hey what's up guys thank you for joining
me today for a new video so in this one
i want to talk about when do fourth
quarter sales finally start picking up
now a lot of us had a pretty big october
and october technically is the start of
q4
but after halloween of course there was
a sales slump for many of us
so
in this video i'm really just going to
look back on my 2020 data
and kind of compare month over month how
the fourth quarter months really stacked
up against each other and see what we
can take away from that and i'll speak
to my uh previous experience over the
last four years this being my fifth year
selling
generally speaking ecommerce stuff in
the fourth quarter so why don't we get
started
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alright so today we are talking
q4 aka fourth quarter sales i always
like to remind you guys the sales cycle
for pretty much anything
is 12 months yes 12 months a lot of
people
um generally speaking hopefully not
anybody watching my videos because i
think we're better we're a little bit
better than what i'm about to say but a
lot of people get excited about
something and if they don't see instant
gratification like overnight
uh and i'm exaggerating but
they tend to quit or they'll be open to
quitting because it wasn't
rewarding enough immediately right and
it's like come on guys that's not how
this works it's not how ecommerce works
that's not really how most things in
life work anyways
um if you
you know do too much if you want that
immediate gratification
uh it's it's probably not in the long
run generally speaking
gonna lead you to good outcomes to
positive outcomes you got to have that
nice long-term perspective
and
like like most things you know ecommerce
or most things that i know at least
web development you know you launch a
new website uh really any project i mean
hey even if it's like i love to work out
if you're doing like a body
transformation give it a year you know
what i mean like why does it have to be
a two week you know or ten day abs you
know why not a year
right a year is it's a long time but
it's not that long you know what i mean
especially if you're trying to make a
lifestyle change or a business that will
lead to a lifestyle change right like
like passive income setting you free
from your day job or opening doors um
whatever that means to you everybody's
got different things that they dream of
anyways i'm rambling here we go
fourth quarter sales when do they pick
up so we're to look at my data we're
going to start with september 2020. now
2020 was a pretty unique year a lot of
people absolutely smashed 2020 because
it was just chock full of amazing
potential for selling t-shirts now me
having a youtube channel and a little
bit of excuses here but like i was
scared to enter
the niches that i didn't consider to be
safe you know and like even if they
look safe at surface level i just need
my account so that i can do these videos
and whatnot so uh generally speaking i
sell a lot of like really boring
evergreens like i say i only need one
sale a year um on 200 000 listings to
make a million dollars not that will
ever happen but that's kind of my
mentality my approach so i'm not going
to blow anybody away with my numbers i
know that a lot of people watching
probably did better numbers than i did
last year um that being said of course
i've like kind of tweaked and updated my
strategy and that's why my 2021 has been
so much better but anyways now that i
said that piece
september of 2020 i did 888
in royalties so that's gonna be my
baseline september is not q4 but i just
wanted to show month over month if we
compare september to october
in october which is the first month of
q4 and of course halloween is a big
holiday for moving t-shirts i definitely
benefited from that
i saw an 85 percent increase in
royalties month over month from
september to october so i went from 888
royalties to 1 647
of royalties in the month of october
2021.
now 85 is huge that's a big
month-over-month jump and of course
october has 31 days that never hurt
anybody either you got extra days to
make sales
uh november though if we compare october
with 1 647 sales to november
in november
i gained almost a thousand dollars in
royalties for a 60 percent increase
month over month in royalties to
2 625
in royalties okay
now i probably could have increased
these numbers just by increasing my
profit margins um that's something that
i made a point of doing in 2021
uh because i realized you know well
there's various there's various reasons
but i feel like in 2021 charging 20 for
a t-shirt 19.99 whatever um not only
does amazon kind of give us a nudge in
the right direction because that's the
default price
but
i mean what is 20 bucks these days right
with with the way that the dollar has
been being devalued i know people think
that things are getting more expensive
but it's really in my mind if you ask me
uh the dollar losing purchasing power
which it's basically done i think it's
lost like 95 plus of its purchasing
power since the inception of the dollar
um back back in the day what was it 1913
or something
especially since they took it off the
gold standard of course but um let me
get back on topic so in november 2625 in
royalties when we compare that to
december and this is typically really
the big month
in december i did four thousand
four hundred eleven dollars in royalties
for an increase of sixty-eight percent
month over month
okay now if we compare this back to like
september with eight hundred eighty
eight dollars uh it's even more
significant okay so let's even just see
i'm over here on my side monitor doing
the math
um we basically
5xed our sales from september to
december now i cannot guarantee that
this is going to happen for you but
typically when i look back on my sales
and it can be across the board it's not
