This is a series of reports that I will post each and every month summarising my progress. I’ll first mention the major events that may have happened within the month that could have made a difference in my earnings. I will also break down the sources of my income so that I can keep track of how each one is doing. Lastly, I’ll conclude with the most important things that I learned and what I have planned for the near future. I’d love to respond to any questions or comments that you may have. Thanks!
Important Goings On In May
Here are the import goings on this month:
Merch By Amazon
I’ve been tiered up to 100 design on Merch By Amazon. I did this by putting my best selling designs (on Redbubble) onto Merch and making them the lowest possible price (so I made $0.01 royalty). I got from 0 to 25 sales so quickly Amazon didn’t bother with the tier 50 and put me straight to 100. I’ve raised my prices now and am currently selling about 1 design a day. This will increase soon when I upload more designs.
Redbubble
I think this will be my last month of making a decent amount of money from Redbubble. I woke up one morning near the end of may to have an email from Redbubble to find that around 50 of my designs had been removed overnight due to a ‘copyright complaint’ the designs in question were all in one niche and were unique designs and not infringing on any copyright. So I assume that a competitor in the same niche made a ‘fake’ complaint to get them removed. Just to put this in perspective some of these designs had been on RB since March 2016 without any issues.
I’m not going to lie it really pissed me off when I saw it. The same designs are all up on Teepublic, Teespring and now Merch By Amazon without any issues and I honestly don’t know if I’ve got the patience to upload them all again for the same thing to potentially happen 1-6 months down the line. It might be something I do on days when I don’t have a lot to do work wise.
How Do I Make My Money Online?
The majority of the money I make online comes from Kindle Publishing. Some income also comes from Createspace, ACX and a small amount comes from selling print on demand T-shirts on sites like Merch By Amazon, Redbubble and Teespring. Plus some small affiliate earnings.
Kindle Publishing
This is my total from Kindle taken from the Book Report dashboard plugin for Kindle. It adds everything up into one nice figure.
Total from Kindle Publishing account 1 – $984.34 (£759.52)
Total from Kindle Publishing account 2 – $11.96 (£9.22)
Createspace
Total from Createspace – $1169.35 (£902.34)
ACX
Sold 78 audiobooks (0 bounties)
Total from ACX – $182 (£140.43)
Note: This is an approximation as I do not know the exact amount until later on this month (20th). So I’ve made an approximation based on what I have been paid in the past.
Merch By Amazon (Redbubble, Teespring, etc)
Merch By Amazon – $13.95 (£10.77).
Total from RedBubble – $225.11 (£173.71).
Total from Teepublic – $42 (£32.41).
Total from Teespring – $0 (£0).
Total from Zazzle – $0 (£0).
Misc Income
Affiliate Income – $63.48 (£48.99).
Dropshipping Income – $37.97 (£29.30).
Total for May 2017
$2729.66 (£2106.69)
What’s Next?
You’ll notice from above that I’ve started making some money from Dropshipping. I’m honestly not sure how I feel about dropshipping, so far its been one headache after another. Customers emailing me every 2 days asking where their order is even after being told it can take between 12 and 20 days for orders to be delivered, and Google Merchant Centre (Google Shopping) suspending my account because I only had an email address (and not also an address & phone number) on my stores contact us page. No warning asking me to sort it out, just suspended 24 hours after registering for an account before even placing any ads. Now I have to jump through hoops to get unsuspended again.
I’m wondering if my time might be better spent focusing on Kindle and T-shirts but we’ll see!
If you have any questions please ask them below. Thanks for reading!
Edit 8th June – Forgot to add in the income from my second Amazon account. I’ve added it above.
Hi, Brendan. I feel sad for what happened to you on Redbubble. Why there are still people who envy the success of others. Things like this should not happen.
Anyway, I really like your strategy in Merch by Amazon to tier up to 100 design. You really proficient in the use of keywords so you are able to get the sales in a short period. Or you also have other strategies? 🙂
Thank you 🙂
Keywords are part of it but I also picked my best selling designs from Redbubble and uploaded them first. I also set my shirt prices at the very minimum that they could be (I think it’s $11.55). That meant I was undercutting all the other shirts by a significant margin. All these factors together meant that I jumped from being able to list 10 shirts to be tiered up to list 100 in 2-3 weeks. Hope that helps 🙂
I know it will take some time to be accepted in Merch by Amazon. But perhaps you have tips that can be given to me and other friends, especially when filling the application.
Try and apply with a few different email addresses. It seems to be a lottery who gets approved and when they do. You’ll have a better chance with a few different email addresses.
Maybe I should try it. Thanks Brendan.
Here’s what i’ve seen others have success with: Amazon Merch – and then Teespring amazon integratin, and then the full amazon-shopify-POD fulfilment company.
Seriously man – put your time and energy into those. All these douches trying to sell oberlo & drop shipping to everyone…..
Have you tried protesting with redbubble forcefully? Its a shame to loose them as an income stream
Thanks for the info Simon. I have been thinking about doing Shopify and Print on demand fulfilment for a while. I made money with drop shipping and Oberlo but it was an absolute pain answering customer emails. It was actually one customer emailing me every 24-48 hours. But it got me thinking out of 5 orders one customer was really hard work. If I’m getting 50 orders a day that means I’m going to have 5-10 of those customers. I quit my web design job because I was sick of dealing with difficult customers so I’m not sure I want the extra stress.
I think regarding Redbubble I’m going to get one of my VAs to upload them again for me