Journey to Overcoming Adversity, Ignoring the Naysayers and Achieving Ultimate Freedom

Hello again BHW! It's been quite some time since I have been here. I lost sight of the end goal and caught myself drifting once again without any major goals or ambitions. I have recently started a new venture, but even just soon after caught myself once again spiralling further away from success. The past week or so I have lost sight of the goal once again, and that is one reason I have to decided to once more begin documenting my journey to freedom.

Some of you may recall my previous journeys. Some may even consider those journeys failures. I myself consider them hard earned wisdom. Looking back now, knowing what I know now, if I would have pushed myself beyond the fear of failure and beyond the self-doubt, all of my previous ventures held a strong chance for success. This journey aims to use the wisdom I have gained from previous ventures to create a real, sustainable business that I will continue to work toward each and every day.

There are a couple of reasons why I have ultimately decided to create another journey. The first and foremost is to once again surround myself with like-minded individuals who also strive to achieve greatness. This helps the mind to continue pushing further and opens up the possibility of getting some advice from others in similar situations. The second reason is so that I can stay on track with my goals. I need a place where I can easily go back and see my failures and successes in order to adjust in the future.

Alright, so enough of that, now let's focus on what I am doing right now. I am currently building a dropshipping business: buying from large retail merchants and selling to people on eBay with a markup large enough to earn a profit. I really just started this business about a month ago. Currently my sales this month are at $1215, although I am still waiting payment for some of those sales. Currently I have shipped a total of 4 products. I would like to scale this up, but due to eBay's selling limits I am forced to start small, which probably isn't a bad idea anyway while I learn the ropes. I have listed many different SKUs so far, but am in the process of getting rid of what doesn't sell FAST. Right now I have only 9 SKUs listed, 3 of which I know sell for sure. My plan is to find products that sell at least 1-2 times per week and make a solid profit of $10+.

I also have another issue I am currently facing: I am Canadian. That may not seem like an issue, but recently I have discovered some hidden fees that come along with transferring USD to CAD and vice-versa. In most cases, most banks charge 2.5%. What this means for me is that when I purchase the item to ship in CAD, which gets converted to USD by my bank, I get charged 2.5%. But then here's the kicker, once I am able to transfer my Paypal funds to my bank, I am going back from USD to CAD for ANOTHER 2.5%. Right now that means I am losing about $3-5 per order, which is close to 50% of my profit. That really hurts when the profit margins are already so razor thin.

To counteract this, I have applied for an Amazon credit card which has no fx fees and also gives 1% cash back, thus eliminating a little more than half the issue. The other issue is apparently unavoidable unless I open a USD account with RBC, since they actually process funds through a US bank. I could sell my items in CAD, but it would most likely deter 99% of the buyers since they are all located in the US and might think the item is coming from Canada. Right now I am thinking it might not be a major issue however, since USD is higher than CAD, I should theoretically still be making back more than the 2.5%. I will have to look at the math more closely another time.

So now where am I going with all of this? First of all I am hoping that eBay will up my selling limits for next month. That will allow my to scale quickly. Over the next few days I will be spending a considerable amount of time sourcing items that sell with good profits. In the months to come I aim to scale this through the roof, and hiring someone to deal with shipping the items. It might also be able to be automated. The end game is freedom to travel. This Summer I want to learn how to sail, and hopefully have the capital to buy a sailboat. I am not sure if I can learn all I need to know in one Summer but time will tell. Hopefully next Winter or the Winter after that I will be able to sail to the Caribbean for a few weeks. That's the goal. Note that I did not say dream. Believing in yourself is key.

To sum up:
-Dropshipping from large merchants to eBay
-Already making a few sales
-Dealing with fx fees
-Currently sourcing items
-Hoping I can scale next month
-Goal is to achieve freedom and to travel

I guess that sums up this post. If there are any questions please feel free to ask.

Cheers,
xxf8xx

Well good luck in your endeavors. You said you are making a $10 profit and you sold 4 products last month which means you are only made $40 profit and out of which half paypal and bank transfers kept? Shouldnt you get more profit on a product with a few hundred dollars price as you said " I really just started this business about a month ago. Currently my sales this month are at $1215, although I am still waiting payment for some of those sales. Currently I have shipped a total of 4 products"

One way to keep you focused is to write down your main goal on a piece of paper or somewhere in your phone. Read it every single morning when you wake up and before you sleep. This one goal should be all you focus on. This will keep your laser focused and avoid all the deviations you've made in the past.

I used to do the same thing as yourself. I would start a project and quickly become distracted by something else and over and over again. This would result in me not achieving anything in particular.

I then started looking at people who achieved success, goal setting and other things. What I would do was write down all my goals that I wanted to achieve. Then I would prioritise them by ranking them from 1 to whatever. Then you focus on only those that are absolutely crucial to your success.

This is will not help directly with your business but it should help you on your journey.

