TIE #035: How I Made $11,892 in Profit on Amazon in July (while hardly working)
Back to school season is here!
Apparently you hate money. If you didn’t, you’d be using Rakuten every time you shop on websites like Walmart and Target to save money.
They have paid me over $8,000 for things I was already going to buy for my one-person business (click here for proof).
They are also the reason this post is free to read. Sign up here and get $30 for free after your first use.
I have been documenting how much profit my personal Amazon business makes in this newsletter for over 2 years now.
While running an Amazon business was never a dream of mine, it is what laid the foundation for me to leave my full-time job and then reach financial freedom at a young age.
In 2023, an Amazon business is still the best option if you want to accomplish something similar.
This post is #31 of this series, you can read post #30 here.
My Amazon business has three branches:
Branch 1: Non-fiction book arbitrage (read here if you do not know what this is)
Branch 2: LEGO investment sales (read here if you do not know what this is)
Branch 3: Other random online arbitrage
Depending on the time of year, they all rise and fall independently from each other.
The common theme between them all is efficiency. I aim for higher than average profit margin while aiming to work as little as possible.
The three branches combined for the following numbers in July:
Total Sales: $36,738.75
Items Sold: 372
Cost of Goods + Fees: $24,846.42
Total Profit: $11,892.33
Hours Worked: ~14-17
Average Profit Per Item: $31.97
Total Profit for 2023: $71,811.48
If you can’t already tell, the back to school season is upon us and started to fire up during the last week of July.
Several non-fiction book titles started to spike in volume and price, making them the main factor for the jump in sales vs. June.
August will be another heavy jump in activity before dipping back down in September.
The back to school season is where my book arbitrage strategy shines most.
Instead of looking for underpriced books to take advantage of, we aim to predict which books are going to increase in value at a future date and buy them before they do.
This is done by combining:
Historical data (if a book has done it 5 years in a row, chances are it will again)
Current data (is it in position to climb in value?)
Experience
Here is a great example of what I’m talking about:
This book doesn’t sell for this much during most of the year, but it does during late July and August every single year:
Selling one of these and making $75 in profit is one thing, but doing it 40 times over again is a beautiful $3,000 in cold hard cash.
If you do that for a bunch of other book titles, you can see how it’s possible to make so much money in so little time.
I’m not the only one that plays back to school season like this, so does everyone else who adopts my one-person business model:
Is this the best business idea in the world? Of course not.
Does it give beginners the best chance to make money online and help them escape the rat race? Absolutely.
I will never stop hammering that point home.
I’ve tried everything there is to try, I’ve done the dirty work, and this is what I would do if I was starting over tomorrow.
You can take advantage of the opportunity or you can let time keep passing you by.
That choice is yours.
When you are ready, there are two different ways I can help you:
If you are interested in starting an efficient one-person online business, I recommend starting with one of the following:
Textbook Flipping Mastery - My in-depth guide on how to start a high-margin Amazon e-commerce business.
LEGO Investing Mastery - My in-depth guide on how to start a long-term “buy, hold, and sell” LEGO investing business.
The Conference Room - My private mentorship community that includes the two guides above, for free. Pay once and stay a member for life.
If you are interested following along with my personal LEGO investment portfolio and getting exclusive alerts when I add a new set to that portfolio:
Become a paid subscriber here (7-day free trial available)