Here is the May income report.
I was expecting a bump in sales due to summer college semesters and a bump we got! But when I was planning out the month, I was convinced that two books would sell. I thought it was a guarantee.
One never sold. And the other one only sold after I low balled the price towards the end of its demand spike. I still got 50% ROI, but it was a good reminder that I don’t know what I am doing and the past doesn’t guarantee the future.
Here are the numbers.
Profit and Revenue for May 2024
Total Revenue: $2,601.17
Cost of Goods Sold: $1,203.84
Total Profit: $768.84
Items Sold: 27
Returns: 1
This was a great month. I was expecting a bump in sales but I did not expect to do nearly three times my previous month.
Winners
Great ROI on these two. The second one was one of the first books I bought way back in February. Hard to complain about 100%+ ROI.
This wasn’t a book, but a random arbitrage opportunity I found via Keepa deals.
Love seeing that profit amount and we came close to 50% ROI. There’s a lot of garbage in keep deals, but this was a diamond in the rough.
Predicting Sales
I was positive that these two books were going to sell in May based on their historical Keepa charts.
But as we got to the last week of May. Neither book had sold. I started to feel impatient and manually updated prices to be the lowest price by a good margin. I use an automated pricer to match the lowest prime price for all my books.
The first book ended up selling at 52% ROI (I was targeting more) and the second book did not sell. I still have a chance in August to sell the second one. But looking back now it’s funny how confident I was that I knew what would happen. And I was only sort of right.
Good reminder that past performance does not guarantee future results.
June Outlook
Purchase $5,000 worth of inventory for the fall busy season
Prep all inventory at home to be sent in
Reducing my ROI target for new books to 30% since I am anticipating selling them in a month
Lets keep the momentum going.