Sales: 593
Revenue: $13,174.34
Profit: $3,199.92
Gross Margin: 24%
2017 💰 Profit to Date: $5,896.49
* sales data from JungleScout Sales AlayticsNovember marked another month of steady FBA sales, with my 2nd product launched reaching the organic #1 spot on its main keywords.
I was also closely monitoring shipments of products in my new brand, totaling 7 SKUs. They were going to arrive in early December, which was cutting it close for holiday deadlines.
All of it was sent via sea, largely in part to the fact that 5 of the 7 SKUs were over-sized, which was a big learning experience.
Over-sized units will always be split to 3 different FBA warehouse destinations, increasing overall shipping costs. You can also opt to pay a per-unit fee in order to have them all sent to a single destination, but in my experience it didn't make sense to go that route.
I also had an issue with one of the products, where a portion of the product couldn't be shipped via sea or air due to hazardous material. Ultimately the product was a huge flop and cost me over $1,000 in lost cash. The real takeaway is that you can't always trust suppliers/freight forwarders when you request information ahead of time - sometimes they will drop bombshells on you AFTER you're already invested.
Sales: 660
Revenue: $12,014.94
Royalty: $3,712.16
Avg. Royalty: $5.62
2017 💰 Profit to Date: $12,490.24
* sales data from PrettyMerch ProMerch profits were in the thousands (plural) for back-to-back months, as the same trending design continued to bring in more sales, although they were slowing down.
I was able to get into Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) which was rebranded as Amazon Advertising in late 2018. This allowed me to advertise my Merch listings in a variety of ways:
- Headline Search Ads
- Product Display Ads
- Sponsored Products
I didn't get too crazy with how much money I spent on the ads - it was more or less a period to learn the platform and see what worked.
Sales: 57
Profit: $236.84
2017 💰 Profit to Date: $423.09
There was a nice Q4 spike in mugs & shot glass sales, and while it didn't equate to a tremendous amount of profit, it was nice to see validation for my effort.
Note: I didn't go the route of trying to advertise my dropshipped print-on-demand listings, rather I went with the high-volume approach where I listed as many items as possible, and didn't worry about writing bullet points or descriptions.
Google Ads
Earnings: $235.29
Page Views: 390,534
Ad Impressions: 1,223,094
2017 💰 Profit to Date: $1,811.19
* 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.
