I normally do this post in December as I do my annual business review, but I was a little busy this last December so please forgive me. Let’s get on to it.
I think it’s important to have constant reflection. Both of myself and my business practices. I like to analyze my character and business to find where I’m succeeding and failing. I’ve found that in order to be successful, I can’t be monitoring progress daily (or many times a day), but an annual review is good practice.
Early on when I started Youtube, I would constantly check my analytics to see how many views and subscribers I was gaining. This lead to constant disappointment as I was not meeting my goals. That’s a quick example of how reflection can be a bad thing.
That said, in order for me to identify ways to improve, a quick audit is necessary. Let’s go over 2020 in detail.
2020 eBay Results
2020 was the first year that I pursued reselling on eBay. Actually, I started in December of 2019 but that’s merely semantics. 2020 was the first whole year that I sold on eBay. The Covid-19 pandemic was a bit of an anomaly for sales, but challenges are challenges nonetheless.
I started off strong with December of 19 and January of 20 with over $500 of gross sales each month. Things started to slow down in the spring due to the pandemic. At the time I was getting most of my inventory from thrift stores and most of them were closed.
My inventory was limited, and the sales were a direct result. For the next few months, my profits were definitely affected. Around the middle of summer, I changed tactics.
Instead of purchasing inventory from thrift stores, I sought out new supplies directly from eBay, purchasing in bulk. I would buy a “lot” of merchandise, usually cameras. Often, I would buy 10-40 cameras that were listed as “for parts or repair,” meaning, for one reason or another, they didn’t work.
Either the seller didn’t have the correct battery to test them, or something was simply broken on them. Now, I had good luck repairing most of these cameras. In fact, I sold quite a few cameras.
As a rule, in order to remain profitable, I would only buy cameras for a maximum of $3 each. That provided some cushion as, inevitably, some simply would not work or I would have to purchase batteries or memory cards.
Also, I paid for shipping on these cameras. I found that it helped them sell quicker. Unfortunately, that also eats in to the profit. With these metrics, I found that over 90% of the cameras would sell for a minimum of $14.95 with free shipping.
As a general rule, I figure that eBay and PayPal fees amount to 20%. So that’s roughly $3. Figure in another $4 for shipping to make things easy. So, for each camera that sells for $14.95 my net profits are around $8.
This is simply a baseline. A lot of the cameras would sell for $20-$60. On the other hand, a lot I couldn’t sell and were used as parts cameras to repair others. Now, $8 a camera isn’t terrible especially when I was selling in bulk. But even 100 cameras is only $800 (on average).
All in all, thanks to selling a few high ticket items towards the end of the year, I grossed $5,084.39 selling on eBay in 2020. After the cost of goods, eBay and Paypal fees and shipping expenses, my net profit was $2,623.32.
eBay Analysis
After the first few months selling on eBay, I was convinced that I had finally found success. I could scale and grow a profitable business – one that I enjoyed doing. I love thrifting and going to rummage sales, auctions, and estate sales. There’s always the possibility of finding treasure, or simply something I can flip for an easy buck.
But, it wasn’t actually profitable. At least, not when you figure the time it took to earn that much. I enjoyed earning in this sense because I could do most of it from home. I didn’t have to work overtime at work and I didn’t need to find a second job. But I spent waaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy to much time to earn this much.
The closest post office is 15 minutes from my house. I did over 133 sales in 2020. Some of them were sold close enough together that I could deliver to the post office in groups. Sometimes they were single sales. Either way, it was multiple trips to the post office. Conservatively, I’d estimate 60 trips for a total of 30 hours.
Also, I spent at least an hour a day searching for new inventory. Browsing auction sites, perusing eBay, looking on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace ate up a ton of time. So there’s another 365 hours (super conservatively).
Then, there was the listing process. Shooting photos, editing photos, writing listings and packaging items. This was my least favorite part of reselling on eBay. I’d estimate another 100 hours for all of that work.
So right there we’re at 500 hours roughly for the year, but I imagine it’s closer to 1,000 hours. And here’s why it’s important to reflect and analyze.
At 500 hours, and with my net profit of $2623.32, I made $2.63 an hour! That is hardly worth it. There’s a better way, which we’ll discuss for this year’s outlook.
2020 YouTube and Blog Review
Sigh. You’ve heard this before. I did not meet my goals for YouTube or this Blog. Hardly. Not even close. My goal for YouTube was 1 video a week, or 52 for the year. I did 7 total for 2020?! That is hardly the foundation for success.
Everything that I’ve read about earning from YouTube is that it comes down to consistently posting content. No wonder my channel hardly grew this year; I didn’t post nearly enough content. The problem was that I never had enough time to make videos because I was spending so much time on eBay.
All in all, my estimated earnings from YouTube for 2020 was $1,349.07
The same thing applies to this blog. I didn’t post enough.
Koda’s Story
I am proud to tell you all though, that after almost a year of writing, I did finish writing Koda’s book. As of right now, it’s roughly 60,000 words. It is a monumental task that I am proud to have completed. It has helped me tremendously as I grieve her loss, and it has given me a sense of accomplishment.
Currently, I’m attempting to find an (affordable) editor to review it so that we can look to the next step in publishing it.
