Niall Doherty's Blog, page 119

You May Fail, And That’s Okay

From a book called The Power of Full Engagement…

Our experience – and considerable research – suggests that setbacks are an intrinsic part of any significant change process. The motivation to make a change, and even the specific plan for doing so, may often just be the first step. The researcher James Prochaska has found, for example, that people launching a major change in their lives often fail several times before succeeding in a sustaining way.

I’ve experienced that first-hand myself.

When I quit my job in 2010, I was super confident that I’d be earning $10,000+ per month within a year. I’d seen other people doing that just by selling simple ebooks and figured I could do the same

And while I was able to earn a decent living working online for many years – mainly via freelancing – my first $10,000+ month didn’t happen until 2020.

So yeah, I tried and failed for about a decade before reaching that goal

But since reaching it, I’ve only had one month where my business has earned LESS than $10,000 per month. (You can see all my finance reports here, btw)

All that to say: try not to let failure get you down.

Learn from it, pick yourself up, and take another shot.

You’ll hit a big one eventually.

Her Island Website + Newsletter Earns Up To $2500/Month

Ida JakobsonFounder of The Mallorcan $2500 max monthly revenue
Published March 23, 2023 by Niall Doherty

Mallorca is a Spanish island (pop. ~1 million) in the Mediterranean

Ida Jakobson started The Mallorcan, a website and newsletter about the island, after moving there from Sweden in 2021.

Ida shared in a recent interview that the site and newsletter now earns $500 to $2500 per month…

The newsletter makes money in two main ways.

Either a main sponsor or smaller ads further down in the newsletter sourced through Post Apex. […]

Then a second source of revenue comes from the website. There, we operate a paid directory for local businesses and have some affiliate content with car rental companies and other tourist attractions.

The Mallorcan’s first 100 subscribers mostly came via local Facebook groups that Ida was a part of. She’s also built up a 2.5k following on Instagram

I love local website/newsletter businesses like this. Not only can they earn good money, but they can also be a great way to get to know a place and be part of the community.

Ida writes…

It’s been an amazing way to both develop professionally by shipping a real project with growing metrics and also personally by being able to meet so many great people where I live.

Check out a recent edition of The Mallorcan here.

Meanwhile, a company called 6AM City has taken the local newsletter concept to the extreme…

The company operates newsletters in 25 cities across the United States, reaching 1.2 million+ subscribers and generating $10 million+ annual revenue.

Like The Mallorcan, 6AM City keeps the format of their newsletter pretty simple, as you can see from a recent edition of their San Jose newsletter.

Could you do something like this for your local area?

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$1 Million Dollar Shopify App (With No Marketing)

Raj KarmaniFounder of AskWhai $1 million sale price of VQB Shopify app
Published March 23, 2023 by Niall Doherty

This visual quiz builder app for Shopify doesn’t look all that special.

Pricing starts at $9/month, there’s a 30-day free trial, and it only has 116 reviews despite there being millions of Shopify stores.

And yet…

With a small team of developers, [founder Raj Karmani] grew the tool to hundreds of customers until selling it for $1 million to Alleyway Capital in September 2022.

Apparently the sale price was “a 4-5x multiple of revenue,” so the app would have been earning $200,000 to $250,000 in annual revenue, or about $19,000 per month

Sounds like this app was one of many Raj was working on with his team developers and $600,000 raised in venture capital.

But they apparently developed the app with low-code tools and spent nothing on marketing…

Karmani spent zero dollars on sales and marketing, yet the product spread through word of mouth, mainly via the Shopify ecosystem.

I’ve heard said before that a good way to find Shopify app ideas is to look at the low-rated apps created by Shopify themselves.

For example, their free Geolocation app has only a 2.4-star rating. And sure enough, a bunch of premium geolocation apps have sprung up that people seem happy to pay for

Back to the quiz builder app, and the company that bought it wrote about the acquisition on their own site…

Despite ecommerce going through an adjustment after its torrid growth in 2020-2021, best-in-class SaaS companies helping merchants improve their conversion rates and AOVs in an economic way are continuing to grow rapidly (50%+ annual growth rates). […] We see the opportunity to grow this 50x if we execute well and current conditions persist.

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Irish Lad Clones His Voice With AI, Tricks His Parents

Check the 6-minute video on YouTube

It shows CNN reporter Donie O’Sullivan calling his parents in Ireland and having a conversation with them using an AI-generated voice.

Donie concludes…

My parents knew something was off, but ultimately, they still fell for it.

Scary to think that scammers could clone your voice – via audio of you posted online somewhere – then call up your loved ones and ask them to send money to “your” bank account or something

But of course there are also some exciting applications of this technology.

For example, here’s a video where someone uses software called Descript to clone his own voice and read out a video transcript generated by ChatGPT …

Skip to the 4:20 mark to hear the cloned voice. It’s impressive.

Related…

ChatGPT prompts aren’t going to make you richAll the best examples of GPT-4

$980K Profit Last Year: “No Clue What I’m Doing”

A recent post on /r/Entrepreneur…

My ecom brand did $3.7-million in sales ($980k in profit) last year, here’s what I learned:

NOTHING.

