Month: March 2020

So I’ve stepped away and did some more reflecting since my last post… Looking back, I do believe I jumped the gun with building a Shopify website so soon. I did not research my product thoroughly enough. Simple as that. Also there are more aspects of dropshipping that I need to dig deeper in to before I go all out. I had enough wisdom to create an LLC last month but I was not even aware of the fact that I’d also need a sales tax ID and/or a Employer Identification Number (EIN). These are things I need to be familiar with if I want to succeed at dropshipping and my other ventures longterm…

With that said, I’m going to reconsider my pace. My new goal will be to learn as much of the ins and outs of dropshipping and come up with a plan before the end of the month. I’ll still push myself to starting up a store with a potential winning product but at the same time not shoot myself in the foot…

To end on a good note, I have accomplished a few things that I think will be helpful in the future:

Applied for a Sales Tax ID (Don’t have it yet)
Applied for an EIN (Got it)
Created an email for my LLC
Opened a Paypal Business Account for my LLC

Nothing new to add other than I’m deciding to change gears and pursuing another or maybe completely different product. I happened to do more searches of my former top candidate and found more websites that are already selling it in a branded one product store format. Looks like I’ll have to see about cancelling some domains that I’ve opened up yesterday…Oh well. Whatever product I choose this time around, I’ll make sure to get a sample to test first before making a Shopify for it.

Wow. Today has been a real grind. And I haven’t even started selling product yet. Getting to that point is still ways away…So what have I done so far? What are my achievements for today?

Well, I’ve picked one of the 15 products I’ve researched to sell for my first dropshipping attempt. I won’t specify what exactly it is for now but I’ll share the fact that it belongs to the electronics category. I think it satisfies the key characteristics for a good dropshipping product in that it has sufficient “Wow Factor”, good quality, and can be found on Alibaba.

That simple bit right there was the easiest part of today. The rest was a struggle…I spent at least 6 hours following a tutorial on how to make a Shopify store from scratch on Youtube by Dan Vas. And I’m still not doing going through it. By following the first few steps I was able to select the first product to try dropshipping, find potential suppliers on Alibaba, see how to contact suppliers, create a Shopify store website, and create a logo for my website. I could’ve done this quicker but I got slowed down by my own ignorance and some technical difficulties. Note to self: never try to do any of this using wi-fi at a local cafe…

So my haste to start dropshipping I realized I’ve done some things out of order. To elaborate, today I’ve reserved a domain name and created a Shopify store website for a product…before reaching out to any suppliers…and before getting a sales tax ID. By the time I get that sorted out, I’ll probably have used up all 14 days of the free trial for my Shopify website before I can make any sales. Luckily, I already made an LLC a week or so and that was helpful when I applied for a Sales Tas Permit today. But it’s still going to take a few weeks for that to come back…I’ve made quite a few new accounts across several websites such as Alibaba/Aliexpress (Product and Supplier directory), Shopify (for the electronics product), Zoho (business email for shopify site), Canva (logo creation site), “State” Comptroller of public accounts (Sales Tax permit application). I hope I can remember all the login info for those a few weeks from now. Also making the last one actually made me a bit nervous. To this point, I hadn’t put much thought to how manage my ventures in terms of taxes. This is something I definitely need to dig deeper into because I don’t want screw myself over with the IRS…

Getting this first Shopify store up and running properly before the end of the month may be more difficult than I initially hoped. I thought I’d spent too much time researching but am now thinking I didn’t spend enough. But I’m making progress a little bit at a time and I intend to keep moving forward even if I stumble. A lot… Some next steps I’ll aim to complete before the end of the week is to open a bank account for my LLC, contact a supplier for my product, and then order a sample with my company logo.

I didn’t get to start the next step today but will be able to tomorrow. At the moment I have at least 15 products listed as potential winners. The top 3 best candidates have been identified and I will start tying to make websites for those first.

It’s almost midnight so there’s not much time for a lengthy post. And TBH I don’t have much to say anyway so no big deal. I’m still researching products that could be used for initial testing. A difference from my activities yesterday was that in addition to browsing through posts only on instagram, I also expanded my efforts to Facebook and Alibaba. I think I’ve found a few more good candidates for testing which is encouraging. I may continue searching tomorrow but if I do I know it won’t be for long. I intend to move forward to the next step with the products I’ve found so far before the end of tomorrow.

