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[Progress] The Road to a wholesome Unscripted Life

Private Witt

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Xeon, just read this whole thread and really enjoyed it. Im in completely different realms of business but feel your pain on the Instagram contest you did in the past as have had similar results.

Good luck with your grind and wish you much success!
 
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sparechange

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lets get an update
 

Bekit

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Just read through your whole thread. WOW. *applause* Do you have any idea how inspiring this is for a brand new person like me walking into this forum and taking a first-look around?

After our brief interchange on that other thread, I now see very clearly that I am the one who needs to learn from you and not the other way around. Just a couple of the things that blew my mind a bit...
  • You're navigating manufacturing, shipping, and distribution while bootstrapping it yourself on a salary that you say costs 2 months worth of pay to get your inventory.
  • You're developing your marketing long before your launch so that you'll have customers lined up and ready to buy when you release your product.
  • You're handling setback after setback and forging ahead anyway (not just the discouraging giveaway, but the loss of time & money...that's a big deal, and you're absorbing all of that as if it didn't make a trace of difference)
  • You're getting grief from random strangers who are harassing you about your pay and a college degree... wow... I can't believe that lady... but one day you'll show her and everyone like her how wrong she was to judge you.
  • You're focusing the best parts of your energy and attention on this business right now. You are a ROCKSTAR for doing that. Your future wife will thank you for choosing this season to focus on the business first, so that you can treat her like a princess later. Have patience with the relationship question. You're not a victim at all. You're building something that is going to give you the chance to call the shots.
Now, just a couple of ideas I had as I was reading through your thread... you may already be doing some/all of this stuff, and some of it might not be quite on target because I don't know what your product actually is. But...

Have you tried targeting dog trainers and veterinarians? They are like the hub of the pet world, and all the pet owners are the spokes. Google "dog trainer + [city]" and then look for the facebook pages of all the dog trainers, and then look at the list of all the people who have liked those pages. Target them (and lookalike audiences). Repeat with veterinarians. Another "hub" is the small, mom-and-pop pet food stores. If you can get your product into the hands of a few of these people, they have *real* relationships with a lot of the pet owners in the community, and this can help you to get traction.

Have you put up a website yet? If you haven't launched, this wouldn't be your full-fledged site yet. But you'll get a slight boost in terms of SEO if your site has been online for 30-60 days ahead of time to give Google a chance to crawl the site and see the keywords and know what the site is "about." Make sure you verify it as a property in Search Console so that you can get some indexing started immediately. It would just be placeholder content at first, but it would be SEO-friendly, keyword-optimized language (e.g. a home page, about page, product page, and couple of blog pages targeting your best keywords). It's not like the site will get visitors until you *actually* launch and start linking to it, but it can help a tad.

I take my hat off to you, sir. All the best!
 

Xeon

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Thanks for the vote of confidence and detailed insight, Rebekah!

Have you tried targeting dog trainers and veterinarians? They are like the hub of the pet world, and all the pet owners are the spokes. Google "dog trainer + [city]" and then look for the facebook pages of all the dog trainers, and then look at the list of all the people who have liked those pages. Target them (and lookalike audiences). Repeat with veterinarians. Another "hub" is the small, mom-and-pop pet food stores. If you can get your product into the hands of a few of these people, they have *real* relationships with a lot of the pet owners in the community, and this can help you to get traction.

I haven't thought of that angle! I've been making a list of all the influencers on IG and studying their followers, to get a rough idea of who knows who and how they're connected, so the popular ones in each network are the "hub" like you say. From there I intend to get social proof and traction. Will definitely look into your suggestions!

The thing with the pet industry, I notice, is that each community is very active and passionate about their pet, which gives me a warm bed to work on.


--------------------- UPDATE ---------------------
(warning, long post ahead)
I want to take a moment to rave about this Eric's Cheesecakes thread here: NOTABLE! - Eric from Erics Cheesecakes
Many gold-tier information in that thread, which emphasises a more positive way of thinking. In particular, there's this insane paragraph from iammelissamoore which I quote below:

Imagine all the people in NC who are eating horrible cheesecake right now from some other company; now imagine how expensive some of those horrible cheesecakes are, and imagine how they are being robbed of that genuine cheesecake experience, are you seriously going to let them continue eating those horrible, expensive cheesecakes because the USDA have a lot of red tape all over their process? Do you think the horrible tasting cheesecake companies are allowing USDA or any other authority to prevent them from progressing? Nah man, you can't let people suffer, horrible cheesecake is just foul and you need to save these people - seriously, you need to get your cakes to these people - fast!

If you've a product which you feel is way better than your rivals, and YET you're not putting it out there due to your own laziness or self-doubts, that IS a CRIMINAL ACT and you should be JAILED. It's extremely VILE, SELFISH and SINFUL behavior!


--------- WHAT HAPPENED DURING THE LAST 2 MONTHS ---------
Custom Packaging : There’s a specific look I need the packaging to have in order to sync with my brand aesthetics. The two Chinese suppliers I tried earlier produced crap results. Found a 3rd one.
Costs were a lot cheaper, and it looks even better than the previous ones. Blessing in disguise.

