Sales: 4,914
Revenue: $82,492.02
Profit: -$484.10
Gross Margin: -0.6%
2019 💰 Profit to Date: $10,795.18
* sales data from JungleScout Sales AlayticsFor the first time ever, I finished a month in the red for my Amazon FBA business.
It wasn't because anything went catastrophically wrong.
I lost money because I liquidated numerous SKUs that weren't profitable enough.
I've mentioned before that you should launch multiple SKUs (even within the same niche) because you won't know what will end up being your next best seller without testing the market.
That said, when things dont pan out, don't be afraid of cutting products loose.
I ended up being invited to participated in multiple Outlet Deals where, if you accept, you have to list your Outlet-eligible products at 30% off the previous day's lowest Buy Box price & 30% off the average Buy Box price from the previous 30 days.
You can read more about my experience running the outlet deals in my Liquidating Amazon Products article, where I also shared a glimpse at my April profits after most of the unprofitable products were sold out:
- April 4: $495.84
- April 5: $403.84
- April 6: $258.41
- April 7: $246.28
- April 8: $520.74
- April 9: $522.73
- April 10: $522.75
Total: +$2,970.59 Profit.
That said, my profitability was deferred in order to free up capital for tax season & be reinvested in launching new SKUs for 2019.
P.s. you can check out my article on How to file taxes for your FBA business here.
Here's a chart of my best selling FBA SKUs in March (product names omitted)
And here's my Campaign Manager statistics from Seller Central:
- Spend: $2,878.96 $163.93 MoM
- Sales: $17,617.14 $2,111.13 MoM
- ACos: 16.34% 3.28% MoM
My March statistics for advertising spend were a nice improvement over February.
My two big takeaways from Amazon FBA in March were:
- Liquidating products that weren't generating enough profits
- Saving some money up so I could pay taxes
After finishing up taxes I could set my sights on using the money I got out of those discontinued products & looking towards future launches.
Sales: 196
Revenue: $4,085.85
Royalty: $864.85
Avg. Royalty: $4.41
2019 💰 Profit to Date: $3,086.70
* sales data from PrettyMerch ProMy best selling shirt of the month was an evergreen design that capitalizes on the ever-popular Game of Thrones niche.
If you're not familiar with Game of Thrones... have you been living under a rock?
Even people who don't watch the show know about it because it's been one of the hottest print on demand niches of 2019 (the final season is airing on HBO in April).
Pretty much all of my designs that sold were evergreens, as I barely had time to create new ones.
I've been spending the majority of my time working on this website & my YouTube channel (I posted 29 new videos in March)
Once I can find the time (without sacrificing my 8 hours a night), I'm going to take full advantage of the fact that I can now automate the variable design creation process in Adobe Illustrator & automate the upload process to various print on demand platforms with the Merch Titans Automation tool.
If you have no clue what I'm talking about, I implore you to check out my YouTube video where I walk away from my computer and get ready to go to my day job while Merch Titans uploads t-shirts to Merch by Amazon for me.
Also, Amazon Merch released a new CREATE (BETA) tab that helps take the time out of uploading a single design to multiple products by allowing you to do it all on 1 screen.
You still have to optimize designs at the correct dimensions for T-Shirt & hoodies... Amazon won't do it on our behalf unfortunately. Also, PopSockets are currently excluded from the new UI - I'm not sure why.
Sales: 313
Profit: $1,584.50
2019 💰 Profit to Date: $4,048.61
It was a largely uneventful month for my dropshipped print on demand sales, as I spent most of my time working on ryanhogue.com + Ryan Hogue Passive Income on YouTube.
The Merch Titans Automation tool I referenced a second ago also allows you to upload to many non-Amazon Merch POD platforms, so my plan is to get my existing designs uploaded to all of the eCommerce platforms supported currently.
No matter how busy I am with things, I am ALWAYS uploading new products to Amazon via the Printful integration, as they're available for sale on the largest eCommerce website in the world FOREVER!
I'm still primarily uploading & selling embroidered hats, as I feel the market is less competitive than shirts/mugs (but my Merch shirts & GearBubble mugs continue to sell as well).
My Promoted Listing analytics for Etsy weren't trending in the right direction in March:
- Spend: $564.26 $185.53 MoM
- Revenue: $1,581.57 $380.13 MoM
- ACoS: 35.7% 4.2% MoM
- CPC: $0.13 (avg bid: $0.16) $0.01 MoM
- CTR: 1.1% 0.14%
(I factor ad spend into my profit calculations by the way, so the $564.26 was deducted from my overall DPOD profits that you see listed).
Switching over to Redbubble, I averaged just under 2 sales per day (up from 1.2 sales/day on average in February).
My plan is to hit the Redbubble uploads hard one I can get comfortable with my new formalized design + uploading process, centered around automation.
Google Ads
Earnings: $169.10
Page Views: 301,326
Ad Impressions: 1,004,717
2019 💰 Profit to Date: $474.64
* data from Google AdsI 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.
