From Drop-shipping Wantrepreneur to Fastlane

[Xolorr]

Just posting to let you know that I've been silently following your thread. Keep the posts coming.

Glad to hear, thank you so much Josh!

 

[Xolorr]

Nothing much to add, except that I love the idea @bytecode had about tracking his Pomodoros to become more productive!

I've implemented pomodoros into my work structure, and I love it!

From now on I'll do a lot less mindless ranting about life, and more tracking of work / execution.
I'm going to be logging how many pomodoros I do each day, as long as it's all good with @bytecode for completely stealing his idea!!

Pomodoros: 8
Pretty solid for my first day, but it was definitely the most productive day I've had in a very long time. Caught up on a lot of university projects I was behind on, as well as finished some photo and video projects that were on the backlog. Started organizing an outreach program for the e-commerce business. Found some decent influencers who should promote for free! I'm going to dm all of them tomorrow and see what happens

 

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[Nick M.]

Nothing much to add, except that I love the idea @bytecode had about tracking his Pomodoros to become more productive!

I've implemented pomodoros into my work structure, and I love it!

From now on I'll do a lot less mindless ranting about life, and more tracking of work / execution.
I'm going to be logging how many pomodoros I do each day, as long as it's all good with @bytecode for completely stealing his idea!!

Pomodoros: 8
Pretty solid for my first day, but it was definitely the most productive day I've had in a very long time. Caught up on a lot of university projects I was behind on, as well as finished some photo and video projects that were on the backlog. Started organizing an outreach program for the e-commerce business. Found some decent influencers who should promote for free! I'm going to dm all of them tomorrow and see what happens

Go for it!

I've just caught up on your thread and your story is quite inspiring!

And if you find my idea of tracking Pomodoros each day helpful for you, then by all means do it.

 

[Xolorr]

I really hope my continual posting/brain-dumping isn't an issue here, but I love tracking my progress, and I get a push from the fact that people can look at this any time, it kinda makes me feel more accountable for my actions. Mods please feel free to edit this thread or something if it's too off topic!

Anyways, I ended up going DEEP down the rabbit hole of this forum last night. Not productive for my business, but I think it was beneficial. Ended up just zoning in on my computer until late into the night and my eyes were stinging. I skimmed through this thread about productivity systems, and have taken today to create my own variation/system to keep track of my tasks and projects. Spending time learning how to use AirTable, (no affiliation, it was recommended in the GSD thread). It's on a free trial now and downgrades to free after two weeks.

Kinda worried that the free plan won't have any good functionality, but I'll research it and see.

Also ended up back on this golden nugget from MJ, which hit home huge. I've been floating around with just a mental to-do list, and not focusing in enough, and often forgetting important things. This also links up to the productivity system, as I need to outline my long-term goals, and break them down into smaller goals, daily habits/actions, and "action blocks".

I know I'm posting a lot now, but I know as soon as I leave for my travels next week, I won't have this much time, so I'm trying my hardest to get the groundwork in place now.

For a business update, I emailed the fulfilment agency with all the info they needed to get started, as well as asked them if they can handle international shipping. This would be huge if they could. I would probably have to charge customers for this as it won't fit into my margins (breakdown of that coming soon), but it would make a huge difference to my market size and brand image. It's the weekend and my product should be arriving next week. That's when things will really start to happen as I can create content and start promoting. Also investigating which payment gateway to use on my site. It's tough because I can't use Stripe (they don't support RSA), and all of the local gateways act as redirect payments, which I really dislike because it looks scammy/unprofessional... I'm going to try a direct gateway for Woocommerce, and if not (or if they are too expensive) I'll use a commision based redirect and worry about direct when I'm actually making sales.

Cool. To do today:
- Develop a productivity system with AirTable
- Write the About Me on my personal page. I'm halfway there with this, but I'm a natural perfectionist, which I'm trying to break. With all my creative endeavours, I tend to hype things up so much in my mind that I can't replicate it in reality, and it either demotivates me and I put it off completely or I spend hours longer than I should be trying to get it right.

