$100 a Day Challenge: November 2024 Income Report – Entry #6

Bybikeraceradmin
November 2024 Income Report

November was a learning experience, from order returns to discounts killing my profit margin, we made it through with a record Daily profit of $2.31 per day. Below is a synopsis of what I learned.

So what did I learn?

Let’s start with returns. I worked with a customer to custom design a hat. We came up with a design we liked and I submitted it to Printful. They made some changes on the embroidery to make the lines thicker because our design had very thin lines which won’t work with Printful’s embroidery. I approved the design, but unbeknownst to me…they increased the size of the design probably by 200%. Below are the issues I ran into:

Richardson 112 Helicopter Hat
Richardson 112 Hats – Embroidery was larger than what the customer asked for.
  1. The idea was to have the embroidery on the lower left quarter of the front of the hat. The logo looks good but wasn’t what the customer wanted. I knew we were testing something out and I offered her a full refund including shipping. So I lost out on a decent order for two hats.
  2. I probably spent 4-5 hours between creating the logo. I couldn’t find a .png of the specific helicopter the customer wanted so I ended up creating the logo from images. I provided the customer with a couple designs because I started with a blank slate. – This was another loss because I didn’t earn anything from my efforts
  3. Trying to do custom designs with a Print-on-demand company isn’t efficient. If you have a design were you just change the text, that’s ok. But in this case we tried to design something from scratch for the customer and for any revisions, I had to create a new product (or edit) it in Printful, create the mockup and send to the customer for her review. Very time consuming. The other issue is that I can’t print off any samples to see how the embroidery will look. So overall, this process isn’t efficient.

Discounts, Fees and Shipping. I received a really nice order of 10 MAGA (Make America Great Again) Beanies on Etsy. I was super excited at first… But when I started analyzing the data…I didn’t make much of a profit. The customer took advantage of a 10% coupon with lowered my profit by $19.95 (I’m totally cool with this). But on top of that, ETSY fees were $21.72!! This is a major profit margin killer. So instead of making $63.90 in profit on the order, I ended up with a profit of $22.23 on the order. (I think ETSY fees are way to high).

I also had another order from a customer that I helped design a logo for about a year ago. They placed a re-order for some Sweatshirts, t-shirts and a hat. Plus I offered them a discount because I thought they were going to place a bulk order for hats. Well…the order total was $470. Sounds great right? BUT…the way Printful calculates shipping is on a per product item basis…ie..Sweatshirts are one package, tshirts are another and hats are another order. Pricing starts high for the first item and then is reduced when an additional item is ordered. For example…First sweatshirt is $8.99, second is 3.99, etc.

I had shipping set up wrong on my shopify story (it’s a learning experience, right?). So…Shopify charged me $41 for shipping the order! Instead of placing the order in one box and shipping, the order probably went out in 3 different packages. And because my shipping was off…I only charged the customer $12.48. The customer used a 10% coupon so that took $47.50 off the top of my profit. At the end of the day after eating the shipping, the discount and fees…I profited $9.11 on a $470 order because I goofed up shipping and offered a discount!

The lesson: Shipping errors and Discounts can very quickly eat into your profit margin, especially on bigger orders. Print-on-demand shipping is very tricky so be sure to have it set up correctly. Small business owners walk a very fine line because Amazon has made shipping very competitive…especially on larger orders. There’s no way we can compete with Amazon’s free shipping, so we have to hope to sell on reputation.

Brass Tacks…How did I do in November 2024?

Month# OrdersEtsyShopifyTotal ProfitAds ProfitDaily Profit
July 202410100$55.84$0.12$1.80
August 2024880$30.03$0.14$0.97
September 2024550$8.12$0.11$0.27
October 2024651$36.28$0.14$1.17
November 20241284$69.93$0.39$2.31
September 2024 Income Report

I’m happy to see 4 orders on my Shopify store. I hope this trend continues. I’d love for the Shopify store to make more sales than my ETSY store. ETSY fees are terrible.

November Update Overview

I focused solely on Coffee Mugs & Hats in November. I posted 10 videos on the Coffee Mugs & Hats Youtube Channel, posted 13 blog posts and added 14 new products. Overall, I just focused on new content.

One thing that I’m really happy about is that Coffee Mugs & Hats is starting to receive some organic clicks. We had consecutive streak of getting at least on click for 9 days and set a record of 7 organic clicks on one day! It’s not much, but when you consider all of the millions of websites on the internet, it’s not so bad.

Goals for December 2024

  1. I’ve been reviewing Google Search Console. One of the keywords I’m not ranking for is “Coffee Mugs“. The blog posts are focused on the “coffee mugs” keywords. I’ll be monitoring the keyword in December to see if we can even get an impression for the keyword
  2. Try to generate 3-5 Blog Posts.
  3. Continue to Create New Products
    • Update Existing Etsy listing to try to get more visits. I’m running at a 1.7% conversion rate on Etsy, so If I can double traffic, I should be able to double my monthly sales.
    • Update Shopify products with more internal links.
  4. Continue to create more product videos for the Youtube channel.
  5. Re-engage some of the other websites to see if we can get Google to like the…or at least get some traffic to them.

This is the fourth full income report on My Journey to $100 Per Day. My goal is to capture any increases or losses in income and traffic to my current websites. I was able to get a lot done in November and am hoping the progress can continue in December.

Content Creation in November?

