Welcome to another income report! I’m pretty intermittent with these, but I’m trying to be better about posting each month especially now that I’m no longer pregnant and we’re two months into life with two kids. We’re getting things down, slowly but surely. As of the day I’m writing this my husband officially quit his job and we’re in this as a family business!

Why do I share how much I make? While a lot of people find this information truly personal, I really don’t mind talking money. Especially when it comes to something like working from home as an entrepreneur. I want to be able to not only track my progress as my businesses grow, but also show others that you can make money from home.

Now let’s get to the good stuff…

IN APRIL 2018 I WAS ABLE TO EARN $4046.79 WORKING FROM HOME!

This total includes a variety of different income streams which I will happily break down for you real quick.

Ebay: Ebay is my main source of income and my main focus. I resell items that I find mostly at thrift stores, but also yard sales, regular retail stores, etc. If I can make a good profit on it, I flip it! You can sign up for eBay here if you don’t already have an account. I started with just items around the house that I didn’t need and reinvested the money I made as I sold it.

Poshmark: For selling trendier, younger and more designer clothing items I love using Poshmark. It’s an app (and a website) that I’m really starting to put more focus on. Sign up here using my code AILEENBARKER for $5 off your first purchase.

Mercari: It’s another app that you can sell pretty much anything on and my favorite part is how low the fees (10%) and shipping are. Anything heavy I like to list on Mercari because the pricing for shipping heavy items is much more reasonable than what I can usually get even directly through the post office. Click here to sign up for Mercari (or download the app) and use my code MZASRJ to get a $10 credit for your first purchase.

Etsy: Most people know Etsy for handmade items, but that’s not what I sell on there. I actually have two stores: one focuses on vintage items and the other is digital downloads (like printables).

Grow With Me Box: This is a new business of mine that I’m so excited about! It’s a secondhand kids clothing subscription box. If you’d like details you can click here to get to the website. PS use the code HUSTLEANDSLOW for $5 off your first box if you decide to sign up!

Affiliates: This include income through different affiliate programs such as Amazon Affiliates, etc. There are a ton out there, but I mainly use Amazon at the moment.

Youtube: I do make a little bit of money on YouTube and it’s been steadily growing which is fun after all the hard work I’ve been putting into it. The money from YouTube comes from ads that play on my videos.

Freelance: Even though this is something I don’t do as much as I used to, I do some freelance work. Mostly virtual assistant type work focusing on the design and technical aspects of it like helping with website or graphic design, etc. This is something I do plan on taking on more of as time goes on. I love that there is practically no overhead and no inventory to manage.

(above screenshot taken from my GoDaddy Bookkeeping account)

BREAKDOWN OF APRIL 2018 ONLINE BUSINESS INCOME

Income: $4046.79

Expenses: $1,788.55

Net Profit: $2,258.24

Note: I run a business that sells products so my expenses are much higher than most other online businesses that are service or digital product based, for example. I am trying to keep my expenses low and I’m also trying to grow the other parts of my business where there is no inventory or cost of goods so that I can take home more of my income.

I think we did pretty good this month considering it was our first full month with a newborn! A few notable expenses in April which bumped up our costs was almost $400 for eBay Open (an eBay conference in Vegas in July) an a hotel room. I’m seriously so excited to go, learn from eBay themselves and meet like minded people.

Other than eBay I didn’t really do much else for income since I had just had a baby. I’m definitely working more on our other income streams moving forward, but I want to keep the focus on eBay until it’s large enough to maintain the level that I’d like it to be at.

EBAY INCOME BREAKDOWN

Since eBay is my main source of income I thought I would take a moment to break down my month on eBay so that I can compare each month.

# of items sold on Ebay: 248

Total sales: $3510.94

Selling Costs (eBay fees, PayPal fees, shipping): $1,410.43

Net Profit: $2,100.51

Net Profit Percentage: 59.8%

Average Sale Price: $14.15 (including shipping)

I’m seriously so happy with how our business is growing. Our average sale price is lower than I’d like, but right now I’m focusing on sales and aiming for approximately $10/item in profit. I have been doing a lot of cheap auctions to get rid of old/stale inventory and boost the number of sales I have. Once we get our store to around 1,000 active items (we’re currently fluctuating around 450-500) I will definitely be focusing on a higher average sale price. What’s important is I pay around $1 for most of my items so $14 isn’t too bad considering.

MAY GOALS

1. $5,000 in eBay sales
2. 600 active items in our store

I’m keeping our May goals pretty simple so we can really focus. We did $3,500 on ebay in April and I want to do $5,000 in May! We’re half way through may at the time of posting this and we aren’t half way there so we really need to push for the rest of the month to get to where we want to be.

If you’d like to see a video break down of my ebay income you can click here to watch it.

So that’s it for this month! If there’s anything that I missed the you’d like me to go over in my next report or if you have any questions at all please comment below!