Done is better than perfect.

 

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[HackVenture]

Glad that you found Airtable useful, awesome that you're getting up to speed with it so quickly, it took me alot more time to figure out how to use it properly lol.

Good luck with the dropshipping business! Though I think it's harder to get a fulfilment agency to work with you unless you can promise certain volume, so in the beginning it's still better to fulfill via Aliexpress, set a volume target for yourself to switch to working with fulfilment for branding.

 

[Xolorr]

Glad that you found Airtable useful, awesome that you're getting up to speed with it so quickly, it took me alot more time to figure out how to use it properly lol.

Good luck with the dropshipping business! Though I think it's harder to get a fulfilment agency to work with you unless you can promise certain volume, so in the beginning it's still better to fulfill via Aliexpress, set a volume target for yourself to switch to working with fulfilment for branding.

Thanks Hack!

Yeah, I did dropship for a while, and have since invested the money into the product being private labelled. The issue is that I'll be travelling for the foreseeable future, which wasn't the plan when I ordered the product, but it's an opportunity I can't pass up. It might not be fastlane as I'll be working for someone else, but the memories I'll make are invaluable, especially at my age.

If the fulfilment falls through, my family have volunteered to run orders to the courier service in my absence. I'd prefer not to do this, but it is still an option.

 

[Xolorr]

Any reason why you decided not to go with Shopify? I'm thinking that would accelerate your process on setting up the site alot.

Hey Hack,

The reason I chose to use Woocommerce is just the customizability, as well as trying to get a direct payment gateway. All South African gateways redirect customers to their websites to complete payment, and it doesn't happen in the store.

Meaning my customers will put their details in at "myshop.com", and then pay on "mypaymentprovider.com", and all of the gateways have pretty terrible UI and look like they'll steal all your money.

This redirect cause a HUGE dropoff in the conversion of customers, and especially for international customers, they would've never even heard of it before. It's overall just a terrible user experience, and I'd like to avoid it if possible.

Even with the use of PayPal, it still acts as a redirect. While it is more known, there's still the conversion issue.

Not to mention the monthly fees involved with shopify...

However, I must say I am considering just getting a Shopify store up for now, and then put time into building the exact site I want for the brand locally over the next few months, and update when possible.

I don't know. Tonight sucked, I got super in my head about some stuff in my personal life, and was completely unproductive. It's probably from staying up untill 2AM for the last couple nights. I'm just going to go to bed and go through a WooCommerce class tomorrow and make a decision after that.

Thanks for the interest! @HackVenture

 

[Xolorr]

Icic, I'm not familiar with the ZA payment issues but shopify supports both stripe and PayPal, with they not be appropriate?

Yes costs will be higher with shopify but imo if it allows you to keep up the momentum it's worth it especially since your products are ready.

Would hate to see the momentum watered down from taking woocommerce classes etc but if you're confident of pushing through then by all means stick to the plan, just my 2 cents

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

Okay, so from a bit of research about my payment gateway thing, I won't be able to get a direct gateway without paying $30 setup, and $25 per month after that.

It really grinds my gears, but I think I'll put together a Shopify store now, and the WooCommerce can come later. I'll use PayPal (I'm only able to use PayPal express, which also redirects. God I hate this country sometimes) as well as a local gateway so that users have a choice. The added costs aren't nice, but I'll deal with it for now.

 

[Xolorr]

Update:

Logged into the Shopify account from my dropshipping operation and everything is saved and still synced up. Website DONE.

Now all I need to do is change out the products and update the copy, and then start promoting the crap out of it.
Huge thank you to @HackVenture for making me re-evaluate this. Saved me hours and hours of setup!

I'm going to do a crawl of any competitor, no matter the difference in product and pick out as much as I can about their branding and what's working for them, and try to implement that into mine.

