Describe your first sale as an entrepreneur!

[Jrjohnny]

So, my “first sale” happened not too long ago.

We were trying to raise money for a school trip, to lower the cost.

My grandma and I had baked around 200 cookies, and 100 brownie squares.

I priced each cookie at 1.50 1.25 (yes it was a marketing trick)

And each brownie square at 2.50 1.99

We open up and I clearly, have the most stuff. But I’m placed at the back of the class.

First 30 minutes of the day: I had 0 sales.

In between every 30 minutes is a 5 minute break.

I thought to myself, and cracked the containers open to let the smell out, when the next class came in…

I sold: 5 cookies, and 2 brownies.

Okay, good start.

I then raise the prices to 1.50, and 2.50, but then said buy 2 for 2.50 dollars and 4.50 dollars.

I closed everything, counted my money and I had made $10.25.

New class came in, I cracked the lids open and started talking to people.

I had sold 15 cookies and 5 brownies.

Profit? Something around 30 ish bucks.

Now people are beginning to sell out, and we’re getting to the older kids.

New batch comes, I crack lids open and I legit have a line of 5 people.

I had to get extra hands to help with everything.

I made 40 bucks that class

It keeps repeating.

After another 2 ish classes, everyone’s sold out.

I decided, I gave my cookies and brownies to others, and they price it the same.

Everyone keeps selling, but I’m the one with the largest line.

The day ends, I still have around 10 cookies left and 0 brownies.

We count how much we all made, it came out to 750, of which I made around 250.

I learnt a lot that day, and that’s my story!

 

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[Andy Black]

So, my “first sale” happened not too long ago.

We were trying to raise money for a school trip, to lower the cost.

My grandma and I had baked around 200 cookies, and 100 brownie squares.

I priced each cookie at 1.50 1.25 (yes it was a marketing trick)

And each brownie square at 2.50 1.99

We open up and I clearly, have the most stuff. But I’m placed at the back of the class.

First 30 minutes of the day: I had 0 sales.

In between every 30 minutes is a 5 minute break.

I thought to myself, and cracked the containers open to let the smell out, when the next class came in…

I sold: 5 cookies, and 2 brownies.

Okay, good start.

I then raise the prices to 1.50, and 2.50, but then said buy 2 for 2.50 dollars and 4.50 dollars.

I closed everything, counted my money and I had made $10.25.

New class came in, I cracked the lids open and started talking to people.

I had sold 15 cookies and 5 brownies.

Profit? Something around 30 ish bucks.

Now people are beginning to sell out, and we’re getting to the older kids.

New batch comes, I crack lids open and I legit have a line of 5 people.

I had to get extra hands to help with everything.

I made 40 bucks that class

It keeps repeating.

After another 2 ish classes, everyone’s sold out.

I decided, I gave my cookies and brownies to others, and they price it the same.

Everyone keeps selling, but I’m the one with the largest line.

The day ends, I still have around 10 cookies left and 0 brownies.

We count how much we all made, it came out to 750, of which I made around 250.

I learnt a lot that day, and that’s my story!

Love this story. You got to iterate quickly through the act, assess, adjust cycle between classes.

Now then, why was this:

I decided, I gave my cookies and brownies to others, and they price it the same.

Everyone keeps selling, but I’m the one with the largest line.

 

[amp0193]

First side hustle was flipping phones and electronics.

I bought a Barnes & Noble "nook" on craigslist to flip.

The next day Barnes & Noble dropped the retail price $100.

Lost money.


Didn't lose money on the next ones. Made sure to buy things people actually wanted (like iphone 3gs and 4s)

 

[Jrjohnny]

Love this story. You got to iterate quickly through the act, assess, adjust cycle between classes.

Thank you Andy!

This had happened about 4 months back.

I was in the middle of reading tmf but something clicked in me.

Now then, why was this:

Well, it was a money raising event, I wouldn’t keep all the money.

And people were challenging me by saying the event would just close if I didn’t share my stock.

I had still counted the profits of what they sold of mine.

I guess you could say I was “franchising”

 

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[Andy Black]

Thank you Andy!

This had happened about 4 months back.

I was in the middle of reading tmf but something clicked in me.

Well, it was a money raising event, I wouldn’t keep all the money.

And people were challenging me by saying the event would just close if I didn’t share my stock.

I had still counted the profits of what they sold of mine.

I guess you could say I was “franchising”

It was smart. I was wondering why your queue was still the longest.

 

[Jrjohnny]

It was smart. I was wondering why your queue was still the longest.

All of them didn’t have my marketing tricks, and word of mouth. People would walk in, lock eyes with me and come, they all said they’re friends said they were great cookies.

But, credit to my grandma who helped me with this. Best and coolest grandma I could ever ask for

 

[f.laengle]

At this time I was in an exchange semester so I had a lot of time to try some side businesses. So I bought a course for dropshipping and tried my best there.

