Covid protection of my fire pit business

The middle size (48") is the bread winner fernwood.

Our small 24 inch fire pit has been a bone of contention with me and the better half Pat.
Yes they sell well and make perfect sense for the reasons you pointed out.
The problem is they take about the same amount of time to build as a large pit but sell for a small amount of money.
The small fire pit subject came to a head resulting in contention.

Contention:

My better half rubbed her better ETSY sales in my face for like 7 years.
She started the abuse, always having been a self proclaimed smart ass.
About 3 years ago I absolutely started smoking her sales when I opened a fire pit ETSY store.
I have always been the type of person to do everything big or in mass(production engineer type). And am competitive on cerebral level.
Now she had to eat crow, I felt sorry for her as my income quintupled(more accurately octupled) her's and 'allowed' her to put my smaller fire pits in her ETSY shop.
(She tucked tail and asked if she could list them).

Come to find out she was trying to sell my fire pits(that I built) on her ETSY shop at a substantial discount without telling to me.
Right there on the same ETSY page next to mine !! The gall !
Embarrassment struck hard when clients continued to by from me at a higher price. I told her they don't like imposters ROFLing.
This was very very humiliating to her but she asked for it for years of teasing me.
Asked if she would start calling me Big Daddy, Fire Pit King, The Master, etc etc. Talk about lady getting mad !
And I started mansplaining stuff to her to increase aggravation levels lol.

Meantime I have had enough spare income to hire web designer, web analyst, welder and take website advancement courses.
While she does the administrative work for my fire pit business.
I barely do any work with the fire pits now.
Talk about 'what comes around goes around'.

I have enough materials to build a few dozen 24's. I suppose I should build them so she can sell them to get them off the property.

This is interesting.
Note that sales follows visits to a tee.
This is a chart showing all visitors(users) in 2019.
Not many, about 2700 visits.
However these people had intention(organic visits), they were likely searching to buy a fire pit.
Look at the higher visits in May/June; these were the highest sales months for 2019.
Note an elevated visitor rate starting December 18th.
These visits increased because we started running a Google Ad Dec. 18.
But these visits arrived from ads and are not producing many sales.
Not all visits created equally...



There are like a 100 metrics(parameters) to look at on Google Analytics.
The challenge is to figure out which of them pertain to your situation as they relate to your sales.

That's some funny sh*t right there. Pricing them lower than you and STILL losing. OOOppps. All's fair in love and war, I guess.

Love the story James, and those are great looking fire pits. I'm still using a galvanized washtub in the yard. I've made that $5.00 dollar purchase go a long way.

(Chuckling also) I must subscribe to this merry thread. Lol. Get my jamesp fix going....

hummingbirdstones rockjunquie knave
You guys would have to know my wife to appreciate this competitive arrangement.
She is a clever and colorful yet feisty character, hung out with and even dated Jeff Foxworthy in high school.
She says she was doing her male cousins a favor since Jeff could never get dates.
She was like the homecoming queen, I suppose Jeff was happy.
I believe she is the one in his book that he curled her toes(openly exaggerating) when he kissed her.
What a loser, girl coulda married Jeff Foxworthy instead got stuck w/me haha.

Any way, I am content being the analytical and her being the personality.
However my personality trumps when she is under my thumb in a competition she started and I finished he he.

Cha Ching Che Ching !!!

I a became an analytics junkie. It is amazing how the trends repeat themselves from the year before fernwood.
2018 and 2019 were like mirror images making the future quite predictable in views and purchasing timing.
The fire pit purchases follow organic views to a tee so it greatly simplifies analysis. Get more organic views, make more sales...simple.
Even comparing say November 18' to November 19', monthly trends follow each other remarkably similar.
About 50% of the views comes from paying ETSY for ETSY/Google ads. So says ETSY anyway. Such stats can be deceptive.
GA is much more comprehensive and the real story can be analyzed if you can decipher the metrics. Often the tricky part.

I am sure that even the fortune 500 companies are educating employees to doctorate levels on this useful tool.
And as you mentioned it will be in marketing curriculums in colleges from now on.

Keep in mind I only want to sell 300 to 400 pits per year.

Funny you mention this Scott. I just bought my first Google ads. Watching results.
Not impressed in 1st 2 weeks, paid ads are not having much conversion. Lots of visits, but lacking intention.
January/February is the deadest season so anything goes. My website is not even a commerce site, clients have to click thru to ETSY to purchase.
Will be changing website to commerce site. This may prompt the more fickle visitors from google ads to purchase. Maybe. I prefer motivated clients.

I never bought ads in the past. But fire pits have become big biz.
Competition may burry me on the big web, not likely on Google local because my site is named firepitsatlanta.
2019 was a record year but I think I am headed for problems in the future being found on www web.
The big players with deeper pockets and better search prowess are getting involved.


ETSY is a funny bird. It does behoove you to pay for ETSY ads so that your listings will appear on pages 1-2-3 of the #1-2-3 'fire pit' search term searches.
Recently ETSY combined Google and ETSY ads into one payment recently. You can not pay for them separately.
I must say ETSY has a massive www google group campaign. They have always had me front and center on www search.
I have been #1 fire pit seller on ETSY in volume and income however as of the past few months other seller's volume has probably surpassed mine because of their reduced pricing.
For this reason they have had a much better search standing than I. Ha, so much for loyalty.

My saving grace will probably be local sales because of the name of my website being a hot local search term. I own the title.
6 million people within 40 miles... Local sales make the most profit. Quicker. Simpler. Funner.