Sales: 2,651
Revenue: $53,072.87
Profit: $9,263.11
Gross Margin: 17%
2019 💰 Profit to Date: $30,889.09
* sales data from JungleScout Sales AlayticsExisting SKUs
My sales were relatively consistent from April to May.
There was no real notable movement in product ranking, my best sellers remained my best sellers, and my "OK" sellers remained OK.
* click to expand
Per the chart above, the only SKU worth mentioning is the one all the way on the right which had abnormally high revenue relative to the profit it generated.
I've been selling this SKU in my most profitable brand & it's generated as much as $500 in a month for me, but it's subject to price fluctuations because it's simply not a "best seller" per my customers.
Rather than killing it off, simply keeping it live and letting it generate me ~$100/mo in a slow month both brings in minor profit + it increases my brand presence on Amazon & makes me look like more of an "authority" in the customer's eyes.
New SKUs
Here's an update on my two most recently launched SKUs:
- SKU #1 Was off to the worst start imaginable. As I mentioned in April's income report, the factory left a protective film on the window panel & customers HATED it, resulting in bad reviews & a high return rate.
- SKU #2 Was off to an incredible start! After launching it with no sales history, it received multiple early reviews (all but 1 were organic) & was selling up to 8 units a day, PROFITABLY!
My competitors average price was in the range of $21.99-$23.99, so I had mine initially offered at $17.99.
with PPC costs deducted, I was still able to make $144.86 of profit from the new SKU (it didn't go live until the back-half of the month).
Any time you can launch a new product & remain in the green while getting it ranked, you're doing a great job!
The market dictates if this is even possible... so don't feel bad if it doesn't work out for you.
One last thing: I ordered a new product , & it was expensive.
Without giving it away, here's some info on it:
- Manufacturing Cost: $17,260
- Shipping Cost: $7,488
- Earning Potential: 6-figures monthly profit
- Additional Info: The BSRs of this product on Page 1 AND 2 were lower than I've ever seen. I found it using Jungle Scout's Web App which I've reviewed on my blog here.
This product has the highest profit potential of any niche market I've ever entered, I'm excited to report back on what will hopefully be good news when it's produced, shipped, & available for sale on Amazon.
PS. If you're new(ish) to selling on Amazon, don't spend this much on a product launch.
PPS. This is actually 2 SKUs. It's a parent listing with 2 child variations (color variants).
PPPS. If you were wondering... this is NOT the most expensive product launch I've done.
PPC Advertising
And here's my Campaign Manager statistics from Seller Central:
- Spend: $1,959.99 $484.81 MoM
- Sales: $8,253.95 $2,122.64 MoM
- ACos: 23.75% 0.31% MoM
Considering I had two new SKUs with PPC dollars being pumped into them to rank them (+ competitive pricing), I'm completely satisfied with these numbers.
Sales: 270
Revenue: $5,179.54
Royalty: $990.76
Avg. Royalty: $3.66
2019 💰 Profit to Date: $12,111.63
* sales data from PrettyMerch ProMy best selling shirt was the same Game of Thrones themed shirt that was the best seller in April, & the rest of my best sellers were all evergreens!
Unfortunately the series finale aired on May 19, so the sales were bound to slow down shortly afterwards as the show fell out of the public consciousness.
One primary takeaway from the "Game of Thrones" experience is to cater to niches you understand.
I talk about the shirt that took my second account from tier 10 to tier 500 in this article & highlight how you can sell shirts targeted to a Trademarked niche.
You obviously need to be extremely careful in your keyword strategy (don't get cute), & when lightning strikes you can capitalize on the success of big TV shows.
If you go down this path: stick to what you know!
I actually watch Game of thrones! So when it came time to design some shirts that won't infringe, I already had ideas floating through my head!
The television that I keep above my monitors is always on while I'm home, & I'm always glancing up and checking for Merch ideas.
Let other people advertise for you!
You can also use apps on your phone that send breaking news via push notifications for cutting-edge alerts of what's going on the in the news cycle.
HUGE PRODUCTIVITY HACK: I use the Pushbullet App to mirror my phone notifications to my computer. As a result, I almost NEVER have to look at my phone!
This is what it looks like when I receive push notifications from a group chat app I used to stay in touch with friends:
* click to expand
While it may seem annoying, I promise you this will increase your productivity (if you actually intended on participating in the group chat!). You can use it monitor push notifications & easily dismiss them without having to phsyically touch your phone.
Automation
I prioritized re-uploading my entire catalog to Merch.
The last time I did this was leading up to December, 2018 (for the Q4 sales rush), so any uploads that hadn't sold would be falling off between now & June.
(They expanded the "live" time for new submissions from 90 days up to 180 days on June 4, 2018)
Thanks to the Merch Titans Automation uploader, I'm able to list my designs to Amazon Merch + multiple other POD platforms without having to dedicate hours upon hours each day slugging through the tedious upload process.
I can't implore you enough to check it out - even just for a month, if you have 100+ designs already made.
Sales: 480
Profit: $2,505.70
2019 💰 Profit to Date: $8,523.64
Dropshipped print on demand profits grew by +27.2% from April to May.
On average, I manually upload anywhere from ~8-10 new FBM products to Amazon using thePrintful + Amazon integration. I was experiencing a bug where I couldn't push new products to my Amazon.co.uk account, but that was fixed after weeks of not being able to make any progress.
My big focus for my POD business was getting my full catalog uploaded to new platform using the Merch Titans Automation uploader.
Efforts began in April & continued through May - there's some manual effort involved: You have to build out the spreadsheet that contains a File Path, Title, Brand, Description, Keywords & Price in order to use the uploader.
(I'll walk you through how to use it like a PRO in my full POD course)
New in May: I was able to make 4 Teepublic sales & 2 Zazzle sales, netting me an additional +$25.52.
While it's not much, it's progress! Most things start slowly & build over time.
Here are my Etsy Promoted Listing analytics for for the month:
* click to expand
- Spend: $433.22 $146.55 MoM
- Revenue: $1,801.70 $312.57 MoM
- ACoS: 24% 14.9% MoM
- CPC: $0.093 (avg bid: $0.11) $0.033 MoM
- CTR: 1.3% 0.1%
Green across the board!
This means you should be experimenting with lower max CPC bids when you run Promoted Listings.
Read my [FREE] Etsy Promoted Listings guide »
It also helped that I earned a 5% Printful volume discount that's applied to my June sales!
* click to expand
Once you can consistently crack $5,000/mo+ in Printful fulfillment costs, your POD business benefits greatly.
You can pass the 5% discount on to your customers & gain an edge in a pricing war, or keep it & enjoy additional profits!
Google Ads
Earnings: $177.71
Page Views: 328,075
Ad Impressions: 1,008,338
2019 💰 Profit to Date: $791.69
* data from Google Ads 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.
