My December 2015 Monthly Income Report

December’s Overview

Happy New Year!

2015 was quite a ride. I hope you enjoyed your holidays as much as I did. In the midst of all the end year craze, running out of inventory, tackling the day to day challenges of eCommerce, I was able to take a much needed break and visit family friends in LA for Christmas.

#partysober ✔ A photo posted by Timmo (@oneuptim) on Dec 30, 2015 at 5:21pm PST

It was fun to step away from work for a bit and enjoy the company of loved ones! On that note, I really miss living in LA- but that’s another story.

So let’s take a look at how things went down income-wise. As you’ll see below, my income took a dip! I ran out of inventory (really Tim?) and was also dealing with a huge influx in eBay orders that I had to manually fulfill which took most of my time. Nevertheless, it was a fun experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

You better believe when Q4 rolls in this year, I’ll be ready!

I generated a total of $9,564.92 this resulted to a -5.09% drop from November’s revenue.

Although I had the chance to, I decided not to make any more sale of the Amazon Business System. I didn’t feel like I’d have enough time to dedicate to any new members joining Tim’s 30 Streams Elite. However, this month, I’m more open to welcoming 1 or 2 new faces.

Take a look at my December numbers…

Income Breakdown

Digital Services $1,000.00 (-71.81%) AdSense Revenue from Niche Sites $98.52 (+16.48%) Dating Website Membership Fees $78.20 (-2.05%) Room Rental Income $1,120.00 (+18.52%) Amazon $1,750.09 (295.79%) $5K Amazon Business System $0.00 (-100%) Alex & Pike (screenshot) $126.96 (-29.81%) eBay (NEW!) $5,401.15 (+31.68%) Craigslist $0.00 (-100%) December’s Gross Income $9,564.92 (-5.09%)

Estimated Expenses

Cost of Goods Sold $2,171.66 Web Hosting $62.00 Landing Page + Analytics $57.00 Email Services $37.00 Fees $810.17 Amazon SEO $50.00 Shopify Store Subscription $29.00 Shipping & Handling + Shipping Supplies $1,080.23 Advertising $623.86 December’s Estimated Expenses $4,920.92 (+81.39%)

Net Income (estimated): $4,644.00 (-36.95%)

Although eBay has much lower fees, manually fulfilling orders can get tedious and expensive and for that, I still advocate FBA. This contributed to the 36.95% drop in net income which is quite significant.

There’s a Digital Services project I started in Dec but since the funds didn’t clear before the end of Dec, I opted not to include it on this report. That would have evened things out.

Nevertheless, I’m happy with the numbers given what I had to work with.

Lessons Learned

#1 Amazon FBA is Still King: After my account go suspended back in September it left a bad taste in my mouth and I have been very reluctant to dedicate a lot of effort into FBA. Most of my resources have gone towards launching new Private Label brands.

Experiencing fulfilling orders myself via eBay, I have to say that FBA is pretty convenient.

Therefore, although I’ll keep selling via eBay, in the near future I’ll shift my focus back to Amazon and continue taking advantage of FBA.

#2 Making Money is Fun, Enjoying it is Even Better: I love making money, I suck at enjoying it. With the short trip I took to LA, I realized how satisfying it is to enjoy myself once in a while. I have to admit I did cut my trip short to come back to work because I was having withdrawals from not working haha.

But it’s a learning process.

I’ve committed to consistently working on my ventures for the next 2 years and then taking a proper break to enjoy the fruits of my labor. We’ll see how that goes.

#3 Step Back and Reassess: With 2016 here, it’s a perfect time to take a step back and reassess my strategies, goals and overall well-being. I feel like I should do this more often and not just once in a while. So, in the coming months, I’ll continue learning how to effectively do this.

Looking Back

Now I’d like to review the goals I set last month to see how well I did;

Getting healthier: I’m still sleeping more which has had a positive effect on my health. I also started doing push ups and pull ups. 20 a day for the moment and I’ll work my way up! Volunteer & Touch Someone’s Life: I didn’t necessarily volunteer but I did touch someone’s life last month. Contribute to the success of members of Tim’s 30 Streams Elite: Successfully completed to more than one member. Get my AdSense revenue back to $100/mo: I missed this by $1.48, so almost there. Continue growing Alex & Pike: Not much progress here either, I need to re-strategize. Increase my rental income: This was short lived, one my roommates moved out yesterday. I’m hoping to get a new one starting Feb 2016. Put out more YouTube videos (please subscribe): 100% fail. I didn’t put out a single video. I’ll shelf this one for a bit.

Looking Ahead

The two partnerships I started are almost materializing. You should see some of the work soon. I’ll hopefully start sharing some of my Private Label results in February so you can benefit from it.

Here are my goals this month;

Finish Amazon series.

I’ll keep it at a minimum this month to maximize the chances of successfully completing it. Thank you for reading, until next month, stream on!