armur
Regular Member
- Jul 20, 2017
- 460
- 249
Hey fellas! I’ve started 3 journey threads so far and have been I’d say about 50-60% successful with each of them - in terms of targets I set and what I actually managed. This one is somewhat a continuation of all three. Let me summarise:
After quitting my job (good job but long tiresome travel + insane workload made me decide it’s not for me) in 2016, I tried my hand in the Stock Market - learnt quite a lot. Earned decent money, built a bot, tried out Algo Trading, etc. but always felt it wasn’t a long term sustainable source of income. End of 2017, I started this journey thread and set myself three goals:
Over the last 3 years, I’d set all three of my goals in motion and now, in 2021, I’m super proud to say that I’ve completed the first two of the above goals and BHW has been a great enabler in both. Freelancing helped me stay afloat in the early days and as the freelancing hustle started paying off, I had enough spare cash to hire people to work on my affiliate blogs.
Now, I’m at a stage where I don’t actually need the freelancing income anymore. Just my affiliate blogs are generating enough passive income to cover all salaries and there’s a healthy amount left each month as well.
Well, you know what that means, right? Woot! It’s time to invest and move forward to making the big one - Goal Number 3 a reality.
Long Term Goal - Where Am I Now?
I registered and started the e-commerce website towards the end of 2018. It’s been a dropshipping merchandise website till now with vendors printing products like t-shirts, mugs, etc. and fulfilling our orders.
The plan to automate everything and switch to a platform for Artists to upload their creations and earn royalties from it was always there in my mind. I’d dabbled my feet with POD sites like MBA, RB and the likes back in 2016/17 and know how awesome they are. However, it always seemed too big a task to create a platform like that and I’d just been putting it off for later. Then, lockdown happened!
Lockdown
The 2020 lockdown was a great time for me personally.
I usually prefer working alone and the months of alone time enabled me to get my hands dirty with some serious web application development.
By September 2020, it was ready - we’d hit a major milestone. We launched the feature that would enable Artists to sign up and start uploading designs to our website - pretty much like RB, MBA, and other POD sites.
POD Platform
Now, this is huge! We’ve had an in-house designer creating stuff for almost a year and a half and we’d only managed about 1300 designs. Now, in the 4-5 months since switching to a platform for Artists, we’re already nearing 4k unique designs on the website.
That being said, there’s always been one all-important thing lacking about the store - sales!!!
The Journey Begins
My affiliate blogs rank easy peasy - I can say it’s all about great content and providing an extraordinary amount of valuable and relevant information to the reader that makes the blogs rank. However, e-com SEO is a different beast altogether and we hardly rank for a few long tails. They do generate a decent amount of organic orders and I was happy all this while, considering this project was pretty much in the back seat throughout.
However, that certainly won’t do from now. Artists need to see money or they’ll start leaving the platform. I started running Facebook Ads last October and I have to say I’m definitely surprised by the fact that they do work! Well, if the product-market fit is right that is.
Facebook Ads
So Facebook Ads has been a constant these last few months. Sometimes they work well and sometimes not. I’m learning all the time however and that’s what I’m happy about. The sales are still nowhere close to where I’d like them to be though.
So one major part of this journey is going to be Facebook Ads. At least, that’s what I think at the moment - things change and I’ve learned that you can’t always put all your eggs in one basket. I plan to update regularly about what campaigns I’m running, what my budgets are, how they’re performing, everything. Full transparency and accountability - that’s going to be key here.
Fb ads are a lot like taking a bet on the Stock Market, so without accountability and a proper data-driven approach, I might get into gambling mode.
Affiliate Marketing
This is something I’ve been thinking of quite a lot. Heck, I run affiliate blogs and generate 100s of thousands of Rupees in sales for Amazon. What if I had at least a few great websites/passionate bloggers driving targeted traffic to my site?
There are big decisions to be made on this front though.
Well, these are a few questions that need to be answered and decisions that need to be taken. Hopefully, the nice folks here can share their views and experiences and make my calls a little bit easier.