Website : 95% ready. The contractor is fixing some shipping issues with the plugin and CSS minor tweaks. Other than that....I'm actually proud of how it looks. One lesson I've learnt : Do not build the website too early. I overestimated how long the products and other logistical issues took, and build the first version of the website in mid-Apr 2017. This is the last version, probably 8th iteration. Gave me lots of training and experience in using Wordpress/WooCommerce/Elementor and tons of other plugins and themes LOL

Product Photography : Results are impressive. I’m banking on this to blow my rivals to hell and never back! Good photography is insanely important and worth the $. I was unwilling to part with the $ previously. The photo editing should be ready next week or before 7 Nov.
For photographers, I strongly suggest looking for them in Russia and Eastern Europe. They've some really sick skills. It's like how the US is at the forefront of tech, China is the land of manufacturing, and these Eastern European folks are the champions in photography (and it's 3x cheaper than the US).

Warehousing : Products have been packed into their packaging, all in the US warehouse. They’ve kitted it and logged them into the inventory system. The storage cost is currently US$1.9 per month for my 200 pcs of products. This is excluding the account fees which is approx US$90. All well within my budget.

Long-term Survival Strategy 1 : Since my products fall more into the Want category and I foresee it would need some time for people to be aware of it (I've no social proof yet), I need to have enough funds to last for the long run (about 1.5 - 2 years after launch). I feel too many new businesses run out of funds quickly and gave up. On the social side, I'll create photographic content that showcases my models and products and how they're being used in daily life, with each picture telling a little story (no words, just imagery). The photos will also subtly show that my products are being "wanted" and "sought-after". I’ll then hire a Fiverr guy to do funny / pun / witty one-liner captions for those.

Long-term Survival Strategy 2 : To keep inventory low and stay lean while building up the brand and demand, I've found a few manufacturers who can do minimum 1 piece order quantity.
If I can rewind time, I would have ordered about 50% less products for my first batch previously. Never thought about it back then!

Financial bleeding per month : I've planned for very bad case scenarios (e.g: 0 sales after 6+ months). But generally, once the thing is launched, I should be able to keep 50% of my monthly savings and use the remaining 50% on the business.

Additional income : Next week, I'll be contacting this lady who showed interest in my part-time work application. I proposed to her that I'll work 3 - 4 hrs per day for her company, and all I need is ~US$350 per month. With this additional $, I can keep more of my monthly savings. This gives me more ammo power. I arrived at this US$350 figure after some calculations. Can't ask for too much, or I'll work even longer hours, which is bad. Good thing is, I can work on this part-time job during my real day job since I'm so free LOL

Paganis and Supercars : I used to jerk off to daily fantasies of driving a Pagani, and having Amber Heard-tier of girls begging me to be their man. Somehow, I've lost much of my interest in supercars (they're still epic to look at). I’m now more concerned with how the biz will turn out. Supercars and girls can come later.

Life Lesson - Forgiveness : I often have violent fantasies of taking revenge on folks who were nasty to me (e.g: mocking/belittling me). 2 days ago, on my bus trip home at night, I realised such thoughts waste tons of energy and damages my health. On that bus trip, I silently called out the names of all the people I used to hate, one by one, and swore to forgive all of them. I realised that regardless of how much I want them to suffer, it doesn't affect them one bit. In fact, many are happily married with kids and living a good life, so why should I continue to let them have control over me? LOL I wanna be free of hatred.

I sincerely wish the best for them and their family; May they have a happy and healthy life. May their dreams follow them for the rest of time. As for me, I've my own story to execute. Let's go!

If this venture eventually fails, it doesn't matter. I've learnt a shitload of stuff especially since the last 2 months. With the new knowledge, I'm much more equipped to try again, and again.

Based on current estimation, I'm still on track to launch around mid-Nov or so.
 
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Roli

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How's it all going @Xeon? Really rooting for you on this one :)
 

sparechange

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so did you launch bud?

lol about the super car bit!
 

sparechange

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You are massively delaying success, why is the product a want and not need?
 
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sparechange

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What are your sales for 2019?

How much have you sold so far?
 

LittleJohn

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Some updates:

1) Signed up with a much better fulfilment center. These guys are extremely professional, assuring and clear in their working style. They guide you every step of the way, tells you what's going to happen next, who to contact, what to do etc.

2) Manufacturer showed me some of the parts they did yesterday. Pretty impressed with one of the parts. The other has a very slight color variation (very light grey instead of white), but it's ok since it's a technical limitation issue and it's only a tiny part. If all is well, everything should be ready approx 20 Feb or earlier. Keeping my fingers crossed. I was reading Vick's sunglass thread (still on page 20 of that monster thread) and it seems with manufacturing, there's always delays.

3) Gonna run my Instagram giveaway next Monday. I did some reading and this infographic is useful:

When-Are-Giveaways-Entered.jpg


I'm using easypromosapp to pull all the comments and generate a random winner, then I'll ship the prize to them direct from amazon.
My purpose of running the weekly giveaways is to:
  • get more followers
  • get more awareness of my brand
  • get social proof
  • increase engagement
4) While waiting during this period, I'm also researching the next few products in my line, and I did a poll on pickfu.com to test my potential customers' feedback. Surprisingly, their opinions are different from what I thought. The service is a bit expensive but it sheds new light on many things and is worth it. Each vote comes with detailed answers (the Whys) and you can choose the demographic to target.

4) Last week or so, I was in a bus going home on Sunday, and during the red light, I look to my right and saw this blue, exotic roofless car. I can't see the whole thing clearly, only the front part, and I thought it was a Pagani (nearly jizzed my shorts), but after a while, it seems to look like a Lotus Elise / Exige.

