TIE #039: How I've Made $117,139 in Profit on Amazon This Year (while hardly working)
Quietly waiting for the holiday season to begin...
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 $9,400 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 almost 3 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 late 2023, an Amazon business is still the best option if you want to accomplish something similar.
This post is #33 of this series, you can read post #32 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: All other online arbitrage
Depending on the time of year, they all rise and fall independently from each other.
It is not your average arbitrage business.
I specifically target the highest profit margin products possible while aiming to work as little as possible.
September was a slow month (by design). We made nearly $40,000 less in profit vs. last month:
Total Sales: $7,719.61
Items Sold: 113
Cost of Goods + Fees: $4,844.75
Total Profit: $2,874.86
Hours Worked: ~5
Average Profit Per Item: $25.44
Total Profit for 2023: $117,139.64
A majority of these sales were leftover book sales from the tail end of the back to school season that didn’t sell in August.
I hardly worked at all (on this business) in September other than monitoring prices of the few things left in my inventory.
A member of my private mentorship group did better than me last month, as you can see here:
October will be even quieter as we gear up for the holiday season. Most of the work being done is adding new LEGO investments.
In early November, the workload will increase further as we prepare for the second busy season for books in January.
Sales will not pick up until December, when we begin to take profit on the LEGO investments we’ve been holding since late last year.
If you don’t have a ton of capital and are not investing in LEGO yet, your focus should instead be on:
Arbitraging books like usual
Arbitraging any other item you can from websites like eBay, Walmart, ULTA, etc. to Amazon
The name of the game is buying and selling as fast as possible when you don’t have a ton of capital.
As we near 2024, the best business model for beginners with no experience remains a simple and efficient Amazon arbitrage business.
You can take advantage of this or you can continue to ignore it.
That is a choice only you can make, I can’t make it for you.
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)