacturer of a new product I’m looking to introduce. The samples are unreal and everyone who’s seen them has said how cool they are. I’m really excited by this as I think this could be a great addition to the WASP Bag range.
- Had advertising appear in Tracks magazine, plus an ad and a great write up in this month’s Smorgasboarder magazine (check out pages 16, 23 and 25 – the magazine is free and online too).
- An initiative I worked on with the surf tour company World Surfaris a little while ago (check out the post I wrote about it here) has led to another opportunity, which could become a nice additional revenue stream. Too early to say much about it yet but there’s definitely an opportunity here…
- I got a lot of admin stuff set up – a proper business bank account, registered the business name and a few other things. Boring. But important.
The Tough Stuff
When you have such a large growth in customers, it certainly presents some challenges:
- For almost the whole of the month I was working in the business not on it. Customer service took up heaps of my time and Greg did an amazing job fulfilling all the orders. There’s no way I would’ve been able to do everything myself this month! Ensuring customers redeemed their vouchers correctly, answering questions and so forth took up lots and lots of time. It got a little overwhelming at times – especially as this was the first time there’d been so much volume through.
- Planning the ‘what next’. I really feel now that I’m a little unclear as to what the next initiative is. I haven’t had the time to think about it in any depth. I don’t like this feeling so looking forward to getting a bit more time to think things out.
- Doing all the other littler things that add up to a greater whole. Trying out Facebook’s new page features. Monitoring and engaging in forums, Twitter etc. Setting up thank you emails for the new customers. The infrequency of posts on this blog. All these smaller things haven’t been done as they’ve been deprioritised.
The Month Ahead
For April, there are a few things I want to focus on:
- Go back over all the various marketing initiatives done over the past 6 months and work out an approach for the next 6. Six months time will see us in October with summer on its way and what will hopefully be the busy WASP Bag season almost here.
- Decide on what initiative I want to trial next.
- Establish a routine of doing the little things. I know I need to give myself a clearer structure on what needs to be done, otherwise it will continue to not. Get done that is.
What Do You Think?
So that’s the first month in review post. What do you think? Tell me in the comments section below and also let me know what else you’d like to see covered in these reviews. I’ll do so in April’s review, only a few weeks away…
Month in Review – Mixed May
Welcome to the month in review for May. My, how the year is flying by! Hello winter.
I mentioned in April’s review that WASP Bag sales had started to slow down. A trend that certainly continued into May – it was a slooooow month. Revenue wise it was the worst month since October 2010 which was disappointing. You can see that even though the unit volumes were similar to November 2010 and February 2011, overall revenue was less. Continued redemption of Scoopon vouchers bought the average revenue per unit down, resulting in a low overall revenue for the month. There should be future benefit from cross selling, referrals etc, however in the short term it hurts:
The Awesome Stuff
Looking back on April, there was some good stuff that happened. I think I’ve finally managed to pull myself out of the little rut I was in and am feeling like there’s some momentum coming back.
Most importantly, I used the quiet period to work out where I need to take WASP Bags. I now have a plan! It’s a daunting, scary, ambitious plan – but aren’t they the best kinds of plans!?!? I’m still finessing it, starting to get other people’s input, and working out how to do it – I’m not letting that hold me back though and have started implementing things. I also spent time thinking about the whole 7 years to financial freedom goal and how I can do that. A lot has changed in the economy etc since I first planned out how to do that so I’m thinking of other ways to achieve that goal. I’ll share more details on both plans in subsequent posts.
Speaking of this blog, I managed to get a few more posts out in May! The trick of writing a few in one go and publishing them over time was a great way to keep the content coming without having to think about it all through the month. Will definitely keep up this approach.
To summarise, May was a month spent more focussed on me, my goals, plans and general wellbeing/balance, all that feel good stuff! 
The Tough Stuff
Obviously, the slow WASP Bags month was tough. I tend to get anxious when there are slow patches without many/any sales. The weather turning absolutely arctic in most of the country obviously doesn’t help – and neither does the gap in marketing initiatives. A couple of opportunities also fell through too which sucks.
Working out where I want to take WASP Bags and how to achieve the 7 years to financial freedom goal has been difficult, but energising as well.
Probably haven’t been as disciplined as I would like either – but I think this has been an important part of re-energising as well. When you’re in a rut and lacking motivation, getting moving is tough. Fortunately I’m moving again – bring it on.
Oh, the other challenge was having this blog temporarily suspended by WordPress – oops! Turns out I had a link in a post that breached their terms and conditions. Don’t know exactly which link, but it’s up and running again (obviously) so I’ll just have to be more careful going forward.
The Month Ahead
Well, this one is exciting now as I have a clear plan and list of tasks to get done! Ah, direction, welcome back:
- Setting up some basic systems to track opportunities for WASP Bags. In particular, events and organisations I can get involved with, as well as a media/industry contact list.
- Get more traction in SEO. Working with the SEO folks to work out what else needs to happen to get to number one (setting a high goal). Will also write two articles for seeding on the website and interweb to help with search rankings.
- Place an order for more stock – yes, the first order of WASP Bags stock is nearly gone! Actually quite cool. Am going to work out a few product enhancements, and also bring in a new product! Exciting. No idea where I’m going to get the cash from as yet, but I’m sure it will work out – anyone know of any angel investors???
There’s a few other smaller things, the three above however are the priorities. Oh, and there will also be a few more blog posts coming too. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss them
What about you?
What projects are you working on this month? Share in the comments section below – I’d love to hear from you! Projects are fun.
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