TIE #044: How I Made $123,655 in Profit on Amazon in 2023 (while hardly working)
My December 2023 Amazon business update 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 $13,400 for things I was already going to buy for my one-person business:
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 a total of 3 years now.
While running this type of business was never a dream of mine, it is what laid the foundation for me to live a lifestyle full of freedom and fulfillment.
In late 2023, an Amazon business is still the best option if you want to accomplish something similar and have no business experience.
This post is #36 of this series, you can read post #35 here.
My Amazon business currently 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: Any and 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.
This often means buying products and waiting a while before selling them.
The game I play is efficiency, I do not play “number go up” simulator.
Let’s dive in to the numbers for December 2023:
Total Sales: $12,487.40
Items Sold: 118
Cost of Goods + Fees: $8,439.86
Total Profit: $4,047.54
Hours Worked: ~4-5
Average Profit Per Item: $34.30
Total Profit for 2023: $123,655.51
You would think that this business would explode during December, but it didn’t.
This was a tactical decision.
It also meant I hardly worked on the business at all.
Rather than compete with every other seller in an attempt to take profit on my LEGO investments, I decided to hold back and keep prices high.
This will allow me to get more profit per set in January, February and even March.
Q1 is a historically good quarter for LEGO prices on retired sets.
The sales you do see are from sets that I had priced too low and sold before I could increase them or books towards the latter end of the month.
January is one of the two busy seasons of the year for non-fiction textbooks.
Remember when I showed the LEGO set below selling for $200 in last months update?
It kept selling even as I raised the price:
I will look to offload these between $250 - $300 whenever the market gives them to me (and provide a sell alert when I do).
Quite the return after buying them for $80 last year!
2023 wasn’t just an incredible year for my own business, it was incredible for numerous readers of the newsletter.
Here are a couple examples:
(I’d put more of these in this post but I don’t want to clog things up and I think you get the point)
Both of these individuals likely made the same amount in profit or more in December than I made every month when I was an aerospace engineer.
All from the comfort of their own home with potential to earn much more than this in 2024.
Like I always say, my goal is not to create a million Amazon sellers and LEGO investors.
My goal is to introduce as many people as possible to the idea of making money as a result of selling something, rather than trading your time for it.
What each individual does with that newfound experience and insight is up to them.
The reality is this:
To survive, you have to sell something.
If you don’t sell something of your own, you will be assigned (or have already been assigned) someone else’s thing to sell.
That choice is yours and I can’t make it for you.
When you are ready, there are a few different ways I can help you:
If you don’t have capital to play with, I recommend starting here:
Textbook Flipping Mastery - My in-depth guide on how to start a high-margin but simple Amazon e-commerce business.
If you do have capital, I recommend starting here:
LEGO Investing Mastery - My in-depth guide on how to start a long-term “buy, hold, and sell” LEGO investing business.
If you want to tackle both at the same time and get the most value possible, I recommend starting here:
The Conference Room - My private mentorship community that includes the two guides above, for free. Pay once and stay a member for life.
Hi Jarek. If one wanted to tackle both streams of income, would you recommend the Conference Room versus being a paid subscriber? The one perk that I believe to be advantageous for the subscription is the hit lists and buy/sell alerts, or are those free/included with the mentorship?
Side question about the hit lists: are the sets there guaranteed(or at least strongly predicted) to retire at year end, or is it more so a list of sets that are predicted to go up in value and sell well even if they don’t retire?