So after watching several how-to videos for starting a drop-shipping business on Youtube I finally begun working towards the first step. Finding a winning product to sell. I have to say, despite how easy some Youtubers make it seem, it’s pretty difficult finding a product that’s not considered saturated (no surprise there though). So far I’ve used a method where I search through instagram to find posts of potential winning products. It seems like I either find several posts for iphone cases, make-up, clothes, or some weird-looking gadgets. I’ve come across maybe three products that might be worth testing. For now I’ll keep note of those and continue searching tomorrow. I want to have found at least one good candidate that I can create a website for before the end of the coming weekend. I’m sure I can get that done.

I’ll get right to the point with this point. Continuing from yesterday’s post, the other income option I’ve chosen is investing in real estate. From what I’ve seen on Youtube, it’s a definitely a viable option that I can rely on getting income in addition to my 9-5 job and eventually replace said job with it and gain passive income from it. I’ve seen different strategies for investing in real estate and at this point feel that I’ve found at least one that is straightforward for me to try out. This would be investing in small multifamily homes primarily and doing fix-and-flips secondarily.

To be honest, I’ve always been aware of the fix-and-flip strategy but I’ve never thought of investing in multifamily homes. For the longest time I’ve been focused on buying a single family home for myself and possibly renting it out but after learning more about options for multi-family I couldn’t care less about single family homes. My ideal scenario for the next few months is to find a local fourplex (4 unit home) that I can afford to buy via an FHA loan and house-hack (i.e. live in one unit and rent the others). This would allow me to live as an owner-occupant landlord and have my housing expenses paid for by my tenants. Furthermore, if I pay my cards right, I could have a monthly rental income far exceeding the expenses for the property and with this “cash flow” I could use it to invest in more multifamily homes to use as rental properties.

Looking at it from the relative short term and long term perspective, investing in real estate via multi-family homes is my main bread and butter to building wealth and eventually financial independence. Its a venture that I could definitely start this year and being profiting from. In fact, in terms of money, I could afford to start right now but this is something I don’t want to screw myself over by not doing enough research first. I’ve started reading a book “How to invest in real estate: the ultimate beginner’s guide to getting started” by Brandon Turner and Joshua Dorkin as a start and will probably read others as I focus on researching processes for buying and renting out multi-family properties specifically. I’ve created a profile on a website called Biggerpockets and it seems like it’ll benefit me due to being able to network with established real esate agents and other investors. I really look forward to making progress with this option.

Today I just want to type out where I currently am with achieving main goal #1. And where am I right now? Phase 1, AKA research.

As I’ve stated in my previous post, starting a drop-shipping business is the first major action I will take for the sake of my goals. To increase my chances of success I’ve watched several Youtube channels of individuals that have and/or are having success with drop-shipping. At this point I’ve been able to build a basic understanding of how drop-shipping has worked over the past few years and how I can enter it in the present time. In the process I have come across pieces of info that encourage me but at the same make me feel salty at myself. Based on the videos I’ve watched, any time before or during 2017 would’ve been a much more convenient time to get into drop-shipping. At that point the very concept of it wasn’t mainstream so those who participated in that industry were very limited in number compared to today. Now that it’s much more widely known, drop-shipping is believed to be more competitive and more difficult to make a profit from the perspective of those that have been doing it since 2017…

But it’s not all gloom and doom of course. It just means that it’s harder for new people to profit from this type of business without effort. Plus there’s a benefit of drop-shipping becoming popular which is that it’s helped drive the creation of the many informative videos that I’ve come across. Apparently a lot of the people who were into it before now had to learn through trial and error and, fortunately for people like me, are willing to pass along the knowledge and wisdom they’ve learned through their experience. I haven’t found a single channel that seems like it can provide all the info I need but by using several different channels I’m sure I can learn enough to start a drop-shipping business.

From what I’ve learned so far, building a successful drop-shipping business relies on the following actions:

1. Finding a good product to sell. One that has consistent quality as well as high and sustainable demand.
2. Selecting reliable suppliers that can be used to buy the product from and have the quickest delivery times
3. Building a website for the product that looks professional and not sketchy. This will encourage visitors to buy the product.
4. Marketing the product’s website via Facebook, Google, or any social media platform that can be used. Being able to put more money into ads will make it more visible to potential buyers by increasing traffic to the website.
5. Providing good customer service. Assuming the product itself is decent, this will probably translate to being able to answer questions regarding delivery times and doing so in a timely manner. This would help keep a positive experience for buyers and also encourage them to leave favorable reviews and keep buying from the website.

