Chriscross way to here

[Chriscross]

Hey all,

today is the day I worked for four years now.

From 14 to 18 I worked in a meat company, cleaning 8 hours a week for 6,31 per hour forms where different kinds of products have been produced. After my school I went one year abroad, working for a project that was helping social and economical disadvanted people with help of sport in south America. One Idea was to figure out what I want to do with my live and what I would like to do later on. Indeed, the result was that I had the same problems to find this out after the year. So I started an industrial clerk training in the meat company I worked before to be on the sure side.

After 2,5 years I the training was completed and as I had no real working experience and not my marks where not that good I started to work in a small wholesale company to gain some experience. In the end I got in contact to an Amazon Seller exporting the products to the US. I had to fill out tons of excel sheets with product descriptions and details. What I noted was, that his sales were incredible high and increasing, he nearly doubled his orders in each month. (Looking back I know that I was optimizing his amazon listings)

And that´s where I noted that there must be more in the world than working for someone else. He had a VA in Philippines, giving him sales predictions, a book-keeping employee for the invoices and so on and his son working as “customer Care rep. He “just” had to find and order products.

So I decided to figure out more about Amazon – consequence was that is very capital intensive and that I was not sure how to manage it. I had a really bad income. As I was bored in the afternoons I also started university on Tuesday from 18:00 to 21 hrs and Saturdays from 08-13 o clock + working 40hrs a week. Maybe a mistake, maybe not.

But I started to look for possibilities to get some cash in and I found out that SEO and OM could be great options. After 6 month learning, reading and thinking, TMF finally helped me to execute. NOT in the sense that is suggested, but at least I executed. Result is that I am the owner of a sports website in a sport niche, with 30 EUR income and 300 visits per day. I have no clue how to monetarize this. And a few more niche websites.

However, I quit the job at the wholesaler and started to work for an international service provider specialized on Pharma companies. I do not know why and how but I was able to develop from an Call Center agent to Supervisor to Process Manager in three years. I can work where I want to – home office is no problem and I like my current boss.

Besides this I have a customer that i am consulting regarding his onlineshop. Project value is 5.000 Eur.

So guys, I read as well Unscripted last year and now I am able to execute like both books suggest. I finished my Economics bachelor degree, have a decent net income and a lot of spare time.

My Skills are

• SEO and online Marketing
• Niche research
• Amazon knowledge (theoretical)
• Amazon Kindle publisher
• Spanish, English and German

I can imagine 4 things:

• Dropshipping online Shop
• Online shop
• Copywriting
  
• I have found a problem in the pharma company I am working for, affecting other companies for sure. But therefore I would need to work together with someone able to create an SAAS-Application for me.

I have problems to decide. Moreover it seems that I am not “The” executer, but as my biggest excuse in the past 4 years has been resolved yesterday, I am willing to act. I finished University. A thing I was working for four years now.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Welcome aboard. We all start somewhere! Thank you for sharing.

 

[100speed]

Thanks for your intro! And welcome to the forum

 

[Kid]

Hey all,

today is the day I worked for four years now.

From 14 to 18 I worked in a meat company, cleaning 8 hours a week for 6,31 per hour forms where different kinds of products have been produced. After my school I went one year abroad, working for a project that was helping social and economical disadvanted people with help of sport in south America. One Idea was to figure out what I want to do with my live and what I would like to do later on. Indeed, the result was that I had the same problems to find this out after the year. So I started an industrial clerk training in the meat company I worked before to be on the sure side.

After 2,5 years I the training was completed and as I had no real working experience and not my marks where not that good I started to work in a small wholesale company to gain some experience. In the end I got in contact to an Amazon Seller exporting the products to the US. I had to fill out tons of excel sheets with product descriptions and details. What I noted was, that his sales were incredible high and increasing, he nearly doubled his orders in each month. (Looking back I know that I was optimizing his amazon listings)

And that´s where I noted that there must be more in the world than working for someone else. He had a VA in Philippines, giving him sales predictions, a book-keeping employee for the invoices and so on and his son working as “customer Care rep. He “just” had to find and order products.

