Welcome to my May Income Report where I share how much I made as a work at home mom from my online businesses!

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.

If you’d rather watch a video break down you can watch it on youtube by clicking here.

Now let’s get to the good stuff…

IN MAY 2018 I WAS ABLE TO EARN $4,721.55 WORKING FROM HOME!

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

Disclaimer: This post contains some affiliate links which pay me a small commission if you click or buy. There is never any obligation to do so, but I appreciate your support if you do decide to.

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, 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 at Poshmark.com or download their app and use 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 anywhere else. If you want to check it out you can sign up for Mercari (or download the app in the app store) 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 (the same items I have on eBay, I just post them to Etsy as well) 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. I’m actually in the process of restructuring the way it works so it’ll be interesting to see how it evolves.

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 MAY 2018 ONLINE BUSINESS INCOME

Income: $4,721.55

Expenses: $5,810.60

Net Loss: -$1,089

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.

WOW. I spent A LOT of money this month. But let me explain some of the bigger expenses. I spent about $1200 on inventory at a local warehouse sale on items that should bring in around $4,000 worth of sales. I’ve already made about half my money back so it’s going well so far. We also had to pay $325 to our tax guy and I bought a new computer which is a purchase I had been planning for a while. There was a sale on the higher model for the same price I was going to pay for the lower model so I jumped on it.

Since we’re moving this month and I spent so much in May, our June expenses should be lower than usual to help make up for it. I think this is the first month in a LONG time (if ever) that I’ve been so far in the red! But it was all needed and the next few months should help it even out.

EBAY INCOME BREAKDOWN

Since eBay is my main 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: 206 (down from 248 in April)

Total sales: $3,721.41 (up from $3510.94 in April)

Selling Costs (eBay fees, PayPal fees, shipping): $1,527.94 (41.1%) (up from $1410.43/ 42%in April)

Average Sale Price (including shipping): $18.06 (up from $14.15 in April)

May was an ok month as far as sales. Even though I was listing regularly, I wasn’t listing as much as I wanted to and I didn’t see all that much growth this month. I’ve heard a lot of online sellers talk about the “summer slow down” and I’m determined to prove that you can push past that this summer and continue having good sales.

The good thing is you can see that I sold less items compared to in April, but my total sales were up so that means I’m selling items for more. I’m definitely aiming for selling things at higher prices in the future so this was a pretty exciting leap in average sale price for us!

Last months goals

$5,000 in eBay sales – FAIL
As you can see above my sales were only $3,721! I only went up $200 from the previous month. I know it was an ambitious goal but I was really hoping to make it. That being said it’s still a few hundred more than last month so that means we’re still growing. Slow growth is still growth!

600 Active items – FAIL
We never made it to 600 active items on eBay. I think I hit around 540 at one point and we’ve been hovering around 500 most of the month.

June Goals

$4,000 in eBay sales
I still want to move up from last month, but I’m not going to be quite so ambitious. We are moving this month and that will likely pull us away from work more than we’d like.

List 250 items
Rather than try to get to a certain number of active listings on eBay I’m going to have a goal for the month. I’d like to list 250 items this month. That’s 12.5 listings per day if I only list 20 days this month due to moving and getting settled in at the new house.

Because we’re moving this month we’re just going to focus on making sure we’re working consistently and don’t drop the ball on that rather than setting big goals. Once we’re settled in in our new home we’re going to boost things quite a bit and I’m so excited for that!
Again, if you’d like to see a video break down you can watch it here.

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!