New to this series? Checkout the first report for background info on Postcard Panda.
tl;dr – January saw a slump compared to December’s holiday rush. I also had a lot of refunds due to one unhappy customer, which cut deeply into profits.
Overall Stats
| December 2016 | January 2017 | % Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $296.85 | $198.93 | -32.99% |
| Total Expenses | $230.76 | $189.33 | -17.95% |
| Profit | $66.09 | $9.60 | -85.47% |
Expenses Breakdown
| December 2016 | January 2017 | % Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kite.ly | $147.00 | $99.00 | -32.65% |
| Hosting (Heroku) | $24.00 | $24.00 | 0.00% |
| Advertising | 0 | 0 | N/A |
| Stripe | $53.01 | $35.68 | -32.69% |
| S3 + Cloudfront | $4.76 | $4.78 | 0.42% |
| Refunds | $1.99 | $25.87 | 1200.00% |
USA App Store Stats
| December 2016 | January 2017 | % Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Guest Orders | 16 | 8 | -50.00% |
| Logged In Orders | 122 | 87 | -28.69% |
| Total Orders | 138 | 95 | -31.16% |
| Signups who placed an order | 13 | 11 | -15.38% |
| Downloads | 149 | 73 | -51.01% |
| Reviews | 0 | 1 | N/A |
UK App Store Stats
| December 2016 | January 2017 | % Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Guest Orders | 2 | 0 | -100.00% |
| Logged In Orders | 7 | 4 | -42.86% |
| Total Orders | 9 | 4 | -55.56% |
| Signups who placed an order | 0 | 1 | N/A |
| Downloads | 0 | 0 | N/A |
| Reviews | 0 | 0 | N/A |
Retention
What Went Right
Nothing broke, and I had less than an hour of support time.
What Went Wrong
Refunds were high at 13 postcards, 12 of which belonged to one customer. The customer in question was unhappy with the delivery times, as they were intended as Christmas cards. I ended up refunding her for all of her cards, as I would rather have a chance that she comes back to the app (with realistic expectations) than scrooging her out of twenty bucks.
One of my biggest sources of frustration, and the biggest complaint I get, is that delivery takes too long. The reality is that it’s called snail mail because, you know, it has to be literally flown/driven/sorted for thousands of miles. I could potentially mitigate this by using a different printing partner that is based in the USA, but I intentionally switched over from Lob to Kite.ly about a year ago. Lob’s postcards were cheap and low quality (plus I had a bad experience with their developer relations) which is why I pay double for cards and shipping takes a few extra days. End rant.
Next Month’s Goals
Last month in this section I said a project I was working on was launching, but I’ve decided to push back that launch until April. I was burning myself out working too much and have found a balance now. You’ll hear about it in April!
Thanks for reading, and check back next month!
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