5) Btw, Tony Robbins is currently in Singapore giving a 4-day seminar. Official: Tony Robbins Singapore - Unleash The Power Within 2018
Look at the prices for the tickets WTF lol. With those $$$ I can buy more inventory and marketing. No offense to the Tony fans here but he comes across as another Tai Lopez type of guy to me, you know, the one who knows everything from wealth to relationships to business to religion to health. The premium tier tickets even have a fire-walking experience.
Tai Lopez, Tony Robbins, Joel Osteen.....masters of the feel-good fastlane business.

Im loving your humble hustle but Im just coming in to view..I wanted to ask about your choice to go with a fulfillment provider vs do that yourself out of the gates but that might be out of order.

Have you launched and how are things looking??
 
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LittleJohn

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5) Btw, Tony Robbins is currently in Singapore giving a 4-day seminar. Official: Tony Robbins Singapore - Unleash The Power Within 2018
Look at the prices for the tickets WTF lol. With those $$$ I can buy more inventory and marketing. No offense to the Tony fans here but he comes across as another Tai Lopez type of guy to me, you know, the one who knows everything from wealth to relationships to business to religion to health. The premium tier tickets even have a fire-walking experience.
Tai Lopez, Tony Robbins, Joel Osteen.....masters of the feel-good fastlane business.

Ironically I noticed this part of your post after sending my first message a moment ago.

Ironic because Ive been digesting some of Tonys stuff (that's available online free) the past couple days. Obviously his energy is amazing no doubt about that. Easy to take what it costs to see him and invest it on the business for guys like us.

So thinking about him as a scam/waste of money/etc.. I don't know man. Theres plenty of people (super successful) that claim he helped them tremendously. I think it's a case of what looking glass your using. I think for people that are looking to improve themselves, achieve, help people, etc. (like you seem to be) I think a guy like Tony can help even if people take away one even just one distinction they can start using to make some kind of positive change. In fact, in his stuff he often talks about distinctions in this way.

One other thing I think is helpful that is the idea to supercharge your affirmations in what he calls 'incantations'. Basically, I think most of us know that if we do affirmations with enthusiasm (emotion) its more beneficial because it has a higher probability of reaching the subconscious or at least getting embedded in there faster. Incantations is affirmations on steroids because not only are you using emotion and enthusiasm but your actually changing your physiology by doing things like, standing up, walking around as you say it, talking rapidly, beating your chest (like a caveman ha), saying this things with as he says "all the intensity" you can, etc.

Google: Tony Robbins incantations - theres a couple vids out there and they are funny watch but also pretty inspirational.

Not trying to hijack your awesome thread here but I see this stuff as helpful for those of us who want to further condition more of our internal beliefs and attitudes we carry about ourselves.

I hope you are still doing the damn thing I'm rooting for you man!

/hijack
 

Xeon

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I wanted to ask about your choice to go with a fulfillment provider vs do that yourself out of the gates but that might be out of order.

Unfortunately, I need a fulfillment provider as I'm not based in the US, and the target market doesn't quite exist here, and due to market size, and a variety of other reasons.

Have you launched and how are things looking??

Looking good. A bit of delay here and there with the product and content photographer, going to chase them tomorrow. I'm sick of waiting.

Ironic because Ive been digesting some of Tonys stuff (that's available online free) the past couple days. Obviously his energy is amazing no doubt about that. Easy to take what it costs to see him and invest it on the business for guys like us.

So thinking about him as a scam/waste of money/etc.. I don't know man. Theres plenty of people (super successful) that claim he helped them tremendously. I think it's a case of what looking glass your using. I think for people that are looking to improve themselves, achieve, help people, etc. (like you seem to be) I think a guy like Tony can help even if people take away one even just one distinction they can start using to make some kind of positive change. In fact, in his stuff he often talks about distinctions in this way.

One other thing I think is helpful that is the idea to supercharge your affirmations in what he calls 'incantations'. Basically, I think most of us know that if we do affirmations with enthusiasm (emotion) its more beneficial because it has a higher probability of reaching the subconscious or at least getting embedded in there faster. Incantations is affirmations on steroids because not only are you using emotion and enthusiasm but your actually changing your physiology by doing things like, standing up, walking around as you say it, talking rapidly, beating your chest (like a caveman ha), saying this things with as he says "all the intensity" you can, etc.

Google: Tony Robbins incantations - theres a couple vids out there and they are funny watch but also pretty inspirational.

With due respect to you and all Tony's fans, I have to say, personally, NLP and affirmations, and things like that, generally don't work for me. Maybe it's cos' I'm an extremely practical person (Kevin O' Leary is one of my idols). I prefer action, hard data and results LOL
All these stuff that Tony and his contemporaries teach, feels too complex and arcane to me.

I do read a couple of self-help books once in a blue moon though. Just absorb a few important nuggets and forget about the rest of the fluff. I prefer spending time watching business/marketing related videos / articles nowadays.

With regards to super successful people (like Oprah) who are Tony's fans, all I can say that if you've Tony's ability to make people feel like they're in Heaven talking to God (which Tony can), you can charm pretty much anyone on earth, celebrity or not. I have to admit that Tony is a very charismatic guy who makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside (no homo) when I watched his videos in the past. He reminds me of Joel Osteen. Joel and Tony's fans....are all mesmerized by them, willing to part with their money for these guys....

What we should be doing is to look at Tony and Joel, and what we can learn from observing them, and applying that into our own businesses, e.g: customer service, engaging with folks on social media.....

I hope you are still doing the damn thing I'm rooting for you man! /hijack

Thanks! I'll update in details once I've launched and made my 1st sale.
I've been learning all these while during my downtime (while waiting for the photographers), reading articles and books, and will post what I've learned here in time to come. A whole ton of findings!
 

