D
Deleted74396
Guest
I love being an entrepreneur. I have ever since I was age 12 and made my first £££ - I made a website using skills I'd taught myself for my uncle. He was impressed and after seeing that first lil bundle of cash and being proud of my work (and seeing it be used for actual business!) I knew my desire to be an entrepreneur would come true.
I turned the hundreds into thousands and, before finishing school, into tens of thousands. I loved creating products people loved, growing audiences, monetising assets, engaging with customers, etc. Almost everything I invested in before I turned 18 turned a profit, from a £1200/mo eBay store (it was an hour's work a day, but for a 16 year old £40 an hour was INCREDIBLE) to a passive £800/mo blog.
At 19 I got into Facebook marketing. I knew if I wanted to make 'real money', money that would provide me stability forever, I had to do something more than what I'd done in school and college. In the 6 months, I grew a 'just for fun' page to 400,000 likes. I made some awful decisions however kept pushing on and invested into monetising the page, and a year later I was making $4k a month from the website (Blog articles) and $2k a month from video (Video ads). In my final month, I also started a dropshipping store which made $4k a month. I almost cried with emotion as I was making $10k a month, way surpassing my goal of £30k/year.
For the first time in my life I felt overwhelmed with happiness/contentedness. I thought 'wow, I can really grow this to be a million dollar business'. I could almost taste the stability I so desired, all the physical things I wanted were almost in my grasp, then disaster struck. My page was scammed by a social media guy who I never even met after he 'invested' in a group I'd started which allowed him to use a loophole/'glitch' (I call it a glitch cause it absolutely should not have happened, but I guess technically it was a loophole, hence why FB were unable to help) to take multiple of my pages, totalling 1.5M+ likes.
After that, I was heavily depressed. I didn't know what to do with myself, and after my family kicked me out (they are catholic and didn't agree with 'life choices') I was in a panic and spent the majority of the money on a house. I understand now a house is a liability, and especially as there was tens of thousands of pounds unexpected work, it's one of my biggest regrets. Regardless, now - despite still not being complete with the renovation - I try look to the positive and appreciate the roof over my head.
I'm 22 now and my side hustle pays the bills and buys me food - just. I am great at saving money and good at investing, however when funds are as tight as they are now I'm only able to save around £50 a month or less. Unexpected costs are killer, a £120 repair on the house lead to 2 months eating less food! Besides the side hustle, I have around £400 in savings, £0 in credit (so borrowing isn't much of an option for me). I've always thought I could turn £2000 into £10k quite easily, but turning £50 into £250 is much harder.
After the theft of my last business, I begun growing a new audience with the goal of doing a similar thing. I knew if I make enough money for two months outgoings I would success. I will probably be in profit the first, but if not DEFINITELY the second month. I've done this multiple times before and I know how Facebook works inside and out. I also know if I don't make the same mistakes last time, I can make what I made last time, and more.
That audience is now at 350k likes, and gets 15M+ monthly reach, 500+ new group members monthly. I know this audience well and there's no reason I can't monetise it with my skillset/experience.
The problem I have is lack of funds. Saving £50 avg a month I'll need to save for literally 2-3 more years to afford the necessities for those vital and lucrative two months of content creation. Upon talking to the audience, analysing their interests, what they buy, what they're into, I came up with a possible way of making money with very little.
This is where I need your advice, as I don't know if this is the right thing to do. Getting a job is not an option. I've screen-printed in the past and knew it's a cheap way to get started making tshirts. I analysed the existing offers in my niche and they are all aimed at a difference target audience (mainly a different age demographic). I know this is something that could grow with the more money I put into it, and could actually be huge. There's a big gap in the market! I have the screen printing setup done, and everything is almost ready to go.
The problem is, I'm not a designer. I have experience with graphic design but I'm in no way an artist or designer. My four designs are good, but not amazing. Truthfully I'd love to hire an artist to create an awesome brand and a few incredible designs, but that's so far from where I'm at. My designs fit the target market's interests, and are on-brand. The quality of the tshirt and the print is good.
I am planning on using organic marketing and one-on-one conversations to make 3 sales a day in my first month. I am not sure how achievable this is, but I should be able to talk to 50-100 people a day and convert 5% easily, right? Even converting 1% would give me 22 sales and even at one item each, I'd have close to £300 profit which gets me away from the 'if I make £100 less this month I'm not paying x bill' line and gives me more than £50 to save or invest!
If I get 1-3 sales a day in month 1, and improve in month 2, I should be able to reach 5 sales a day, at which point I'll have £2000 a month coming in from the store alone and can begin to invest in the other areas and start making real money. I can also make the shop better and increase sales there. 1-3 sales a day isn't crazy with an existing audience of 350,000 yet I still have this mental block as I hate the feeling of being this broke. My self-esteem is so low.
I am good at marketing, but after my previous mistakes and having so little cash, I get so defeatist. I know this can work, and that I'm not crazy, I have years experience and I'm not making any of my old mistakes. But on the other hand maybe I am wrong and this is a terrible idea that won't work, and that's why I'm posting here. Sorry for the thought dump, but I'd really love some words of advice or guidance, particularly at this starting point. I'm not so worried about what to do once I have ££££ monthly rather than £££.
