The new year has already begun which means that it’s time to report the annual numbers for our online store. Just yesterday, my wife closed the books on our financials and I’m proud to announce that we had yet another record year with double digit growth!

I know that I say this every single year, but my wife and I are continually amazed by how our little online shop continues to grow. Seriously folks, while our store does cater to the wedding industry, our niche is actually quite small. But apparently, we haven’t yet saturated the market for wedding hankies and we’re not done growing yet.

Here are some of the highlights for 2011

Year over year revenue grew 39%
Year over year profit grew 44%
Except for just 2 months out of the year, our store had higher revenues than the previous year’s highest month.
Our SG&A went down as a percentage of …

It has been quite a year for MyWifeQuitHerJob.com and I just wanted to thank everyone for continuing to support my blog. Compared to last year, traffic has more than doubled and the number of subscribers to my newsletter has almost tripled! Honestly, I never thought that my blog would ever become that popular and I’m very thankful to have reached this point after 3 years of hard work.

In addition to the increases in subscribers and overall traffic, revenues for MyWifeQuitHerJob.com have also increased by over 5x largely thanks to my Create A Profitable Online Store course which launched in March of this year.

Looking back, I started this course which just a 400 page PDF document and nothing else. Today, the course has well over 30 hours of video and I’ve had a total blast teaching a very driven set of students.

In fact, I just wanted to take …

These last few weeks haven’t exactly been the smoothest in small business land for my wife and I. For starters, our business computer died a horrible death which caused all sorts of mayhem. Ironically, I wasn’t that upset about the computer itself. After all, we bought it a good 4 years ago for a few hundred bucks off of Craigslist and it had served us well.

The big pain was in reinstalling all of the software that was on the old computer. Now with regular programs like Windows and Microsoft Office, reinstalling the software is not that big of a deal because I keep all of my original install CDs.

Most programs don’t require you to jump through hoops during installation. But our business relies on several “sewing” programs that are sold by companies who are terrified of piracy.

So I get it. These sewing programs …

Because my wife and I were at the Canton Fair last October in search of new vendors for our store, we didn’t get a chance to celebrate Halloween with our kids last year. So to make up for lost time, we took the kids out trick or treating for almost an entire hour past their normal bedtime.

And I have to say that it was the most fun I’ve had in a long time! My daughter is at this age right now where she just loves playing dress up and she’s incredibly outgoing and enthusiastic about everything.

In fact, we had such a good time dressing the kids up that I now completely regret missing Halloween last year and I don’t plan on missing it ever again.

Just seeing the look on my son and daughter’s face yelling out “Trick or Treat” in cute little costumes just made my night and …

When I was a kid, one of my favorite fables was “The Tortoise and The Hare”. But even though I loved this story growing up, I never had any respect for the tortoise because the way he won the race just wasn’t that sexy. So what if he beat the hare this one time? As far as I was concerned, the tortoise’s win was just a big fluke. What do you think would happen if they came out with the sequel “The Hare Strikes Back”? Who do you think would win the second time around?

The problem with the tortoise is that no one wants to be known as the slow and steady guy. Human nature dictates it’s infinitely more appealing to be quick and speedy rather than slow and steady which is why most people are impatient and expect fast results when they …

Recently, I was featured in an article published on AllAnalytics.com discussing how analytics has improved our online business. While the article was well received, I ended up getting a good amount of questions asking for more specifics on exactly how and what we track for our web store. So, the purpose of this blog post is to point out a few important metrics that we analyze and look at on a regular basis.

First off, I just want to emphasize that analytics is more than just looking at the number of visits or the number of pageviews that your website gets.

Don’t get me wrong, checking your traffic levels is both fun and rewarding but ultimately Analytics is about tracking specific metrics that will allow you to improve both the engagement and conversion rate of your website.
Make Sure You Set Up Ecommerce Tracking
Google Analytics has many ecommerce specific features which …

It has been almost eight months since my wife and I signed up my little daughter for her first swimming lesson. And even though I’ve witnessed her triumphs and her struggles every step of the way, I’m still shocked and amazed that my baby girl is now practically swimming on her own. After all, she’s only 3 years old and it’s crazy how far she has come in just a short period of time.

If you saw her in a swimming pool today, you would think that she always loved the water and that swimming came naturally to her, but it was actually the complete opposite.

I still remember the first time I stepped into the swimming pool with her when she was scared to death and shivering with fright. Every splash of water that touched her caused her to scream as if acid was burning her skin. …

Every year, my wife and I hire a professional photographer to take pictures of the kids and the family. While this is not cheap, it’s something we like to do because the kids are growing up so fast and we want to have photos for every stage of their development.

What’s funny is that hiring a photographer is only a small portion of the overall cost. Buying all new matching outfits for the kids and my wife is what tears a hole in my pocketbook and gives me heartburn.