LittleJohn

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Unfortunately, I need a fulfillment provider as I'm not based in the US, and the target market doesn't quite exist here, and due to market size, and a variety of other reasons.



Looking good. A bit of delay here and there with the product and content photographer, going to chase them tomorrow. I'm sick of waiting.



With due respect to you and all Tony's fans, I have to say, personally, NLP and affirmations, and things like that, generally don't work for me. Maybe it's cos' I'm an extremely practical person (Kevin O' Leary is one of my idols). I prefer action, hard data and results LOL
All these stuff that Tony and his contemporaries teach, feels too complex and arcane to me.

I do read a couple of self-help books once in a blue moon though. Just absorb a few important nuggets and forget about the rest of the fluff. I prefer spending time watching business/marketing related videos / articles nowadays.

With regards to super successful people (like Oprah) who are Tony's fans, all I can say that if you've Tony's ability to make people feel like they're in Heaven talking to God (which Tony can), you can charm pretty much anyone on earth, celebrity or not. I have to admit that Tony is a very charismatic guy who makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside (no homo) when I watched his videos in the past. He reminds me of Joel Osteen. Joel and Tony's fans....are all mesmerized by them, willing to part with their money for these guys....

What we should be doing is to look at Tony and Joel, and what we can learn from observing them, and applying that into our own businesses, e.g: customer service, engaging with folks on social media.....



Thanks! I'll update in details once I've launched and made my 1st sale.
I've been learning all these while during my downtime (while waiting for the photographers), reading articles and books, and will post what I've learned here in time to come. A whole ton of findings!

Extra kudos for serving a market in a country other than your own!
Stay on 'em man your going after it no one can stop you.

Regarding Tony and everything: different strokes for different folks. I will say that I am also VERY practical and I also like Mr. Wonderful ;)

I don't know if I'd drop big bucks on this stuff either but training my belief system (my mind) definitely helps me get focused. I see myself as a DIY guy that looks for ideas to implement and harness. Training my subconscious mind to be tuned in is something I see big value in.

So I guess I agree with you and the last statement you made. Thanks for responding man and I like your hustle man. Your locked into what you're doing man nice job.
 
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Xeon

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Aragorn

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Great thread, Xeon!

I went through a similar experience. Building a decent business takes so much more time than anticipated. Pretty much every step you take is uphill. Hardly anything works for the first time. Initially, I thought that the time span between my product idea to our first sale on Amazon would be about 10 -12 months. Turned out to be more than two years.

But in order to play it safe, like you, I kept my day job to support me - and nurture the business. Yesterday evening, I was adjusting some Amazon parameters (I'm still learning) I discovered our first sell. It is overwhelming. I was close to tears and at the same time wanted to jump, run outside and wake up my sleeping neighbors with a load RRRRRRROOOOOOAAAAAAARRRRRRRR!!! I know it must sound weird for some. But after putting in many thousands of USD into creating a product, labels, boxes, getting the stuff manufactured and shipped to Amazon (after a long struggle there), this first sell was an emotional blast!

Of course, I want more of this feeling. But I know it will never be so intense as it was last night. The first zip of a cold beer is the best. Always. And you are so right. All the fancy stuff doesn't matter. If one glues oneself to such an endeavor for such a long time and stands one's ground against all obstacles materialistic thoughts retract. Entrepreneurship did something to me. It changed me substantially and for the better.

Keep on going, man! You'll make it!
 
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Vadim26

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Epic progress @Xeon

Honestly, it looks like it's going to be a GOLD thread in the very near future from what I've seen you posted here.

You consistently take action, learn, adjust, fail, adjust and most importantly keep going. Amazing tenacity!
I don't see this ending as anything else, but success if you will keep doing what you are doing.

Product development does take a long time, hang in there.
My product in the golf niche is around 5-6 month now, and I am just getting a first sample.

In the end, remember that you are building an asset, an asset that can literally set you free.
 
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Xeon

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Appreciate all the replies here and thanks!
Some brief updates and thoughts here as my last post was in Feb 2019.

1) The hustle I was working on for the past 2 years (late 2017 - mid 2019) tanked. Reason? I waited far too long to launch. It could have been done in 6 - 8 months but I wanted everything to be perfect.
Ended up, I just lost interest completely in June 2019 (the "fire" was gone). The other issue was, this is something that is very hard to scale up in future (both in time and market size), so after some thinking, I decided to let it go. I learned many things in the process though, so it's not all for naught.

2) Then, in late July 2019, I came across this niche. Looking at the industry and what approx 95% of my other competitors are doing, I realized many of them are old-fashioned and are seen as "uncool" by the upcoming younger crowd. I felt like there was an angle here that I can capitalize on : taking an existing niche and giving it a different spin. There is a very small % of competitors who are already doing what I'm planning, however, and they're quite well-established. But instead of competing with those directly (which is suicide), I'll take what they're doing, and niche down even further.

3) To learn from my mistake in 1) above (taking far too long to launch), I've made this new hustle as minimally viable (MVP) as possible. I started executing this in late Aug. It's early Dec now. About 3.5 months. Products are ready and in warehouse. The packaging lead time is pretty long (will be ready in early Jan). Factoring in the shipping etc, this should be ready to go live in late Jan 2020.
I've kept the no. of things that could go wrong to as low as possible so I can launch fast.

