Sales: 57
Revenue: $1,539.46
Profit: $197.97
Gross Margin: 12%
2017 💰 Profit to Date: $1,153.13
* sales data from JungleScout Sales AlayticsWhen you launch new products on Amazon, you want to be cautious with your order sizes until the product demand is validated.
That said, if a product is a success, it can be tough to know how much to order. My first few products were validated at this point, and my order sizes from the manufacturer had tripled in quantity.
I should have paid my freight forwarder to send about half of the units via air express, but instead I had him send them all by sea, hence the delayed sales.
When you ship by AIR, you tend to pay around $6 USD per KG. When you ship by SEA, prices are often around $3 per KG, resulting in higher profit margins.
Sales: 279
Revenue: $4,655.83
Royalty: $1,289.44
Avg. Royalty: $4.62
2017 💰 Profit to Date: $4,155.64
* sales data from PrettyMerch ProMerch sales increased steadily, and I was very disciplined about maxing my daily uploads with new, quality designs.
I was still in the 500 tier for shirt uploads at this point and would soon be eligible for a tier up to 1,000.
Sales: 5
Profit: $27.81
2017 💰 Profit to Date: $142.55
I finally came up with a strategy for how to maximize my time spent designing!
I worked on templated designs, such as "My awesome bought me this!" or "This is what an awesome looks like!" where was interchangeable, such as "friend", "mom", "sister", etc.
I would render my designs as PNGs optimized for Amazon Merch, because GearBubble.com's platform let me resize & reposition them after being uploaded.
I also rendered a white + black version of each design, allowing me to put them on light background products + dark background products.
This way, one templated design could net be 20+ designs, and each of those 20+ would be placed on standard shirts, premium shirts, 11oz white/black mugs, 15oz white/black mugs, & shot glasses.
If I thought it made sense to, I would also throw them on pillow cases, although they definitely were the worst seller.
Online Arbitrage
Sales: 3
Revenue: $283.47
Profit: $109.47
My online shoe arbitrage hustle was running out of steam, for no other reason than that the shoes were running out of stock in popular sizes (haha).
It was good while it lasted! But a quick reminder: If you make a sale on eBay that you can't fulfil (and have to cancel), it will hurt your account standing.
If you account is in bad standing, they increase their final value fees on your sales to 14% (Yes, this happened to me).
Google Ads
Earnings: $211.93
Page Views: 432,102
Ad Impressions: 672,534
2017 💰 Profit to Date: $1,385.70
* 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.