For all of you who know me well, I’m pretty cheap and seeing the clothing costs for these photo shoots makes me want to faint. In fact, I don’t even bother checking the credit card bills during this time because I’m that terrified.

The other day, my wife was shopping online at a kids clothing “boutique” and probably spent a …

My wife just closed the books on our mid year numbers(January – June) and profits are up in the double digits again. I say this every year but my wife and I are constantly amazed by how our little business continues to grow and expand.

Seriously folks, there’s nothing particularly exciting about our online store on the surface. We sell wedding hankies and linen napkins primarily to the wedding and event planning industry. Nothing big! Our niche is very small but it happens to be a part of a very large and lucrative market that is insensitive to price.

Part of the reason why my wife and I are always surprised with our numbers is because these yearly increases are compounded annually.

If we have a great year like last year where we grew 44%, then it’s that much harder the following year to show similar growth.

At …

Today, I’m happy to announce that our online store will be featured in the summer 2011 issue of Martha Stewart Weddings magazine! My wife and I are both ecstatic because we’ve been trying to get Martha Stewart’s attention for quite some time now.

As one of the top magazines in the wedding industry, I am truly humbled that they chose to include our wedding handkerchiefs in their latest issue.

A Mad Scramble
Several months back, an editor for Martha Stewart contacted us on a Friday afternoon asking if we could send some personalized hankies to their offices for a photo shoot the following Tuesday morning!

It was extremely short notice (the package had to arrive on Monday), but we managed to stitch out their request right then and there(something that would have been impossible to do if we didn’t do our own embroidery in house) and shipped out the hankies that afternoon via …

My daughter is now 3 years old and as she continues to grow and mature, it’s becoming much easier for the two of us to communicate with one other. Finally, she can put together simple sentences and convey what she wants and needs using words instead of grunting or crying.

The problem is that she’s also getting smarter and harder to negotiate with. Once she wants something, she’s tends to have a one track mind.

Daughter: Daddy, can I play with your phone?
Me: Not right now my love
Daughter: Can I see your phone? Can I see your phone? Can I see your phone?
Me: I said not right now
Daughter: I picked up my toys off the floor…
Me: Mommy made you do that so that doesn’t count
Daughter: Can I see your phone? Can I see your phone? Can I see your phone? Please Daddy?
Me: AHHH!!! …

I don’t know what’s been going on lately, but I’ve been receiving an unusually large number of depressing emails this past month. People have been asking me questions like…

How do I know when to shut down my business?
It’s been over 8 months now and I’m not still not making that much with my website yet. Should I change my niche?
Why is my site not getting any traffic? Should I start over?

After taking a closer look at a few of these websites, I noticed one glaring commonality between all of these online businesses. They’ve all been around for less than a year!!!

While my wife and I were able to make a six figure salary in a short period of time, making significant money with your business can often take longer depending on your niche and your ability to adapt to the market. In …

My wife just closed the books on 2010 for our online store and I’m pleased to share some of the numbers with you. Looking back, I’m still amazed and proud that our little online store continues to grow at such a fast pace. To think that our business all started when we found out that my wife was pregnant makes me almost want to have another kid (though I might have to run this one by my wife first…).

Photo by Oschene

This year was especially hard on my wife and I (in terms of the business) because our second child was born in late 2009. During the same week my son was born, we also decided to move into a larger house.

So with a crying baby, we basically packed up our bags and moved all of our stuff including parts of our business while on zero sleep. …

Before I tell you about my love hate relationship with marketing, I thought that I’d give you a little background about what I do. When I’m not blogging or helping my wife run our online store, I run a small electrical engineering team for a startup company in silicon valley.

Photo by Perigrinari

Most of my day consists of managing a small team, sitting behind a computer doing designs, architecting features to go into the next version of the product, giving presentations and going to meetings.

My primary focus at work is to put out the best product possible for our company but I’m never directly involved in selling it. In other words, I don’t do a lick of marketing at my day job.

Prior to starting my own business, I used to believe that putting out extraordinary products was the key to success in business. I used to believe that …

After publishing my article on How To Buy Wholesale Direct From Chinese Factories, a number of readers asked why my wife and I chose to pay all of this money to go to the Canton fair in China when we could have just used Alibaba.com for free to find our vendors. Certainly, the trip was not cheap. Here’s a breakdown of our expenses.

Photo By Zach Klein

Multi Entry Visa Cost To China – $440 (We paid $160 extra for special service so we didn’t have to drive all the way to the Embassy in San Francisco)
Airfare To Hong Kong – $1740
Bank Transaction fees – $45 (atm and credit card foreign transaction fee)
Train to/from Guangzhou – $120
HK Taxi/Metro – $140
Meals and Incidentals – $550
Hotel in Guangzhou – $260 (can be as high as $450/day) for a 5 star hotel
Hotels in Hong Kong (approx $300/day) for a 5 star hotel

Now you …