Amazon Affiliate
I am affiliate at Amazon, and I earn a small commission when someone buys something through my links. It’s not a major source of revenue, but I’ll add it here just because we’re doing a thorough audit. My total earnings through the Amazon Affiliate program for 2020 was $134.53.
2021 Outlook
So now that we’ve reviewed 2020, what does this mean for 2021? First of all, I’m no longer going to invest so much time into selling on eBay. I’m still going to look for deals because I’m going to be looking at auctions and estate sales anyways, but I’m not going to actively pursue this business model unless I can make a larger margin of profit on an item.
What that does mean is that I will have more free time for passive income investments. If you’re not familiar with that term, it simply means that I will be working on opportunities that earn for me, even when I’m not working.
For instance, with eBay, if I wasn’t acquiring inventory, listing it, and promoting it, nothing would sell. It requires active participation, much like a normal job. You go to work, put in the hours, and collect a paycheck.
Passive income, on the other hand, works when I’m not. Usually, it requires up front time and effort, but then you can collect in perpetuity.
What does this look like for me? It means investing more of my time into these sorts of passive income investments. Specifically, YouTube, blogging, affiliate earnings, writing books, and more recently, crypto mining.
YouTube Goals for 2021
Every year I have made a goal of posting one video per week, and every year I have failed. This year, I’m going to make a goal of one video every two weeks, and hope that I get closer. So, we’re shooting for 26 videos this year. Since it’s already the middle of February, I’m already behind.
Also, my channel is currently sitting at 6,198. I’d like to reach 10,000 subscribers by the end of the year. If you’re reading this and haven’t already subscribed, now is the perfect time!
Blog Goals for 2021
This one I’m going to keep at one post per week, or 52 total. This should be a bit easier, since half of the posts will be a summary of the video that I post. Attainable.
Amazon Affiliate Goals for 2021
This has been a bit of a pleasant surprise. Even with my meager views on both YouTube and this blog, I have generated a decent amount of sales from the Amazon Affiliate links – and I haven’t even put in that much effort.
The problem is that the commission percentages are very low. So the only way to increase earnings is to get more clicks. More content posted equals more views equals more clicks equals more conversions and sales.
I’m excited to see what’s possible with this earning potential by this time next year after I’ve met my content goals.
Book Publishing Goals for 2021
It took me a long time to write a complete book. Over an entire year was spent to tell Koda’s story. My goal for this year is to somehow publish it. Whether that means I can sign a book deal through a traditional publisher, or I go the self publishing route. One way or another, I will publish her story this year.
It’s also inspired me to continue writing more. Previously, I had started several books and never finished. Now, I know that I can. I’m currently writing two different nonfiction books and one fiction novel.
I’m going to finish and publish one of the nonfiction books this year, and make meaningful progress on the novel. Bre really wants me to work on this novel, but I’m having a more difficult time with that one.
I’m not going to make any earnings goals with any of the books, because honestly I have no idea what to even project. I simply have the goal of publishing them.
Crypto Mining
This last goal is one that I’ve wanted to do for over a decade. If you’re not familiar, cryptocurrencies are like normal currencies. There are many different kinds of tokens, each with a different monetary value. Think of the US dollar vs the British pound.
Each currency is traded and fluctuates in value. You can trade for these currencies on various platforms, like Coinbase. Coinbase is a crypto wallet, much like a normal savings account. You can even earn some free crypto tokens by watching videos and learning about the different types.
Self promotion here: You can sign up for a free Coinbase wallet here and earn a free $10 after you’ve traded $100. I’ll get $10 too if you use my link, and it’s an easy way to show your support.
So you can trade crypto like any other stock or ETF, but the beauty about crypto is that you can also mine, or create it. And that’s what I’ll be doing.
To simplify, a crypto miner is simply a computer. You use the computer to perform mathematical algorithms in exchange for tokens. Depending on the token determines the value. The higher powered your computer, the more you can generate.
I recently spent $1,100 of my eBay earnings for equipment to build my first mining rig. At current values, I’ll be earning $5.78 a day. So that’s 190 days until my investment is paid off. If the price of the token I’m mining increases, that pay off date will be sooner.
As recently as 2017, Bitcoin was $0.07. Earlier this year, it broke $40,000. If you had invested $7 at $0.07, you would have had 100 Bitcoin tokens that would have been worth $4,000,000!
So the idea is that I will be earning crypto to pay off my investment in the equipment. After that, it will continue to mine tokens for me and earn 24/7, even if I’m not actively working.
Of course the value will fluctuate depending on the price, but the trajectory of cryptocurrencies has shown it to be a good investment. At this point, it’s a much better proposal than spending thousands of hours making eBay listings.
Once I have demonstrated the fact that I can actually build a functioning mining rig, I will invest more into this facet to increase my daily earnings.
My goal for this crypto miner is to earn $10,000 in 2021. That will be directly invested in turn to build more miners for the future.
Wrap Up
Phew! If you’ve read this much, thanks for sticking around. As always, the annual audits are lengthy posts, but there’s a lot to consider. What are your thoughts? Let me know your plans for passive income investments in the comments below!
You’ve worked so incredibly hard this year! Way to go!
Thank you!