There’s probably a few more actions I could list but these are what I can remember of the top of my mind as I type this post. I know this is something I can do and succeed at with more research. And the fact that I have more than a few thousand dollars to start with is super encouraging when several videos give examples of what is possible with just 1k or less. I can definitely try it out before the end of the month and I am willing to to make multiple attempts if necessary. But I will take the time to build up what I know to come up with a plan first so that I’ll have a higher chance of succeeding the first time.

And at the same time I’ve also been trying to build more knowledge in how to invest in real estate. This is something I’ve lowkey been excited about and want to chase in parallel with drop-shipping. There’s quite a bit I could type out on this one but will hold off for now since its’s getting late and I need sleep. After all, one of the keys to success is getting a good nights rest.

Continuing from the first post I made here. The one that was the start of me moving towards my goals. But at the same time wasn’t.

For the last few weeks or so I’ve already been researching ways to build wealth outside of a traditional 9-5 job. Common methods I’ve seen so far include: Investing in real estate, Investing in stocks, starting a drop-shipping business, starting a Youtube channel, participating in affiliate marketing, participating in retail arbitrage, creating a how to program, starting a print on-demand T-shirt business, writing in a blog and several other options.

Out of what I’ve read so far, the options that not only pique my interest but could straightforward for me to attempt in my current situation are starting a drop-shipping business, investing in real estate, investing in stock and starting a Youtube channel. And *cough* definitely not a blog.

If I could organize these options I could try out in terms of quickest to implement, it’d probably be starting a drop-shipping business, investing in stock, starting a Youtube channel, and investing in real estate. I could start one of the first three before the end of the month if I wanted to. And guess what? I want to.

With that said I choose you, Drop-shipping! Why? Well if I do proper research it is possible for me to make a profitable business in relatively short time. And it doesn’t seem like it’ll take much money to get started, although I do have quite a bit to experiment with. So with that said, I will aim to create my first drop-shipping business before the end of the month!

Today’s date is March 1st 2020. Which means it’s the first of the month and coincidentally I’ve finally made my first post!

Congratulations to me because this is at least one achievement towards my goals that I can claim. Which reminds me…What are my goals? And why is this blog important?

I guess I should explain myself and do so quickly because it’s past 10PM on a Sunday and I need to go to work tomorrow….Ah that’s right, I remember now. Currently I work for as an engineer for a large, renowned company, earn a decent salary with good benefits and stability but….I don’t like it. Why don’t I like my job? There’s a few reasons:

First, I don’t like my line of work. To be honest, working as an engineer is not something I chose to do out of passion but purely for financial reasons. Throughout middle-school and high-school I demonstrated a decent aptitude for math and science and was often recommended by my parents, teachers, advisers, and professional speakers to pursue engineering as a career. And since I didn’t know of other career options that I thought I’d be skilled at and could do for a decent living, I went for it. Fast forward a decade and some change, I’ve have earned over 2 years of full-time experience working with my first and current employer after graduating from college with an engineering degree. And I’ve just recently come to terms that engineering isn’t for me… Looking back, I might’ve liked to tinker with things but I’ve never really been interested in designing useful tools or optimizing systems and processes and learning about technical subjects. I just liked to mess with things and see what would happen. Engineering was something I thought I could do, so I did it. And after doing if for awhile I realize how much liking what I do is important for me because spending 8 hours of time doing engineering feels so draining. And I now know that I don’t want to do it forever or much longer for that matter…

Secondly, another thing about myself I’ve realized is that I don’t like working for the company I work at now. Well, actually I don’t like the idea of working for any company, especially a corporation. For starters, dealing with the work politics is something that I’ve never been fond of. If I want to succeed at the company I work at I’ll need to conform to beliefs that I don’t buy in. Also, I don’t like taking orders from other people. Even though I’ve conditioned myself to behave in a customer service manner, it feels like I’m being eaten away on the inside by my true nature. Which is that I’m a person that likes to do things his own way and on his own time with no need to answer to anyone else. Not to mention I’ve become more conscious of the fact that no matter what company I work, I will probably be paid less than I’m worth.

So with no offense to the company that, to be fair, has paid me well to this point my experiences and self-reflection has lead me to forming the following goals:

1. Transition from this traditional 9-5 job to self-employment via multiple income streams.
2. Reach 100K income per year before I hit 30 years-old.
3. Become a millionaire before I hit 40.
4. Become financially independent before I hit 40.

To reach this goals, I intend to write posts here to document my progress towards this goals. I hope doing so will help keep me motivated as I make progress and will gain a sense of achievement when I succeed. And to be honest. I’m a forgetful person so keeping track of what I’m doing and why will ease any guilt for the sacrifices I make along the way. Because to get where I want to be, it’s going to take guts.