So far:

• Logo and all artwork is done (from the dropshipping)
• Product and packaging is branded with said artwork etc.
• Website building is done, now I need to populate it with content
• Instagram is at 1300 followers, going to investigate how real/fake these followers are.

Marketing plan:

• Ship products to 10 micro influencers (5K to 30K)
• Post influencer photos + my own on Instagram.
• Facebook pixel my traffic
• Run facebook & YouTube ads targeted to my market

 

[Xolorr]

Okay, so today sucked, business wise.

I had to go see a doctor in a town 1 hour away for a checkup (post surgery). I then spent the entire day shopping with my mom, as she wanted to get a whole bunch of stuff before my trip. I live on the other side of the country, but came home for the surgery and to see my family before I leave. I would've prefered to have the day to work, but I feel guilty if I don't spend time with them.

Anyways.

Didn't manage to get any photos done today, so I posted another one of my old photos on the Instagram. This particular photo had a semi-viral effect last time I posted it, so I'm hoping it'll do the same.

My posting methodology has been this:

• Post high-quality photos, with a caption related to something OTHER than the product, and #brandname in the caption
• Tag as many "repost accounts" (more on this below) as I can find in the picture itself, all in one corner to keep it neat.
• Copy & paste 29 hashtags into the first comment from Display Purposes. It's a great tool for Instagram and generates sets of hashtags filtered from spam

"Repost accounts, wut??"

These are KEY! (in my opinion, by no means a pro) They're basically those huge accounts that post about a particular niche. Now, these guys don't actually make content themselves, they just leverage other peoples content to grow an audience. That's how they're able to post so frequently and grow so quickly. For example, if my customers were cat lovers, I would be trying my hardest to get my photos on cats_of_instagram or catloversclub. Now, these accounts are HUGE, because it's such a broad niche, but there would be tons of smaller accounts similar, who I would target (either by tagging or using their hashtag).

They're ALWAYS on the lookout for more content (and this is why quality photos are key), so why not give it to them? If they repost your photos its an insanely effective (and free) way of reaching a new audience, and helps with the virality effect. Here's to hoping some of mine get reposted!

What else have I done??

• Called a couple courier companies while I was in the car to get rates for delivery. One of them wanted to meet with me before they would release pricing, which was weird, and couldn't meet me before I left. Another said they'd email me their price list, but I haven't received it (just emailed a followup)
• Messaged an influencer, and he's actually coming to my town tomorrow! Going to buy him a coffee and interview him, as well as shoot some photos and give him my product.
• Bought a udemy course on digital marketing and have started going through it. It's now become a part of my "Kaizen checklist", and I have to do at least two lectures on this a day.
• Touched up the website copy. It's not proper copy, because I have very little knowledge about copy, but there's a brief section on copywriting in the course I'm doing, and I can always change it as I learn more. Done is better than perfect.
• Emailed the fulfilment company with the dimensions of my product, but haven't heard back from them. It'd be great if I can work with them, but I'm not going to rely on them, hence my courier research.

In other news, this client project is taking much longer than I thought it would. I've barely made any progress there, and need to finish it by the weekend. For tonight I'm just going to grind on that and see how far I can get. I'll also do my udemy lectures tonight.

I'm making notes on everything I can business related, and I want to have a look at all the notes I made on unscripted sometime soon. I think this will probably happen while I'm on the plan, and I'll have a lot of time to think/plan what I will do.

Achieved my monthly goal of having a fully functioning ecom site.
Now reset it to "make my first sale outside of friend groups", then looked at it again and said F*ck it and 10X'd it. 10 sales might not sound like a lot to some of you, but I think I'll be ballistic if it happens.

Side note:
I find it so easy to write here, and I think I'm pushing myself to do it more as practice. I really want to grow my personal brand, and do blog posts based around my travels (This isn't business related, just because I want to), but find writing for a blog so intimidating. Weird.

