After having a busy and adventure filled month of March, it was time to continue that journey in April!

This month, I made my way up to Las Vegas for a dropshipper’s meetup hosted by eDropshipEmpire.com, attended the amazing Coachella music festival, and spent the last 2 weeks researching and preparing for my first international solo flight in less than 72 hours.

Read on to see how my April went and catch a preview of what’s to come as I make my way over to Thailand, South Korea, and more for the next 30 days!

April Update

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eDropshipEmpire.com Las Vegas Meet Up

During the first weekend of April, my girlfriend and I made our way up to the Vdara Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, NV for eDropshipEmpire‘s first meet up event.

A shot of all the wonderful individuals that came out to the first meet up. It was a great success!

Here, we were able to meet face to face and break bread with some of our fellow student’s from David Vu’s eBay Dropshipping with No Inventory Udemy course. We had people who came from all over the US who shared their experiences with the business.

Sharing my experiences about dropshipping has been a humbling and rewarding experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything else.

I had such an awesome time helping, sharing, and learning with my peers and left with an invigorating spirit to continue growing my eBay business and helping others as well in the process.

My hat’s off to Jonathan and Joanne for hosting such a wonderful event. Can’t wait to be a part of the next one!

2 Different Mastermind Groups, 1 Big Family

Coachella 2017

I marked off the artists I saw (or remember seeing, lol) this year at Coachella. Who was your favorite?

JUST FUCKING WOW. What a lineup it was this year!

It was incredible to witness so many amazing performances live and for the first time. The XX, Kendrick Lamar, and Justice were my definite top 3 that weekend and all expectations were completely blown away!

The XX for me was easily the best performance of the weekend. I’ve been waiting to see them for years!

With Gaga subbing in for Beyonce this year due to conflictions with her pregnancy, I expect ticket sales for Coachella to fly off the internet shelves even faster next year, so be sure to scoop them ASAP once they’re available!

Til next year!

Group shot of the Coachella fam! Shout outs to buff shirtless Tony in the middle!

Preparing for Southeast Asia

The Story

I made this promise to a friend of mine a year or so back that if I could ever hit $2,000 in profit with my eBay business, I would get a plane ticket out to visit him since he was planning to move to South Korea. Just a few short months ago back in November, I finally hit that goal during my best performing month ever.

Now I get to visit him at the tail end of my Asia trip before I head back to the US! Shout out to the big homie Jay! See you soon man!

And thanks to the Chase Sapphire Reserved credit card for hooking me up with these flights!

The Checklist

I began preparing everything I would need to be able to work remotely and still enjoy my first real vacation in over 15 years. Here’s what I picked up based on some research through Facebook groups, friends, and forum posts. Big shoutouts to the folks over at the Chiang Mai Digital Nomads Facebook Community for providing me some major knowledge about packing essentials:

Osprey Porter Travel Backpack Bag, 46-Liter – Perfect sized backpack that can be used as a carry on instead of checking in luggage. Highly recommended if you plan on only taking 1 bag with you when flying that fits most aircraft storage compartments; even smaller ones.

 Dell Inspiron 15 – 7567 – I decided to splurge a little and pick up a good performing laptop that would still allow me to play video games if I needed to. The performance on this particular model should also be great for editing videos while on the go.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100M III Bundle – I never really got into any type of photography (not since high school classes) until I met my girlfriend who shoots as a side gig. She taught me a little bit about composition and how to properly hold and use a camera, so this will be my first attempt at taking high quality photos and videos with a great point and shoot. Can’t wait to share the footage with you guys on YouTube!

TRIORAL – Oral Rehydration Salts ORS – When I was younger, I took a trip to Asia with my family and I remember the food tasting AMAZING, but not being able to “adjust” to it right away, which caused some intestinal problems (aka: diarrhea). Oral rehydration salts, according to my research, are supposed to help relieve this issue amongst many other common problems people can face when adjusting to a new environment including nausea, food poisoning, and dreaded hangovers.

Woolx Men’s Merino Wool Tee – Wool is supposed to be a great material for wicking off sweat, staying odorless, and keeping you cool, which sounds like the perfect combination for a t-shirt in Thailand’s hot and humid weather!

Woolx Basix – Men’s Athletic Boxer Briefs – Just like the T-Shirt above but in underwear form! What could get any better?

Kanu Surf Men’s Barracuda Swim Trunk – I needed some new swim trunks so I opted for this highly reviewed brand that came at a fair price ($17.99 for a large size at the time of this posting). Ready to get my swim on!

