Journey to create passive income while in school

Hey all,

So I'm currently a senior in college studying computer science and I've had previous times where I've made a solid amount of money online ($100+ per day) but I never really kept up with it or the niche died off. I'm currently making an average of about $35 per day but I won't disclose what that is (pretty competitive and not much traffic)

The goal of this journey is to keep me on track and constantly posting about my progress.
I want to hit $100+ per day again and then take it from there.

What I will be doing:

I will be dropshipping items from AliExpress
Note: I have no experience with this so you guys will be seeing some struggling, haha.

How will I be marketing?:

Facebook Ads
Instagram Posts
Pinterest Posts
Instagram Shoutouts

Thanks for reading this far

good luck!

What I'm going to be doing today:

Creating Pinterest Account + Instagram Account
I'm going to let them sit for a little while before I begin promoting them
I might send some fake followers and likes to them to build up their reputation this week.

Apart from that I'm going to get my website to a point where I am ready to begin posting products tomorrow.
This will be things such as figuring out my product from AliExpress and finding good images for the site.

That green is really hard to read if you like me, have the white theme selected.

Aliexpress dropshipping, im starting to wonder if this will not get over saturated within the next 2 years, thousands of people doing this and it grows with thousands every year

Billy_Batts said:

That green is really hard to read if you like me, have the white theme selected.

Aliexpress dropshipping, im starting to wonder if this will not get over saturated within the next 2 years, thousands of people doing this and it grows with thousands every year

Click to expand...

Let me know if the coloring is better for you.
I don't think that having the mindset that people will oversaturate a niche is the best way to look at it.
If you look at internet marketing with this mindset then you'll never really make money because most things that you'll make money from, there will be hundreds or thousands of other people doing.

It's a matter of putting your own unique twist to it.

Yildiz said:

Let me know if the coloring is better for you.
I don't think that having the mindset that people will oversaturate a niche is the best way to look at it.
If you look at internet marketing with this mindset then you'll never really make money because most things that you'll make money from, there will be hundreds or thousands of other people doing.

It's a matter of putting your own unique twist to it.

Click to expand...

Coloring is better for me now.. I am using white theme too.

I agree that the popularity of dropshipping is skyrocketing. Besides all the usual chatter about it, Shopify themselves are pushing it big time by collaborating with the likes of Tecademics. I look at it in a few different ways - first I completely agree that you have to put a twist on it, test, refine and continually monitor to get the best results. It is certainly not the "set it and forget it" type of endeavor. Secondly, so many people start this type of thing and never follow through or they get to the point of reading about it and get overwhelmed by shipping timelines, return policies, FB ads and payment processors. Lastly as part of niche and keyword research I think you have to be diligent about making sure that your particular niche is not either saturated or completely dominated by one player. If that is the case you may be done before you even start.

So with that word vomit out of the way -- I am curious if you already had a niche in mind or did you have to do research to reveal a niche that you felt you could be competitive in? I have an idea floating around in my head but I have yet to do all the research to see if I should even bother. I suffer from idea overload or analysis paralysis most of the time

Anyways.. good luck! I will be following along.

Yildiz said:

Let me know if the coloring is better for you.
I don't think that having the mindset that people will oversaturate a niche is the best way to look at it.
If you look at internet marketing with this mindset then you'll never really make money because most things that you'll make money from, there will be hundreds or thousands of other people doing.

It's a matter of putting your own unique twist to it.

Click to expand...

Yes, thanks on my behalf and anyone else that uses the white theme.

You are probably right, my problem always is that I always look at it too realistically and weight every option. I've been doing the last couple weeks a LOT of research into a niche of mine and found out although much competition, they are all retailers.

I have also tracked down many websites that are doing aliexpress dropshipping and most of them suck, their fb pages suck but yet they making money. I am a beast when it comes to promoting and marketing but still some thoughts hold me back, like:

More and more people know about aliexpress, especially when your delivery times are so long so why after knowing that would they still visit your site as they can get it way cheaper themselves? Also, unless there comes a new trend you pick up as one of the first you will have probably a lot of competition and you will see idiots even undercutting you.

Talk some positive things to me man convince me to go through with it.

Motherdex said:

Shopify themselves are pushing it big time by collaborating with the likes of Tecademics. I suffer from idea overload or analysis paralysis most of the time

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Yes, I hate those people, like any other big company, they don't care about people even though people are making them money, it's much like the government

Motherdex said:

I suffer from idea overload or analysis paralysis most of the time

Click to expand...

I got this problem also

Motherdex said:

I am curious if you already had a niche in mind or did you have to do research to reveal a niche that you felt you could be competitive in?

Click to expand...

Hey, although I would love to tell you my niche I think that it's better to just be broad about it.
As long as you have something that people can be passionate about or can attract attention then you should be solid.
With that in mind don't take anything I say as being solid since I'm just starting in eCommerce

What I did today:

1. Created Website w/ Marketable Name
This isn't keyword related since I won't be doing seo, atleast at first
2. Added a slider and a basic professional setup for the website.
3. Created Pinterest and Instagram Accounts
4. Created Logo and Icons for Website Branding

What I'll be doing tomorrow:

1. Upload 20 Products - I think im going to buy WooImporter to make this quicker
2. Begin uploading non-product related content to Instagram and Pinterest
3. Add both of these accounts to Pinblaster and FollowLiker to begin getting followers
4. Add 2 Non Blog Related Viral Content Blog Posts to Website
5. Buy SSL Certificate for website

Goodluck Yildiz
I do dropshipping from ali as well.
Where you sell it?

Good luck with woo, although woo itself is free it is going to cost you a LOT to set things up, wooimportee is just one of many plugins you are going to need.

Good luck OP

sparkspark said:

Goodluck Yildiz
I do dropshipping from ali as well.
Where you sell it?

Click to expand...

I'm going to be selling on my own website.

Billy_Batts said:

Good luck with woo, although woo itself is free it is going to cost you a LOT to set things up, wooimportee is just one of many plugins you are going to need.

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Not really man, I'm pretty much all set up at this point. Just bought the SSL for the site and everything else seems to be running smoothly.

Seems like everyone is using shopify these days, good luck with WP. Its a good platform and I use it as well instead of Shopify.

I'll be honest, shopify is just so easy and nice and that's why people use it.
However, I don't really mind using Wordpress since I'm a programmer by trade and can pretty much customize anything.

What plugin you using for the import of aliexpress

WooImporter

Nice journey. Looking forward to watching you succeed.

Good luck bro