I turned the hundreds into thousands and, before finishing school, into tens of thousands. I loved creating products people loved, growing audiences, monetising assets, engaging with customers, etc. Almost everything I invested in before I turned 18 turned a profit, from a £1200/mo eBay store (it was an hour's work a day, but for a 16 year old £40 an hour was INCREDIBLE) to a passive £800/mo blog.
At 19 I got into Facebook marketing. I knew if I wanted to make 'real money', money that would provide me stability forever, I had to do something more than what I'd done in school and college. In the 6 months, I grew a 'just for fun' page to 400,000 likes. I made some awful decisions however kept pushing on and invested into monetising the page, and a year later I was making $4k a month from the website (Blog articles) and $2k a month from video (Video ads). In my final month, I also started a dropshipping store which made $4k a month. I almost cried with emotion as I was making $10k a month, way surpassing my goal of £30k/year.
For the first time in my life I felt overwhelmed with happiness/contentedness. I thought 'wow, I can really grow this to be a million dollar business'. I could almost taste the stability I so desired, all the physical things I wanted were almost in my grasp, then disaster struck. My page was scammed by a social media guy who I never even met after he 'invested' in a group I'd started which allowed him to use a loophole/'glitch' (I call it a glitch cause it absolutely should not have happened, but I guess technically it was a loophole, hence why FB were unable to help) to take multiple of my pages, totalling 1.5M+ likes.
After that, I was heavily depressed. I didn't know what to do with myself, and after my family kicked me out (they are catholic and didn't agree with 'life choices') I was in a panic and spent the majority of the money on a house. I understand now a house is a liability, and especially as there was tens of thousands of pounds unexpected work, it's one of my biggest regrets. Regardless, now - despite still not being complete with the renovation - I try look to the positive and appreciate the roof over my head.
I'm 22 now and my side hustle pays the bills and buys me food - just. I am great at saving money and good at investing, however when funds are as tight as they are now I'm only able to save around £50 a month or less. Unexpected costs are killer, a £120 repair on the house lead to 2 months eating less food! Besides the side hustle, I have around £400 in savings, £0 in credit (so borrowing isn't much of an option for me). I've always thought I could turn £2000 into £10k quite easily, but turning £50 into £250 is much harder.
After the theft of my last business, I begun growing a new audience with the goal of doing a similar thing. I knew if I make enough money for two months outgoings I would success. I will probably be in profit the first, but if not DEFINITELY the second month. I've done this multiple times before and I know how Facebook works inside and out. I also know if I don't make the same mistakes last time, I can make what I made last time, and more.
That audience is now at 350k likes, and gets 15M+ monthly reach, 500+ new group members monthly. I know this audience well and there's no reason I can't monetise it with my skillset/experience.
The problem I have is lack of funds. Saving £50 avg a month I'll need to save for literally 2-3 more years to afford the necessities for those vital and lucrative two months of content creation. Upon talking to the audience, analysing their interests, what they buy, what they're into, I came up with a possible way of making money with very little.
This is where I need your advice, as I don't know if this is the right thing to do. Getting a job is not an option. I've screen-printed in the past and knew it's a cheap way to get started making tshirts. I analysed the existing offers in my niche and they are all aimed at a difference target audience (mainly a different age demographic). I know this is something that could grow with the more money I put into it, and could actually be huge. There's a big gap in the market! I have the screen printing setup done, and everything is almost ready to go.
The problem is, I'm not a designer. I have experience with graphic design but I'm in no way an artist or designer. My four designs are good, but not amazing. Truthfully I'd love to hire an artist to create an awesome brand and a few incredible designs, but that's so far from where I'm at. My designs fit the target market's interests, and are on-brand. The quality of the tshirt and the print is good.
I am planning on using organic marketing and one-on-one conversations to make 3 sales a day in my first month. I am not sure how achievable this is, but I should be able to talk to 50-100 people a day and convert 5% easily, right? Even converting 1% would give me 22 sales and even at one item each, I'd have close to £300 profit which gets me away from the 'if I make £100 less this month I'm not paying x bill' line and gives me more than £50 to save or invest!
If I get 1-3 sales a day in month 1, and improve in month 2, I should be able to reach 5 sales a day, at which point I'll have £2000 a month coming in from the store alone and can begin to invest in the other areas and start making real money. I can also make the shop better and increase sales there. 1-3 sales a day isn't crazy with an existing audience of 350,000 yet I still have this mental block as I hate the feeling of being this broke. My self-esteem is so low.
I am good at marketing, but after my previous mistakes and having so little cash, I get so defeatist. I know this can work, and that I'm not crazy, I have years experience and I'm not making any of my old mistakes. But on the other hand maybe I am wrong and this is a terrible idea that won't work, and that's why I'm posting here. Sorry for the thought dump, but I'd really love some words of advice or guidance, particularly at this starting point. I'm not so worried about what to do once I have ££££ monthly rather than £££.
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