November 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 been performing. I’d like to start by saying that I’m not sure how I will approach doing these posts next year, as I’ve been relying on InventoryLab for my reporting and I’ve come to realize it’s more of an estimate than an accurate report.

I’ve been speaking with an accountant recently to clean up my books and pay myself a salary, so I’m not sure what these P&L posts will be like next year (if I end up continuing with them). For the sake of consistency though, I will continue writing these posts until the end of the year because I believe they’re at least partially accurate.

Putting that aside, overall I’m very happy with how things went this month. InventoryLab will say otherwise because they don’t count pending orders (I have over 400 of them at the time of writing this), but I finally had my first month of $100,000 in revenue:

While this number is slightly inflated by offloading bad inventory during BFCM, I can confidently say that my business is growing and I’ll have no issues becoming a 7 figure seller in 2023.

The Numbers

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

Revenue: $93,742.01

Cost of Goods Sold: $49,065.92

Amazon Fees: $30,973.67 (includes shipping costs, fulfillment fees, storage, etc.)

Other Expenses: $6,251 (See list below)

Net Profit: $7,451.42

Other Expenses:

• Tactical Arbitrage (OA Package) - $89

• SellerAmp - $23

• BQool - $100

• Keepa - $22

• Quickbooks - $80

• Cheddarsoft - $50

• Virtual Assistant Salary - $1780 (includes bonuses)

• eCommerce Insurance - $51

• Legal Retainer - $89

• Prep Center Fees - $3967

Like I mentioned previously, InventoryLab isn’t accounting for my 400+ pending orders which is why the numbers don’t seem that great - a lot of my big winners were sold at the end of the month, which I assume will inflate December’s P&L report.

I think one area where I can improve is being more selective on the items I buy and going deeper on them - there’s a saying in the arbitrage space that says, “go wide, not deep”. For a newer seller this is good advice because you want to test a lot of different products out to make sure you understand what performs well and what doesn’t, but in my case I end up buying a bunch of crap and only 20-30 units of the items that end of being a slam dunk.

Category Breakdown

Anyone familiar with these posts will notice that toys skyrocketed to #2 on the list out of nowhere. In December, check-in times at Amazon fulfillment centers are horrendous - everything I sent in to FBA last week is estimated to be shipped to customers in the second week of January.

This is the perfect opportunity to do some FBM - lots of small items like toys are going up in price due to higher demand, and FBA sellers can’t get their items checked in fast enough. While my catalog for this month isn’t as large as I would like, I have found a small handful of good items I should be able to sell through for the next week or two (and I can always find more).

What’s Next?

My plans for the rest of the year are as follows:

• Go ham on FBM (small items like plush toys, makeup, and candy)

• Buy less items in higher quantities

• Finish working on my course (37 / 49 videos complete, need title / branding still)

Until next time.