I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing.

The same person shares their backstory in the comments…

Got into ecom in 2017. Got super lucky with my first store and made $1-million in revenue in about 2 months selling gun accessories. Used the $200k in profits I made from that and tried a buncha stuff. I made okay money from 2017 – 2019 just trying a lot of different stores (PoD, dropshipping, buying bulk from China), but none of them really took off.

Eventually one did take off, resulting in $3.7 million in sales last year

The OP continues…

To be honest, my background and story won’t help most of you. I got here cuz of sheer luck. When you have $200k to throw around at random business ideas, one is bound to work as long as you’re not wasting money like an idiot. But most don’t have that.

I’ve tried helping countless people start their own thing, but all of them have quit because they couldn’t get past the idea of having to spend a lot of money to make money.

There’s some truth to that, though I’ve seen tons of examples of people bootstrapping businesses to significant earnings. 

This particular person is in ecom though, and they apparently built their own physical product. You’ll usually need a lot of capital to do something like that

Still, I find it reassuring to hear that someone earning almost $1 million a year in profit considers themselves to be pretty clueless about business. 

It’s not like you figure everything out and then all the fear and uncertainty goes away. Which means there’s no point waiting for the fear and uncertainty to go away. 

Just do your best to shrug it off and keep moving forward

This Nurse Earns $16K/Month From 2 Blogs

Hilary EricksonFounder of Pulling Curls $16,000 average monthly revenue
Published March 23, 2023 by Niall Doherty

Hilary Erickson is a registered nurse and the founder of Pulling Curls

She writes in a recent interview…

I started the website as a “mommy blog” back in 2005 when I had two small boys who were making me pull my curls out. I came up with the name because I wanted to highlight something that made me different, and it’s always been my curly hair.

The site was a hobby for Hilary for many years, and she stayed working as a nurse until 2020. That same year she launched another site, The Pregnancy Nurse.

Now…

The Pregnancy Nurse gets almost 100k pageviews/month, and Pulling Curls gets about 200k. Ad revenue between the two sites is about 5k, about 6-7k from course sales, and maybe 2k from affiliate income, depending on the month.

Hilary’s sites focus on 3 topics: pregnancy, parenting, and home.

She has a course for each

The Online Prenatal Class for CouplesThe Organized HomeFamily Routines

Sounds like most of her traffic comes via SEO and Pinterest.

Hilary’s advice for following in her footsteps…

Keep working, every day. It’s not a quick way to make money, it’s a job and you have to treat it like that…

If you want money to support your family, it will likely be a slow burn that requires a lot of work upfront.

Hilary’s finance reports show that she earned only $588 from her site in May 2014, about 9 years after she launched it.

She apparently got more serious about her business around then – and presumably had more time to spare with her kids a bit older – and was up to around $4500/month by December 2015

Even though Hilary is now pulling in about $16k/month, she’s not letting up…

I work about 4-6 hours every day and I think of it as a job. I’m down working before my kids are up and I try to be done before they get home from school.

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We treat all income claims we find online with skepticism.We don’t report incomes that seem especially controversial or unrealistic.We cite our sources and/or share our calculations so you can see where the numbers come from.If there are uncertainties about an income claim or estimate, we tell you what those are.

If you see an income claim or estimate that seems off, please tell us so we can fix it.

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$16,000/Month via Amazon UK in His “Spare Time”

Daniel SarpongAmazon Seller $16,000 monthly revenue
Published March 20, 2023 by Niall Doherty

London-based Daniel Sarpong started his Amazon business in mid-2020, after COVID put an end to another side hustle he’d been working on.

In a recent interview on YouTube, Daniel shares how he’s built his Amazon business to £13,000 in monthly revenue (about $16,000 USD) …

But don’t get too excited just yet: Daniel is still in the scaling phase, with a profit margin of 13-14%.

So his monthly profit ends up being around £1700 ($2000).

He reckons he can get to £35,000 in revenue and 20% in profit in the next few years in the UK before expanding his business to Amazon in the USA

Daniel uses something called the “replens” strategy for selling on Amazon. He basically focuses on sourcing and reselling items that people order regularly (replenishables) rather than novelty or clearance items.

Typical replens products would be items like disposable razors, grocery items, pet food, shampoo, etc.

Related: Amazon Replens Strategy – The Full Guide (YouTube)…

Daniel has built up his business despite working full-time as a real estate agent in the UK.

His schedule makes me want to take a nap

I now get up at 4 in the morning, work till probably about 8 when I leave [for my job], and then do the same in the evening from 6 till 9. And that gives me enough time to essentially source the products that I need and do all the admin behind it.

With that kind of work ethic, I wouldn’t bet against him getting to £35k/month and beyond.

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Our goal at eBiz Facts is to give you accurate information about online business so you can gain clearer insights, make better decisions, and achieve your own success.

With that in mind, we strive to ensure the accuracy and transparency of the income claims and estimates that you see on this website.