E Commerce SEO
I know this is highly competitive but I do plan to put in some work on this. Who says no to free targeted traffic.
Email Marketing
This is pretty much on autopilot at the moment through Klaviyo but yeah, I need to put some serious thought and effort into this.
Self Fulfilment
Now, this is the big one - we’ve pretty much tried every POD vendor in India and they either lack in quality or their timelines are huge. Indian customers are super spoiled by Amazon with their 1 day / 2 day delivery and that means 7-10 day delivery with POD vendors automatically results in several abandoned orders or angry customers who didn’t read the delivery date on the website or in the emails. It also puts us in a helpless situation with more apologies than thank yous to customers. Aaargh, I hate that.
Diwali 2020 (peak sales season in India similar to Christmas) was a nightmare and we had to cancel or refund almost 30% of our orders.
So going forward, scaling this business will only be possible through self-fulfilment since there aren’t any reliable vendors in India like Printful who can handle huge order loads AND offer quick fulfilment.
So, fulfilment for other websites?
In case we do secure funding and start fulfilment, it’s only natural that we start fulfilling orders for other websites. That is, at least until we hit a point where our orders increase sufficiently to keep the equipment occupied all day long. So a platform for fulfilment (with Shopify integrations, etc.) is also definitely on the cards.
Well, you know what, if that’s more successful than our POD site, maybe we’ll pivot to full-fledged manufacturing and become the next Printful. That does sound nice
The Hustle Begins, Or Rather Continues…
Indeed, it continues. I’ll keep this thread updated with my progress, actual numbers and document my journey. Wish me luck folks!
PS: I really wanted to add a lot of images and gifs to make it an interesting read but it's already 1 am here and I'm feeling super drowsy now. So please excuse the lack of images guys. I'll include them in future posts!
Cheers!
After quitting my job (good job but long tiresome travel + insane workload made me decide it’s not for me) in 2016, I tried my hand in the Stock Market - learnt quite a lot. Earned decent money, built a bot, tried out Algo Trading, etc. but always felt it wasn’t a long term sustainable source of income. End of 2017, I started this journey thread and set myself three goals:
- Short Term - Freelance and earn a sustainable income
- Medium Term - Build an Amazon Affiliate Blog that can passively generate sustainable income
- Long Term - Build an eCommerce store that will scale to great heights and let me retire to a peaceful life stroking my cats while chilling in the Nilgiri hills in South India.
Over the last 3 years, I’d set all three of my goals in motion and now, in 2021, I’m super proud to say that I’ve completed the first two of the above goals and BHW has been a great enabler in both. Freelancing helped me stay afloat in the early days and as the freelancing hustle started paying off, I had enough spare cash to hire people to work on my affiliate blogs.
Now, I’m at a stage where I don’t actually need the freelancing income anymore. Just my affiliate blogs are generating enough passive income to cover all salaries and there’s a healthy amount left each month as well.
Well, you know what that means, right? Woot! It’s time to invest and move forward to making the big one - Goal Number 3 a reality.
Long Term Goal - Where Am I Now?
I registered and started the e-commerce website towards the end of 2018. It’s been a dropshipping merchandise website till now with vendors printing products like t-shirts, mugs, etc. and fulfilling our orders.
The plan to automate everything and switch to a platform for Artists to upload their creations and earn royalties from it was always there in my mind. I’d dabbled my feet with POD sites like MBA, RB and the likes back in 2016/17 and know how awesome they are. However, it always seemed too big a task to create a platform like that and I’d just been putting it off for later. Then, lockdown happened!
Lockdown
The 2020 lockdown was a great time for me personally.
I usually prefer working alone and the months of alone time enabled me to get my hands dirty with some serious web application development.
By September 2020, it was ready - we’d hit a major milestone. We launched the feature that would enable Artists to sign up and start uploading designs to our website - pretty much like RB, MBA, and other POD sites.
