Welcome back! Now that we’ve made it through another month, it’s time to take another look at the P&L. As usual, I’ve been seeing some solid growth - but I’m not sure if it will be sustainable in the long term. I’ll talk about this a bit more later, but for now I’ll just go over the numbers since that’s probably why you’re reading this in the first place.
The Numbers
NOTE: These numbers come from InventoryLab which only counts shipped orders:
Revenue: $45,839.06
Cost of Goods Sold: $21,519.94
Amazon Fees: $14,501.65 (includes shipping costs, fulfillment fees, storage, etc.)
Other Expenses: $3,866 (See list below)
Net Profit: $5951.47
Other Expenses:
Leads List - $100
Tactical Arbitrage (OA Package) - $89
SellerAmp - $23
Profit Protector Pro - $60
Keepa - $22
Quickbooks - $40
Virtual Assistant Salary - $1100 (includes bonuses)
eCommerce Insurance - $51
Prep Center Fees - $2381
The numbers just keep going up. As I hire more VAs to reduce my workload and send more items to my prep center, I’ll continue to have more expenses but in order to continue scaling the way I am I think outsourcing more is the solution.
The only notable change from last month is that I have a second sourcing VA so the payroll has doubled. She’s doing really well for her first month and I still plan to write a post about VAs in the future.
Category Breakdown
To the surprise of no one, Beauty is still the big hitter. I know the screenshot says Lawn & Patio under beauty but it’s a single item that I’ve been shipping FBM that really should be in Health and Household - I don’t know why InventoryLab thinks its in the patio category.
The only other notable change is that I’ve started to get my feet wet with shoes. I was initially scared by people who said the return rate was high for shoes but ultimately I decided to just go for it if I see an opportunity - hopefully I can get shoes up to 5-10%.
What’s Next?
One thing that’s started to happen to me is I’ve spent a lot more time than usual on the business due to a heavier workload - this makes sense as I’ve been aggressively scaling all year long but I don’t think it’s sustainable. My goal for this month is to talk to some other big sellers and try to see what systems I can implement to make less work for myself - this will probably involve more hiring but I think I’m up to the task.
Inspiring post. I am just getting started and has been real difficult to find profitable ASINs. Any recommendation / tips ? Also how are you using lead list and VA. Are you using lead list as starting point for VAs. Does the VA comes trained for sourcing or you have to train them ?