2005 Retrospect Part I: The business

posted by Jeff | Thursday, December 29, 2005, 9:48 PM | comments: 0

I don't know why the new year causes us to reflect exactly, but I can't help doing it. The part that matters the most, my general well-being, I'm still processing. I'm not ready to write about that yet. So I figure I'll cover some other parts first. I'll start with the business.

The P&L is complete enough for me to get a good grip on how things look. It's not all bad, but it isn't all good either. I'm down slightly on profit for the year, despite an increase in revenue, but that's because of software upgrades (namely the MSDN subscription) and the purchase of audio gear for the podcast. The most disappointing thing is that bank fees ended up being about flat, and interest charges are up like 30% because the business cards weren't offering good low rate transfer options. I've got the interest down to about $25 a month now, thank God.

Traffic on my sites was up in most cases in the 10-20% range, and the ad revenue was about in line with the traffic increases. The frustrating thing about that though was having to use more advertising to compensate for lower fill rates and lower CPM's. The targeted Google ads that are making some people millionaires only work with subject matter that has strong advertising potential. Sadly, the amusement industry isn't big on that because it's just too small.

CoasterBuzz Club is still doing OK, but is down from last year overall. That doesn't surprise me because CoasterBuzz is so long overdue for an overhaul. It's on my to-do list though.

Looking forward to next year I've got several proposals out there and some new things to try. I just need to stay focused long enough to make them happen. Not sure what they'll do in terms of revenue, but if I can hit a few of the targets, I should be in good enough shape late in the year when I tend to struggle a bit.

My book, which I kind of look at as being part of the business, didn't sell as well as I had hoped in the first half of the year, so I'm crossing my fingers it did better in the second half. The publisher has done a pretty piss poor job of marketing it, but at the time I got the contract, I was just thrilled with the royalty rate I was getting so I never questioned anything about retaining copyright or how they'd market the book. Now I know better. If it does 10,000 copies in the long run, I'll be satisfied with that.

The one thing I didn't make a lot of progress on was the debt position of the company, and that's disappointing, but to be expected since I didn't work a day job the last four months of the year. I only knocked it down by 40%.

I also let my personal life, which has been less than stellar, get in the way of meeting some of my goals this year. I hope to work around that next year.

So overall I'm reasonably pleased with how things went, but very aware of the improvements and new goals I need to hit next year. I'm still floating in that limbo between hobby and successful business. I just hope it's still fun when I get far enough on to the success side!


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