4) There was this execution philosophy called "Ready, Fire, Aim". I wished I had followed this thinking back then. That said, in future, I still hope to go back to the hustle mentioned in 1) as a side-gig to fund my main current hustle once it's launched, since I've found a way to drastically reduce the time needed to execute it.

5) For my current hustle, I've more or less identified my target market, including age range, likes/dislikes, ethnicity, country etc. The problem though, is that they're fragmented everywhere, so my plan is to cast as broad a net as I can initially to reel them into one place.
Get them into my email list to nurture them over time via content and slowly sell to them.

My main outreach will be :

a) FB/IG post ads to target not too specifically ---> they land on my site ---> lead magnet : 40% discount for first-time buyers in exchange for email address ---> if they abandon cart, I'll send them email to remind them of the 40% discount code that can use. To create sense of urgency, I'll let the code expire in 48 hours.​
b) FB Click to Messenger ads on FB site itself ---> lead magnet : 40% discount in exchange for giving me email in Messenger chat popup ---> discount code expires in 48 hours ---> drive them to my site ---> if they abandon-browsing or abandon-cart, they'll get pop-ups in Messenger for follow-ups.​
c) FB ads that specifically target people who are working as journalists (not sure if this can still be done in 2019/2020) : My idea is to get my product in front of their eyes. Since it's eye-catching and marketed differently than most of my rivals, who knows? They might want to do a story on it. Even if just ONE journalist does an article on it, BOOM. Sooner or later, the news sites will syndicate this and it'll start appearing more and more (notice how after a product appears in one news publication, other news start to catch on it? LOL)​
c) Pinterest ads : I saw an article from statista.com yesterday which says that among all the social platforms, Pinterest has 47% of its audience going there for shopping inspiration and ideas, compared to below 20% for FB and IG. This says a lot.​
d) Currently building a following on IG from scratch so I can post a mix of niche-related memes and in future, product announcements to build an audience. My ultimate intention is to drive all these into my newsletter list. Building new accounts on IG nowadays is very hard. Pre-2017, you can post your grandma's pajamas or the shitty lunch you ate, and you can easily get 50 - 100+ Likes and 5+ comments for an account with less than 200 followers.​
Anyway, my new account is slowly getting some traction (the Likes in my latest post are more than my no. of followers lol) ; I may drive IG ads there to boost social proof soon.​
One note regarding using Instagram bots (I'm not using any now) : stay away from them. They're very good in the past, but not worth the cost nowadays. Instagram's algorithm went on steroids mode sometime in June this year, and a lot of botting services became less effective. Using bots on a meme page is ok, using them on a brand/company page is not : it's like walking on a tightrope 7 miles above ground-level. If IG suspends your account, you're F*cked. The amount of $$$ spend on botting services can be used on either giveaways or IG engagement ads.​
e) Influenster.com : I'm thinking of signing up with them to get reviews fast. Not sure how much it costs to join them, but seems all the brands that sign up with them are getting above 200 reviews. Out of these reviews, you can cherry pick the good ones and repost them on social media and website to boost social proof even more. This is to fix the "Never-heard-of-this-new-brand-before-so-it-must-be-bad" mentality.​
f) Influencers : I've identified a few in my niche, and a few on youtube.​

6) Before I end this post, I want to share something REALLY SHITTY which made me lose US$2,000.
This amount is peanuts to you if you're rich, but that's like 3 months worth of my savings from my day job. It blew a very big hole in my already low bank account. This caused a lot of pain, so......

During the product sourcing phase of this new hustle, I found my supplier in Europe.
Because I wanted to store everything in the US for easy shipping, I had to ship the products from Europe and the packaging from China, all to the US to be assembled by the fulfillment centre there.

From Excel calculations, I realized the upfront costs for these (especially shipping and kitting), is going to be high. So, I tried to be a smart a$$, and decided to ship EVERYTHING to a fulfillment company I found in China. In other words, everything will be sourced, assembled and shipped from China once customers order.

When you hear 'China', maybe you would think 'uh-oh, he's going to get F*cked'.
Well, you're right.

So, la la la, I got the products, accessories, packaging....everything done. Beautiful. Ready to launch in 1 Dec 2019.

Then I realized the Chinese fulfilment centre had no way to integrate properly with my WooCommerce site despite their claims. But that's not all : I came across highly negative reviews which I didn't discover previously while researching these guys. The more I read, the more I realized I need to run away. FAST.

Sure, they were on Skype, but depending on their "mood", they were sometimes very responsive and sometimes just give a one word reply. I can't afford to take any chances, because if you're a new company and your first few customer orders are f*cked up, words will spread around fast.

So, I decided to look at other fulfilment centres in China, and ship the goods there.
That's when I realize one more problem : for my particular product category, most fulfilment centres ARE NOT ALLOWED to ship it out of China due to their regulatory laws. I thought with China, they would be more lax on things.

F*ck.

So, after realizing all the insane **** that's going on there, I contacted the US branch of my supplier, and re-order the stuff, and ship to my fulfilment centre there. Only the packaging will be from China. And, guess what, after re-calculating the costs, my profit margin per product is actually ~20% higher when all these are done in the US. Shipping cost to customers is also not that much higher, and it arrives way faster too.
ePacket/China Post/China Direct Line shipping from China to US/EU can take weeks (side note: I sometimes read online about Americans complaining about USPS and how it sucks so hard, but trust me, as a non-US citizen, I LOVE USPS. All my experiences with them has been very good. If you think USPS sucks, wait till you see the rest of the world).

I still see lots of potential in China, however.