Good luck

nomansohail said:

Well good luck in your endeavors. You said you are making a $10 profit and you sold 4 products last month which means you are only made $40 profit and out of which half paypal and bank transfers kept? Shouldnt you get more profit on a product with a few hundred dollars price as you said " I really just started this business about a month ago. Currently my sales this month are at $1215, although I am still waiting payment for some of those sales. Currently I have shipped a total of 4 products"

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My items are currently priced between $100 and $200. Unfortunately it's hard to price something high enough to make more profit because eBay takes 10% and then Paypal takes about 3% of the sale as well. So basically when I price my items I multiply the price by 1.13 and then add 10. From there, if the item is selling I plan to slowly increase the price to maximize profits. Also note that I have $1215 in sales although I am still awaiting payment for $521. So I have shipped 4 items and have received a total of $693.

Hopefully this clears everything up.

refexpert said:

One way to keep you focused is to write down your main goal on a piece of paper or somewhere in your phone. Read it every single morning when you wake up and before you sleep. This one goal should be all you focus on. This will keep your laser focused and avoid all the deviations you've made in the past.

I used to do the same thing as yourself. I would start a project and quickly become distracted by something else and over and over again. This would result in me not achieving anything in particular.

I then started looking at people who achieved success, goal setting and other things. What I would do was write down all my goals that I wanted to achieve. Then I would prioritise them by ranking them from 1 to whatever. Then you focus on only those that are absolutely crucial to your success.

This is will not help directly with your business but it should help you on your journey.

Good luck

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Absolutely. I'm assuming you have read Think and Grow Rich. I've actually done this before and will be doing it again. Some may say I am obsessed with my goals, and I want them to be right. I want to obsess over achieving my goals.

I've also read a book recently called Before Happiness, which deals with changing our minds to be happy in order to be productive. The author demonstrates a method called the X-Spot. Basically, it is when marathon runners see the finish line. Despite how tired they are, they actually run faster than they have through the entire race. The author Shawn Achor explains that we need to spot our own X-Spots. An easy way to do this everyday is to keep a list of things we need to do, writing down even things we know we are already going to do and crossing them off right away. I myself will write make breakfast, etc... Once we can visually see we are ~70% done our list, our brain sees the X-Spot and works extra hard to finish everything on the list.

I am also currently reading The Motivation Manifesto and so far I am very impressed. Highly recommend it.

Yep. Read think and grow rich. If you haven't done so already I would advise you to read two books by tony robbins. 'Unlimited power' and 'awaken the giant within'. Great books for achieving success among other things such as creating great changes in your life.

Great news! Just as I listed a new item that would have maxed my selling limit, my limit got increased from $5000 to $8000! I have a few more items to list and then I'll have to continue sourcing. So far I have found 6 new items to list today and am working on getting them all up right now. I don't want to get in the trap of only doing the fun part (sourcing) and then failing to follow through with the tedious part (listing).

One of the items I will be listing is selling every 4-7 days or so and will net me a $45 profit! Considering it only takes me about 10 minutes to fulfill an order, I would say that's pretty awesome. The rest of the items will net me $10-20.

"The best time to plant an oak tree was 50 years ago.The second best time is now." Screw the Naysayers and keep kicking ass.

Just a quick update. Haven't had any new sales yet but I have managed to list 14 new SKUs in the past couple days. It takes me about 15-20 minutes to list each one. Today I would like to max out my selling limits by listing as many new SKUs as possible.

Aside from that, I am really trying to tighten up on achieving not only my business goals, but other goals as well. I am trying to eat a strict paleo diet and avoid alcohol as much as possible, but have kind of fallen off track the past week. Luckily I have taken notice early enough and I am able to go right back on track starting today.

Also, I thought I would post a screenshot because well, everyone likes a good screenshot!

Just realized one of my items I have listed is out of stock on the merchant's site. I knew stock could be an issue going into this, and I'm sure a little customer service will go a long way to preventing neg feedback in the case I am unable to fulfil an order, however, I plan on writing up a php script to check stock and update my listing if necessary. I'll just run this baby on a cron job every 10 minutes or something and I should be good to go. Haven't done much php in a while so it could take some time but I'm sure it will be worth it.

Just dropping in to say that I made two sales so far today! Woo! Unfortunately though, one of the items was out of stock so I had to refund the buyer. I've sent the buyer an apology along with it and am hoping I do not receive any neg feedback. The other sale was from an item I listed yesterday! Pretty awesome to see that yesterday's work is already paying off. I netted about $20USD from the sale which is pretty sweet.

EDIT: So apparently I can't use the eBay API until 90 days after my first sale and 10 positive selling feedback. Just going to have to update stock manually for now I guess.

Just checking in real quick. Not really much to do at this point. I could list a few more products but I would like to keep the last of my limit open for SKUs that sell more than once. Not really sure what else I can do at this point. I will give eBay a call soon to see if they can raise my limits higher.