So I decided to figure out more about Amazon – consequence was that is very capital intensive and that I was not sure how to manage it. I had a really bad income. As I was bored in the afternoons I also started university on Tuesday from 18:00 to 21 hrs and Saturdays from 08-13 o clock + working 40hrs a week. Maybe a mistake, maybe not.

But I started to look for possibilities to get some cash in and I found out that SEO and OM could be great options. After 6 month learning, reading and thinking, TMF finally helped me to execute. NOT in the sense that is suggested, but at least I executed. Result is that I am the owner of a sports website in a sport niche, with 30 EUR income and 300 visits per day. I have no clue how to monetarize this. And a few more niche websites.

However, I quit the job at the wholesaler and started to work for an international service provider specialized on Pharma companies. I do not know why and how but I was able to develop from an Call Center agent to Supervisor to Process Manager in three years. I can work where I want to – home office is no problem and I like my current boss.

Besides this I have a customer that i am consulting regarding his onlineshop. Project value is 5.000 Eur.

So guys, I read as well Unscripted last year and now I am able to execute like both books suggest. I finished my Economics bachelor degree, have a decent net income and a lot of spare time.

My Skills are

• SEO and online Marketing
• Niche research
• Amazon knowledge (theoretical)
• Amazon Kindle publisher
• Spanish, English and German

I can imagine 4 things:

• Dropshipping online Shop
• Online shop
• Copywriting
  
• I have found a problem in the pharma company I am working for, affecting other companies for sure. But therefore I would need to work together with someone able to create an SAAS-Application for me.

I have problems to decide. Moreover it seems that I am not “The” executer, but as my biggest excuse in the past 4 years has been resolved yesterday, I am willing to act. I finished University. A thing I was working for four years now.

Welcome to forum!

 

[Chriscross]

So todays 1st of July - a small recap of the last six weeks.

First I started to search for niches that could be interesting looking at numbers like traffic, competition and e commerce know how (is the shop looking like 1990 or 2018, is it SEO-optimized or not).
If I compare my results with this thread I can confirm that most topics are from the mentioned niches. I am currently investigating the entry barriers.

Second I started a Green Belt Training at work. That will help me personally, career related and business related. And I hope to save the company I am working for up to 40K per year, but further math and calculation is needed.

Third, I visited a fair for Sports - it was ok. I collected a few Business cards and had a good conversation with a manufacturer who may help me to find a dropshipper (one of his customers with a Brick and Mortar store that is running well, but has no online shop yet, due to lack of knowledge and age). I will contact the possible partners until Wednesday and let´s see what works. But why dropshipping if I could do this by myself? Well, the reason is that you need a certain volume - without volume no good price.

The next days I am on a further workshop for learning to lead workshops, question techniques and as well process optimization. This is paid by my company either.

At work everything is ok - no important updates.

Best regards
Chris

 

[Chriscross]

Cheers,
so more than a year passed and I can share the following updates.

Career related:
Green Belt for Work has been finished 03/2019 with a total saving of 130 k per year for my companty. Since 01/2019 I am in charge of a team of 6 persons. That all lead to a small increasment of my salary of 7 % more loan. I am currently preparing the next loan discussion. Current projects are NEARLY finished I am daily in touch with the upper management. Visibility in a company is helpfullfor the next steps.

I am thinking about studying my MBA in Germany on a private university that costs in total 30k for 2 years. The MBA deals with Pharma topics and the univercity is also sponsored by pharma companys. It´s might be the ticket to a 6 figure salary and to get in contact with these people.

Personal development
Nevertheless I ve noted gaps in my personality in regard to networking. A topic I have to start working on, in special if I will really attend to the univercity. The only thing that changed since July 2018 is that I am doing sports now and that I can run 1 hr 3 times per week. At the beginning i was just able to run for 20 minutes. Nice babysteps to the current shape.

