Real monthly income report – February 2021

What’s the purpose of me sharing my monthly retail income reports?

Every month, I get a little raw and real about my revenue and return - good or bad.

Why do I do this? Because I believe that complete transparency is the key to eCommerce and online retail success. So often, you’ll see ads from gurus promising six-figure incomes in a matter of weeks, and the reality is that making money from your online store isn’t as cut and dry as they’d have you believe.

Yes, it’s absolutely possible to make serious cash from eCommerce, but it’s certainly not overnight - and mostly, it starts with smaller wins, like adding ten more sales to your weekly report, doubling your monthly revenue, or seeing 50% annual growth. Your retail price also has a lot to do with it - have a squizz here about how to set your prices.

In this retail income report series, I’ll be sharing my revenue, returns, top-line ad spend, and return-on-ad-spend (ROAS), in the hope that you get a real glimpse into the cash comings and goings of a working eCommerce business. Enjoy.

February 2021 Income

$110,458.93
-$6,194.55 in returns

Income Breakdown

$40,991.70 was from Social

$23,767.72 was from Email

$16,325.35 was from Paid Search

$10,976.26 was Direct

$8,334.70 was Organic Search

$6,712.05 was Referral

Any income not accounted for is from Display or Other

Whilst we did a heck of a lot better than last February, myself and the team were a little disappointed with this month.

February was a perfect storm of sorts, and not in our favour. Not only are we sold out of our most popular styles, but we were slammed by inventory shortages (thanks to Chinese New Year shutting down entire production houses), custom delays on stock and the pausing of some really high-performing social ads.

Thanks to the government restrictions on removing news content from Facebook, and the cost per conversion price increase of Facebook ads (both traffic and sales), plus that lack of stock, we didn’t put as much into ad spend as we normally would. This is reflected in our revenue compared to the previous month, and meant that web traffic and sales were down significantly. 

Frustrating? Yes. Fixable? Absolutely.

We launched a brand new collection, SILK SAFARI, which is always exciting - but very daunting as we never know how new styles will be received, and very rarely can we anticipate the reaction. 

One thing is for sure, adding newness is a consumer expectation so it’s an inevitable process you have to go through to find out what works and what your customers respond to. My best advice is to play and have fun with it as much as you can. Cut the losses and celebrate the wins.

With that said, let’s breakdown the ROI:

Social

Spend: $12,987.68
Return: $40,991.70
ROAS: 315.61%

Google Ads

Spend: $3,320.16
Return: $16,325.25
ROAS: 491.72%

While we’re working on growing our organic traffic and building more sophisticated social and email marketing profiles, we’re seeing some good early growth from those channels. With anything organic, though, you can’t expect to see too much happening for at least six months from the date of implementation.

We’re pushing hard on the influencer marketing front from now as user-generated content is so beautiful - not just aesthetically (I mean, how amazing is it to see your products on a real, live human being?) but in terms of social proof, expanded reach and real wearability. We’re also smoothing out our paid traffic bottlenecks which we know will make a huge difference.

If this has raised any questions for you, please feel free to drop me a line. I love chatting with other online retail entrepreneurs about their highs, lows, wins and setbacks.