May Earnings and Expenses

    So, my first month of concentrated selling has gone on by and it's time to look at the numbers and see where I'm at. Now, if I had really made $20 a day I would've made $620! I'll let you know right that I did not hit that mark, or really even come close to it. It's okay though, I'm not letting it get me down, or discourage me from continuing to try. I actually made more money than I thought, which is nice, and that keeps me going into next month. I'll briefly list my selling goals for next month, a realization I made coming up with my numbers, and how the different selling formats plays into "making $20 a day" even though I'm not some days.

Profits

Ebay - $107.45
Facebook Group Sales - $70 (baby bassinet and nicorrette gum unopened I had left)
Yard Sale - $113
Money collected for Shipping and Handling - $22.35
Total - $312.80

Expenses

Shipping - $30 (estimate, I'll do a better job of keeping track this month)

Ebay fees - $13.37

Sourcing more products to sell - $31.96

Total Expenses - $75.33

Total Net Profit - $237.47

Over $200 really is not a bad number, and I'm not going to sneeze at it, and it really motivates me to keep going and shoot for a higher number next month. You may see that I have some facebook group sales on there, and that is just a couple items I had around the house that I didn't or couldn't sell on ebay. If you go to facebook, and type your town's name and add buy/sell/trade at the end in the search bar you'll find groups for selling stuff in and around your area. That is what I mean by Facebook group selling. I would also like to point out that the garage sale is a maybe twice a year event, usually only once. So this is not something I can replicate month to month. However, it's those unexpected money makers that are the best sometimes. 

Here's something I realized though going over these numbers. I really don't have much to show for all this money I made. I didn't really pay a bill with it, I bought a small amount of groceries a couple times, put gas in the truck a couple times, but really, not a whole lot to show. In fact, I was shocked at how much I made this month, because I really felt like it wasn't much. Which I know for many people a little over $200 isn't a lot of money, but to me and my budget it really is. I think I found the root of the problem though. The problem is that a lot of times this money came to me in $20 - $30 increments. Which made them easy to spend, on little stuff, without saving up for a larger expense, like a bill. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to remedy this situation.

I already have the money going into a separate account, my Paypal account, not my regular checking, which is something experts say to do. I can't tell Ebay to save my money until the end of the week, and I can't control how many items I sell, and how much I make through ebay each week either. I can make a weekly goal, and try to hit it, but little control. Maybe, I should start posting a weekly sales report, so that will at least keep me thinking about how much I made. I've already been adding it to my weekly goals, so I think I'll just continue to do that. Once again, I'm just trying to build in that accountability factor for myself by putting it all out there. If that doesn't seem to work, then I'll just have to think of something else. I'll give it the month of June and see if I do at least a little better about it before I decide.

Next, I said I would explain how I figure all this fits into making $20 a day. After all, I'm sure you've noticed that I'm NOT actually making $20 every single day. Some weeks/days I made nothing, other's I made $100. In a sense I'm not actually trying to make $20 every single day, not literally. In another I am trying to make that $20 everyday in a more general way. $20 a day, is $140 a week and $580 in four weeks. However, telling myself to go make another $580 this month, or $140 next week is daunting task to put on myself. One that, frankly, would overwhelm me. I wouldn't know where to start, I'd start to feel hopeless, and eventually give up. So telling myself, hey, I'm going to make $20 everyday is a much more smaller and more manageable goal for my mind to wrap itself around. So, income streams like ebay, where I can run a 7 day auction, or Amazon FBA where I could send in products weekly, and hopefully sell weekly can give me that $20 everyday. Maybe not literally, maybe one day I'll make 0 and the next I'll make $40, but the point is to try and average earnings that would divide into $20 everyday. From time to time I will try things that I could do for a quick $20, like exchanging my change bank, or collecting cans, or a lot of other things. Mostly though I'm looking for income streams that will take minimal time, and continue to generate that revenue over and over and over again. Hope I didn't lose you, and I hope that all made sense to you.

Lastly, I'm going to try and a do a quick rundown for my overall goals for June. Now, if I'm shooting for $20 a day, and there's 30 days in the month than that equals to $600. So, there's my sales goals. It's a bit lofty, especially considering my sales from this month, but give yourself a goal that just above what you think you can do, and then you will see what you really can do. The point is to make myself stretch to try and hit that goal. To keep it all simple for this month, I'm saying $600 gross profit. I'm new to this, I don't have a lot of "stock" to sell, so I'm going to have to roll a lot of the $600 right back into everything. I need shipping supplies, I need more things to sell, I would like to purchase a couple different books about Amazon FBA, and so on. Really, if I walk away with $100 of that actually going into my pocket I'll be happy. I figure a few months of rolling at least 50% of my profits right back into everything should give me a good start so that I can start keeping more down the road. Ideally I shoot for rolling 75% back into it, but life determines much more than plans, so we'll see what happens. As far as where and how I would like to earn the money, I'm thinking around $500 from Ebay, and $100 from FBA. Only because my FBA seems to be off to a slow (really slow) start, and I think I'll need June just to get the basics started. 

So, there you have it. What I accomplished this month, and what I hope to accomplish next month. Overall I'm very pleased with myself. I feel that when I first started this blog over a year ago I was not very focused on what I would do. This time I feel more focused, and I also have a better idea of what I'm doing with this blog. I'm finding that it is truly helping keep on task, and keep my thoughts in order. Case in point, I wasn't going to do anything today, period. I was going to just cruise the net, then I read my weekly goals, and realized that I needed to get this post done, and I start my research as well. So there already it's helping me. Hopefully, some day, it'll help someone else as well. Until then, I'm going to keep plugging away at it!