Second Shipment & January/February Stats
Stats from the first 1.5 months
This will be rolled into the income report next March. But wanted to add stats here for future readers as they start their journey. Here are a few stats from January & February
Items tracked in Keepa: 1158
New Inventory Acquired: 41 (Amazon and Ebay)
FBA Inventory Sent to Amazon: 13
One thing I need to work on is making sure that every item added to Keepa is a good deal. It took me a while to figure out how to include shipping costs in my threshold strike prices.
As new notifications come in, I am updating the strike prices to include shipping. Keepa does have an API and I have been toying around with generating a python script to do a lot of this work for me.
Python / Keepa Script
Right now I see two benefits of creating a script:
Manage existing trackings
Mass data imports
Managing my existing trackings. Ex. I could set a sales rank threshold and purge any item that falls outside of that threshold. Or to assist with my problem above, I could go through each notification and check to see if the notification price includes shipping. If it does not include shipping, update it so it will going forward.
Mass data import. If you can get your hands on a list of ISBN’s used for a college course, iterate over that list and save listings in Keepa. Set strike prices to 50% of the list price, or average price. Lots of room to play with that there. The issue I see with that here is obtaining the list of ISBNs.
Second FBA Shipment
I sent in my second shipment to FBA. This time instead of going to PA, it is off to New Jersey.
During my first shipment, I saw on the Amazon Shipment page that there was a carrier delay. That instantly conjured up images of car crashes, train derailments, and nuclear waste.
Luckily, my shipment was delivered the very next day and the crisis was averted.
But I now have another notification for a carrier delay, so we will see if my premonitions come true this time.
The process this second go was straight forward. I almost feel careless because of how smooth sending items to Amazon for FBA has been. I add the products, set a sale price and minimum price, click on the SKU’s to add to my shipment, print labels, drive to the UPS store and kiss my box goodbye.
It’s a lot of steps, but straight forward. I hope that I was not flippant during my sophomore submission and that my items make it to Amazon safe and sound with no problems.
Keep the Faith
It’s been fun working on this side business and it’s going to be sweet when that first sale comes through. But that success will be short lived because there is a long way to go. I am not after one sale. I want consistent business and growth.
I wrote in an earlier post that one day I think to myself that I am an idiot for trying this and that this is stupid. And then the next I’m having a blast clicking Amazon buttons and creating keepa notifications. One of the benefits of having a short term memory.
When I put my head on my pillow at night, I try to think of all the great things I have in my life and all of the reasons to be optimistic. One reason to be optimistic is this side business.
Another reason is my great wife whom I love very much. :)