Below is a table I’m going to use to track content creation. The goal is to give you an idea of what I’ve been doing to tray to drive traffic to my websites to increase conversions. The table is pretty self explanatory but I’ll add a little context:

  1. YT Shorts – These are shorts that I created for any of the Youtube Channels
  2. YT Video – These are long form videos
  3. New Blog Posts – (Self explanatory)
  4. Blog Updates – Any time I edit or update a blog, I’ll include it in the total. This could be rewriting a paragraph, adding links or new images.
  5. New Products – I’ll keep a total of new products that have been added to any of my e-commerce sites
  6. Etsy Updates – Similar to blog updates, anytime I update an Etsy product, I’ll track it here.
  7. Shopfiy Updates – Similar to blog updates, anytime I update an Shopify product, I’ll track it here.
  8. Attack the keywords in the list below.

Below are the keywords i’m going to be focusing on in December. These keywords are getting impressions in Search Console…so I figure I might as well concentrate on them and try to get some movement.

Click Here to see a running tally of changes per website.

MonthYT ShortsYT VideoNew Blog PostsBlog UpdatesNew ProductsProduct UpdatesEtsy UpdatesShopify Updates
August 2024210130550
September 202400542200
October 2024002Multiple2811MultipleMultiple
November 20245514Multiple140MultipleMultiple
Content Creation Tracking

November Website Traffic Update

I’m going to do something different this month and just grab screenshots from Google Analytics and Search Console. It’ll be faster and easier to understand.

Coffee Mugs and Hats

The Bike Racer (No Organic Clicks to report)

Hovering Helicopter

None of the other sites received any traffic worth reporting on.

WebsiteMonthGoogle UsersGoogle SessionsGoogle Search ClickGoogle Search ImpressionsBing ImpressionsBing Clicks
TheBikeRacer.comJuly 2024788299881
August 20247287071.1K3
September 2024901090391.4K1
October 202477823691.9K6
TheBikeRacer.com Traffic Updates
WebsiteMonthGoogle UsersGoogle SessionsGoogle Search ClicksBing ImpressionsBing Clicks
HoveringHelicopter.comJuly 2024664693012.3K72
August 2024316392040.5K291
September 2024273310015.4K105
October 2024351412021.2K221
HoveringHelicopter.com Traffic Updates

WebsiteMonthGoogle UsersGoogle SessionsGoogle Search ClicksBing ImpressionsBing Clicks
CoffeeMugandHats.comJuly 2024161161133140
August 2024142149175031
September 2024275288108112
October 202420724961.3K2
Coffeemugsandhats.com Traffic Updates

WebsiteMonthGoogle UsersGoogle SessionsGoogle Search ClicksBing ImpressionsBing Clicks
CloudSeedingtheSky.comJuly 20240000290
August 20240000291
September 2024222201
Cloudseedingthesky.com Traffic Updates

WebsiteMonthGoogle UsersGoogle SessionsGoogle Search ClicksBing ImpressionsBing Clicks
TheFoundationisCracking.comJuly 202466017192
August 20242020011220
September 2024324509350
TheFoundationisCracking.com Traffic Updates

Social Media Review

I posted the Youtube videos on the Coffee Mug & Hats socials. That’s all I really did in November.

Youtube

The only mover in shaker in August was my Find it and Buy it Youtube channel. It picked up 2 new subscribers. I guess it helps to post videos if you want to build a subscriber base…

  1. TheBikeRacer (139 Subscribers) (+1)
  2. HoveringHelicopter (1 Subscriber) (No Change)
  3. Coffeemugsandhats (7 Subscribers) (+4)
  4. Cloudseedingthesky (1 Subscriber) (No Change)
  5. TheFoundationisCracking (9 Subscribers) (+1)
  6. Finditandbuyit (6 Subscribers) (No Change)

X (Formally Twitter)

  1. Mike Byrd (169 Followers) (No Change)
  2. Hovering Helicopter (720 Followers) (-2 Followers)
  3. Coffee Mugs and Hats (24 Followers) (-25 Followers)
  4. Cloud Seeding the Sky (18 Followers) (+2 Follower)
  5. The Foundation is Cracking (210 Followers) (-118 Followers)
  6. Find It and Buy It (209 Followers) (-37 Followers)

Instagram

I did very little on Instagram in July. The results show it.

  1. The Bike Racer (166 Followers) (-351 Followers)
  2. Hovering Helicopter (7 Followers) (No Change)
  3. Coffee Mugs and Hats (152 Followers) (No Change)
  4. Cloud Seeding the Sky (1 Followers) (+0 Follower)
  5. The Foundation is Cracking (0 Followers) (No Change
  6. Find it and Buy It (1 Follower) (No Change)

Facebook

  1. The Bike Racer (218 Followers) (No Change)
  2. Hovering Helicopter (2,93 Followers) (-11 Followers)
  3. Coffee Mugs and Hats (18 Followers) (+0 Followers)
  4. The Foundation is Cracking (2 Followers) (No Change)
  5. Find it and Buy It (76 Followers) (No Change)

Rumble – (Rumble really needs to work on their interface)

  1. The Bike Racer Videos (0 Followers) (No Change)
  2. Hovering Helicopter (0 Followers) (No Change)

Pinterest

  1. Coffee Mugs and Hats (8 Followers) (No Change)

Conclusion

Overall November was good from a content building perspective. I also learned a lot by really digging into the cost of doing business. Little things like shipping cost mistakes and discounts can have a HUGE impact on profit. I hope I have that under control now.

My stretch goal is to be making $3 per day by the end of December.

Thanks for stopping by my little corner of the Internet. My name is Mike Byrd and this is my website. I enjoy sports, being outside, new challenges, marketing and anything that comes my way. I am the author of the blog posts on thebikeracer.com. I enjoy writing about cycling, poiltics, coffee and anything else that fits in the "My World" category. Be sure to subscribe to my newsletter to say up to date on anything new that gets posted to thebikeracer.com.

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