Sales: 1,105
Revenue: $35,318.40
Profit: $3,379.72
Gross Margin: 9%
2017 💰 Profit to Date: $9,276.21
* sales data from JungleScout Sales AlayticsThe 7 new SKUs for my new brand arrived on time to catch the Q4 spike in sales volume which was very lucky.
Revenue jumped from $13,224 to $35,318 which was fueled by a combination of having more inventory available for sale, combined with the CRAZY spike in holiday traffic to e-commerce sites like Amazon.
You'll notice my gross margin is relatively low. My new product line, as I would eventually realize at a later date, was more of a personal dream and not an optimal money maker.
After dumping tons of time and effort into launching it (and a $35,000 investment), I would ultimately only keep 1 of the SKUs in my future catalog, as profit margins were too low on the over-sized units.
Also, with over-sized products, any customers returns will destroy your profits - so if you decide to launch large/heavy products, make sure they are QA tested!
Sales: 752
Revenue: $13,396.58
Royalty: $3,985.35
Avg. Royalty: $5.30
2017 💰 Profit to Date: $16,475.59
* sales data from PrettyMerch ProBased on research I had done about previous Q4 Merch sales, I was anticipating more sales than this.
The communities I participate in all reported much lower than expected revenues from Merch, and it was suspected that Amazon's Merch facilities were overwhelmed and running out of shirts, ultimately resulting in throttled listings.
My sales were much higher than most people's, especially given my tier (2,000).
I credit my success in part to running AMS ads, which helped guarantee my advertised listings exposure, even if Merch listings were throttled in the SERP.
Sales: 261
Profit: $1,731.87
2017 💰 Profit to Date: $2,154.96
Profits for my print-on-demand listings were fueled by a combination of my 2,000+ merchant-fulfilled listings, and 5 FBA listings that were technically not print-on-demand, rather mugs with popular designs that I paid for up front.
One nice thing about working with GearBubble.com is that you can order products for FBA at a discounted price and they will send them directly to your FBA warehouse.
In my experience, this works GREAT during Q4. Outside of the holidays, only very niche POD products (mugs, shot glasses) that are holiday-specific seem to do well.
I mention this because I had trouble unloading my inventory after the holidays. It was essentially like catching lightning in a bottle for about a month and a half, and after that it was tough to give the inventory away (exaggerating, but still).
I also started selling shirts on Etsy through the Printful.com integration, netting me an additional 37 sales & $447.63 in profit.
Google Ads
Earnings: $314.47
Page Views: 584,713
Ad Impressions: 1,973,473
2017 💰 Profit to Date: $2,125.66
* 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.
