August 2022 FBA Profit and Loss Report
How much did I actually make?
Welcome back! It’s time for another update on how my business has performed in the last ~30ish days. While I can’t exactly say I’m satisfied with the outcome, from a macro perspective I think I’m headed in the right direction - but I’ll save that discussion for later on in this post.
The Numbers
NOTE: These numbers come from InventoryLab which only counts shipped orders:
Revenue: $89,504.87
Cost of Goods Sold: $44,685.83
Amazon Fees: $32,121.05 (includes shipping costs, fulfillment fees, storage, etc.)
Other Expenses: $4,003 (See list below)
Net Profit: $8,694.99
Other Expenses:
Tactical Arbitrage (OA Package) - $89
SellerAmp - $23
Profit Protector Pro - $60
Keepa - $22
Quickbooks - $80
Cheddarsoft - $50
Virtual Assistant Salary - $900 (includes bonuses)
eCommerce Insurance - $51
Prep Center Fees - $2728
While it may seem weird that I had around a ~20% increase in revenue but a ~20% decrease in profit, I think there are some plausible reasons why this is the case.
First, I liquidated a lot of bad purchases from earlier in the year. This includes ~$2000 worth of inventory I purchased from March —> April where Amazon randomly came onto the listing at half of everyone’s price. I was hoping that they would eventually sell out, but I decided it was best to cut my losses and get some of my money back.
Second, as it is with every other month I am in a position where I have several hundred units that have been checked in, but are being transferred to other fulfillment centers across the country. This is a theme I’ll be talking about later in this post.
To top it all off, I got really lucky with a few insanely high ROI items last month that are no longer available now - I love my 100%+ returns as much as the next guy but I try to focus on items that are more consistent, even if they provide lower returns.
To go over the main changes in costs:
Philippine Peso continues to crash so I’m getting a big discount on my VAs at the moment. I have a 3rd sourcing VA starting this month so the cost will go up but they’ll pay for themselves with a few good items.
I wanted to hire an admin VA so I wouldn’t waste my time doing admin tasks, but frankly I don’t think it’s enough work to justify a full-time position yet. In the meantime, I’ll be enlisting the help of my friend from Brazil who I used to game online with - he’ll get to make a few hundred a month on a temporary basis.
A Trend
The past 6 months I’ve noticed something interesting. Take a look at the graph below:
Every 2 months, I have one month with explosive growth and another month where stuff is stuck in FC transfer and there’s barely any growth - while it looks like I broke out of this cycle in August, remember that I liquidated a lot of losing inventory which probably added $5k-$10k to my sales for that month. January / February doesn’t count because that’s when I was offloading my massive investment into textbooks for the spring semester and began transitioning into 100% OA.
I’m not sure if there’s anything I can do to break this cycle without massively increasing my daily spend - I’m already increasing it from $1800 to $2000 this month. That being said, I’m interested in seeing if this trend will continue for the rest of the year.
Category Breakdown
Not much to say in this section, nothing has really changed - my biz is still mostly beauty / apparel and I don't see any reason for that to stop.
What’s Next?
I’ll be doing my best to start creating more refined systems to increase the productivity of both myself and my employees. Other then that, business as usual.
Crushing it bro