7) My job contract is ending next year in Jan. If they decide not to renew it, I'll be short on funds, so I'll need to pause and continue the hustle again after I find a new job. Hope that doesn't happen though.
 
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Last edited:

KSR

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Appreciate all the replies here and thanks!
Some brief updates and thoughts here as my last post was in Feb 2019.

1) The hustle I was working on for the past 2 years (late 2017 - mid 2019) tanked. Reason? I waited far too long to launch. It could have been done in 6 - 8 months but I wanted everything to be perfect.
Ended up, I just lost interest completely in June 2019 (the "fire" was gone). The other issue was, this is something that is very hard to scale up in future (both in time and market size), so after some thinking, I decided to let it go. I learned many things in the process though, so it's not all for naught.

2) Then, in late July 2019, I came across this niche. Looking at the industry and what approx 95% of my other competitors are doing, I realized many of them are old-fashioned and are seen as "uncool" by the upcoming younger crowd. I felt like there was an angle here that I can capitalize on : taking an existing niche and giving it a different spin. There is a very small % of competitors who are already doing what I'm planning, however, and they're quite well-established. But instead of competing with those directly (which is suicide), I'll take what they're doing, and niche down even further.

3) To learn from my mistake in 1) above (taking far too long to launch), I've made this new hustle as minimally viable (MVP) as possible. I started executing this in late Aug. It's early Dec now. About 3.5 months. Products are ready and in warehouse. The packaging lead time is pretty long (will be ready in early Jan). Factoring in the shipping etc, this should be ready to go live in late Jan 2020.
I've kept the no. of things that could go wrong to as low as possible so I can launch fast.

4) There was this execution philosophy called "Ready, Fire, Aim". I wished I had followed this thinking back then. That said, in future, I still hope to go back to the hustle mentioned in 1) as a side-gig to fund my main current hustle once it's launched, since I've found a way to drastically reduce the time needed to execute it.

5) For my current hustle, I've more or less identified my target market, including age range, likes/dislikes, ethnicity, country etc. The problem though, is that they're fragmented everywhere, so my plan is to cast as broad a net as I can initially to reel them into one place.
Get them into my email list to nurture them over time via content and slowly sell to them.

My main outreach will be :

a) FB/IG post ads to target not too specifically ---> they land on my site ---> lead magnet : 40% discount for first-time buyers in exchange for email address ---> if they abandon cart, I'll send them email to remind them of the 40% discount code that can use. To create sense of urgency, I'll let the code expire in 48 hours.​
b) FB Click to Messenger ads on FB site itself ---> lead magnet : 40% discount in exchange for giving me email in Messenger chat popup ---> discount code expires in 48 hours ---> drive them to my site ---> if they abandon-browsing or abandon-cart, they'll get pop-ups in Messenger for follow-ups.​
c) FB ads that specifically target people who are working as journalists (not sure if this can still be done in 2019/2020) : My idea is to get my product in front of their eyes. Since it's eye-catching and marketed differently than most of my rivals, who knows? They might want to do a story on it. Even if just ONE journalist does an article on it, BOOM. Sooner or later, the news sites will syndicate this and it'll start appearing more and more (notice how after a product appears in one news publication, other news start to catch on it? LOL)​
c) Pinterest ads : I saw an article from statista.com yesterday which says that among all the social platforms, Pinterest has 47% of its audience going there for shopping inspiration and ideas, compared to below 20% for FB and IG. This says a lot.​
d) Currently building a following on IG from scratch so I can post a mix of niche-related memes and in future, product announcements to build an audience. My ultimate intention is to drive all these into my newsletter list. Building new accounts on IG nowadays is very hard. Pre-2017, you can post your grandma's pajamas or the shitty lunch you ate, and you can easily get 50 - 100+ Likes and 5+ comments for an account with less than 200 followers.​
Anyway, my new account is slowly getting some traction (the Likes in my latest post are more than my no. of followers lol) ; I may drive IG ads there to boost social proof soon.​
One note regarding using Instagram bots (I'm not using any now) : stay away from them. They're very good in the past, but not worth the cost nowadays. Instagram's algorithm went on steroids mode sometime in June this year, and a lot of botting services became less effective. Using bots on a meme page is ok, using them on a brand/company page is not : it's like walking on a tightrope 7 miles above ground-level. If IG suspends your account, you're F*cked. The amount of $$$ spend on botting services can be used on either giveaways or IG engagement ads.​
e) Influenster.com : I'm thinking of signing up with them to get reviews fast. Not sure how much it costs to join them, but seems all the brands that sign up with them are getting above 200 reviews. Out of these reviews, you can cherry pick the good ones and repost them on social media and website to boost social proof even more. This is to fix the "Never-heard-of-this-new-brand-before-so-it-must-be-bad" mentality.​
f) Influencers : I've identified a few in my niche, and a few on youtube.​

6) Before I end this post, I want to share something REALLY SHITTY which made me lose US$2,000.
This amount is peanuts to you if you're rich, but that's like 3 months worth of my savings from my day job. It blew a very big hole in my already low bank account. This caused a lot of pain, so......

During the product sourcing phase of this new hustle, I found my supplier in Europe.
Because I wanted to store everything in the US for easy shipping, I had to ship the products from Europe and the packaging from China, all to the US to be assembled by the fulfillment centre there.

From Excel calculations, I realized the upfront costs for these (especially shipping and kitting), is going to be high. So, I tried to be a smart a$$, and decided to ship EVERYTHING to a fulfillment company I found in China. In other words, everything will be sourced, assembled and shipped from China once customers order.

