Life of an Online Business – My Pillow place

January 2009 is almost in the rearview mirror.  I’ve noticed that the frenzy of December turned into the lull of January.  We’re back on track, though.  I’ve refocused our efforts and am ready to start enhancing our site with new products.  I’ve spent most of the month playing catch up with all of the other things that business requires.

Sales are coming in slowly.  The average dollar per sale has seemed to dip as well.  We usually have one large order each month that helps our numbers rise quickly.  This month, we haven’t had that.  My goal is to exceed last January’s sales total…and with 5 days left this month, we’re almost there.  I’m confident that We’ll hit our goal.

On the product front, some of our vendors have put out new catalogs with new products.  I have yet to review this stuff…but will soon.  I believe we’ll have some new products in February.

I’m glad to see that our dog beds are getting more attention in the search engines.  Its been almost a year and we’ve only sold a few.  That’s the problem with getting into a niche market.  You have a lot of competition.  We’re also, all of a sudden, selling more of our childrens floor pillows.  This is a product that went mostly ignored through most of last year.  Now its becoming popular.

The traffic and sales generated this month are a huge difference from this time last month.  That’s to be expected, but it is humbling.  I wanted this year to start high and go higher.  But after Christmas and New Years pass, there is always a pullback. 

You want people to spend their christmas money with you.  But this year is different.  They don’t have it to spend.  They are saying on the news that even the really affluent are pulling back.  However, I am confident that the further into this year we get, the better the economy will get.  I have no facts, I’m just hopeful.

On a better note, I spoke to one of our suppliers and was informed that they’ll have some new products coming out in the next month or so.  That’s exciting.  I love adding new quality products to our site.  Its even better if you can get it from one of your existing vendors.  I have no idea what the new stuff will be.  But it should be good.

One of our vendors offered us the opportunity to sell a unique product that they had some overstock on.  We’re offering it as a product that will be available while supplies last.  Its a 40×40 Fluffy Blue Floor Pillow filled with a shredded foam filling.  Its a good product, unfortunately, it is only available in 1 color.

We’re starting to catch up on our December shipments.  That is making me feel better because it is stressful when things don’t ship quickly.  We’ve had some orders that were outstanding for a month…but our suppliers shipped a lot of stuff today and I expect more tomorrow. 

I’ve added a new links page to our link directory.  A second Furniture links page will be good for our links partners because too many links on one page reduces the quality of that link.  I’ve seen links pages with hundreds of links and unfortunately, Google and yahoo only count so many links before they start ignoring.  I think I read that more than 150 links on a page is counter-productive.  But, I think I’m going to start limiting our links pages to 40-50 links per page. 

The first 8 days of 2009 have been relatively slow.  But we hope that as the month goes on we can gain some momentum.  I’m working tirelessly to make 2009 even better than 2008.

One of the problems we have during the month of December is the flood of orders that some of our vendors get which will increase the shipping times.  We always put a deadline for ordering to get your product by the holidays, but after that date passes it can be a crap shoot.

Its hard when orders aren’t shipping because we literally have no control.  We are at the mercy of our suppliers to create the custom pillows and furniture and get it shipped as fast as possible.  Here on January 6th, we still have a bunch of orders placed in early December that haven’t shipped yet.  Of course we have to field calls from customers asking where their purchase is…some people even cancel their orders because the gift is no use if the holiday’s have passed.

Most people are understanding though.  We try to do the best we can because we want everyone to be happy.  I spent last night exchanging many links to help our website achieve better organic rankings.  I’m also looking at adding new products very soon.  January will be a busy month.  I am looking forward to our vendors getting back to a normal schedule and shipping to resume in a timely fashion.

2009 has begun and so has the start of the 4th year of My-Pillow-Place.com.  With this being our 4th year in business, we should really start to see some good traction.  Our website has reached an age where the search engines know you are going to be sticking around and not disappear overnight.

I just noticed that this blog had its pagerank reduced from 3 to 2.  Not a big deal, but Google’s pagerank is still playing around with our site.  Still displaying 0 and shifting the numbers of links we have.  I’ve slowed down my link exchanges over the month of December.  But now that the new year is here, I will rededicate myself to improving our site and exchanging more links.  Not necessarily in that order.  Over this weekend, I plan to sit down and review all pages of our site, evaluate products and look at our list of new companies. 

I want to see some serious growth this year.  We had a good year in 2008 by doubling our traffic and sales.  But in ‘09, I want it to fly really high and make all this hard work worth the effort.  We’ll see what happens as we move forward.