Made another sale yesterday, but unfortunately was out of stock again. Had to cancel the order. In light of this I decided to start working on a script that will notify me when items are out of stock. I won't be able to use the eBay API to auto change my stock yet, but at least I will know when to change it manually.

Today I am going to focus on swapping out old SKUs for new ones. Whatever isn't selling at the moment will be set to 0 stock, and will be set back to in stock once my limits are higher. I'm hoping that today I will be able to introduce 4-5 new SKUs and also get some work done on the script. Once I have access to the eBay API, the script will also be able to stock my items again once the item comes back in stock on the merchant's end. I want to make this process as automated as possible in order to focus on listing.

That's all to report for now.

Cheers,
xxf8xx

Well that was pretty crazy! Just sold one of the items I listed like a half an hour ago. $20USD profit on this one. Relisted it for sale and will hopefully sell more soon!

Nice going bro, not sure why this thread hasn't got many replies, Good luck, looking great so far.

subscribing.

Brad100 said:

Nice going bro, not sure why this thread hasn't got many replies, Good luck, looking great so far.

subscribing.

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Thanks for the kind words! Hope to be pushing this business really far, really fast.

Same goals, different journeys. Keep it up dude! Though, I actually went for social networks to be able to travel, work and live wherever I would love to. You gonna pay people later on or what?

blazekdotm said:

Same goals, different journeys. Keep it up dude! Though, I actually went for social networks to be able to travel, work and live wherever I would love to. You gonna pay people later on or what?

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Not too sure what I will end up doing. The plan is to automate the shipping process so that I do not have to lift a finger, but even if I cannot do that, I don't mind spending 1-2 hours a day on processing orders and customer service. Keep in mind also that eBay isn't my end all be all money maker. I am an entrepreneur at heart and will continue finding new revenue streams that may be easier to maintain. I definitely plan on moving back into apps once I have the required capital, for starters.


Today is a day of getting shit done. TAKING ACTION. I decided I really needed to call eBay and try to persuade them to up my selling limits. I talked to 3 people, the third of which was speaking to the supervisor. I was SO CLOSE but unfortunately there was nothing they could do because of the system auto upping my sales shortly ago. They were very nice and made notes on my account about everything and I will be able to up my limits on March 17th.

I also asked about getting into the eBay API. No one really knew what I was talking about but they linked me to the developers site. Good news is I signed up and made a test call to update stock and price and BAM IT WORKED! This means I can now work on a full fledged stock checker and price updater app. I am very happy about this. One more step closer to full automation.

Today I want to swap out a few more SKUs since making the moola is the most important thing, but I have a feeling I will be staying awake very late tonight to work on this script.

This is exciting times! This script will solve so many issues! I also cannot wait for my limits to get increased. I was told they usually do between 30-100% increases, but that I could expect 75%. I'm definitely going to try to persuade them on the 17th to go the full 100% or higher though, which would mean I could list/sell $16k. Then hopefully after another 30 days I can double that again.

One last thing I am excited about is that my 21 day Paypal hold will be GONE very soon! In about 20 days or so I will be receiving my money immediately when a buyer pays, which means I do no have to use a credit card anymore. Awesome stuff.

Get ready BHW, because this is going to be one incredible journey. Such early success can only be a small reflection of what is coming in the months to come. 2015 is the year for success! I urge you all to jump into the water of success with me. Stop asking questions and start TAKING ACTION. There is no need to ask about water temperature, optimal dive direction or how big the waves are. Jump in or else risk never taking the plunge at all. Far too many people on this forum ask so many questions that they are BOUND to find something to stop them. We learn best from our actions so go ahead and dive on in.

Cheers,
xxf8xx

Good luck on your journal! It's different than the other journeys here and it would be interesting to see how far you can go!

goodluck xxf8xx good to see you are back on track. I remember the days you are using MVB to blast videos on YT

karupoiss said:

Good luck on your journal! It's different than the other journeys here and it would be interesting to see how far you can go!

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Thanks! I will definitely be taking this beyond limitations.

AmateRasu said:

goodluck xxf8xx good to see you are back on track. I remember the days you are using MVB to blast videos on YT

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Nice to see you AmateRasu! Those were some good days. Almost exactly a year ago I was in BC blasting videos and now I am in Nova Scotia, the other end of Canada, starting another venture. Crazy where time takes us!


The stock checking script is COMPLETE! My script is now running on autopilot once every hour to update my eBay stock. The cool thing is that now I just set my stock to 1, since if it gets sold it will get reset back to 1 again the next hour. This allows me to free up some of my limit to add more SKUs. I already noticed that a couple items came back in stock over night because my limit went from $2400 to $2000. Pretty awesome to see it's already doing it's job.

Today I want to try and use up $1000 of that limit, possibly more. Just not sure how much wiggle room I should leave. On one end I'm leaning toward listing as many SKUs as possible just to know what sells, but on the other end I would like room to sell some SKUs multiple times.