As some of you probably know, back in March I began to sell books online in my spare time. I analyzed the March results here. I started with $500 and I lost about $26 in March. I had a lot of one-time expenses, so I was pretty certain I could turn that around and generate a profit in April.
Here is April’s breakdown:
Sales: $628.58
Inventory Costs: $317.07
Amazon Commission: $203.51
Shipping Credit: $343.89
Shipping Costs: $209.65
Scouting Fee: $30 (Recurring monthly fee – will be increasing next month)
Amazon Marketplace Membership: $39.99 (Recurring monthly fee)
Misc. Postage: $2.58 (I had to resend a book that got sent back to me)
Expansion Costs: $339.98 (Additional equipment for my brother to use)
Brother’s Commission: $37.22 (My brother’s cut)
GRAND TOTAL: - $207.53
April was not quite what I expected. But I’m still not worried and here’s why:
My brother recently got laid off and to help keep himself busy and to make a little bit of cash…we made a deal that he would help me in my bookselling. There were a few large one-time expenses in April that I was not expecting. If it weren’t for those, I would have been profitable. I’m not worried because sometimes it takes money to make money and expanding the business isn’t a bad thing at this point. If anything, it’s less work for me.
Being unemployed, my brother has all the time in the world (when he’s not looking for a real job) to be out scouring the used bookstores and thrift stores and garage sales for books valuable enough to be resold. It’s a good partnership. He finds the books, I list them on Amazon and then package and ship them when they sell.
I reimburse him for all the books he buys. Because I carry 100% of the risk of the books not selling, I take 60% and give him a 40% cut of the profits on the books that he finds that sell. Any books that I find and sell on my own, I take 100% of the profits.
So now that the expenses for getting my brother started are taken care of I REALLY think May should be a profitable month for us. I’m really hoping to make some money to put towards the honeymoon. Hopefully more money than the $10 here and there that I am picking up from MySurvey.
I’ve updated the sidebar for the book business. We started with $500 in March and now we’re down to $268. We need to turn that around!
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