just merch by amazon it's in like kdp
fba uh drop ship print on demand which i
call my non-amazon merch print on demand
sales i'm actually going to show you
some numbers because it is a little bit
different for that specifically and i'll
explain why in a minute um but yes guys
like seriously this is where the hard
work pays off like i get
uh really excited all year for the
fourth quarter it's what has me you know
excited to push new products in the slow
months you know what i mean the middle
of the year when maybe things aren't uh
going that great you know i know that
i'm probably gonna get paid off in the
fourth quarter for all that hard work
that i did okay so in december over two
thousand sales
um forty four hundred dollars in
royalties
now my fourth quarter sales compared to
the other nine months of the year
represented almost 60 of my sales on the
year however 2020 was a little bit of a
weird year like i got off to a really
slow start uh it was the you know covid
year so
again not everybody's priorities
involved buying t-shirts uh then again
if you were willing to sell the t-shirts
in the major major trends because there
were a handful of trends that just
popped up overnight and were just crazy
with the number of sales that took place
um you know you probably had a different
year and you may have seen your biggest
your biggest month could have been
any month of the year because if you
were really capitalizing on some of
those major trends or all of them um you
know your data probably looked a little
bit skewed by that uh because it's not
gonna follow the general flow of demand
that increases towards the end of the
year but my fourth quarter sales oh yeah
and then also in uh april
uh merch by amazon closed down for a
month so we lost a month out of the year
too so it's really q4 versus the other
eight months of the year and that was 58
of my 2020 sales
now when i look at my amazon kdp sales
it followed pretty much the exact same
trajectory as my merch by amazon sales i
mean not the exact but within
a couple percentage points difference
was the arc of my increasing fourth
quarter sales for kdp
now when i talk about drop ship print on
demand i alluded to it a second ago but
it was a little bit different okay
my september sales uh well this is my
profit
717 in september for reference october
actually i went down a little bit that's
interesting uh 1 566 dollars in profit
and december sixteen hundred eighty two
dollars in profit
now here's the thing about dropship
print on demand i omitted november my
november sales were four thousand eighty
nine dollars so more than two x
any of those other months september
october december okay more than 2x
november was really big and december had
the potential to carry that momentum but
here's the thing anybody who shops on
amazon in the fourth quarter you've seen
this before
amazon will tag listings
and say
arrives before christmas or arrives
after christmas and they put it in red
text
right near the buy button
so what do you think that does to your
conversion rate when it says arrives
after christmas and you're selling in
december
yeah it's not good and here's the thing
when we let amazon do the fulfillment
for us like merch by amazon kdp et
cetera we don't have to worry about that
like it kind of is what it is and amazon
uh definitely
generally speaking has really good
infrastructure behind it as far as like
getting things produced and shipped very
quickly especially with prime shipping
when we're doing our fbm listings
through
seller central
we are responsible for putting the
handling time
okay and that involves also the
processing time and whoever's fulfilling
our orders
they're gonna get backed up uh typically
printful gear bubble printified you know
the big three for me that i'm used to
using
they will create a page where they just
push updates and let us sellers know how
long it's taking by product type so that
we can plan accordingly now i generally
speaking update all of my seller central
listings and say 14 days handling time
in the in the fourth quarter and then
i'll reset that in january when things
go back to normal the reason i do that
is because i want to keep my account
safe if you have a bunch of products
selling and you're shipping them late
there's going to be repercussions guys i
mean you may lose your seller account
you may lose the ability to sell in
certain categories a number of things
can happen but obviously we know this is
a long-term business we don't want to
throw it all away for a fourth quarter
where we soak up sales that end up
getting refunded anyways then we just
lose the money because we didn't set
handling time to an appropriate length
okay
also you know you can do all of that in
bulk
that's something that's like really
useful to know how to do in the fourth
quarter if you're selling fbm print on
demand products
or just fbm products in general in case
you you know have longer fulfillment
times handling times shipping times etc
so that's pretty much all i want to
cover in this video guys if you enjoyed
it do me a quick favor hit that like
button let the youtube algorithm know to
like the video before i sign off i did
want to remind you that i wrote a full
print on demand course walking you
through how i make six figure print on
demand sales every single year
it's a it's just a really good course
guys i don't want to toot my own horn
but i i also interviewed one of the
students in it earlier this week if you
missed it catch that video with uh
aldean right here he did 28 thousand
dollars in 28 days in sales this month
in november so if you want to learn how
he did that uh check out that video i'll
link to it in the youtube cards again
and i'll put a link to it in the
description thank you so much guys for
watching this video please enjoy the
rest of your day and i'll see you
tomorrow
you