In February, I celebrated what some consider to be a defining highlight and milestone in life – my 30th birthday!

Sometimes though, along with the ups come the downs. This month, I also had to deal with the challenge of having one of my slowest performing months in my eBay business.

With this update, I share some of the cool stuff I did this month, why I saw low profits in my business and how I plan to prevent it from happening in the future.

Read on!

February Update

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Aquarium of the Pacific

February was an adventure packed month!

I kicked off the first week by celebrating my 30th birthday with a day trip to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach with my girlfriend. I had been there before recently but it was her first time going in forever. Lots to see and get done in an afternoon!

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We got to see penguins, seals, sea otters, walruses, jellyfish, and even got to feed the Lorikeets in their forest habitat. We even got memberships so we could come back again during the rest of the year.

If you haven’t made a trip out that way yet and you’re in Southern California, make it an effort to do so! Going to these types of places always reminds me that there is so much more to the world out there than what we see on a day to day basis. It’s inspired me to travel the world more this year and get out of my comfort zone more often, so I definitely plan to do just that.

30th Birthday Dinner

That evening, I met up with some of my closest friends for a birthday dinner at Go Goo Ryeo, one of my favorite local Korean Barbeque spots.

I got to share a room and a speech with 25 of my closest friends and I couldn’t be more thankful and blessed for all the awesome connections I’ve made these past few years.

Real life, at least in my opinion, begins at 30. Quitting my job this past year to pursue my own eBay business prior to this defining age really meant a lot to me and I’ll never regret that decision. These days, I get to wake up with a sense of purpose in my life and I’m much happier for it.

I wish I had actually grabbed some photos of the actual event since it was such an important year for me but I think we were all too busy celebrating LOL. (If I find any, I’ll be sure to update this post!)

Oh, well. Maybe next time. Live in the moment, I say!

Superbowl Sunday

On Sunday, I ended up going to my buddy Mike Carcerano‘s place for a Superbowl house party, whom you may recall wrote a guest article on Empathy.

One of my closest friends who up and moved to South Korea about two years ago to pursue a new life actually ended up visiting for the holidays and it was an absolute blast being able to see him both days that weekend. Love you, Jay! Can’t wait to come visit in May!

10 Year Car Club Reunion

The weekend after, I got Korean Barbeque (again) with some members of a Car Club I used to be a part of. It felt good to catch up with everyone since most of us hadn’t kept contact with eachother since the old days. Old beefs were squashed, jokes were resurrected, closure was achieved, and a good time was had by all!

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LiveStar.com Streamers and Friends Meet Up

One community that I’ve been neglecting though, is my LiveStar fam. It’s been a while since I’ve made it a priority to stream so I definitely need to get back in touch with everyone. The week after, it was great seeing new friends and old and I can’t wait for the next time we get together again!

Shout outs to the lunch crew in the picture above, and to Theresa (not pictured) who invited me out in the first place. Thanks for never forgetting about me! ❤

BACK: @dav.eeed, @marxx_ct, IT ME, @andruamp (all the way from TN!), @gohanblue98_niftyfifty

FRONT: @cma86, @xevelynlinx, @jjennynguyenn (from GA!), @crazyaznboy, @markymanifest, @ericnguyen22 (from GA!)

Wish I could’ve hung out longer but I had another event planned that I had to go to that afternoon – WWE Raw! Oh hell yeah!

WWE Raw Live!

One of my old gaming buddies hit me up and offered me tickets to see a live WWE Raw taping with him. Growing up as a huge wrestling fan when I was younger, I could have only dreamed of ever going to an event like this. I had to jump on this opportunity!

When we finally got our tickets at will call, we noticed the section said “PR” on it. After showing our ticket, we were told to enter a different side entrance and to present our tickets to the door guard. At this point it was when I realized that we weren’t just getting regular seats, we were being escorted upstairs to the VIP section! HOLY SHIT! My first RAW event and I’m in the VIP area.

The seats weren’t floor but they had EXCELLENT views of the whole arena and the announcers desk. It was an awesome show and I can’t wait for the next time the WWE comes around again! Thanks Max!

What a busy and fun February! Now, let’s move on to the income reports!

 

Income Report

Income from eBay

February (like last year) is typically considered one of my worst performing months for me. It’s the shortest month out of the year, and you’re “missing” 2-3 days of sales that other months potentially sell more on. Also, from my own observations and understanding of how the eBay business cycles work, after the holiday rush, customers typically recoup their spendings until tax season comes.

Once those IRS tax return checks come in around March or April, I start seeing more activity.

Slow and short month aside though, this is simply an excuse that I should see as a challenge instead to improve upon on the next go around. I have other friends who had their best months ever while I had my worst, so I need to re-adjust my strategies going forward.