Private goals

• Dropshipping online Shop
• Online shop
• Copywriting
• I have found a problem in the pharma company I am working for, affecting other companies for sure. But therefore I would need to work together with someone able to create an SAAS-Application for me.

So nothing of these points have been tackled.

The reason is that I connected with 2 guys on the Green Belt Training who had the same ideas and wishes that I had. The opener between us was that we were hearing the same podcasts and shared the same interests.

We pitched to each other once a week business ideas and we decided in January 2019 to focus on a project in an unsexy branch: Recycling.
I assume that you are aware of increasing amount of trash that is produced, in special electronic trash. Moreover Germany is very regulated and this causes a lot of pain points to all involved parties.

So we had on one hand the e-trash supplier and on the other hand the e-trash Recycler.
The Pain points for the e-trash supplier are

1. Very manual and paperbased process between the parties
2. Audits check the documentation, issues can lead to penalties
3. E-Trashsupplier have to pay for the pick up of e trash or have to give it away for free
4. The market and prices not transparent

These Pain Points have been identifyed for e-trash Recycler:

1. The more volume of e-trash, the more is it worth. So 1kg of copper is less worth per KG as 100 kg of copper.
2. Hard to find customer in the market
3. Transport costs are often too high and it is always an investment to pick up e-trash

So we managed to get a customer via cold calling, we presented ourselves and managed twice to bring supplier and recycler together, that did not know each other but were pretty close.

But, the margin was too low for all three parties. We calculated a lot and thought about services around the business, for example digitalization of the paperwork communication, etc.

This took 7 month in total. We had the feeling that we were too slow, we had to make more calls and contacts within the recycling business or potential customers.

 

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[Chriscross]

Then we heard a podcast and it resulted that there was a start up doing exactly the same like us, telling the same learnings we had within the the past half year. We made a lot of things good, but were too slow, but I have still to highlight that they made the following things better:

• They adapted the processes to the customer and did not try to educate them
  • We tried to take over the communication between the party, the other start up gave them a plattform to communicate like before via whatsapp or so
• They were faster and had more customer contacts
• They focussed and convinced not small to mid size recycle companies, but the ones in the end of the recycle chain to use their plattform

However, we just work on the next idea that has been discovered in the context, I keep you posted.

Kind regards
Chris

 

[Monkeycom]

Hey all,

today is the day I worked for four years now.

From 14 to 18 I worked in a meat company, cleaning 8 hours a week for 6,31 per hour forms where different kinds of products have been produced. After my school I went one year abroad, working for a project that was helping social and economical disadvanted people with help of sport in south America. One Idea was to figure out what I want to do with my live and what I would like to do later on. Indeed, the result was that I had the same problems to find this out after the year. So I started an industrial clerk training in the meat company I worked before to be on the sure side.

After 2,5 years I the training was completed and as I had no real working experience and not my marks where not that good I started to work in a small wholesale company to gain some experience. In the end I got in contact to an Amazon Seller exporting the products to the US. I had to fill out tons of excel sheets with product descriptions and details. What I noted was, that his sales were incredible high and increasing, he nearly doubled his orders in each month. (Looking back I know that I was optimizing his amazon listings)

And that´s where I noted that there must be more in the world than working for someone else. He had a VA in Philippines, giving him sales predictions, a book-keeping employee for the invoices and so on and his son working as “customer Care rep. He “just” had to find and order products.

So I decided to figure out more about Amazon – consequence was that is very capital intensive and that I was not sure how to manage it. I had a really bad income. As I was bored in the afternoons I also started university on Tuesday from 18:00 to 21 hrs and Saturdays from 08-13 o clock + working 40hrs a week. Maybe a mistake, maybe not.

But I started to look for possibilities to get some cash in and I found out that SEO and OM could be great options. After 6 month learning, reading and thinking, TMF finally helped me to execute. NOT in the sense that is suggested, but at least I executed. Result is that I am the owner of a sports website in a sport niche, with 30 EUR income and 300 visits per day. I have no clue how to monetarize this. And a few more niche websites.