POD Platform
Now, this is huge! We’ve had an in-house designer creating stuff for almost a year and a half and we’d only managed about 1300 designs. Now, in the 4-5 months since switching to a platform for Artists, we’re already nearing 4k unique designs on the website.
That being said, there’s always been one all-important thing lacking about the store - sales!!!
The Journey Begins
My affiliate blogs rank easy peasy - I can say it’s all about great content and providing an extraordinary amount of valuable and relevant information to the reader that makes the blogs rank. However, e-com SEO is a different beast altogether and we hardly rank for a few long tails. They do generate a decent amount of organic orders and I was happy all this while, considering this project was pretty much in the back seat throughout.
However, that certainly won’t do from now. Artists need to see money or they’ll start leaving the platform. I started running Facebook Ads last October and I have to say I’m definitely surprised by the fact that they do work! Well, if the product-market fit is right that is.
Facebook Ads
So Facebook Ads has been a constant these last few months. Sometimes they work well and sometimes not. I’m learning all the time however and that’s what I’m happy about. The sales are still nowhere close to where I’d like them to be though.
So one major part of this journey is going to be Facebook Ads. At least, that’s what I think at the moment - things change and I’ve learned that you can’t always put all your eggs in one basket. I plan to update regularly about what campaigns I’m running, what my budgets are, how they’re performing, everything. Full transparency and accountability - that’s going to be key here.
Fb ads are a lot like taking a bet on the Stock Market, so without accountability and a proper data-driven approach, I might get into gambling mode.
Affiliate Marketing
This is something I’ve been thinking of quite a lot. Heck, I run affiliate blogs and generate 100s of thousands of Rupees in sales for Amazon. What if I had at least a few great websites/passionate bloggers driving targeted traffic to my site?
There are big decisions to be made on this front though.
- To go with a network or build a system myself?
- How much can I afford to pay Affiliates?
- How much will affiliates be satisfied?
- What if 2 < 3? What do I do then?
- What about a reselling app for my website? They seem to be doing well in India.
Well, these are a few questions that need to be answered and decisions that need to be taken. Hopefully, the nice folks here can share their views and experiences and make my calls a little bit easier.
E Commerce SEO
I know this is highly competitive but I do plan to put in some work on this. Who says no to free targeted traffic.
Email Marketing
This is pretty much on autopilot at the moment through Klaviyo but yeah, I need to put some serious thought and effort into this.
Self Fulfilment
Now, this is the big one - we’ve pretty much tried every POD vendor in India and they either lack in quality or their timelines are huge. Indian customers are super spoiled by Amazon with their 1 day / 2 day delivery and that means 7-10 day delivery with POD vendors automatically results in several abandoned orders or angry customers who didn’t read the delivery date on the website or in the emails. It also puts us in a helpless situation with more apologies than thank yous to customers. Aaargh, I hate that.
Diwali 2020 (peak sales season in India similar to Christmas) was a nightmare and we had to cancel or refund almost 30% of our orders.
So going forward, scaling this business will only be possible through self-fulfilment since there aren’t any reliable vendors in India like Printful who can handle huge order loads AND offer quick fulfilment.
So, fulfilment for other websites?
In case we do secure funding and start fulfilment, it’s only natural that we start fulfilling orders for other websites. That is, at least until we hit a point where our orders increase sufficiently to keep the equipment occupied all day long. So a platform for fulfilment (with Shopify integrations, etc.) is also definitely on the cards.
Well, you know what, if that’s more successful than our POD site, maybe we’ll pivot to full-fledged manufacturing and become the next Printful. That does sound nice
The Hustle Begins, Or Rather Continues…
Indeed, it continues. I’ll keep this thread updated with my progress, actual numbers and document my journey. Wish me luck folks!
PS: I really wanted to add a lot of images and gifs to make it an interesting read but it's already 1 am here and I'm feeling super drowsy now. So please excuse the lack of images guys. I'll include them in future posts!
Cheers!
