Every three months, I crunch my business's figures, work out what's wrong, what's right, and, basically think out loud to anyone who'll listen. And this time, that's you! Thank you so much! I started writing this in Bangkok.
I still don't know if it's OK to publish stuff on Steemit that I've already published on my blog but here we go.
This quarter has been, on the face of it, quite eventful. These last three months, I have:
- Launched three courses
- Wasted a lot of money on FBA and given up on a product
- And, I think, finally did what I've always wanted: start a viable side business that is totally separate from my brand
Let's start with my "successes". Don't worry, you'll also get the dirty details of my horrendous failures.
Merch by Amazon success!
I love thee Merch By Amazon. Why do I love thee Merch By Amazon?
Well, compare it to two years of Amazon FBA pain: sourcing products, paying upfront for inventory, organizing transportation, spending a fortune on ads and, ultimately, loosing money despite selling thousands of products.
With Merch By Amazon, I identify a niche, design a t-shirt, upload a PNG ... And. That. Is. It. Amazon does everything else and I sit back and watch the royalties come in.
Bringing in $120 a week, doesn't sound great. But I've only just started. I never spend more that an hour a day on it. It's got potential: I conservatively predict that this little side business will be bringing in over $1000 a month by the end of the year.
That's over $1000 a month, pure profit, while spending less than an hour a day. Who knows where this will be this time next year!
The only blot on the horizon is Amazon's trigger-happy habit of banning accounts. I've had nearly 10 rejections of designs that have fallen foul of their strict content policy.
If you want to know more about Merch By Amazon:
- how to make sure you get accepted straightway
- how to identify profitable niches quickly
- and how to make sure you don't get your account banned
and how to do it right, you should take my brand new course: Merch by Amazon: An Introduction to Selling Print On Demand T-Shirts.
And, talking of courses ...
More course launch success!
Regular readers will know that selling courses has been an important part of my business for a long time. This quarter I launched three courses:
- WordPress Security 2017: Secure & Lock Down Your Site Against Hackers!
- The Complete Steemit Course: Earn Cryptocurrency For Free (Free Course)
- Merch by Amazon: An Introduction to Selling Print On Demand T-Shirts
For along time, Udemy was my main way of selling courses. This was both good and bad.
Udemy was good for me because it brought in nice monthly revenues and expanded my audience. It was bad because it got me in the habit of accepting low prices for my courses and it made me over-reliant on one platform for passive income.
Now I sell the premium versions of my courses on my site and "watered down" or lite versions on Udemy. My latest course on Merch By Amazon is doing well on both platforms.
I'm delighted to say that I'm now making as much from my own Teachable school as I am from Udemy.
This last month, for some reason, I received really good organic sales from my autoresponder emails. As a result I'm now running Facebook ads retargeting my website's visitors to get them to join the mailing list.
It's all about the list...
More Amazon FBA pain
Well, we've been here before. I've put a lot of money into my first two products.
My first product sells OK. I used a Viral Launch promo to get it "above the fold" in the results for its main keyword. I failed. It pushed it up to 7th in the rankings, on the third row and therefore just "below the fold". I increased my spend on PPC ads but despite all this there wasn't a reasonable increase in sales to justify continuing. So, the product descended back to the mid-page position it's always been in.
My second product doesn't sell. I'd already done a Viral Launch promo of 100 units which failed to get it off the ground so I blasted it with another Viral Launch promo of 350 units. And, nothing. So I'm discontinuing that product.
It's too early to tell whether my third product will do any good. I've just ordered another 300 units to see how it goes. Fingers crossed on that one.
I've spent nearly two years trying and failing at FBA. I've just crunched the figures – I've actually lost money on it. So where do I go from here? I really don't know but I'm going to keep at it.
Cryptocurrency investing
I invested some money in cryptocurrencies, mostly Ethereum, back in March/April this year. The word "rollercoaster" would be apt to describe the journey.
A lot of the money I invested in March/April started producing amazing returns initially. The price of Ethereum, which I'd bought at $40 soared to the heights of $400 at one point.
This situation was hugely conflicting. I began spending too much time watching the price of Ethereum and Bitcoin, and keeping an eye on Twitter to see what was happening to my investments, and less time doing what an entrepreneur is supposed to do: hustle.
Then the Ethereum price started to falter. To make matters worse, another investment did extremely badly. I lost a lot of money. Even worse, I wrote about it here and other people who'd invested as a result lost money as well.
The situation has calmed down a lot this quarter. I've been buying and selling less, and holding more. I've not being looking at the price so much – although spending too much time on Twitter. This is something I'll be putting right in the next quarter.
I'm firming up an exit strategy in my mind. By the end of the tax year I intend to take out my original investment in crypto.
You can do it!
I get lots of emails from people asking me about business. If you’ve recently sent me an email don’t think I’m talking about you here. I get a lot of emails.
Just recently two or three of the emails really struck me. I’m a lucky guy. But I was in a bad situation over a decade ago. I thought getting a website live was beyond me. Then I managed to create a website. Then I got one visitor. And then another.
I took it slowly. I still do. The goals are small. The affirmations are huge.
You will get there.
Lots of love from LDN! Rob x
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