#11 December 2024 P&L: $2,257.06 Net Profit

End of year zero

December 2024 Income Report:

Read the previous November 2024 income report

The month started out slow but picked up closer to Christmas. I made about 23 FBM sales on a few toys and lotions. And then January textbooks started selling around the 20th and really picked up at the end of the month.

Here are the numbers (including Ebay sales):

And hit the like button and ask any questions in the comments. I can dive deep into any questions in future posts.

P&L for December 2024

Amazon Sales 12/1/2024 - 12/31/2024

Total Revenue: $7,095.64 (ebay sales included in the below numbers)

Items Sold: 68

COGS: $3,181.75

Biz Expense + AMZ Fees: $1,656.83

Net Profit: $2,257.06

2024 Net Profit: $5,826.34

I’m excited to have finished up year zero selling on Amazon. I’m surprised with how much I did and extremely optimistic for the future. I learned a ton this year and it has honestly been the most fun I have had “working”.

It’s still a small business, but I have learned a lot from just flipping textbooks. When I enter my course guru phase, I’ll sell a course and call it “the textbook MBA”.

A review post on year zero will come at the end of February.

Accounting

The year zero celebration ends now. While I was reviewing the figures for this article I realized how bad my accounting system is.

I have been tracking all buys and sales on spreadsheets and that has worked fine up until this busy season. But in October and November went deep on a few ASINs that I was confident would be profitable. And as they have been selling I’ve been fumbling over what has sold and which hasn’t.

I was previously using Inventory Lab and they did a good job for tracking profit & loss and auto importing Amazon transactions. But the customer support sucks, every SKU has additional inventory added (the devs are “looking into it”), and every CPA I’ve talked to has said it’s not a legitimate bookkeeping system and they don't accept it.

So I decided to go back to quickbooks again. Every Amazon Seller CPA I have seen says to use it. And a lot of the big sellers use it. It’s the gold standard for a reason.

I need to figure out a system that works with QB. I want to be a legit biz and having poor accounting standards is a recipe for disaster.

Winter Busy Season

January sales are already picking up. But I did lose a little bit of sleep the other night thinking about the upcoming season.

I was confident, maybe even cocky, heading into the Jan season that I was going to make a good amount of sales.

So far it’s been good, but I have seen a few listings that aren’t panning out like I thought they would. I’ve been monitoring prices and adjusting where I can. But a few tankers are on my listings. Not much I can do but play the cards I’m dealt.

This is my second busy season and my strategy is similar to my first. Liquidate all textbook inventory at 30% ROI or greater. I don’t care if a book will spike to a higher price in August and I have to sell for less now. I want the money so I can churn it over the winter and spring. And I’ll probably be able to re-enter the position in May or June.

Online Arbitrage

Sent in 72 units, have spent ~2k on inventory. No sales (other than the Christmas items) yet and still don’t know what I’m doing.

Will be a little painful figuring this out.