SOB Story and a big THANK YOU to Reddit! entrepreneur how earn by blogging blog

I have been in business since always. Retail stores in Canada for about 6 years and noticed a steady 5%ish decline in sales every year. The money was great, I had many months of vacation but I was getting smaller every year and had little growth and long term success prospects.

About 3 years ago I tried making a website to try and move away from retail and after maybe 5k and a whole lot of time spent I made about $100 back and decided to cut the cord.

After that I decided to jump head first into "internet money". When I say that I mean I wanted to do something online but had no idea which direction to go and really knew nothing at all.

I closed ended up closing down all 6 retail locations and just keeping my one "bread winner". I liquidated about 1.5 40ftHC containers during the Christmas season and between my profit and recouping the $ from that 1.5 containers of illiquid goods that I would normally have been left over at the end if the year I was feeling good to jump into a completely new business with no idea when money would come in.

I knew that profit and income will be potentially years away so I lived like a peasant.

My office was my basement or if I needed to make calls I would use my car as a mobile office since I had no cell reception in the house. Police were called on me many, many times for suspicious activity because I would be in the car doing my work in abandoned parking lots.

I started 2016 by spending 2 or 3 months learning to design websites and on my other Reddit account I would constantly get criticism from internet people. 90% was bad because I just lacked skill and am still working everyday to improve as well as internet people being internet people lol

After I was finished with the learning process I decided to make a business creating websites and monetizing them with AdSense and affiliate links in articles.

Problem was, my writing is not captivating whatsoever so in the following three months I "made" about $6 (Canadian dollars at that too lol)

In reality though at this point I was probably -$1000ish. After buying about 30 domains, hosting, paying for help with problems I couldn't solve and all the other stuff that goes along with this type of thing.

So at this point I decided that one way or the other I need to generate income period. If this continues the way it was going or even worse, if the cash flow burn started to increase I would be spending 50k-80k annually including living expenses, mortgage on a condo, rent in the current city I am in etc.

I ended up babysitting dogs since I have a dog and am at home all the time which surprisingly was quite profitable for the little work required. I even started thinking about getting back into brick and mortar storefronts and doing dog boarding.

I was charging $25-$35 per day per dog depending on size, duration of stay etc. It seemed scalable but in the end I did set out to make "internet money" so decided not to digress from that path.

I had a few old things lying around the house like smart watches, some ties, sunglasses, other leftover stuff from previous business ventures etc. So I decided to try selling a few of them on eBay.

That is where I caught my first "big break" lol. I sold in the period of 1 week a $200 smart watch on eBay and a bulk lot of 50 straight razors.

Now I have made more money in one week than I did in my first 6 months of internet money! Even though the money was very small it felt like a huge accomplishment.

I knew the ins and outs of importing, manufacturing, international trade and so on from my previous retail business so I decided to go with what I knew and give the e-commerce business a shot.

I started making sites selling physical products and each site was dedicated to one specific category or product.

I started advertising them on Kijiji mostly, adding content to get Google ranking and now that I knew timelines for decent rankings were 3-6 months I at least had a basic estimate of when the site will start to mature.

The sites that were gaining traction were kept and the ones with low sales or ones that seemed to have hit a plateau or just won't make it I sold for cheap on Flippa to recoup costs and some time spent.

About a year after doing this full time, making websites, developing products, learning more and almost daily 12 hour days I am finally making a livable income and it's growing.

I am still nowhere close to where I need to be to support myself and my girlfriend and my foundation is still rocky but the trajectory looks great and at least things are happening.

I operate on about 30-50 percent profit margins generally depending on the category and average about 8k gross now with my highest month being ~13k

My first product I have developed that did well in initial market test is patent pending in Canada and production will start (in Canada!) In about 2 months, my second product is stage two market test and if all goes well I will be applying for patent on that one soon also and getting started on production hopefully before the coming Christmas season.

In Canada if you are a business with less than 50 employees it is about $200 for a patent application and $400 for the exploratory work. Those are the main fees in the beginning but you get few more near the end.

I just googled many other patents similar and unrelated and used them as a template to create my own, did the drawings myself and there you go. A lawyer costs about $3000-$15,000 for the application and that was just out of the question.

