volume is very low, page-59

Advertising
Does anybody know where their advertising budget is spent?

It seems like the other expenses are under control, but that advertising is expensive. $10m spent in the past year on advertising vs $7.6m on product operating costs and $23m on staff.

Ads was 21% of total expenses this quarter. So if that was able to be cut in half, then they would jump to profit being 10% of receipts. I don't know if that's feasible though.

Expenses / Cashflow


The bottom lines are the expense groupings. The top 2 lines are total expenses vs receipts (the difference being net cashflow). So it bounces around break even, usually.

Projects
As far as I can tell, projects are up 21% YoY, but receipts are up only 7.8% YoY, meaning that average project value fell this quarter to $83.2 from $96.7 last quarter and $99.2 YoY.

I thought they were moving away from the high volume low price model, toward lower volume higher price. Apparently not. Maybe they're trying to compete with fiverr in the cheaper projects segment? But at least receipts is still up 7.8% YoY.