Below, we’ve laid out our sales growth timeline for the first eighteen months of an online arbitrage business within our team. In the timeline, we identify different details of the business and at what point in the process we automated them.
In this post, we are also going to show you what tools we implemented into the system and at what point in the process we implemented them. We hope this helps you grasp a birds-eye-view of how the online arbitrage business operation came together so that you can utilize the strategy to help yourself in the future.
An Example Online Arbitrage Growth Timeline
Year 1
January 2015 – $5101.61 (first full month with online arbitrage business)
February – $8,825.80
March – $17,302.19 (pulled all existing inventory off eBay and sent it to Amazon FBA. Instantly sales went up over 100%)
April – $18,372.97
May – $16,852.53
June – $24,126.19 (partially introduced a prep company)
July – $35,404.97 (stopped prepping inventory in-house completely and began sending all inventory to the prep company. Also hired full-time administration assistant)
August – $30,682.96
September – $30,478.43 (started using Informed.co repricing)
October – $23,836.72 (learned how to outsource sourcing. Spent the month focused on training product sourcers, leading to less buying and decreased sales. The leads our sourcing team finds are now publicly available at FbaLeadList.com)
November – $38,043.08 (discovered OAxray and other helpful sourcing tools and began creating more extensive sourcing systems)
December – $52,802.73 (Began using TaxJar to automate sales and use tax filings)
Year 2
January – $48,850.15 (implemented an eBay liquidation plan)
February – $46,461.48
March – $63,736.31
April – $45,060.78 (switched to a cheaper repricer which backfired, killing sales for a few months)
May – $47,751.66 (hired a bookkeeper and a full-time buyer to do all financial work and product purchasing)
June – $59,255.65 (Hired a full-time product sourcing team)
July – $51,383.97
August – $52,248.95
September – $58,245.02 (finished the complete systematization of the business and outsourced the final piece of the puzzle, repricing. Daily executive workload dropped to 10-15 minutes per day.)
October – $76,967.02 (restarted using Informed.co as a repricer again, instantly increasing my sales)
November – $104,808.30 (first 6 figure month)
December – $114,204.85
Year 3
January – $73,188.60 (Introduced Rev Seller extension)
February – $60,868.20 (Hired more sourcers to expand the team and leads)
March – $84,424.53
April – $91,552.67
May – $58,493.28 (Amazon’s policies becoming more strict, causing loss of $10k plus in unsellable inventory. Forced us to revamp sourcing plan)
June – $60,272.39
July – $65,091.40
August – $54,885.94
September – $54,518.17
October – $90,429.31
November – $112,572.78
December – $109,512.18
We have shifted a good percentage of our attention the last two years to building our custom brands and services while the online arbitrage system runs itself. It’s incredibly powerful to have such high cash flow because it allows you to invest in new projects and expand your diversity in business.
By looking at this timeline, you can see the progress that we made early was correlating directly with how we implemented new automation techniques and tools. In the first few months, we were sourcing everything ourselves and/or buying from paid lists, packing/sourcing our own items, and doing all of the finance and admin work.
As we implemented assistants and new tools, the sales started to grow because we had more systems in place to handle the growth. Now, we are able to sell anywhere from $70,000 -$120,000 per month without more than a few hours of physical work per week.
The key is to keep scaling and growing.
Sales trends can be directly correlated with momentum based off of Amazon marketplace decisions, and that’s not always easy to swallow. However, it’s the most powerful marketplace in the world with millions of customers at your fingertips. It is better to make friends with the giant and praise the opportunity it creates rather than curse it for its limitations.
We hope this timeline helps you gauge the possibility of scaling your business over a period of time so that you can implement the practices and scale faster.
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Overview of Staff, Services, and Tools for an Amazon FBA Online Arbitrage Business
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