 

[Xolorr]

• Took some photos yesterday and they came out really good! Going to start putting those up as time progresses on the Instagram and Facebook pages.
• The store isn't live yet which sucks. This is because there was an issue verifying my residence, because of all the utility bills being in my dad's name, not mine. I emailed customer support last night, so hopefully, this gets solved and I can go live this weekend!
• Met with & interviewed my first influencer. I was really nervous about this, but, it went amazing! His story is amazing and I think it will work really well with my brand. He was an amazing guy and so supportive of my brand. He said he will take photos for me and push as hard as he can promoting my product on his page as soon as the site goes live.
• Going to photoshop some white background images for the products, and write their product descriptions now, and push those to the site.
• Two of the repost accounts posted my photo! And I got a nice boost in followers for it. One of them refused to tag me, which sucked, but oh well. I wish the site was live when that happened so that I could've directed the traffic somewhere and tested the market. SHould've thought of this before hand.

Things have been insane leading up to my trip, and there is so much that I've been doing for that, it makes me a bit mad because it's so much time I could've spent sorting out all the issues I'm having at the moment.

Oh well.

The courier service came in a lot more expensive than I was expecting... At about $7 nationwide and $10 worldwide, which fluctuate depending on the region. This is going to cut down my margins a lot, but I think it's definitely worth absorbing the cost and offering free shipping for the customer experience.

 

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[Xolorr]

Update:

I am currently in the UK, and am still waiting for my payment approval! This sucks because I can't make sales until I have it, and they're taking forever to get back to me!

Being in a first world country is INSANE. I love it. It's really kick-started my motivation cycle, because this is the end goal for me. To move somewhere first-world, but it would need to be much hotter than here, lol.

Anyway, very sidetracked, but it's been in my thoughts a lot lately.

My product photos are done, and I think the site is looking good. Going to work on my copy while I have this down time, and read a lot about writing product descriptions.

Keeping focused is really hard here, because I'm staying with a friend and his family, and none of them are entrepreneurial. They spend most of their free time sitting around watching TV, and I'm sitting at their dining room table editing or working on the business. It'll change when I go onto my internship thing ( I don't know what else to call it), because I feel that they are much more similar minded to me.

 

[AllanB]

That looks good! For sure you will make money.

 

[Xolorr]

How did you get the mentor?

Great Question!

So I got the "mentor" per say, just by showing I could add value to his business and life, and showing that I was dedicated to helping him.

I met him when he travelled to my country at the beginning of this year, by dming him and saying that I would show him around and take photos of him for his Instagram. He replied, and we did just that. I took him around to all the good spots, took photos, and he loved them. Then he left to his next destination and that was it.

Later on in the year, I decided, F**k it, I need to see the world. So I booked a one-way ticket to London, and did just that. Before I left, I messaged him again, this time asking for advice on travelling as well as offering to help him out if he had any projects in Europe while I was there. He replied and said that they were actually looking for someone to travel with them, but he didn't know any dates or plans yet. He could only tell me once I was in Europe. So I travelled 18 hours and thousands of KMs, and slept on a friends couch until he said that it was on.

I only got told two days before the trip, and 10 days after I had left Africa.

My advice would be this:

1. Provide immense value. You cannot be self-orientated. You need to be thinking solely about how you can make their life easier, more efficient, and more profitable, not what you'll get out of it. Don't think about future riches, travels, fame, etc. The only thing you should be paying attention to is learning from them.

2. Be flexible, and committed. You need to be able to drop whatever you have on to accommodate them. THEY DONT OWE YOU ANYTHING, not even the convenience of knowing things ahead of time. You need to be ready to help whenever they need you.

3. Be knowledgeable enough in your craft to be independent. If they constantly have to tell you what to do, you become an irate. You should be able to get on with what you have to do independantly, and without too much supervision. Act, assess, adjust. DO something helpful, ask their opinion of how you did, and repeat. Eventually you will begin to work like them, know their tastes, preferences, quality standards, etc.

