💰 Income Report: January 2019

Amazon FBA

Sales: 3,278
Revenue: $55,547.94
Profit: $5,560.52
Gross Margin: 9%
2019 💰 Profit to Date: $5,560.52

It's nice a see my Amazon FBA profit back in the thousands... I mismanaged my inventory levels in Q4 of last year and was slammed by fees.

My best selling SKU accounted for the majority of FBA profits, as surprisingly some of my best-sellers from the previous year's summer/fall seasons seemed to fade.

As it was my first year selling them, I'm still learning about their seasonality. I definitely overstocked them during the winter when FBA fees were the highest and paid a premium for the mistake.

Alas, I'm better for it now and I will pay closer attention in the future! That's what this "game" is about... LEARNING from both your wins & from your mistakes.

Fortunately for you, the reader, you can learn from my errors and hopefully avoid making them while you run your own FBA business :)

I began the product research process with the intention of adding a few new winners to me repertoire in 2019 - I'll keep you posted!

Amazon Merch

Sales: 246
Revenue: $5,251.38
Royalty: $948.69
Avg. Royalty: $3.85
2019 💰 Profit to Date: $948.69

If we thought Amazon customers were entitled before... well, they've collectively reached an entire new level of entitlement.

This is straight up abuse of the A to Z guarantee, to the point that it's laughable.

43 returns!

This definitely put a dent in my January royalties to say the least, and there's nothing we can do about it. Merch knew better than to pay us out in full for December too... they held onto a big portion of our royalties until January to make sure potential returns were covered.

It is what it is I guess.

Oh and how could I forget - they lowered royalties again!

Beginning January 30, 2019, we are decreasing the royalty paid on US t-shirts in order to account for increases in our manufacturing costs. If your t-shirts are priced below the new minimum price, they will be automatically increased to the minimum. To offer more competitive pricing, we are decreasing costs for hoodies, sweatshirts, and long sleeve tees and introducing lower default list prices. List prices for existing hoodies, sweatshirts, and long sleeve tees will be lowered on a rolling basis so their current royalty is unchanged. To learn more please visit our 2019 Royalties FAQ and Royalties pages.

You guys know my favorite price point for t-shirts is $19.99.

Back in 2017 we got paid a $7.19 royalty for a $19.99 sale. Then in 2018, it changed to $5.38. In 2019, we can look forward to a $5.23 royalty on a $19.99 sale.

We'll have to make due with it!

Dropshipped Print-on-Demand

Sales: 244
Profit: $1,139.59
2019 💰 Profit to Date: $1,139.59

Sales by platform:

I was pretty happy with my print on demand sales in January. They were primarily lead by selling Printful hats on Amazon.

My second my popular product was selling Printful shirts on Etsy.

Case & point: You should be on Printful! :)

Join Printful today »

My Gearbubble mug sales have been doing decent, but I can't tell if it's become like trying to sell FBM t-shirts on Amazon... (near impossible to do at this point).

I see some sales, but given that I have over 10,000 of them for sale, it's definitely less than expected.

I've noticed a number of hijackers have also jumped on some of my more popular print on demand coffee mug listings which is funny to me.

Many people don't seem to have a grasp on Amazon's fee structure, and I worry that many people may be selling at a loss and not even being aware of it.

That's why I pay $19.99/mo for Fetcher, Amazon seller analytics software that helps me stay on top of my profit margins across the board.

It's especially helpful when you sell fulfilled by merchant (FBM) SKUs in addition to FBA SKUs, as the number of print on demand SKUs created once you get your GTIN exemption will balloon quickly.

I did 175 Etsy sales, which is 5.6 sales per day on average. Definitely pretty good - but I always want more =)

• Spend: $243.09
• Revenue: $746.16
• ACoS: 32.6% ( 21.1% MoM)
• CPC: 0.11 (avg bid: $0.16) ( $0.01 MoM)
• CTR: 0.72% ( 0.01% MoM)

Unfortunately, I came up a few hundred dollars shy of the $5,000 requirement to earn a 5% volume discount from Printful for February :(

I had taken for granted how easily I was able to reach that number in the past, and now I'll have to re-focus myself to earn the volume discount moving forward.

Redbubble was OK, averaging 1.4 sales per day. I had uploaded all of my designs to the platform, using a variable profit margins that attempt to get prices close to numbers ending in ".99" while maintaining a ~20-30% profit margin.

I increased my sticker profit margins to 125% which came as a recommendation from one of my students who sells stickers regularly at a 150% margin. As of writing this, they still sell just as well as before!

Google Ads

Earnings: $171.34
Page Views: 351,177
Ad Impressions: 1,163,108
2019 💰 Profit to Date: $171.34

I run a few popular websites where I collect advertising revenue via Google Ads (formerly Google AdSense). I also collect revenue via direct partnerships with advertisers & from affiliate links, but for times sake, I'm going to omit those deals.

I won't be doing month-to-month write ups here because I don't spend much time maintaining these websites. They started out as passion projects that allowed me to become a better web developer, but today I spend very little time working on them.