How much MTGPrecons.co.uk made this month
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I've had a lot of interest in MTGPrecons.co.uk as a business and the profitability of it. I love reading content about businesses and am trying to be the change I want to see in the world by fully lifting the hood on my own business!
Note: this is the best month I've ever had. A lot of things lined up well for this month to be so great, I'd expect previous months to be about £500 bottom line profit.
The headline
| Line | £ |
|---|---|
| Customers paid | 8,093.45 |
| Platform / payment fees | −589.83 |
| Reached my accounts | 7,503.62 |
| Output VAT (1/6 of gross) | −1,348.91 |
| Cost of stock sold | −4,649.04 |
| Overheads | −543.07 |
| Net profit | 962.60 |
80 orders · 87 units · £101.17 average order value.
Net margin 12.3% of gross sales, or 14.7% of ex-VAT revenue.
Where the money came from, and what each channel charged
| Channel | Orders | Gross £ | Fees £ | Fee % | Net cash £ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Own web store | 37 | 4,259.65 | 94.44 | 2.2% | 4,165.21 |
| eBay | 27 | 2,456.73 | 331.16 | 13.5% | 2,125.57 |
| Amazon | 10 | 823.90 | 126.06 | 15.3% | 697.84 |
| TikTok Shop | 3 | 314.00 | 28.26 | 9.0% | 285.74 |
| Cardmarket | 1 | 154.17 | 7.71 | 5.0% | 146.46 |
| Shop app | 2 | 85.00 | 2.20 | 2.6% | 82.80 |
| Total | 80 | 8,093.45 | 589.83 | 7.3% | 7,503.62 |
Rates applied: eBay 12.8% final value fee + 30p + 0.35% regulatory operating fee · Amazon 15.3% referral including digital services tax · TikTok 9% · Cardmarket 5% · Shopify Payments 2% + 25p.
These marketplace rates always feel a bit brutal. Note that I increase the prices of listings on Marketplaces due to this.
Amazon has gone from 32 orders to 10. I've had some health issues and had to change the ship time from 1 day to 2 which probably explains it.
Cost of goods
£4,649.04 across 87 units, or 57.4% of gross sales.
This is landed unit cost including £3.80/item of outbound postage, which I bake into the cost field rather than tracking as a separate expense line.
Ex-VAT revenue was £6,744.54, so gross profit before overheads was £1,505.67 - a 22.3% gross margin.
VAT and pricing
£1,348.91 of the £7,503.62 sitting in my accounts is not mine. At 20% on VAT-inclusive pricing, one sixth of every sale belongs to HMRC.
Once I started paying VAT I set a minimal target % profit to 31% more than each unit's landed cost.
I use dynamic pricing for my products because the market price of products change frequently. For instance, I have a rule to hike the price of the last item I have in stock by around 20%. I have another rule to reduce prices of stock that isn't selling by around 2-5% every week (depending on how fast it usually sells).
I initially accomplished this with internal scripts and tooling but have now published Dynamic Pricer on the app store. Very few people are using it, I thought it would be a bigger hit and perhaps even revenue generating. No such luck so far!
Overheads - £513 this month, £368 run-rate
| Item | £ | |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify software (August cycle bill) | 235.54 | includes a £228 annual plan renewal for Shopify. |
| Accountant | 195.54 | Monthly fee. Honestly I feel like this is too much for the level of support I receive. |
| AI tooling | 75.00 | I use Claude |
| Amazon Selling Fee | 30 | Amazon charges £30 a month to sell on their platform. |
| Microsoft | 6.99 | monthly cloud costs (for the Shopify app) |
| Total | 543.07 |
The Shopify line breaks down as: Basic plan £228/year (£19/month amortised), plus three paid apps - a reviews app at $15/30 days, a marketplace-sync app and an upsell app both billed on usage.
I automate a bunch of my business through using AI tooling and the value I get is huge. The Shopify connector on Claud is very impressive.
Some things I've made with Claude:
- My Dynamic Pricer Shopify app which changes the prices of my products, preventing me from running out of stock overnight if something starts to trend.
- A tool I use to quickly edit Rip and Ship videos, adding card prices and sound effects automatically. (I've now published this to RipAndClip.com)
- Scripts to look for good deals on the secondary market
- A script to monitor YouTube videos, Reddit, and Twitter for mentions of reprints (work in progress)
- A tool that tracks the price movements of products based on offers on CardMarket and TCGPlayer
More stats about the business
Headline
- 80 orders, 87 units, £8,093.45 gross
- £101.07 average order · 1.09 items per order
- Six live channels; the Shop app appeared for the first time this month
- Web: 46% of orders, 53% of revenue, 2.2% fee
- eBay 13.5% fee, Amazon 15.3% — blended 7.3%
- Gross margin 22.3%, net margin 12.3%
- Stock cost eats 57.4% of every pound taken
Products
- Best seller by units: Ahoy Mateys, then EOE PBB
- Biggest single order: £341.99 (LCI deck set, eBay, 1 Aug)
Stock
- £15,532.86 at cost — 291 units, 48 lines
- ~£27,100 retail value, ~£7,000 of gross profit sitting on shelves
- 3.3 months of cover, rising to 4.7 once the 22 Aug purchase lands
- Booster boxes: 23% of units, 46% of the value
- £5,218 across 9 lines sold nothing at all — 34% of stock value
Customers
- 78 customers: 70 new, 9 returning — 11.5% return rate
Looking forward
Here are a few things I'm thinking about to improve this store:
- Buying a UV printer and providing customised products for clients. I just think it would be neat. Plus, might be cool to use it on livestreams.
- Continue upping the amounts of stock I purchase in each instance, I've drastically improved here. Likely from around £500 at a time to £3000. With all of the admin time it takes, smaller quantities just aren't worth it anymore.
- I'm looking to rebrand and change this store from MTGPrecons to something more generic. I think StarWars, RiftBound and Lorcana are pretty cool and I'd like to expand further into them.
- I've flirted with the idea of going into singles but it seems like such a headache for a relatively small reward. Part of me wants to buy a single cheap, useful, upgrade to each of the decks I sell and include it as a bonus.
- There's a tiny voice in my head saying it would be cool to have a physical premise. I've been learning about this and it seems a bit brutal. I do wonder if, with my current infrastructure and sales velocity, perhaps tacking on a physical location to my store could work.
Notes
There are additional expenditures that I have to pay which I'm likely overlooking, such as domain fees, banking fees, label fees, utilities, packaging. This likely all comes to a max of £50 a month.
Also note that, due to health reasons, I'm not fulfilling orders myself at the moment. I'm giving a friend half of the profit to do this instead. Likely about 8-12 hours of work a month.
Allocations are ever brutal for an online stores and margins are thin anyway, I buy 90% of my stock on the secondary market.
I have not yet taken any money out of the business. If I did I would be taxed at 40% anyway.
PS
I'm planning on creating a UK WhatsApp community for other TCG shops - reach out to me if you're interested in joining!
PPS: I'm thinking about making YouTube videos about my journey, give me a follow here
Happy to answer questions on any line. If you sell on marketplaces, the channel fee comparison is the part I'd push hardest — it took me far too long to notice that my cheapest channel was also quietly becoming my biggest.