Working on the business vs in the business: most people who run an online store don't own a business. They own a job that happens to have a website. Melia Moore walks through an operator's twelve-hour day, the questions that separate an operator from an owner, and why a store that depends entirely on your hands can't grow past them. An owner watches five numbers: conversion rate, average order value, repeat purchase rate, the cost to get a new customer, and the margin left on each order. Shiny object syndrome turns out to be an operator disease, and thinking like an owner is what gives you permission not to do things. Plus the thirty-minute weekly habit: find your weakest number and make one move aimed at it this month. Chapters Links Episode page: https://ecomprofitably.com/podcast/working-on-the-business/ Ecom by the Numbers is brought to you by ecomprofitably: https://ecomprofitably.com/

Everybody lists the mental benefits of hiking; this is my attempt at the real list. I recorded this one a little differently. Most of these I write at a table, or in the van with a notebook, thinking it through ahead of time. This one started in front of a fire a few nights ago, out past Bend on a road I won't name — built slow, from small stuff, no rushing it — with a notebook I never opened, trying to answer the question I said at the very beginning I'd get around to eventually. What has any of this actually taught me? Not the skills. I can read a river now, mostly. I can fix the van, usually. I can build a fire in the wind. Those aren't nothing, but they're not what I mean, and they're not why you're still here. Here's what I found when I laid the episodes next to each other: I planned a pile of them about different subjects, and they turned out to be the same handful of lessons wearing different clothes. Patience, which is not waiting — the waiting turned out to be the good part, and the fish was never the point. Solitude, which did the opposite of what I expected and made me want people more, and better, and fewer. The ordinary day, which is not the consolation prize but the actual prize, because most of a life is ordinary days and if you can only enjoy the epic ones you've signed up to be unhappy for the large majority of your time on earth. And underneath all of it, a posture rather than a lesson: show up without an agenda, and stop needing the place to perform for you, because you can't actually see it while it is. I'll also close the loop on the van, since it's the thing people ask about most. It didn't set me free. It stripped my life down until there was very little left to hide behind, and it turns out that's most of what I needed. Not freedom. Fewer places to hide. Chapters Links Full episode notes and transcript: https://milesofquiet.com/episodes/mental-benefits-of-hiking/ This episode is sponsored by The Sprinter Store: https://milesofquiet.com/sprinter

Revenue vs profit: one store does a million dollars a year and keeps about $20,000. Another does $200,000 and keeps about $50,000. Melia Moore follows the money down both of them, line by line, from cost of goods to ad spend to overhead, to show why revenue is the easiest number in your business to grow and the least honest. The first split between an owner and an operator is one question: what did it keep? This episode adds the second half of the series' filter. A move can lift a lever and still cost you money, and discounting is the classic case. Revenue is an input, not the goal. For the rest of Ecom by the Numbers, profit is the lens. Chapters Links Episode page: https://ecomprofitably.com/podcast/revenue-vs-profit/ Ecom by the Numbers is brought to you by ecomprofitably: https://ecomprofitably.com/

Why is fire so mesmerizing? A few summers ago I found out what one can do to three strangers. I shared a clearing with two guys I'd met that same afternoon. Dispersed site, forest service road, one flat spot and three parties who all wanted it. We were polite about it — nods, small talk, everybody on their own patch of dirt. Then somebody got a fire going and offered to share it, because building a second one six feet away would have been strange, and within an hour the three of us were talking like we'd known each other for years. One of them told a story about his father I don't think he'd told many people. I know I said things I don't usually say to strangers. In the morning we drove off in three directions and I never saw either of them again. I've thought about that night a lot, and not because anything happened. Because of what the fire did. I've come around to thinking a campfire is a piece of technology — an old one, maybe the oldest one we've got — and that we walked away from it without noticing what came with it. It's the only thing I know of that makes people put their phones down without anyone asking. Nobody announces it. You sit down in front of one and after a few minutes the phone is in a pocket or face down on a log, and it stays there, and I've watched this happen to people who cannot put a phone down anywhere else. What I think is going on is that a fire is the reverse of a screen: a screen demands nothing and tends you, and a fire gives you plenty but only if you keep up your end. It keeps your hands a little busy and your eyes somewhere to rest, and that turns out to be the exact condition under which people actually talk to each other — sideways, pointed at a third thing, where a silence is just a pause instead of a failure. Chapters Links Full episode notes and transcript: https://milesofquiet.com/episodes/why-is-fire-so-mesmerizing/ This episode is sponsored by RVGearPro: https://milesofquiet.com/rvgear

How do you increase ecommerce sales without adding another channel, tool or tactic to the list? You stop treating your store as a hundred problems and see it as one equation: traffic × conversion × average order value × purchase frequency = revenue, minus what it costs = profit. In the first episode of Ecom by the Numbers, Melia Moore walks through the five ecommerce metrics that actually run your store. A worked example shows what one lever does. Lift conversion from 2% to 3% on the same thousand visitors and a $1,000 month becomes a $1,500 month, without finding a single new customer. Then the filter this whole series runs on: almost every growth tactic you get pitched is one of those four levers in a costume. Ask which number it moves and whether it's the cheapest way to move it. If it moves none of them, it's a nice-to-have, not the main event. Chapters Links Episode page: https://ecomprofitably.com/podcast/how-to-increase-ecommerce-sales/ Ecom by the Numbers is brought to you by ecomprofitably: https://ecomprofitably.com/