OK so just want to basically take this lecture to introduce the concept of good housekeeping right.
Good discipline when we talk about sales and expenses you know this is this is the lifeblood of your
business.
Keeping track of these key figures and you know in my experience at least I am absolutely amazed of
the number of people who don't do this.
It's a daily discipline.
Please don't ignore it.
And what I'm going to show you here is a very very basic method right this is what I use still actually
to a certain extent but it's by no means you know your definitive accounting package.
Nothing like that but it's going to help you enormously to give you a very good overview of what you
have and how well you are doing.
And in fact a lot of these figures you can get your accountant know later on in the day later on the
year as your business develops.
You do need to actually file your accounts.
All the information that he or she will need will be there but most importantly right now it's for you.
OK.
So if you've been in business for a while forgive the simplicity of what I'm doing here OK.
But if you're new to business I really hope you find this to be useful it's not supposed to be patronizing
in any way.
OK I'm just trying to sort of give you a very nice introduction to some simple but very effective methods.
So as you can see I've basically got here an Excel spreadsheet.
So let's just get rid of the top headache here.
So an Excel spreadsheet with sales.
OK that's it.
And what I have here on the left hand side is the start date.
So when I actually started my campaign to sell these things.
OK.
So I took down the first of May 2017.
Obviously this is just an example.
No end date for the moment because you know we are still doing this.
All right then we got the product name itself.
OK my heart shaped dog pendant necklace what I actually called it on my site.
And then the actual You are out of that product on my site.
OK if I start to get many many products on my site I need to be able to go there quickly if I need to
to keep track of it.
So that's exactly the product you are all on my site itself.
OK.
If you can see here you don't see much of the product yourself if I draw your attention to the top part
here of the sheet.
You can see the full URL appearing here.
Now next to that I've now got excuse me I've now got the product you're out on Ali Express.
Right.
The actual corresponding address for that product on Ali Express and as you can see here.
The whole thing.
All right.
Now this is also very important.
OK because I get people saying to me things like you know how do I keep track of you know where my products
were that I bought on our L'Express.
Well this is a very simple method to do it.
You'd be amazed that people who sell something on highly expressed maybe two or three weeks after they
started advertising or later on or whatever it could be and they can't find the Pagnell Express because
they simply haven't taken the time to record where it was in the first place.
So there we go.
That's exactly where it is on daily express.
Now this next one is called the U.
Kate which is basically just a it's called a stop stock keeping units OK askew and it's just basically
a number a unique number that identifies where that is on our Express.
So let me just take you to Ali express itself.
OK.
So now here we are on my on the next list that we're talking about and here is a unique Jaro you know
which relates to where we actually can get this from from our supplier.
When somebody buys and the skew is actually this last number here I hope you can see that.
Basically you've got just before the age demand you get a series of numbers here.
OK.
7:57 so probable.
What I've done is I've taken that and I've copied it and I've pasted it into my spreadsheet here.
OK.
Now just to show you something that you might not be aware of.
I can now find that products store straight away just using that skew.
So let me demonstrate to find out copy this let's go back to early Express.
Let's just go to the home page.
OK let's imagine we've just come into well-expressed and we need to go straight to that product.
OK.
All I need to do is actually paste that number into the search bar on an express click on the search
icon and it takes me straight there.
It's a unique number that identifies it on our Express.
So that's very very useful very very important to have in my spreadsheet right.
So now I've got everything linked up I know.
You know the product you're on my site where it is on Ali and I can find it very easily on Ali as well.
Now these next bits is just what I do.
OK.
And again this is just an example but I hope you're beginning to realize you know this is very simple
but very powerful.
So what I've got here is my advertising costs.
OK this will be a running total.
So just an example so far has been 12 dollars and 32 cents.
Clearly I'm making this up.
And then every time I get a sale I'm going to record it in these lines below.
OK.
So my example here I've got a sale on the first.
How much money I got.
Yeah nineteen dollars that's how much I'm selling it for how much I paid my supplier.
Right.
$3 50 that would be the cost the price of the shipping.
Just for example.
And then some sort of difference.
OK.
And this difference here is curative.
So you know the same day I got another sale of 19.
Right.
And my cumulative amount now is 31.
All right.
Fifteen point five plus the 19 I got minus 3.5 that I gave to the supplier.
Now I've got thirty one dollars.
Yeah those are my actual sales now and then hopefully now becoming obvious the next day I got another
sale and then I put this last one in here just to demonstrate you know that now I receive perhaps 25
because it's no longer on sale.
So I got a different price for it this time.
Right.
So straight away I can see from this very very basic exercise that at the moment I have got excuse me
I have got sixty eight dollars received as a result of this.
And I spent $12 and 32 on advertising so you know I'm doing well.
This is great.
And you can imagine Yeah I can just basically list all my other products that I have on my site that
I'm using and I can list them down here and I can very easily see how well they're doing how much I'm
spending on advertising how much I'm actually getting them from the suppliers when I get an order I
just grab that SKU from Ali and I put it into the site and I go straight there straight to my supplier.
So it's a very very nice little exercise.
Nice little control panel.
So on a second tab down here I've got expenses and this is even simpler.
But again you'd be amazed the number of people who don't do this.
So you know again just as an example on the first of May I spent three dollars and 14 cents on Facebook
advertising.
Yeah.
Two days later I had an expense for web hosting for $4 50 and so on and so on.
Basically every time record my expenses now do this every day.
OK assuming there's something going on every day but do it every day.
OK.
Don't do it.
You know once a month or so I just do that on Friday or of course I'll do it tomorrow because you won't
do it.
I know it's boring.
Right.
And that's the reason why people don't do it because it's boring we've done all the fun stuff of designing
the site.
We've done all the fun stuff of you know driving targeted traffic.
We've had great fun making sales of feeling great.
What we need to do now is to actually record this stuff.
OK.
So just use a very simple spreadsheet like this.
You know this is just to give you a start.
This is not a definitive you know this is the solution you must do this is just to give you a start
start to give you an idea you know take your own spin on it.
But definitely do it.
Please please please don't ignore it.
You will not regret it in the long run.