I doubt anyone will see this, but we are in desperate need of help. Any order large or small is highly appreciated. All we need is a few big orders of less than $300 total (for all) and it would give us a bit of relief before the end of the month.
As you may have already read, September is by far the hardest month on record for us since 2002 due to poor sales. Basically it’s been a nightmare. We’re trying to figure out what the cause of this is. We think it could be due to some google issues with indexing or something. The web server is super fast, so that’s not it. At this point we’re trying everything we can. It could be due to people just having less money these days. I can totally understand this. Everything has gotten way more expensive. Many people are prioritizing their absolute essentials over porn! It makes sense.
I thought maybe people are having problems with the checkout process. I’ve tested this over and over and it seems fine on my end, but i’ll keep checking. To be 100% sure there is no conflict, i’ve removed the site from any page caching software or anything that could cause problems with the checkout process. There also was a security software that may have been blocking things.
If I don’t get many sales in by the end of this week I am about 100% sure I will be forced to take part time work. This is really nearly impossible while running this site, but it will have to happen. Running this site is full time work and then some. My entire life is basically spent running this site. And of course I am VERY thankful for this! I get to do something I love for a job! I sometimes wish it was just a little easier. This year it’s been a constant struggle.
I work so hard at running this site and want to keep it going for many more years And no, we are 1000% not going anywhere. Not in a million years is there a chance of that. If I have to take part time work i’d just have to limit order size and raise prices by a lot. Not something i’d ever want to do. The site would then become more of a hobby of mine and with only one monthly update. DVDs would be raised to $8 (which nobody would buy of course).
So basically, all I need is a few big orders and it will be a major major relief. Once that happens I can then focus on order processing and planning for next month.
OK, this is sort of technical, but I had this idea about my site that may have been causing issues with traffic from Google. My homepage was always my “shop archives” page (full catalog). This may not be optimal at all and might have harmed my product categories and search traffic. To fix this i’ve moved my full catalog to a “Shop ALL” page.
Everything that is in the “Shop All” page is also listed in specific categories too. So maybe that was all duplicate content to Google and resulted in less traffic. I hope i’m correct. I’ve “no-indexed” the Shop All pages and hope this leads to a recovery. I really need a miracle to happen. I am hopeful that this somehow fixes things.
NOTE TO CUSTOMERS WITH OPEN ORDERS:
Please don’t worry. If you’ve got an open order, it’s in process and we are working on them non-stop until done. Thank you!