I was reading Why People Don’t Like Lifestyle Businesses this morning and a couple of points jumped out at me. (Note: I love lifestyle businesses)
“A business success can be measured on the bottom line. A business success is not measured on its top line. I have heard celebrity entrepreneurs brag about their businesses calling out their total revenue as though the sheer volume of cash that their business touched was somehow meaningful.?” (more…)
Earlier today I was on the Clicky site when I saw this little, unobtrusive ad:
It links to a blog post that you really should read.
This is the first time I have seen this with mobile development, but I love it. They decided what it is worth, set the price, gave the spec, and put the offer out there.
At first I thought they were asking you to build it and then they would pay the developer who created the one they liked most. After reading the offer I realize it is much more reasonable than that. Though they are well protected from hourly overruns.
I have been doing fixed price development work too. I have not yet created an Android widget, so I don’t fit their requirements, but I like the model. So a fairly simply, but well designed widget is worth $5,000? Seems good to me.
As we enter into a new phase of software development, one based on mobile apps, we have the opportunity the change how the game is played. Clicky is doing just that.
Remember when everyone was up in arms about auto execs taking private jets to petition congress for bailout funds? Yeah, that was pretty bad. The thing is, the execs made what could be a compelling argument based on the value of their time and the wasted time involved in travel. Still, it was a PR loss. The perception of largess was far worse than the reality of the situation.
The same kind of thing happens with business travel on commercial airlines too. Today, a friend told me they are a “Southwest company.” As in, they only fly Southwest airlines. I know other Southwest companies too. It is worn as a badge of honor representing fiscal responsibility.
I don’t buy it.
Michael Arrington has posted that TechCrunch has reached the 1,000,000 subscriber mark on FeedBurner. First off, congrats to TechCrunch; I have never seen someone hit that milestone before.
I don’t know that they really have one million subscribers, but I do know they have at least one… me.
I use NetNewsWire on my laptop and my phone. They both sync with NewsGator.com which pulls the feed for me and reports a subscriber to FeedBurner. Sometimes the NewsGator sync doesn’t work right so I turn it off. At that point my laptop appears to be a second subscriber to FeedBurner. As I go through my day I may check feed from my home, a coffee shop or two, and my office (subscriptions 3 and 4).
Of course, I have tried out many other feed readers. Some of them are web-based and continue to report that I am a subscriber. Off the top of my head I know Google Reader and Bloglines do (subscriptions 5 and 6). I am sure there are more places I have uploaded my OPML file that would each report me as an additional RSS subscriber.
I am in no way doubting that TechCrunch is one of the most widely read blogs on the internet. I just think it is completely within the realm of reason to assume that the actually number of people subscribing to the TechCrunch feed is 20% of what FeedBurner is reporting.
How do I know and why do I care?
At one point in time I added the “number of subscribers” metric to statzen.com. As I dug in and saw what was really happening I realized that it is just a bad number; it does not represent what it portrays to represent. It can be skewed so far in either direction that the number becomes meaningless.
Do you know how people read your blog? Do your posts get read on your website or in your feed?
It should be a simple question, but with the tools that are available it is a hard answer to find.
Unless of course you have Statzen. 
jaxn.org channel overview for 9/2007 – 9/2008
BusinessWeek is reporting (via WaPo) on National legislation that would restrict behavioral targeting of web advertising. This legislation could impact how web analytics companies track surfers. You might think I would be worried, but I am not and here is why:
I knew this kind of legislation was coming. I think New York state was the first to propose it. I am pretty excited to see how it plays out.
One thing I have learned from being a partner in a retail store is the importance of measuring performance. The “one true metric” for a small business owner is “how much money is in the bank”. Unfortunately, if you only watch that metric you don’t see problems until it is too late. You have to find other ways of measuring performance, and if you pick the wrong ways it could do more harm than good.
First we track overall sales and the cost of goods sold (COGS). This gives us our gross profit and our gross margin. Next we look at our inventory and how much we are spending on inventory. This gives us an idea of cash flow and correlates to potential best-case sales volume for the near future.
As we measure these metrics over time we are able to get some idea about our weekly and annual sales distribution. The sales distribution is important because people’s shopping habits follow weekly and annual patterns (i.e. people shop more on weekends. not much shopping in Jan-Feb, back to school shopping 1-2 months before school starts, gift shopping in Nov-Dec, etc). Because of seasonal sales trends, comparing month to month (i.e. October to September) numbers is pretty much a worthless venture in retail. Year over year sales are the comparative metric that matters in retail. I need to know how this October is doing compared to the previous October. By calculating a year over year percent increase, the retail industry is able to compare performance with each other. This gives an idea of how you are doing “in the market”.
I just found a great retail sales reportsresource from BusinessWire. As I look at the September retail sales report, my eyes shoot straight to the right 4 columns. From looking at the month over month percent increase for retail brands like Gap Inc and Target I am able to compare the numbers to our store to get an idea for how we are doing in the market (we are doing great).
The bad news is that the retail market in general is not doing too good. For a surprising number of companies, the percent increase is actually a percent decrease. Wal-Mart is essentially flat. Target (who had been experiencing solid growth) is showing slightly more than 1% growth. Gap Inc (The Gap, Bannana Republic, Old Navy) is down. Dillard’s is down. All-in-all September sucked for retail. The year-to-date numbers aren’t much better.
While it is nice to be able to define a metric that can easily be shared and compared across the industry is nice, it is far from the most informative way to measure performance. Once a business has been around for a while, self-referential comparison is incredibly informative. By measuring the average amount of a sales transaction and the number of transactions that we do in a given month, we are able to get a sense for how our advertising and customer service is doing. This also let’s us know more finely where our growth is coming from.
You cannot run a business by measuring and analyzing the business. A retail business is successful by having a good product and great customer service. Still, analytics can help you make a business better.
This is why I am doing statzen. I want to know how my blog is doing so that I can make it better. Any statistics service can give hits and visits, but that is the equivalent of knowing sales and COGS; it just isn’t very helpful. I want statzen to answer more in-depth questions like “which topics are people most interested in?”, “What attention does an average post get? How does this post measure up?”, “Is my blog growing or declining?”
Really, statzen is about bringing “business intelligence” to the conversational web. Our experience as retail store owners is definitely influencing how we think about measuring performance on blogs.
Somehow this turned into a long post and I hope it makes sense. The original intent of the post was to say “Hey, look at these cool retail sales reports that I found.”