In order to earn additional income this month, I’ll also be doing some of my own product research and getting back into the practice of listing to create more refined and better performing items that I think might sell. The last time I went back to listing alongside my Virtual Assistant, Ria, I saw about a 20% growth in my profit so I’m hoping for the same results these coming months.

Also, a second store will be in the works very shortly now that Ria will be moving back into her home that was destroyed and flooded a few months back, this weekend. Once she and her family gets settled in, I can have her resume working full time again.

Total January Sales: $3,456.39

Total eBay Profit: $1,119.64

If you’d like to learn more about how you can start a dropshipping business for yourself, be sure to check out David Vu’s Udemy Course on eBay Drop Shipping with No Inventory.

I have also started doing private coaching along with a few others for this business which you can read more about here. Now that I’ve experienced both the highs and lows of this business, I have a better idea of what to do and what not to do going forward. Let me help you shave 6 months or more off your learning curve, plus save you from the same mistakes I made in the past.

Income from Cashback

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This month, I discovered a new cashback monitoring website that I’ll be adding to my resources section called cashbackmonitor.com.

This website gives you a live look at who the current best Cashback source is for you so you don’t have to spend the time comparing yourself. In the below screenshot, I did a search for Bed Bath & Beyond and show that GivingAssistant.org (my most recent top recommendation from last month’s report!) is the choice to make if you plan on shopping or sourcing from there.

I do want to preface that if you have the time, definitely take that time to check on your own as this website may not always be up to date or 100% accurate. In this business, I try to squeeze and maximize every sale so sometimes I’ll take the extra minute or two to compare with my favorite website myself just to make extra sure I’m not leaving money on the table. Make sure to sign up for all 4 of the below websites so you can make sure you always get the best deals.

TopCashBack – $61.81
Ebates – $19.10
Splender – $0.00
GivingAssistant – $61.53

Total Cashback Profit: $142.44

If you haven’t started using cashback yet, be sure to check out my article on how I made $2000 shopping online. Why not get paid for something you’re already doing anyway?

Other / Misc. Affiliate Income

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This month, I decided to add another section for profits that I make by using gift cards since I forgot to include it on the last 2 reports.

Gift Card Profit: $90
Misc. Affiliate Profit: $17.53

Total Other / Misc. Affiliate Profit: $107.53

Additionally, if you’re an Amazon shopper and would like to help me earn some commission (at no additional cost to you), bookmark this link and click it before placing your regular Amazon order. If you did this for me, be sure to let me know so I can personally thank you! Shout-outs to the 3 individuals that made purchases using my links in February.

Oh, and if you haven’t already signed up for Amazon Prime, get it. Free unlimited 2-Day shipping is freakin’ awesome, especially when you’re using it as a handy back-up source for your own dropshipping business. If you’re a gamer like me, you even get Twitch Prime for commercial free viewing along with bonus goodies and free subscription to any Twitch.TV channel every month!

Try Amazon Prime 30-Day Free Trial
Shop Amazon – Give the Gift of Amazon Prime

Income Breakdown

*decrease of $1419.52 from last month

Monthly Goals

This last month hit me emotionally. I knew that I wasn’t mentally preparing myself each day for work. I got complacent and fell off the work and gym wagon so that’s changing immediately in March. I started filling up my whiteboard again to keep myself busy and I plan to keep it that way going forward. It’s important that we admit our mistakes, but it’s even more important to make a lesson of it and prevent it from happening again in the future.

I feel so blessed and thankful every day for this opportunity and wouldn’t change my path for anything else but I also need to get back into the trenches and focus on improving my business and craft.

Despite having a low profiting month, I still can’t discount the fact that I only work 4 hours a week on my eBay business, which allows me free time to work on other projects, go to the gym during regular business hours when less people are there, and travel for extended periods of time without having to worry about being stuck at a job. In January’s Income Report, I spoke about my upcoming tour in May of Southeast Asia so be sure to give it a read if you’d like to find out more about where I’m flying to!

If you’d like to help keep me accountable or just yell at me (lol) for slacking off this past month, always feel free to shoot me a message through any of my social media links below. If you like free and exclusive stuff, be sure to sign up for my newsletter and be entered in a raffle every month to win awesome prizes like a copy of The 4-Hour Week by Timothy Feriss:

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I’ll start putting out more content on a consistent basis going forward instead of spending too much of my idle time with thing that keep me from my goals. I’ll still be gaming if you guys want to play with me, but I’m sure you want to see me succeed in life as well, so Thank You to my gaming guys and gals for understanding that I’ll be online a lot less.

Have any other advice or words for me? Drop a comment below, share this post, and share your thoughts!

Love you all!