Sales: 2,498
Revenue: $49,754.88
Profit: $8,767.60
Gross Margin: 17%
2018 💰 Profit to Date: $77,554.27
* sales data from JungleScout Sales AlayticsThere was a noticeable slow period for sales in October, and other people on the Amazon seller forums echoed my sentiment. Apparently it's typical to see a slow down in sales before the big Q4 November-December rush.
My profit was lead primarily by a few select SKUs pictured below (from Fetcher).
This graph illustrates why it's important to launch multiple products - it's hard to predict which ones will excel!
By launching more products (even if it's just variations of the same product), you give yourself a higher likelihood of scoring a major win.
My most profitable product from the graph above was the 3rd SKU i launched of that product. It unexpectedly received a bunch of 5-star reviews, and maintained a perfect 5/5 stars for 6+ months before dropping to 4.5 (I have my suspicions that competitors helped make that happen).
I also made a BIG mistake in August/October.
I overextended myself and allowed myself to get careless with ordering products, and ended up re-ordering a SKU that didn't need a re-order, resulting in holding WAY too much excess inventory.
This was especially brutal, because Amazon charges higher storage fees during the holiday period (stay tuned for the November income report - Amazon had an extra special holiday gift for it's sellers this year, & I don't mean that in a good way)
I also haven't launched new SKUs recently. End of year tends to mean higher storage and shipping prices, so I believe that Q1/Q2 are the most optimal times for product launches.
Sales: 435
Revenue: $9,131.33
Royalty: $1,852.44
Avg. Royalty: $4.25
2018 💰 Profit to Date: $15,607.28
* sales data from PrettyMerch ProOctober was full of ebbs and flows.
On any given day I could do $30 in royalties, or $100+. The odd thing was that it tended to teeter between either extreme.
Check out these few days of sales:
| Date | Royalty |
|---|
| Oct 9 | $23.14 |
| Oct 10 | $111.02 |
| Oct 11 | $115.41 |
| Oct 12 | $38.76 |
Crazy, right? I can't tell if it's truly just the ebbs & flows of Amazon shoppers, or if it's the result of throttling Merch listings, which Amazon has been known to do on occasion.
Regardless, it was a pretty good month.
Sales: 443
Profit: $3,336.65
2018 💰 Profit to Date: $20,790.83
In October, sales fell a bit on Etsy, likely as a result of me spending less on Google Shopping ads. The downside to using them is that we can't control our bids, so you have to monitor them closely.
Sales on Amazon increased, which was to be expected. Since I had a GTIN exemption, I can list as many products as I want on Amazon's catalog (it typically works out to about 1 product per 30-40 minutes).
As a result, I should continue to see an uptick in Amazon sales, proportional to the # of active listings.
I continued to list a ton of hats, testing things like the title of popular rap songs, to the obvious low hanging fruit, MAGA (Make America Great Again) parody hats.
One important note: The first time a design hat sells, you pay an $8.95 digitization fee (subject to change - already increased at least once) to Printful. This means you should upload a single design to multiple products, resulting in more product listings, giving it a better chance to sell over time (since you will most likely only break even on the first sale).
After a design has been digizited, you will see an icon indicating which embroidery type is paid for:
I would typically, at a minimum, upload a design to the following:
- Yupoong 6007 Five-Panel Flat Bill Cap * best seller
- Yupoong 6006 Five Panel Trucker Cap
- Yupoong 6245CM - Unstructured Classic Dad Cap
- Yupoong 12" Cuffed Beanie 1501KC
- Sportsman SP15 Pom Pom Knit Cap
5x products = 5x more coverage = 5x the likelihood of getting the sale.
I also use AMS to promote designs via headline ads.
Amazon headline search ads allow you to advertise up to 4 different products at a time (on desktop):
My approach involved taking a single design and uploading it to Amazon Merch standard shirts (@ $19.99) & Premium shirts ($21.99), as well as merchant-fulfilled hats via the Printful integration.
Then, I would create a headline ad in AMS for that design that featured both shirts & hats with the same design.
Just remember that the brand has to be the same on each product listing in order to be AMS headline eligible, so when you upload to Merch, make sure to match it to your Seller Central product brand.
I also had a very popular sticker that I sold around 100 of between eBay and Etsy. It was being advertised on television, but was not protected by Trademark, so it was fair game.
I didn't risk selling it on Amazon, as I was dropshipping them by creating manual orders on Redbubble that would ship directly to the customer.
I sold each sticker for $11.99 + $4.99 shipping, and the fees broke down as such:
- (-$0.82) PayPal fee
- ($-1.80) eBay fee | ($-.90) Etsy fee
- (-$8.05) RedBubble cost of goods + shipping
- Net profit: $7.32-$8.22 per sale
Given that I sold about 100 of them, I made around $750 profit by dropshipping the sticker!
This is what my advertising spend on Etsy looked like in October:
I'm not very aggressive right now with My Etsy promoted listings. I turned off my remaining Google Shopping ads & typically use a <$0.20 CPC bid in promoted listings.
As expected, I earned another 5% volume discount for the month of November from my October sales.
Google Ads
Earnings: $190.20
Page Views: 381,004
Ad Impressions: 1,045,466
2018 💰 Profit to Date: $2,146.4
* 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.