When you hear 'China', maybe you would think 'uh-oh, he's going to get F*cked'.
Well, you're right.

So, la la la, I got the products, accessories, packaging....everything done. Beautiful. Ready to launch in 1 Dec 2019.

Then I realized the Chinese fulfilment centre had no way to integrate properly with my WooCommerce site despite their claims. But that's not all : I came across highly negative reviews which I didn't discover previously while researching these guys. The more I read, the more I realized I need to run away. FAST.

Sure, they were on Skype, but depending on their "mood", they were sometimes very responsive and sometimes just give a one word reply. I can't afford to take any chances, because if you're a new company and your first few customer orders are f*cked up, words will spread around fast.

So, I decided to look at other fulfilment centres in China, and ship the goods there.
That's when I realize one more problem : for my particular product category, most fulfilment centres ARE NOT ALLOWED to ship it out of China due to their regulatory laws. I thought with China, they would be more lax on things.

F*ck.

So, after realizing all the insane **** that's going on there, I contacted the US branch of my supplier, and re-order the stuff, and ship to my fulfilment centre there. Only the packaging will be from China. And, guess what, after re-calculating the costs, my profit margin per product is actually ~20% higher when all these are done in the US. Shipping cost to customers is also not that much higher, and it arrives way faster too.
ePacket/China Post/China Direct Line shipping from China to US/EU can take weeks (side note: I sometimes read online about Americans complaining about USPS and how it sucks so hard, but trust me, as a non-US citizen, I LOVE USPS. All my experiences with them has been very good. If you think USPS sucks, wait till you see the rest of the world).

I still see lots of potential in China, however.

7) My job contract is ending next year in Jan. If they decide not to renew it, I'll be short on funds, so I'll need to pause and continue the hustle again after I find a new job. Hope that doesn't happen though.
Fail hard, fail fast.
 

sparechange

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What was your product that tanked? I think you were in the same niche as me (pet products)
 

PizzaOnTheRoof

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Life Lesson - Forgiveness : I often have violent fantasies of taking revenge on folks who were nasty to me (e.g: mocking/belittling me). 2 days ago, on my bus trip home at night, I realised such thoughts waste tons of energy and damages my health. On that bus trip, I silently called out the names of all the people I used to hate, one by one, and swore to forgive all of them. I realised that regardless of how much I want them to suffer, it doesn't affect them one bit. In fact, many are happily married with kids and living a good life, so why should I continue to let them have control over me? LOL I wanna be free of hatred.
As long as these kinds of people are in your thoughts, they’re still winning.

“The best revenge is massive success.” -Frank Sinatra
 
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Xeon

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What a time to be launching, in the midst of the coronavirus! My 2nd attempt. Total time took to bring this out to the world is about 7 months. Could have been 5 months if I didn't made that costly false start in the chinese warehouse.
I've kept the product quantities and overhead costs low so that the burn rate can be sustained for a longer time.

My next steps:

Figure out how to get traffic. I'm thinking of Pinterest, FB feed ads (carpet bombing), and FB Messenger ads (Click-to-Messenger > Landing page > Lead quiz > collect email > let user share their results on their social for additional traffic back to my site, hopefully). The last one is the strategy I'm pinning most of my hopes on.

I have an idea of my target audience (gender, age interests etc.), but because this is a mass-market sort of product (unlike niche stuff such as chainsaws), it's a bit vague as to how to reach them.

Will post updates on the ads soon. I really really suck at FB ads.
 

Vadim26

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What a time to be launching, in the midst of the coronavirus! My 2nd attempt. Total time took to bring this out to the world is about 7 months. Could have been 5 months if I didn't made that costly false start in the chinese warehouse.
I've kept the product quantities and overhead costs low so that the burn rate can be sustained for a longer time.

My next steps:

Figure out how to get traffic. I'm thinking of Pinterest, FB feed ads (carpet bombing), and FB Messenger ads (Click-to-Messenger > Landing page > Lead quiz > collect email > let user share their results on their social for additional traffic back to my site, hopefully). The last one is the strategy I'm pinning most of my hopes on.

I have an idea of my target audience (gender, age interests etc.), but because this is a mass-market sort of product (unlike niche stuff such as chainsaws), it's a bit vague as to how to reach them.

Will post updates on the ads soon. I really really suck at FB ads.

Let’s get it!

Was reading your first story,

Excited to hear your updates on the 2nd journey.

Check out “AdEspresso” blog to learn more about FB ads, it’s the best resource out there in my opinion.
 

Xeon

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During the past 3 days, I ran some FB and Pinterest ads to test things.

Below are results from the Pinterest ads. I'm using different ad creatives.

30916

Below are results from the FB ads:

30917

(as you can see, Pinterest ads are cheap as F*ck).

In the FB ads screenshot above, the 2nd row is the lead quiz ad (Ad > Landing page > Fun Quiz > Collect Emails > Reveal results). Despite the clicks, I only got 4 email sign-ups though. It's surprising, considering that the quiz is dog-related (which is a crowd-pleaser) and funny. I checked out my Hotjar recordings, and most people seems to click the 'Skip this' button to go straight to the Quiz results page without inputting their email.

I also checked my MailCheat(Chimp) abandonment cart email campaigns : no emails got sent out, which means no one even added any items to the cart.

That said, the lead quiz method, despite tanking, actually looks promising. I will try to figure out how to improve it, and probably outsource this in the near future.

