Ecommerce Holiday Chaos!
I've been trying really hard to prepare myself for Q4's holiday season. It looks like still I wasn't prepared enough for what its bringing though. I've been spending the majority of my time fulfilling Etsy orders and getting my FBA products that I produce ready to ship to Amazon's warehouses. I would say that I have at least 10 FBA products that have 50k and below ranking, which means that they are selling at least 3-5 a day. This is before November too. I was expecting sales to increase during this time but not by as much as it has been. To prepare for the Thanksgiving weekend I was trying to have at least 300 of each of those SKUs in Amazon's warehouse so I don't have to worry about inventory. Well, seems like 300 wasn't enough because as soon Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend came I was selling out quickly. Running out inventory quickly because of sales is good problem to have I guess, but I'm super stressed trying to make more inventory to replenish my SKUs on Amazon. Right now I'm working from 10 to 6 alongside an employee of mine creating and prepping as much inventory as we can. I'm already looking to hire one more employee for the holiday season to help out with my Etsy, Ebay, and my Shopify store's order fulfillment. I'm really excited because of the results that I'm getting. I know its a seasonal thing, I'm just trying to milk out as much as I can.
Printful's Etsy Integration
I also opened a new Etsy store too, right before Thanksgiving weekend. There's a lot of buzz going around about Printful's Etsy integration. For those of you who don't know what this is, it's a Merch by Amazon program but for Etsy. In other words, you upload designs to Printful, which is the company that fulfills the product for you for a percent of the revenue, and then you create the listing on Etsy. Like Merch by Amazon, you don't need any money to get started. Here is a link that will give you free 40 Etsy listings for you to create! http://etsy.me/2BHMAA7, I'll include the link in the resources section at the end of this post too. All you really need are highly optimized Etsy listings and somewhat quality designs. I've watched countless videos about it on youtube and I decided to get in as soon as possible. I dedicated a whole day to upload and optimize 100 listings. I opened my store the day before Thanksgiving and tested to see if I would get any results by Cyber Monday. I logged into my account the Tuesday right after to check out how things were going and I noticed that I had 30 sales already! I was super excited that I immediately started uploading more designs and now the store is sitting with 200 listings. So far this is what I've gotten from it.
I'm really trying my hardest to do as much as I can right now. My main goal for the end of the year is to have a positve net worth. I'm recording the results as time goes by. Even though there have been few hiccups with keeping inventory in stock, I know this is going to help me prepare for next years holiday season so that's cool. Here are some numbers that I got for the Thanksgiving weekend. You really need to take a look at Etsy and Printful's integration program. It's super easy to get started. There are plenty of videos on youtube about it if you want to learn more. Also, I hope that you are uploading designs to merch by amazon's program too because this is too the busiest time of the year for that. If you aren't in the program yet make sure you request an invitation, it will take a while for you to get accepted but its worth the wait.
If you guys would like for me to go more in-depth about Printful's Etsy integration please let me know in the comment section below. I'm thinking about creating a youtube page, not sure what it should be about though. Ideas are welcome. Thank you for reading. Until the next time, deuce.
Resources
Receive 40 Free Etsy Listings when you use this link to sign up: http://etsy.me/2BHMAA7
Printful webiste: www.printful.com
Merch by Amazon: merch.amazon.com
