I began to offer forward shipping for a niche market, starting with people I know, and someone promoted it on TikTok.
Started doing this on Friday, April 10th.
Total revenue since Friday is about $18,000CAD. This is because I offer to buy the item (from $100 to $500CAD+) for them and ship it to them, once payment is received.
Total income is unknown. First two days, likely made only $500-$1000 despite revenue of about $10,000. I was only charging people $30ish for each order but have since upped my fee based on cost of order.
Fee rate is: $25 for orders up to $125, $50 for orders up to $500, $75 for orders up to $800, $100 for orders up to $1000, $150 for orders up to $1700, and so on. Feedback on fees is welcome.
Total cost additional to item and tax for customers is prepaid tariffs, tax on tariffs, shipping estimate (not sure how to do this right), transaction platform fees, and my own service fee.
Since rush has died down, I’ve made about $150 a day doing nothing in terms of advertising or pursuing customers who were interested. I’ve had to pause orders where I buy the item. I have customers waiting whose orders I can’t fulfill.
I’m currently organizing everything in my notes app (awful). I do calculations on notes and at times fudge up. I need to get excel going.
I’m looking for advice on how I can best track expenses, income, things for taxes, customers and orders, etc. Willing to pay a freelancer for help.
Wondering if I should go to the bank to get a credit increase too so I can take more orders, as some people only want me to order the items instead of sending to my house.
I’m not sure if this is just something I’ll do until the hype dies down, but it looks like there’s a good market for it. If I could get a cheap website that does everything for me, it could be viable?
Open to partners in Canada depending on logistics, or someone on tech or tracking side willing to do something for cheap and get more later if it takes off.
submitted by /u/rheannahh
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