shopify method

Thomas J. Leonard - Simply Brilliant - 1800 Success Tips and Life Lessons from America’s Top Personal and Business Coaches

Affluent people typically follow a lifestyle conducive to accumulating money. In the course of our investigations, we discovered seven common denominators among those who successfully build wealth.
1. They live well below their means.
2. They allocate their time, energy, and money efficiently, in ways conducive to building wealth.
3. They believe that financial independence is more important than displaying high social status.
4. Their parents did not provide economic outpatient care.
5. Their adult children are economically self-sufficient.
6. They are proficient in targeting market opportunities.
7. They chose the right occupation.

The Millionaire Next Door

Why Did I Start My Journey With These Two Quotes?
The answer is simple. The Secret To Success is Your Mindset. So before reading this journey I highly suggest you visit some personal development blogs and educate yourself on how to transform your life?
You can start with those lists:
http://www.startofhappiness.com/pers...lopment-blogs/
https://www.guidedmind.com/blog/best...gs-2016-awards

How It all Began?
Aliexpress-Facebook-Shopify method. This method is not new in its core. Drop shipping is not something new. But when I first read this post and many others that followed I was stunned. I knew that with some tweaks to fit my knowledge and expertise I can make some money.
I knew that I should start with what I like to call "strong business infra-structure". Niche. Website Platform. Traffic Source. The further down you read the more information you will get about this.

How It Started?
It's my new year's resolution. 6 Figures net profit by 31st December 2016. I can hear you saying "well that's everybody's resolution to be a millionaire in a year and they all fail, why would yours be different?"
I won't lie here, I've failed so many times. I failed many times in my life but luckily I have learned a lot from my mistakes. I have learned how to set goals. I have learned how to write down my plans. I have learned to accept and adapt. I have learned to to take 10 mins each morning to write my To Dos. I've learned a lot from my mistakes that I'm ready to start building wealth.
Keep in mind that your main purpose of reading and following this topic is not to watch me counting my money. Your should concentrate on how I keep going? How I motivate myself? What I've done right? What went wrong?
How much I earn should not concern you. There is so much information in this topic that could keep you busy for a long time.

My Vision
I've always wanted to start my own startup company. For This I decided to:

1. Build a niche targeted eCommerce website.
2. Use Aliexpress to drop ship my products.
3. Use Facebook groups to drive traffic to my site.

It does not end here. When the business starts to grow with steady flow of orders I will:

1. Buy my products in bulk.
2. Use fulfilment service in the US to reduce delivery time.
3. Automate at least 80% of the whole process.

At last when I hit my goal I will sell my startup.


The Journey


Setting Goals

For this I use Asana.

A hybrid task and project manager, Asana is available for both iOS and Android devices. It has become quite a tool for helping with individual and organization projects. Through it, you can add multiple projects and track each of them with a sidebar on the left.

Want to know how much you’ve achieved? Structure your project’s goals and milestones as a checklist from start to finish.

You can order tasks by date or when they need to done. You can even create dependencies between tasks so that one task cannot be completed without completing another. Add details for any task such as notes, links, tags and comments.

You can refer back to 10 Must-Have Personal Project Management Tools for more information.

My main goal is set to low six figures by 31st of December 2016. I'm divided the year to 4 quarters just like any business. Each quarter is divided in to monthly goals.

Business Infra-Structure
Niche
I will not reveal my niche but I will give you some hints. It took me about 4 days of searching to decide on my niche. I searched Aliexpress, Amazon and Ebay to compare different niches and relevant products.
My Niche:
* is a hobby
* with 90% female audience
* worldwide market

Website Platform
I use Prestashop. It's a complete ecommerce platform and they offer free cloud hosting. And it can be connected to many fullfilment services which will help in automating order processing and shipping later on.

Traffic Source
As mentioned earlier, I will start with facebook groups to drive targeted traffic to my website. I will add pinterest later on because of the fact that 90% of my audience are females. Social PPC campaigns may have a role in 3rd quarter.

Website accountant
As I said earlier, I want to sell tjis website when I reach a certain point. For this reason I'll have to keep everything organized and well documented. I use WaveApp to save all my incomes and expenses.

Easy to use accounting software automatically keeps your transactions up to date. Professional reports and insights make it simple to understand how your business is doing.

It has many other features incase I would like to expand.

Mailing List
I'm using mailchimp. They have a free package which is enough for the start. Also there is a huge room for future expansions.

January Status

What I did?

1. Got my debit card loaded with cash to start ($100)
2. Created NEW business Paypal account. Which means I have 30 days Hold time for my earnings.
3. Created Niche Targeted facebook group
4. created facebook page
5. got 4 Non-pva facebook accounts
6. created mailchimp list to collect emails.

What I achieved?

1. $250+ in sales. It could've been much much more but I ran out of cash on my debit card and paypal have my money on hold.
2. 2000+ members on my FB group
3. 750 subscribers to my mailing list

What I've Learned?

1. Always ask your aliexpress supplier how long does it takes them to ship? I mean the time they take to process an order and send it to the shipping company. You don't want to be stuck with a supplier who takes 8 days to process an order.
2. Make sure to read the feedback for your supplier/s. Rating is not everything. Read the latest feedbacks from customers.
3. If you have the privelege to make a test order, DO IT.
4. Free shipping is not always your best option. Sometimes you will find $1-$5 shipping methods that offers a better tracking and faster delivery time. I'm still learning which shipping method is the best but for now It's a good thing to keep testing different methods.
5. Test different prices for your products. This is the beauty of an online store. You can change the price in a second.
6. There is a few facebook secrets that I've discovered but I won't reveal those. Sorry!

February Status
Due to the Chinese New Year and Spring Festival most of aliexpress sellers were having 2-3 weeks vacation. I had to stop selling to avoid bad reviews and paypal disputes. I will start selling by Feb 15th.

What I did?

1. Created a 220+ Pages ebook for my niche
2. Added more products to my store

What I achieved?

1. Reached 1900+ subscribers for my list (mailchimp allows 2000 subscribers for the free plan)
2. 3000+ group members
3. 750 FB page fans
4. $300 in sales (15 days working)

What I've Learned?

1. When something works for you abuse it. take every penny out of it. I found an interesting photo posted in a group, I copied it and post it in my group, page and 60+ other groups. it gained about 250+ shares which lead to more likes to my page eventually some sales
2. China Registered Air Mail is a fair option for worldwide shipping. It's usually costs $1.5-$2 and provides good tracking and delivery time is about 4 weeks
3. ePacket is a reliable shipping method to US/CA/AU/UK and propably available for more countries. It costs $2.5-$5 and delivery time is 15 days with very good tracking.
4. Always let your supplier know which shipping method you want. sometimes they list epacket as free shipping but they actually ship with another service.

March Status

What I did?

1. Created my 2nd store
2. Added Mass Planner to my arsenal
3. Started buildng another site

What I achieved?

1. $900 in sales
2. 900+ Page Fans

What I've Learned?
1. Always have more than one supplier for your products.