AND you will learn a shitload, as well as gain an epic friend.

 

[Xolorr]

Wow.
Wow.
Wow.

I honestly feel like An entirely new person after this trip. I have newfound energy, ambition, and hustle like never before.
Jumping out of my comfort zone with both feet was the best thing I could've ever done.
Period.

I have clarity like never before, and it's unbelievable. I'm back "home" now, and I have so many stories and lessons that I cannot wait to post and share here, but they will have to wait for now. It's too much to process at this point in time, and I want to take my time with it.

For now, I'm going all in on my Ecom that's been brewing for the last month or two, and the sole reason I started this.

To Do:

• Email every courier service I can find with an office / drop off point in my town. Organize rates, meetings, and finally get the logistics for my products sorted. This is the number 1 priority because without this I can't sell. I'm going to spend the rest of the afternoon (Sunday) researching and writing emails so that by tomorrow morning I should have some replies, and I can then get them on the phone and go through the nitty gritty of this.
• Double and triple check my site. I know it's not perfect, but there's no such thing as perfect, and if you chase perfection you never get anything finished. Time to throw it out into the market and get feedback. Act, Assess, Adjust.
• Market, Market, Market. This is key. My demo is hugely into instagram, so that will be the priority. I have realized through various podcasts, etc, how important facebook actually is. I do not use Facebook AT ALL. I hate it for my own social needs, but it will be hugely beneficial to learn it and get effective at it. To start, I'm going to interview and give influencers in my niche my product. I will buy them coffee, ask them a bunch of questions, write a blog post about them, and then take them for a photoshoot, in return for their posting about my business and using my product. This will cost me: A product ($6 actual, $25 opportunity), a coffee ($2), transport ($~) BUT it will be huge for my social presence. My goal is to get all of the big influencers in my region using my product and posting about it. I will then have INSANE content to use in a digital marketing strategy, using facebook and youtube ads. (I think YouTube ads are extremely under used, and will be especially effective for my demographic. I haven't researched the costs of this as of yet. One step at a time.

Amount Earned: $35

 

[Xolorr]

Hey Bro!

Glad you pointed this out.

I wouldn't say this was a switch at all, as both are going ahead, and before you lose faith in me and think I'm doing too much, they really supplement each other and are mutually beneficial. I've been doing video for a year and a bit now, and I am still going all in on it, but that is my personal brand. I do freelance gigs as a way to get cash and fund my business venture.

I didn't switch at all, I'm going all in on BOTH.
Video and creation is my passion, but I don't want it to be my main income source, which it is at the moment.

 

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[FastNAwesome]

@Xolorr this is a great thread, just noticed it.

Happy for your success and progress. Much respect for setting out to do your own thing.

Hope this is not off-topic, because what you said really inspired me and made my day:

My biggest take away was definitely the value of being resourceful. This dude does this for a living (and gets paid well for it), and he knows a lot less about video and photo than I do. I WAS TEACHING HIM things about content creation. He has very minimal camera gear, which every film/photography student would laugh at the thought of shooting a commercial on

Question for you - would you say a guy with a consumer grade HD camcorder but GREAT ideas could make it work? Or at least something semi-professional is required? Is 4K a must? My thing is also travel but with my own unique spin.

I guess my questions look stupid, but there are things I rock at, like web development, so if you're ever stuck with something, you can PM me

 

[Xolorr]

Progress:
2 more sales through Ecommerce store
12 sold through wholesale @ 50% off.

Massive thank you to @Scot ! After reading his thread on Wholesaling, I landed this buy 4 hours later. In conversation with 4 other stores regarding more wholesaling. Can't wait for tomorrows business hours to get some responses!

I have 16 days left until I'm away for another month. That should be insane networking wise. I'll be traveling to 2 new countries, and I'm not paying a cent, plus I will earn from the trip. I'm also learning a lot from various marketing resources, and that's enabled me to up my pricing on freelance video work, as well as invest in some new gear. Long term, I want to scale this up into an agency, and start outsourcing a lot of the work.