Looking at the figures above this morning, I decided to stop the ads. Either there is no demand for this product, or I'm targetting the Audience wrongly, in which case, it's time to pull out and cut losses before I go too deep. I then took a cold hard look at my competitors, and realized some things:

1) There are a few very big players in the market and these guys are dominating majority of the sales

2) Among these big players, most of them are VERY AGGRESSIVE in running discounts and sales. I subscribed to their email newsletters, and every single F*cking day, they're running 20% Off, and some times, even Buy 1 Get 1 Free. It feels like a very cut-throat industry with little money to be made.
It feels like, without running discounts constantly, these guys can't survive.

3) Looking at the customer acquisition costs, I feel that it's really hard for me as a small player to survive long term - profit margin in terms of $ is low, meaning that there's barely any room for maneuvering. To succeed in this, I would need to push MASSIVE volumes, something which is beyond me.

4) The target audience is highly fragmented and I've no idea how to reach them. Customer loyalty among these brands is very poor : from my snooping around the Reddit forums, as well as social media, the customers of this industry switch brands very often and inter-changeably (kinda like toilet rolls or tissue wipes).

5) New unheard-of company selling 'Want' category products to cold audiences = disaster

Anyway, because I started this 2nd project with the idea of a built-in brand story, the product doesn't matter that much. My website and everything will stay intact. I've just come across another product that fits in with my brand story, and have purchased samples, waiting for it to arrive in ~14 days time. The margins for this is a lot higher (~$28 / product), and I can actually see myself cross-selling and upselling related accessories for this one product.

In the meantime, and over the next few weeks and months, I'll continue with my current content strategy to build an audience and network with Instagram and TikTok influencers (YEAH, now I can see clearly how to reach the target audience!).

#whateverittakes
 
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Last edited:

sparechange

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Stand outside with a big sign in the crowded part of a major city and hand out samples. Might be worth a go.

There's a famous guy here in Van that did a huge publicity stunt where he got customers to stand outside in the rain naked for a free product. It's hilarious how silly ideas can blow up. Press got involved and everything.
 

sparechange

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Door to door knocking is a good way to get the message out aswell, just be friendly and smiley making a quick offer in under 10 seconds. Worked for me

If they dont buy egg their house! (just kidding)
 

rpeck90

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Stand outside with a big sign in the crowded part of a major city and hand out samples. Might be worth a go.

There's a famous guy here in Van that did a huge publicity stunt where he got customers to stand outside in the rain naked for a free product. It's hilarious how silly ideas can blow up. Press got involved and everything.
Bearing in mind he lives in Singapore.

During the past 3 days, I ran some FB and Pinterest ads to test things.

Below are results from the Pinterest ads. I'm using different ad creatives.

View attachment 30916

Below are results from the FB ads:

View attachment 30917

(as you can see, Pinterest ads are cheap as F*ck).

In the FB ads screenshot above, the 2nd row is the lead quiz ad (Ad > Landing page > Fun Quiz > Collect Emails > Reveal results). Despite the clicks, I only got 4 email sign-ups though. It's surprising, considering that the quiz is dog-related (which is a crowd-pleaser) and funny. I checked out my Hotjar recordings, and most people seems to click the 'Skip this' button to go straight to the Quiz results page without inputting their email.

I also checked my MailCheat(Chimp) abandonment cart email campaigns : no emails got sent out, which means no one even added any items to the cart.

That said, the lead quiz method, despite tanking, actually looks promising. I will try to figure out how to improve it, and probably outsource this in the near future.

Looking at the figures above this morning, I decided to stop the ads. Either there is no demand for this product, or I'm targetting the Audience wrongly, in which case, it's time to pull out and cut losses before I go too deep. I then took a cold hard look at my competitors, and realized some things:

1) There are a few very big players in the market and these guys are dominating majority of the sales

2) Among these big players, most of them are VERY AGGRESSIVE in running discounts and sales. I subscribed to their email newsletters, and every single F*cking day, they're running 20% Off, and some times, even Buy 1 Get 1 Free. It feels like a very cut-throat industry with little money to be made.
It feels like, without running discounts constantly, these guys can't survive.

3) Looking at the customer acquisition costs, I feel that it's really hard for me as a small player to survive long term - profit margin in terms of $ is low, meaning that there's barely any room for maneuvering. To succeed in this, I would need to push MASSIVE volumes, something which is beyond me.

4) The target audience is highly fragmented and I've no idea how to reach them. Customer loyalty among these brands is very poor : from my snooping around the Reddit forums, as well as social media, the customers of this industry switch brands very often and inter-changeably (kinda like toilet rolls or tissue wipes).

5) New unheard-of company selling 'Want' category products to cold audiences = disaster

Anyway, because I started this 2nd project with the idea of a built-in brand story, the product doesn't matter that much. My website and everything will stay intact. I've just come across another product that fits in with my brand story, and have purchased samples, waiting for it to arrive in ~14 days time. The margins for this is a lot higher (~$28 / product), and I can actually see myself cross-selling and upselling related accessories for this one product.

In the meantime, and over the next few weeks and months, I'll continue with my current content strategy to build an audience and network with Instagram and TikTok influencers (YEAH, now I can see clearly how to reach the target audience!).

#whateverittakes

KEEP GOING. Do NOT stop now - you already made significant progress, if the results aren't sufficient, you just need to adjust and keep moving forward. It's truly inspiring to see how far you've come, and are continuing to push. You're on the cusp of something great and it's incredible to see the action you're continuing to take.
 
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Xeon

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how is the progress going?

Launching my 3rd hustle this week (the other two tanked). I'll update again once I get my first sale.....
 

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