After a few weeks of building the shop and dedicating a lot of attention to the details I tried to make my first advertisement. Let's say it failed horribly. After this little inconvenience and about 150 USD spent on ads without any sales I knew my ad was just trash.

I took a few bucks and spent it on Fiverr so someone could make a better ad for my product I wanted to sell. After some days I finally got my ad. It was just what I paid for - nothing good but it was certainly better than what I've produced. With a bit of hesitation I uploaded it to the Facebook Business Manager and scheduled the ad for the following day.

The next morning I got up really early to visit a famous landmark which had a exhibition limited to only a few days. As I was standing in line for about three houers and freezing my butt off, I tried to warm up my hands as good as I could in my pockets. Finally after three long hours in the cold I was at the entrance. I thought to myself "what a waste of time". But after I took out my phone my mood changed immediately. "You got 3 sales" was written on the screen. I was so happy. I made money by just waiting in line and not working at all. Obviously I was thrilled!

This was my first impression of making money while doing different stuff than working. It felt quite nice and I stayed on this path. Now I'm starting other businesses but for a start these first dropshipping sales were all it took to hook me to entrepreneurship

 

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[Andy Black]

At this time I was in an exchange semester so I had a lot of time to try some side businesses. So I bought a course for dropshipping and tried my best there.

After a few weeks of building the shop and dedicating a lot of attention to the details I tried to make my first advertisement. Let's say it failed horribly. After this little inconvenience and about 150 USD spent on ads without any sales I knew my ad was just trash.

I took a few bucks and spent it on Fiverr so someone could make a better ad for my product I wanted to sell. After some days I finally got my ad. It was just what I paid for - nothing good but it was certainly better than what I've produced. With a bit of hesitation I uploaded it to the Facebook Business Manager and scheduled the ad for the following day.

The next morning I got up really early to visit a famous landmark which had a exhibition limited to only a few days. As I was standing in line for about three houers and freezing my butt off, I tried to warm up my hands as good as I could in my pockets. Finally after three long hours in the cold I was at the entrance. I thought to myself "what a waste of time". But after I took out my phone my mood changed immediately. "You got 3 sales" was written on the screen. I was so happy. I made money by just waiting in line and not working at all. Obviously I was thrilled!

This was my first impression of making money while doing different stuff than working. It felt quite nice and I stayed on this path. Now I'm starting other businesses but for a start these first dropshipping sales were all it took to hook me to entrepreneurship

Great story. Those little Paypal or Stripe notifications are something to marvel at.

@Vigilante has a thread somewhere about being addicted to passive income deposits.

 

[ZackerySprague]

Consultant call for an owner on Ecommerce. Though I'd probably be against it now as I feel like an imposter. I'd rather build something then do some of that, and not really charge.

 

[mikecarlooch]

11 years old.

Started my own minecraft server business.

12 o'clock midnight.

Placed ads on a minecraft forum to get people to join my server.

100 + people join, and all of a sudden someone buys a server rank for $500.

I got hyped, ran into my parents room, and they told me to refund the dude because they thought I was doing something bad. lol

From then on I knew I would never live according to conventional wisdom.

 

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[Marco L]

What’s the story of your first sale?

To be honest, this is not the story of my first sale, but of an early sale that I can remember I had a business selling laptops with Linux only. it was about 2008. I had already sold a few units, but then came this order with all possible upgrades. At the time, I was charging more than Apple for the upgrades (bigger SSD, more RAM, etc.). At the end I had a sale with a margin of a few thousand Euros. I assembled all the parts by myself and when I was packaging the laptop and labeling I was shivering.

• How did you feel in that moment?

It was a mixture of feeling ecstatic and frightened. I earned 2000 Euros in 1 hour of work. I thought this feels like being a rainmaker in an investment firm. On the other hand, it could have broken my company if the buyer had used his money-back guarantee.

• What changed from that moment onwards?

A lasting memory

• What has it lead to?

Not much, unfortunately. I wasn't able to scale the operation.

In hindsight:

• What one piece of advice would you give someone about making that first sale?

Create on online store and sell something. A first sell shouldn't need marketing. People should be searching for the solution you provide.

 

[Sterling729]

Sold a copy of my eBook for soccer players for 5 bucks. I was estatic as this was the first time someone paid me over the internet for a product that I made. However, it was based on my youtube channel and content which I spent 3 years on to only get a dozen or so sales. So, been looking at other ventures that scale well.

 

[ZackerySprague]

1. $50 dollars for a Logo Design for my real father.

2. $100 dollars for ecommerce advice? I regret this. I'm no expert.

3. $300 dollars from cold calling a Web Design firm locally in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas.

4. $1,500 dollars - Almost made from an Electrician in Scottsdale, AZ.

5. $3,000 - Almost made from helping a Electrician company hand code a timesheet program for his 40 union of Electrical workers in php.

 

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