Revenue:
$305
Profit:
$145

 

[Xolorr]

So, what am I doing going forward?

Firstly, I need to define my destination and how I'm going to get there. I'm really out of touch with the unscripted /TMF framework, so I am going through unscripted with a fine-toothed comb (Read: Highlighter) and getting that back in my head.

Daily process: Read 10 pages of unscripted and highlight important parts

Don't get me wrong, I've already read unscripted and tmf , but I'm going to treat this like school and STUDY it.

From that $1000 I'm going to buy myself an INSIDERS subscription, and try to absorb and implement that information aswell. The main point here is that I highlight the important parts and actually put them to action.

The biggest issue I'm facing right now is spreading myself too thin.

I get excited easily, and I jump from business to business. I'm also unorganized as hell. You've probably picked that up from this progress thread so far. I don't spend enough time on one project to see it come to fruition. I need to be monogamous to one idea for a year, and I'm giving myself the remainder of this year to close / finish my already established projects.

What projects do I have at the moment?

- My online store, selling a product for $25 that anyone can make at home for $5. I know, I f*cked up. I'm going to push through with this, at least to get rid of my remaining stock. I have ~ 250 units to move, and I will be happy to see them go at BE or even a small loss, but I refuse to just give up on this. This has been self-funded, as it was a dropshipping store turned private label.

- Udacity Digital Marketing course: This falls under education I guess, but I need to graduate this course, and I am a month behind on my projects etc. I get lifetime access to these resources, if I graduate in time, and they are extremely good. The plan was to follow Sean's digital marketing agency guide once I've finished this.

- Videos and personal branding: I'm a small Instagrammer, and I love photography and video work. This is how I've seen most of the success in my few short years. The problem with instagram is that you have to be insanely consistent, which isn't always possible with travel content. The standard is also ridiculously high, and it has No Legacy! You post, it gets consumed, and then it falls into the ever growing abyss of scrolled posts. This is why one of my focuses in this aspect is Youtube, because when people disco ver a youtube channel, they Binge watch a bunch of videos, and your videos can show up as recommended, even if you posted months ago. YouTube compounds, Instagram doesn't.

- Freelancing: Going into 2019, this will be my main source of income. I'm freelancing for my mentor, helping him manage his website, digital products, and marketing. This is a priority, as it is a commitment I have made and will be my only stable source of income, but is very much trading time for money.


Ideas:

- Digital marketing agency
- E-commerce (FBA style, but not with Amazon, will explain later)
- EBook publishing service
- FinTech app

I will go into detail for these Ideas later, and break each down logically and mathematically to decide which to pursue.

 

[Xolorr]

As another way to up productivity / remain on track, I want to list out what I ACTUALLY do in a day, because lately a lot of it has gone to waste in a post-travel daze. I've been feeling extremely low energy, and want to get my discipline levels up, and actually, F**king do something instead of wasting my life rations

• Woke up at ~ 8AM and instantly checked my phone.

- This needs to change. I only have a small studio flat, but I will charge my phone on the other side of the room, and I also need to buy an alarm clock to actually replace my phone.

• Spent the morning reading through the forum, and replying to random emails.
• Edited a video for Instagram, nearly finished, but took way longer than it should've.
• Meditated for 10 mins (Work in progress / habit forming)
• Snuck into the local university library and caught up on udacity work
• Had lunch watching Gary Vee content on FB ads
• Wrote all of the above

What I need to do:

• Approach a bunch of IG Influencers to post about my product
• Create content around my product for IG
• Write blog posts for SEO / Content marketing
• Start building an FB messenger list
• Edit some photos for a brand
• Do a freelance photoshoot
• Edit 4 Youtube videos

I don't really know the point of me writing all this, but it helps give me an objective view on whats happening in my life.

 

[Guest62234]

Cool stuff man!