THIS POD LIFE: THIS YEAR, NOT THE SAME AS LAST YEAR

Here's a chart overlaying my 2021 PoD sales (blue), with the same period in 2020 (red). As you can see, much more volatile this year and I had hoped to be doing better by this time in the year. However it's after a year of lockdowns and people are no doubt still dealing from the economic fallout. Also people are buying a lot less masks all around, which was (perhaps regrettably), a nice boost for online sellers over the last year. All up, this is going to be a tough year for PoD, I think.

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COVID 19: DO YOUR RESERCH MORANS!!!

The popular but unreliable FaceBook Journal of On-The-Bog Scientific Research.

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COVID-19: INDIA

It pains me to write this, but it seems Covid-19 is exploding in India.

They did well early on, but new cases are now reaching up to 200,000 a day and the rate of daily cases is sharply increasing. 

The country has exceeded Brazil for total cases, and while the US is still number one at 31 million, India is at 14 million cases and may overtake the US in the coming months.

This is not good, and will such a large viral reservoir encourage further variants to arise?

I foresee two paths; one is that India manages to wrestle this into some sort of (mostly) manageable situation - a possibility that seems unlikely given that at time of writing only 1% of the population has been fully inoculated and it is accepted that 70% is needed if herd immunity is to be achieved.

The other is that India becomes a truly awful spectacle and one that the world has to take note of and cannot turn its back on. 

Regardless, the developing situation in India is something to keep an eye on in the coming months.

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THIS POD LIFE: DMCA TAKEDOWN EDITION

Well, it finally happened.

Woke up to a DMCA takedown issued by Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc; 'against this design of yours on TeePublic: LUDWIG VAN BAT-HOVEN no title variation'

Good night sweet prince; you were like a trusty lighthouse watching over me whenever I visited the TeePublic harbor - standing firm all these years against the encircling forces of corporate darkness, piercing the night with your light (even though you sold exactly no copies ever).

Your cruel extinguishment will be keenly felt old friend.

Rest now. <sniff>

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THIS POD LIFE: PREDICTIONS 2021

So I'm down to one or two sticker sales a day on Redbubble. This is unusually low and includes Teepublic and from what I've read, Amazon as well. Point being this seems to be an across the board slump.

My pick is that the first half of 2021 (and perhaps longer) will be volatile, although an uptick may be seen when Biden's covid relief checks finally land in US bank accounts, which should be soon. Of course no one is expecting this to reverse, much less resolve the US economic downturn caused by the pandemic.

There will be some growth as the year progresses but overall sales will be depressed compared to last year with the dips being very low.

A lot of last year's PoD signups made during lockdowns will lose interest. There'll be a surfeit of accounts that have 5 - 12 designs and are effectively abandoned. How long Redbubble will keep these on the books is unknown. 

Internet influencers will lose interest and move on to the next big thing, whatever that will be. You know an online market has been exhausted when videos of eager wideboys and girls promising thousands of dollars of online profits become ubiquitous on Youtube - as long as you subscribe to their online course, naturally. They're the crows and vultures flocking in to strip the last morsels of flesh from the corpse.

Having said that, the last quarter may see a surge greater than expected, due to relief at the global vax programme proving effective at reducing covid case numbers.

In short, I suspect it's going to be a tough year for PoD veterans.

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