Hello Everyone, hope your 2015 is off to a great start! March is now in the books and that means it is time for me to share my financial results from the past month.   If you missed any of my past financial results posts, you can find them HERE.

We’ll get started with how my time was spent during March.  I only worked on weekdays on the amazon business for the most part, and only took 1 week day off from working.  Overall, I would estimate I average a little above 40 hours per week in March on activities directly related to the amazon business.

Before we get to the numbers, there is one more topic to discuss.  My goal with sharing my financial results is to show what can be done when selling on Amazon. It’s not meant to be seen as bragging or anything of the sort.  I want to show that working hard and sticking with your plan can pay off.  If the results turn out to be poor at any time I will share that too.

With that said, let’s get into the numbers for March.  I want to provide as much clarity as possible into what I am doing on a month to month basis (if you have suggestions for additions to these posts, please let me know!).  I will be changing up the format a bit, but will be sharing numbers exported directly from my InventoryLab account.  The cash flow statement will be in the same format as in prior months.  The numbers below will NOT be the exact numbers that go on my tax returns as there will be additional deductions not included here.  It’s also possible that I missed a receipt or 2 and the spending numbers may be updated slightly.  Also for clarity, this does not include any income from any other sources, it is simply my income from amazon and eBay.

March 2015 Financial Results

Now, the expenses:

Now, a chart view of the sales and profits by week:

The excel files are exported directly from my InventoryLab account, and the chart is a screenshot of an analyze tool within my account as well.  InventoryLab is the main accounting system that I am using.  A couple of notes are that certain items will only show up in one of the time periods even though they occurred over the course of the month, in these instances look at the total number for the month.   Also the “other income” is the net effect of my eBay sales which I manually enter, which was a small profit this month.

March was a big step in the right direction in terms of profits for my business.  Profits were just over $16,000 for the month, which is a little over double the amount from last month.  This has been due to a variety of factors, but the largest has been consistently sourcing high quality inventory.  This includes items sourced by me,  as well as by individuals sourcing products for me.  As you can see from above I paid out a little over $5K in wages and commissions. I wrote an article about Outsourcing Amazon FBA Sourcing that shares the details of these arrangements that I am using for these individuals.

Here are the current services that I am using that make up the above numbers for the subscription expenses (note that some of these I paid for on an annual basis to obtain a discount):

InventoryLab – I use their service for listing all of my products for sale on amazon, as well as the majority of my accounting. I use their scanning app, Scoutify, as my main scanning app.  Current cost is $49.99/month, you can sign up for a 30 day free trial with no credit card required.

Shoeboxed– This is a service that I use to manage my receipts.  I send my receipts off to them in an envelope, they scan them into an online filling system, and mail them back to me.  If you sign up through this link you can receive a 1 month free trial, and a 20% discount on your first 6 months if you become a paying user.  Current cost for the plan I am using is $29.99/month.

Appeagle– This is the repricer I am using.  It has been saving me significant amounts of time manually repricing.  In addition, it reprices items up as well as down, so I have sold many items already for more than I have listed them for.  They have a 14 day free trial, and if you enter coupon code “RYAN_G” you will receive 50% off your first month’s subscription if you elect to become a paying user.  The current cost for this service is $50/mo.

Feedback Genius – This service automatically sends out emails when items are out for delivery to the customer, as well as 4 days after the item has been delivered.  I tried out the free trial of this service, and it nearly doubled the percentage of orders on which I receive feedback without adding negative/neutral feedback, so I am now a paying customer.

Now let’s take a look at cash flow for the month:

Cash flow was a decent amount in the red for this month.  This is by design as I am working to continually grow the business, and the inventory spending should lead to greater results in coming months.  I didn’t break the amount out separately on the cash flow statement, but I placed my first private label order in March.  The total was just under $5,000, and I have not received it yet as I am having it shipped via ocean freight which takes about a month to receive.  This inflated the inventory purchases a bit, but the other sourcing methods (retail, online, wholesale, and liquidation) have all been big contributors as well.

My plan is to continue to spend aggressively on inventory, and I don’t expect cash flow to be significantly positive for quite some time.

Now I will share some screenshots to provide some support for the above numbers I am sharing.  Please note that the amazon sales number will not be exactly the same as what is shown above, as the screenshot below shows all orders that have been placed (but not necessarily shipped), while the above numbers are only for items that actually shipped during the month.  Due to this the variance is to be expected:

Now, the eBay sales:

Overall, this was a great month.  I am very happy with how things went, and am really looking forward to seeing what the rest of 2015 holds.  The goal for April will be to maintain a similar level of inventory purchasing to March, and to keep the trend of sales and profits increasing month over month.

If you are interested in a video tour of my warehouse, I did a youtube video showing it during March.  If you are interested, check it out HERE.

That’s all I have for today.  How is 2015 going for you so far? Let me know in the comments below.  Also if you have any other questions or comments, please let me know below!