Ted's Blog

After things started getting a lot better last quarter, things started to slow down and get bad all over again this quarter, hopefully temporarily. The big problem was that Speedfactory's webservers were taken offline in September and, despite talking to their tech support people about getting it back online, nothing has happened. So after a decent July and August, things were terrible in September and I'm still only getting about 100 visitors a day. For instance, Amazon commissions went from $26 in July to $28 in August to $5 and change in September. AdSense was similar: $19 in July, $9 in August, and only $4 in September. So far my advertising deal is still generating about $50 a month, but with the page rank and traffic down, that may not last.

The most popular item remains the Maxell battery pack, with 16 sales (after 2 were returned). I also sold 5 of the cheaper Turbo iPod charger and 3 PAC unilink adapters for Sony car stereos. The most expensive item that sold was a solar-powered gadget charger for $73 (a 4% commission yielding $2.92). I also was able to sell a pair of Nikon binoculars which for some reason also qualified for the lower 4% commission for electronics (instead of 6.5%) despite the binoculars being completely not electronic. The most unusual thing was probably the Mattel Matchbox Mega Rig Shark Adventure.