How I Had My First £10k Month on Amazon FBA

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Why £10k is a Big Deal

Achieving £10,000 in sales is a major milestone for in the journey for a full-time Amazon seller. It feels as inspiring as it does when you reach your first £1,000 month. Depending on your profit margins, there’s no reason why you have to earn as much as that each month, but hitting five figures is really fulfilling to anyone that relies on this as their primary income source.

There’s lots of reasons why I wouldn’t work a regular office job again. A big factor is that it makes no sense in me contributing my time towards someone else’s business, when I can actually make over £10,000 revenue from something I only work on a few hours per week. I’m not alone and I’m not special – I just tried something that ended up working. 

As I keep a log of my monthly Amazon stats each month, it’s easy to look back at how I managed to reach that number the first time and what factors went into it.

Note that 99% of my stock was through online arbitrage – by finding products from online retailers and selling on Amazon. I have a seasonal private label product, but only two units (each worth £20) sold during this month, so those can be ignored.

The Journey Here

It’s important to contextualise things. It took a long time to get to the point where my inventory acquisition, sell-through rate and restocking processes are streamlined. I’m fortunate to be in a place where I minimise waste and I usually get through around 80% of what I send to Amazon each month.

My first couple of years involved me figuring out how to become more profitable with my sourcing. Then I focused on streamlining processes. Then I honed in on reducing my workload. With much less hours than my earlier days and even less stock expenditure, I steadily creeped up to this big milestone.   

At the time the £10k month happened I usually did:

• 1-2 stock orders per week (by ‘orders’ I mean individual sessions where I’m ordering from multiple places at once)
• Sent 1-2 shipments of inventory
• Had no VAs
• Used Tactical Arbitrage for all my sourcing (as is the case now)

My £10k month figures wouldn’t have happened without the investment in the month prior, so I’ll throw in some stats about that here. For that month:

Stock expenditure: £2,790.09

Shipments sent: 10

Time investment: 22 hours approx.

Revenue: £9,878.83

£10k Month

Big reveal: it wasn’t actually a £10k month; it was actually very nearly a £12k month. It would have got there if I had more things in stock and it definitely would have cleared it by far if it was a 31-day month.

The £10k month played out in exactly the way that I would usually operate my Amazon business. I’m juggling a lot of things, and I only dedicate a little of that time to Amazon these days, because I’ve got such streamlined processes in place. I make my orders specific days of the week and I make shipments once I can fill the biggest cardboard box I have in the house at the time.

Stock investment: £898.24

Shipments sent: 7

Time investment: 16 hours approx.

Revenue: £11,990.39

It’s obviously not fair to do profit calculations based on stock investment, as some inventory would have come from spend the month prior, but either way it’s clear that it’s clear that the margins are very healthy. The key thing I want to show is just how little time I need to contribute towards Amazon to get this sort of return – without VAs!

Now I’ve written this I realise that I just mean that it was just the first £10k month on Amazon UK. The month prior I would have hit £10k overall, including all international marketplaces. Either way, this was the one that really mattered most.

If you want any guidance on how to increase sales on Amazon, there’s plenty of resources on this site. For more specific questions, just give me a shout.