However, I quit the job at the wholesaler and started to work for an international service provider specialized on Pharma companies. I do not know why and how but I was able to develop from an Call Center agent to Supervisor to Process Manager in three years. I can work where I want to – home office is no problem and I like my current boss.

Besides this I have a customer that i am consulting regarding his onlineshop. Project value is 5.000 Eur.

So guys, I read as well Unscripted last year and now I am able to execute like both books suggest. I finished my Economics bachelor degree, have a decent net income and a lot of spare time.

My Skills are

• SEO and online Marketing
• Niche research
• Amazon knowledge (theoretical)
• Amazon Kindle publisher
• Spanish, English and German

I can imagine 4 things:

• Dropshipping online Shop
• Online shop
• Copywriting
• I have found a problem in the pharma company I am working for, affecting other companies for sure. But therefore I would need to work together with someone able to create an SAAS-Application for me.

I have problems to decide. Moreover it seems that I am not “The” executer, but as my biggest excuse in the past 4 years has been resolved yesterday, I am willing to act. I finished University. A thing I was working for four years now.

I'd recommend to go for an online shop. E-commerce is booming, and you're at the perfect time to take some positions.

I made my fortune in e-commerce, so I can't recommend it enough.
Feel free to read my threads, where I describe exactly how an e-commerce need to be launched to make real money, and not depend on Amazon, nor Google.

Feel free to pm me if you have private questions.

Best of luck, you're on the right path !

 

[Chriscross]

Hi all,
so a lot happened in the last years.

First, the guys and I connected and found an attractive niche which was

I'd recommend to go for an online shop. E-commerce is booming, and you're at the perfect time to take some positions.

I made my fortune in e-commerce, so I can't recommend it enough.
Feel free to read my threads, where I describe exactly how an e-commerce need to be launched to make real money, and not depend on Amazon, nor Google.

Feel free to pm me if you have private questions.

Best of luck, you're on the right path !

So in the end that´s where we are today

We discovered that the online gaming market is growing heavily and were able to adapt a products from the healthcare niche to it. Long story short: The idea has been to create a MVP, we exceled a lot, found suppliers,produced a charge of 500 units of our products, got certificates and more important insurances, found someone who designed our packaging , stored everything on pallets and set up a online shop with Shopify. This few sentences took like 6 month in coordination and alignment. Result has been that wewanted to launch everything in the first week of May.

The first week passed without any sales and spending ~100 EUR of Ads (I am doing this and I thought I would be able to handle it but pfff, no way. It is said a lot that the pixel needs some time, so I accepted it until a certain point). So we sit down again and we reworked the ad-creatives, the slogans and so on.

I am sure you expect now a turning point where everything turns well, but sorry no

Indeed we were able to generate like 7 sales with the rework, but still we were ages away to be profitable - we invested like 20 Euro per customer - the total product worth is 30 EUR with 10 EUR margin.

Then we made a move that generated a lot of sales, that I would like to share with you guys:
We set up a affiliate website, where you could apply as Influencer to become our partner and to sale our products. You get on the one hand a discount code with 20% for your own use (+ - self costs of the products) and on the other hand a discount code according to their social media reach for their fans. Next, we set up an AD where we just stated, hey are you an influencer and interested in gaming? Apply now ...

With this, we sold more than 30 units in two weeks and had even more applications where people just linked to our website and so on. I think this is a good thing if you start and you have a product where you get people buying your products (better with a small margin) and making advertising for free for you (less ad spends). Or in other words: You get applications to get your product sold and people even pay for it.

However, we decided that we have to add more value to our website and give people more reasons to buy on our website. We created therefore more pictures how to use the product, why we used certain ingredients and so on.