Here’s how:

We treat all income claims we find online with skepticism.We don’t report incomes that seem especially controversial or unrealistic.We cite our sources and/or share our calculations so you can see where the numbers come from.If there are uncertainties about an income claim or estimate, we tell you what those are.

If you see an income claim or estimate that seems off, please tell us so we can fix it.

Is this kind of business right for you?

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Steven Sashen’s Really Fun Bit of Guerrilla Marketing

Xero Shoes is a minimalist shoe brand that did $48 million in net sales last year

Founders Steven Sashen and Lena Phoenix told the story of building the company on a recent episode of How I Built This.

Steven was inspired to start the business after reading the popular book Born to Run by Chris McDougal, which was big on minimalist footwear

About 45 minutes into the HIBT episode, Steven talks about leveraging the popularity of that book to spread awareness of Xero Shoes…

So Chris McDougal is going out and doing book signings for his book. And whenever he did a book signing, we would see a lift in sales and we joked that he was our unofficial marketing department. 

But then I did a really fun bit of guerrilla marketing. I printed up a few thousand business cards and I would go to bookstores and find his book and then insert our business card in the book. 

And then eventually I made like 50,000 of those and sent those to customers and asked them to do the same thing.

Hard to know how big an impact that little marketing hack had on the company’s growth.

But it could be worth trying for your own business if there’s a related best-selling book doing the rounds

His Simple Car Blog Became a $1 Billion Marketplace

Randy NonnenbergCo-founder of Bring a Trailer $412 million transaction volume the year before selling
Published March 20, 2023 by Niall Doherty

WSJ has a fascinating write-up on Bring a Trailer.

Car fanatic Randy Nonnenberg started it with a friend back in 2007 “as an excuse to hang out more.” 

For the first few years, it was a simple car blog

Randy says in a video interview…

We basically from 2007 to 2014 built this community that was really excited about cars and selling and transacting them. But they would always fight over the cars and who got dibs. And the best way to solve that… was a bidding model. So we built our own and launched it in 2014.

Bring a Trailer came up with a clever way to make each auction more compelling…

One engine of BaT’s growth was its solution for the problem of “sniping,” the practice of winning digital auctions by waiting until the last moment to bid. If a BaT auction ends at 3 p.m., and there’s a new bid at 2:59 p.m., the deadline gets extended by two minutes and the clock resets with every offer, which means it could end at 4 p.m. or 5 p.m. This way, bidders are competing against each other, not time.

Apparently that’s how someone ended up spending $102,200 on this race car that was once owned by Tom Cruise, instead of the $40,000 he’d originally budgeted

WSJ again…

Sales on the BaT platform increased from $248 million in 2019 to $412 million in 2020. That year, the company was acquired for an undisclosed amount […] The numbers then accelerated to $859 million in 2021, according to BaT, and they zoomed past $1 billion in 2022.

$1 billion in sales… all from starting a silly little car blog

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Our goal at eBiz Facts is to give you accurate information about online business so you can gain clearer insights, make better decisions, and achieve your own success.

With that in mind, we strive to ensure the accuracy and transparency of the income claims and estimates that you see on this website.

Here’s how:

We treat all income claims we find online with skepticism.We don’t report incomes that seem especially controversial or unrealistic.We cite our sources and/or share our calculations so you can see where the numbers come from.If there are uncertainties about an income claim or estimate, we tell you what those are.

If you see an income claim or estimate that seems off, please tell us so we can fix it.

Is this kind of business right for you?

Check out our framework to see the 19 types and 6 levels of online business, and discover which is best for you.

Other ways to make money online

There are many other ways to make money online, to work from home or anywhere in the world.

Full list of ways to make money onlineMore profiles of online money makers👇 Subscribe to eBiz Insider 👇

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The True Opportunity of the Creator Economy

Jay Clouse writes…

Too much emphasis and attention is placed on creator-entertainers and not enough is placed on the creator-educators. Independent creators not taking on legacy media, but legacy education.

MrBeast is a prime example of a creator-entertainer.

But to earn a living as a creator-entertainer, you usually need a huge audience

Creator-educators, on the other hand, can make a good living with a relatively small audience. Because that audience sees them as someone to learn from, not just someone to be entertained by.

And if someone likes learning from you, it’s not hard to sell them some premium training…

Self-paced online courses sell anywhere from $20 on third-party marketplaces like Udemy to upwards of $1,000 (e.g. Mastering ConvertKit).

Cohort-based courses often range from $500 – $6,000 (e.g. Write Of Passage). Some mastermind or community programs sell for tens of thousands of dollars.

…and all of these are direct sales relationships with your audience.

Jay also notes a sweet spot between creator-entertainers and creator-educators.

The rarely-seen-in-the-wild creator-edutainer…

These creators have the best of both worlds – they have the more efficient monetization opportunities of creator-educators while attracting a larger audience like creator-entertainers.

Jay offers the example of Webflow University’s training library: “I can’t believe how effective they are at training while also being hilarious.”…