AmazonBasics 4-Piece Packing Cube Set – Something else I picked up from my girlfriend was using packing cubes to help maximize space when packing luggage. To fit a months worth of clothes might be a challenge, but with some careful planning and about 3 of these packing cubes, I should be good to go.

Spigen Tough Armor Galaxy S8 Plus Case with Kickstand – I recently picked up the Galaxy S8 Plus and have always stuck by Spigen for their amazing protection for my phones. I’ve dropped my phone a few times just like everyone else probably has, and have never one had a scratch on my phone thanks to their awesome engineering. The kickstand on this particular model will also be great for watching movies on the go. Highly recommended brand!

TSA Approved Luggage Travel Lock 2 Pack – I learned that having locks to protect your luggage from thieves may be more of a safety precaution then anything, but for my first trip I figured I could never be too careful. With TSA approved locks, these automatically allow TSA to open your luggage if they need to without the hassle of having you unlock it first. You can simply click them back afterwards if checked.

Finally, I included both a light and a heavy jacket, some shorts, light shirts, sneakers, flip flops, and a pair of jeans for the varying weather conditions I’ll be in. I also brought along a portable battery brick my girlfriend gave me which should help a lot when I’m low on juice from recording footage for my YouTube channel that I’ll start uploading videos on again while I’m in Asia. Be sure to follow me if you’d like to catch my adventures overseas!

Anything else that I’m missing can probably be picked up in Thailand, but I think I have most of the bases covered for my first trip! Can’t wait!

Now, that we’re all caught up, let’s jump right in to the income report for the month of April.

Income Report

Income from eBay

April’s sales were not as great as I personally expected them to be, partly due to the fact that I had been focusing more on packing, researching, and preparing for my trip rather than sitting down and listing more products along with my Virtual Assistant.

On the up side, my feedback is 1 month away from being at 100% again! As long as nothing arises in the next few weeks, it’ll be nice to see it back where it needs to be after sitting at 99.x% for months now. This should hopefully help boost and bring some more sales my way as I work on building my second store very soon.

Total April Sales: $5394.35

Total eBay Profit: $1535

If you’d like to learn more about how you can start your own dropshipping business, be sure to check out David Vu’s Udemy Course on eBay Drop Shipping with No Inventory. I also provide store analysis and consultation services which you can read more about at eDropshipEmpire.com.

Income from Cashback

TopCashBack – $93.29

Ebates – $0

Splender – $0

GivingAssistant – $66.53

Total Cashback Profit: $159.82

If you haven’t started using cashback yet, be sure to check out my article on how I made $2000 shopping online. Did you know you can even earn cashback now with in-store purchases? You can even stack them with Credit Card Bonuses! Check it out!

Other / Misc. Affiliate Income

Affiliate and other miscellaneous forms of income have been steady but I’m hoping to ramp that up this year as I start to work with more dropshipping clients through my consultation business at eDropshipEmpire.

Gift Card Profit: $72.84

Misc. Affiliate Profit: $22.28

Other Profit: $0

Total Other / Misc. Affiliate Profit: $95.12

As a dropshipper, one of the places I recommend as a back-up source in case you’re out of stock is Amazon. Being able to ship an item out to yourself or your customer with free unlimited 2-day shipping can make a huge difference in your life and your 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!

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Income Breakdown

*decrease of $639.74 from last month

Monthly Goals

The main goal for next month is to learn how to adapt to working overseas outside the comfort of my own home and adapting to my environment since the weather isn’t like it is here in California.

Buathong’s Sticky Waterfalls. I can’t wait to climb you!!

While in Thailand, I’d like to visit the massive Maya Mall, the many night markets and bazaars, the Sticky Falls, live muay thai fights, museums, ancient ruins, the Chiang Mai Zoo, and anything else I can hit during the 3 weeks that I am there. Rainforest ziplining and participating in an elephant conservation experience (DO NOT RIDE THE ELEPHANTS!) are also at the top of my list. I’d like to make it a goal to get outside of my comfort zone more and try new things while I’m there.

Regarding eBay, I’d like to work on reaching 8,000 items next month as well as hitting a higher profit amount than I did in April. I may or may not reach that number as I also plan on downsizing and auditing some of my previous inventory due to recent issues with Bed Bath & Beyond (which I may elaborate more about depending on how this situation goes with them right now).

I also plan to visiting coworking spaces as often as I can to meet my peers and learn from their experiences. I’m getting excited just thinking about it!

Now to do some laundry, get some last minute packing done, and prepare to head for the skies!

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Are there any places in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, or Seoul that you think I should check out? Be sure to leave a comment below!

I’ll see you guys again real soon! Thanks for reading!