December 2022 FBA Profit and Loss Report

How much did I actually make?

Welcome back!

It’s time for my last P&L post (in this format). Moving forward I will have a professional bookkeeping service, which means that anything I post going into this year will be 100% accurate. I have considered putting future P&L posts behind a paywall because of this, but will keep all of the 2022 ones available to the public regardless of what I end up doing.

Putting that aside, let’s talk about December - the most profitable (and mentally exhausting) month for an Amazon seller. To kick things off, we had another six figure month in revenue. If we’re being honest, I’m actually quite frustrated because the holiday items I bought were gone within the first 10 days of December. One thing I’m starting to learn after doing this for 19 months is when it comes to Q4, if you find the right items you won’t ever buy enough. I will take this as a learning opportunity and be sure to set aside some capital for next Q4.

I’ll go into some specifics after we talk about the numbers.

The Numbers

NOTE: These numbers come from InventoryLab which only counts shipped orders:

Revenue: $105,079.69

Cost of Goods Sold: $55,182.78

Amazon Fees: $31,052.62 (includes shipping costs, fulfillment fees, storage, etc.)

Other Expenses: $5,951 (See list below)

Net Profit: $12,893.29

Other Expenses:

• Tactical Arbitrage (OA Package) - $89

• SellerAmp - $23

• BQool - $100

• Keepa - $22

• Quickbooks - $80

• Cheddarsoft - $50

• Virtual Assistant Salary - $2609 (includes bonuses)

• eCommerce Insurance - $51

• Legal Retainer - $89

• Prep Center Fees - $2838

The main difference in expenses for this month compared to previous months is that the VA salary is much higher than usual, while the prep center fees are a bit lower than usual. Prep fees aren’t surprising, since a big part of my Q4 strategy was to focus on FBM and moving lots of units from my house.

For the VA salary, this is because the Philippines has something called 13th month pay, where employees get an extra month’s worth of salary at the end of the year. Since all of my VAs have been working for less than a year, they got a partial amount based on how many months they’ve been with the company. Next year though, they will all get a full month’s worth of salary on top of their December salary + performance bonuses.

Profits were much higher this time around since people are always overpaying for stuff in Q4. I managed to find a handful of winners that I shipped out 100+ units of each through FBM, the lowest ROI one being 40%. That being said, I also dumped bad inventory so the margins aren’t as inflated as they could be.

Category Breakdown

More or less the same as last month with the exception of Grocery shooting up to #4. My VA found a homerun product in this category where for 1 week I was the only seller on the listing, making $8/9 profit per unit and shipping out 10-20 of them every day with FBM. The only thing preventing me from selling more was the fact that it was a holiday themed item only available in small online stores, and they were all out of stock after I’d sold ~175 units. If they’re available next year, you can bet your ass I’m selling at least 500.

What’s Next?

Going into 2023, I don’t plan on having super explosive growth like I did in 2022. The plan is to keep building systems that allow the business to run without me, and continue creating content that will help others build their own arbitrage business.

And of course become a 7 figure seller. Until next time.