Well, in this time frame also the IOS Update for Facebook started and I am at a point again where we invested like 200 EUR in a week without generating sales nor finding people that add added the products to the chart.
I tried a lot: Changed Product price, set up again discount codes and made ads for it, but everything leads to 0 sales. I am not sure if I am selecting wrong interest groups or if our creatives and slogans are too poor. On the other side, most of them converted already. Do you have any ideas how I could get profitable with ads on instagram?

Best regards
Christian

 

[Chriscross]

So, 2 years later a few updates:

1) we have been able to use a small hack to reduce our loss on the last journey. Therefore we acquired a lot of micro influencer on Twitch who bought our products with a decent discount to promote these with a customer discount code. In the end an experience that has been worth it.

I have never been able to figure out how to tweak the interest groups for instagram ads. Nowadays I think it was next to my lack of knowledge a bad moment due to the IOS 14 Update, too. However, we ran out of money and a founder ran out of motivation: the other guy had to build a house. We finished the project with a 4 digit loss each.

2) I changed my full time job and have been able to increase my income by 20.000 euro, doing the same work with less stress. Recommended.

3) during this time frame I studied for my master degree. Worth it? Maybe if I continue working full time for companies. I guess the university degrees are also kind of inflationary and so better to be higher qualified on the paper.

4) Bought a department.

5) I became dad. Recommended

6) founded another company with one of the previous mates. Basically an arbitration model where we are able to process digitalization projects in areas of RPA, EDI (Interfaces), App creation, MVP and Software developing. The customers are got by Instagram ads and todays simple answers to the right targeting - is open targeting and create ads in a way that meta is able to show the ads to the right persons. I think we can still improve the quantity of leads by implenting testimonials, but these are hard to get.

7) we have programmed a script that is able to generate a high amount of high quality articles around a topic, including pictures and videos. Here we are currently unsure how to proceed.

- affiliate marketing to grow
- promote our service to other companies that might be interested with ads and cold calls

Well, we are still far away from the fast lane but improving I guess. Let me know your thoughts and questions.

 

[Chriscross]

fast forward 1.5 years:

Attempt number six did not succeed. Unfortunately, we burned through a significant amount of money and ended up without any leads. Two years later, I spoke with someone who works with a friend in a similar niche, and they highlighted the importance of having a network. They mentioned that their success—albeit moderate—was largely due to completing jobs for acquaintances of a company owner they knew. While networking undoubtedly plays a role, the current demand in the RPA and AI sectors is so high that I can’t see it as a legitimate excuse. In hindsight, I believe we didn’t put enough effort into strategies like cold calling or similar approaches instead of instagram marketing.

Attempt number seven did not succeed. For the first time, we had a digital product that could immediately solve a problem, with just a bit competition in the market. However, it turned out that the number of people actually generating hundreds of articles directly into WordPress—rather than copying and pasting them—was very limited and we have not been able to figure these out with instagram marketing.

No	Business idea	Execution	Marketing	Outcome
1	e Trash Recycling plattform / service provider	Good, we gained our first customers on the demand side. However, nobody was willing to pay for "e-trash," as the market was still accustomed to getting it for free at the time.	Cold Calling + Network	2 Transactions without financial success, no relevant investment gone
2	Physical product	Good we fully committed by producing products and driving sales through Shopify. However, we couldn't reach break-even with online marketing efforts, so we ultimately decided to discontinue it. highlight has been definatly to sponsor a e sport club in the year that nearly won the national PS4 Cup in e-sports that had been transmitted to the television and that our product has been seen. We had so much luck to had sponsored the team.	Online Marketing	50 Sales, low 5 digit loss (not for sponsoring, just products + Marketing) divided through the 3 founders
3	Consultation / program RPA	Poor - setting up a landing page and throwing traffic on it did not work out	Online Marketing	Poor - 4 digit loss
4	Digital product	Medium - we could not validate the market for europe	Online Marketing	No transactions and just a loss of time invested

So let´s talk about my new number 5: A transportation service designed specifically for two key audiences—elderly individuals and those with demanding schedules. The mission is to address challenges related to limited physical strength and time constraints, offering a solution that's both practical and reliable. The idea is scalable.