Though I am not a pro of any sort I do have these little tidbits of advice to offer :

• Don't spend big. Start small, test, go a little bigger, test and so on. If something doesn't work out you don't want to be stuck with excess stock and if an opportunity comes up you don't want to be over leveraged.

• Go with what you know. If I started with ecomm I probably would have saved a couple months but I did learn A LOT in the advertising/affiliate marketing stage including how to grow your own ecomm business and how to get people who do affiliate marketing onboard with my current businesses.

• Accounting! From the first dollar you make or spend just just it down in s note book. Make a ledger, keep your receipts organized and print off online invoices. Accounting should be relatively simple your first year and if you have a loss it can be carried over for 4 years here so don't skip this important step!

• Working from home can make you lazy. Coffee, some good motivating music and getting help from pros on Reddit make a world of difference and get you a bit of socializing whole your at it. I have ADD medication (Vyvanse) which makes such a difference you don't even know! At about $5 per pill it's worth every cent I'd you have ADD make sure to take your meds! Haha

• Learn all you can. Even if it doesn't apply to your business just get a basic grasp of how that thing works. It will be another tool in your tool box for the future.

• Save at least 6 months of living expenses plus 6 months of business expenses before you start. When you do start, live like a hobo. You don't know when or if the money will start pouring in.

• When something starts working, dont splurge. It could all be gone tomorrow.

• Have an exit plan to avoid bankruptcy​ and stuff if things don't work out.

• Clear your debt and make sure nothing like that is looming over you.

• I can't emphasis this enough but make a separate Reddit account just for business stuff. Ask you questions, help others who are going through the same thing and keep it professional. I have found accountants, freight forwarder, contractors, an office rental and more on Reddit. If they saw this account with Cannabis stuff and political arguments I would be very embarrassed.

• Don't spam Reddit with advertising. I have seen people do it and they are gone in a minute and people can tell right away. Unless you provide value, do an AMA or something like that it's just bad etiquette for a platform which has so much to offer.

• Don't buy website traffic, clicks, visitors etc. Google knows all and WILL penalize you for it. It will take 3-6 months of hard daily work to really get something going.

• White boards, white boards, white boards! I went to home Depot when I started and got two 8ftx8ft white boards and converted my walls to panoramic white boards. Just bring a dry erase markers with you and test out a few materials until you find one which works. It will help organize your day into 1-2 hour blocks, visualize ideas, brainstorm and so much more. Costed maybe $30 for everything including screws.

-Get a good inkjet printer and a laser printer letter on. I just googled best printers to print fake $$ with and an article from 2006ish helped me find a $50 used printer and I ebayed a continuous ink system for it.

• Learn to do everything yourself. Once you learn it you can outsource with confidence knowing all the details, costs and work involved to avoid getting f*cked or hiring a low level low quality person.

• Once again, Reddit. 10 years ago you would need to go all over to find help. On Reddit there is a community of people willing to criticize you ruthlessly and offer up help in pretty much any area you can imagine.

• Check out your local incubators and accelerators. I was offered a spot at a huge government sponsored one where you get free office space, professional help in terms of sales, design, coding etc for $0 and no equity stake in your company. As long as your company is exhibiting growth and i is profitable or is on track to reach profitability they help you with everything. Beware of the scammy ones. They take your money, equity and do very little for you. I ultimately didn't take the offer but I do keep in touch and am saving them for when I REALLY need help with something bigger in the future.

• Audible. I never liked reading and would fall asleep whenever I did so I subscribed To audible. $14ish a month and that includes a free audiobook which more often than not costs $25-$35 normally and someone will read it to you! If your interested check out "Thank You For Being Late" by Thomas Friedman.

And in the end I just want to say :

ThankYouReddit!!!

You guys don't know how much you guys ALL help! Whether your the troll who comes on here to f*ck with people or the good samaritan who mediates arguments or a professional offering legal, account or businesses advice it makes a world of difference.

Thank you Reddit again and again! Hope something here helps someone.

P.S I really think that the government here should instead of offering only welfare, could offer some sort of subsidy to people starting a new business like this. I was lucky enough to have cash reserves to deal with a long period of 0 income but I know many people that a $900 a month or something subsidy would really make a world of difference to and could potentially create jobs, increase the persons income + tax $ and add overall value to society. Unlike welfare where people just hang on as long as they can to keep getting free money in most cases.

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