What’s up, ya’ll? Summer is officially here and it is HOT! It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been back from Southeast Asia and readjusting to the work life was a little more difficult than expected.
This past month, I was suddenly restricted from one of my biggest suppliers and spent the majority of my time restructuring and determining what the best course of action was in order to put my eBay store in the right direction again. I also faced the challenge of dealing with a few of my orders disappearing off the face of the planet and explain how that affected my business.
Read on as I share the latest happenings for me in June and catch a peek at where I’m headed next month!
June Update
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June was very difficult for me to have to come back to after being gone for all of May. Not only was I officially back to the work grind, I also had to deal with some major issues arising with my suppliers as of late.
Getting Restricted By My Supplier
Typically, my main supplier usually gets shipments out within 24 to 48 hours (with the occasional 72 hours if it’s coming directly from a vendor) but when I started noticing that shipments were still stuck in the “being processed” status after waiting for almost 3 days, I knew something was up.
Imagine seeing this message after waiting 3 freakin’ days for your product! It drove me nuts!
I decided to get in touch with my supplier and was told by customer service that all of my orders were currently being cancelled and that I had to contact a special department that handled these kinds of “situations”. Of course, I tried to ask them what the deal was but they simply told me they were unable to speak about it and that the special department would explain everything.
How I feel when customer service tells me I have to call a different number to find out where my orders are…
Well, it turns out that this particular supplier doesn’t take too kindly to dropshippers.
I was told by the customer service rep that they recently created a new department to start cracking down on people that ship to multiple addresses on the same order. To me, this sounds extremely silly because:
- Dropshippers (and regular shoppers) bringing this company tons of extra business.
- This extra business doesn’t even affect their current business because they are coming from a completely different market that would have never bothered to even check their website in the first place.
- Plenty of people often ship gifts to their friends and wouldn’t mind bulking their orders together to save on shipping. Why punish someone for doing something like this when it’s literally available everywhere else with no hassle?
After I spoke to this department, I was advised that going forward, I was no longer allowed to place multiple orders together but single orders were still allowed (weird, right?), which means I can still make a decent (but lower) profit on my items.
In the end, as I am not the owner of my actual merchandise and am simply a middle man, I finally concluded that I really have no say as to what their policies are and simply have to abide by their rules if I want to continue dropshipping from them.
Oh well. On to the next supplier!
Disappearing Online Orders
Something was definitely different about June with my second supplier. I started receiving phone calls from them a few days after placing some orders saying that a system error had occurred on their end and that I would need to replace my orders with them on a different ordering system if I wanted to ensure that they would go through.
The reason why I didn’t notice this issue right away was because I was placing multiple orders with this supplier constantly and you sometimes assume that everything goes through because it always has in the past. Well, lesson learned. Don’t ever assume because you never know what can happen when things aren’t entirely in your control.
To work around this issue for the future, I decided that I would simply take a minute or two after each order verify that each order was processed via email going forward to ensure that it had gone through. If I hadn’t seen anything within 5 minutes, I would know right away that something was up and could get refunded for my order so I could place the order again a short while later. By spending this small amount of time to verify the order, it saves me potentially hours if not days worth of waiting time to confirm if the order was successful or not.
Conclusion
By being put to the test with each of these new challenges head every month, I figured out how to grow from them and be better each time.
My current suppliers simply weren’t cutting it with their current business practices and it was time to expand to new sources. If you are not constantly growing, adjusting, and learning about your business or craft, your business is slowly dying and will eventually get left behind.
Now let’s see how the month turned out after dealing with both of these issues on the income report!
Income Report
Income from eBay
As a result of not being able to bulk my orders to save on shipping costs as often as I’d like, it definitely cut into the totals this month and resulted in a lower overall profit amount per order.
As of the month of June, I still maintained 100% feedback which helps ensure potential customer’s that you are a good and reputable person to purchase from. It’s extremely important that you work on maintaining a perfect rating as having a lower amount can affect your potential sales. Customer service is everything in this business!
Total June Sales: $4904.01
Total eBay Profit: $1410.78
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.
If you’re looking for additional assistance outside of the course, some of my amazing business partners (who are absolutely crushing it in the business right now) and myself also provide additional eBay store analysis and consultation services which you can learn more about at eDropshipEmpire.com.
Income from Cashback
TopCashBack – $135.89
Ebates – $1.42
Splender – $0
GivingAssistant – $25.20
Total Cashback Profit: $162.51
If you haven’t started using free cashback yet, be sure to check out my article on how I made $2000 shopping online. Bonus free cashback available ($5-$10) for new sign-ups after purchase! Did you know you can even earn cashback now with in-store purchases? You can even stack them with Credit Card Bonuses like I do to earn miles / points! Check it out!
Other / Misc. Affiliate Income
Affiliate / other miscellaneous incomes weren’t my primary focus this month but several people were interested in starting their own dropshipping business from the looks of the number of sign ups on Udemy.
Gift card profits are also up and should continue to go up so long as my supplier doesn’t restrict me again going forward and my new supplier’s items start turning over.
Gift Card Profit: $150.74
Misc. Affiliate Profit: $29.60
Other Profit: $0
Total Other / Misc. Affiliate Profit: $180.34
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 $267.68 from last month
Monthly Goals
In May, I made it a goal to hit 8,000 listings and to launch my second store. Here are the actual results for June.
Listing and Profit Goals
We landed a bit short of the goal but ended at 7821 listings for the month. For July, my VA will begin listing full time once she returns from her vacation in a week or two. I would like for us to hit 9,000 listings and hit $2,000 in profit.
Second eBay Store
After having a discussion with one of my successful peers regarding the second store, I decided to continue expanding on my current store instead because I already had a solid foundation to stand on and still tons of room for potential growth. Once this store finally gets maxed out, I will then look into growing a second one.
July Travel Plans
July 14th – 16th – Evolution 2017 – Las Vegas, NV
Evolution is the largest and longest running fighting game tournament in the world. I’ve attended this event for the past few years and look forward to it every time. Can’t wait to see all my old friends again!
July 21st – 30th – Family Trip – Jamaica
Insanely excited to visit the beautiful island and people of Jamaica!
The weekend after, I will be heading to the island of Jamaica with my family for a week for their annual vacation together for the FIRST TIME! The reason why this is so significant to me is because I have always missed this event every year due to work obligations due to taking some time off the weekend before. This will be the first time I will get to spend with my family on a trip in forever and I couldn’t be more excited for it.
I’ll still have my work laptop with me to make sure things are running smoothly with the eBay business and my point and shoot camera to document the journey so I won’t be entirely without technology!
Keep in touch! Thanks for reading!
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DANIEL "SHGLBMX" TAM 
Nice one brother
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Appreciate you sir!
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