I’ve launched the website and started running the first ads (CBO; 3-2-2 campaign structure). To understand visitor behavior, I’ve been using Hotjar for tracking. The initial results are promising (?): this week, the ads achieved a 4% CTR on the creatives and a 2% link click rate. Visitors are exploring the site and even reaching the 'Register Now' page. However, I’ve noticed a gap in trust—all users hesitate to complete the registration process, which prevents me from gathering leads to follow up.

If anyone could offer advice on improving conversions or optimizing ads, I’d be incredibly grateful. I truly believe in this idea and am confident it has the potential to succeed.

SEO looks like that right now: Slowly growing. I publish local SEO optimiszed articles.


The target for the following days is to set up new creatives, continue to give away more business cards to the local and wait for the first leads.

Best regards
Chris

 

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[Kevin88660]

I interact with a lot of elderly in my business.

What’s your transportation service like? Do you mind sharing more details?

Try door to door face to face marketing.

To a lot of elderly everything online is a scam.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Appreciate the ongoing reports, years of them! This is how breakthroughs happen.

 

[TheWiseGuy]

Inspiring read.

Although you didn't hit your goal, YET-- the perseverance and endurance you've shown makes you stand out from the crowd.

Like MJ said, this is how breakthroughs happen! No F*cking 4 hour work weeks until you pass the endurance test!

 

[Chriscross]

I interact with a lot of elderly in my business.

What’s your transportation service like? Do you mind sharing more details?

Try door to door face to face marketing.

To a lot of elderly everything online is a scam.

Hi Kevin, the service is basically to bring the trash to curb and back. The trash cans are quite heavy once full.
Yes I think you are right, because a lot of visitors visit the imprint and the about us page during their first visit.

Bests
Chris

 

[Chriscross]

Hello,

Here’s a brief update on my progress:

Advertising & Lead Generation
I'm currently spending €12 per day on Meta ads, using broad targeting with a regional focus. I always believed that landing the first customer would be the hardest.

After two weeks, here’s where things stand:
- 2 leads: Too far away to start with but useful for training the pixel → added to the waiting list.
- 1 promising lead nearby**: No response after two follow-ups → will reach out again later this month.
- 1 attractive B2B lead (personal connection, but found me via ads):
- Met in person, pitched, and sent an offer.
- They declined due to concerns that my prices might increase significantly.
- I don’t understand why they think that since the service can be canceled monthly.
- I plan to follow up to better understand their concerns and refine my sales approach.
- 1 lead nearby**: Still negotiating.

SEO-Generated Leads
- Lead 1**: My first converted customer! **€200 profit**, but they only booked the service for *our weeks - very far away but I managed to have the service provided and learned so much with the first customer.
- Lead 2**: Following up → awaiting internal clarification.
- Lead 3**: A potential big customer! They want to meet on **May 6th**, but they live also far away, I need to assess whether the trip is worth it and confirm their potential beforehand.

Insights & Key Learnings
- Personal follow-ups have confirmed that Meta ads are reaching the right audience.
- Finding customers locally has been more difficult than expected, so I’m shifting focus to the region fivve hours away, where all my leads are coming from.
- Pricing struggles:
- No customer has outright said my price is too high, but I tend to overcomplicate my offer.
- I believe **a slightly higher price** could help with growth, but I need more customers first.
- What’s your take on this?

Observations on Ads & Sales Process
- During the first two weeks, I closely monitored ad performance and website visitors.
- Hotjar was invaluable in spotting website bugs.
- Once leads started coming in, I spent less time analyzing ads and more time on quoting, writing emails, and making the service feasible—a time-consuming but exciting shift!
- The real challenge lies in converting leads - looking the whole time how ads perform just distracts and is a symptom of having no sales yet.

Challenges & Next Steps
-Landing page conversion rate: Not as strong as I’d like.
- Ad spend vs. leads generated: Needs improvement.





Seo is ok.

 

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