Post: #151

^ Just make a PayPal account and put your age as 18, they won't verify it until you've reached a few thousands dollars. What are your skills or expertise, not necessarily online?

Post: #152

(06-14-2018 03:37 AM)the-dream Wrote:  ^ Just make a PayPal account and put your age as 18, they won't verify it until you've reached a few thousands dollars. What are your skills or expertise, not necessarily online?

I think it's $20,000 that they require you verify

Post: #153

How do you guys make your POD instagram page appealing? Do you use placeit? I find that it’s pretty expensive, so any alternatives? Do you hire a person online that takes care of your instagram account? I’m having problems as I’m not the most artistic person!

Post: #154

(06-14-2018 08:43 AM)Aviel Wrote:  How do you guys make your POD instagram page appealing? Do you use placeit? I find that it’s pretty expensive, so any alternatives? Do you hire a person online that takes care of your instagram account? I’m having problems as I’m not the most artistic person!

You can buy or find templates and make your own mockups in photoshop. Another option there's a service called Make-Merch, their mockups aren't as nice but they do have a good number of mockups

Post: #155

Hey thanks but I’m looking for more “lifestyle” type mockups not just simple T-shirt mockups, like on placeit

Post: #156

(06-14-2018 12:22 PM)Aviel Wrote:  Hey thanks but I’m looking for more “lifestyle” type mockups not just simple T-shirt mockups, like on placeit

They have some of a guy holding a guitar, can change the backdrops etc but yeah not as good as placeit. Lemme know if you find a good alternative to placeit, they're a little expensive

Post: #157

(06-14-2018 03:37 AM)the-dream Wrote:  ^ Just make a PayPal account and put your age as 18, they won't verify it until you've reached a few thousands dollars. What are your skills or expertise, not necessarily online?

Thank you for responding. From what I gather, the best course of action would be to make my first few hundred to convince my parents it’s not a scam; after that, they should be willing to let me do business under their name.

I have very few skills. I’m not particularly tech-savvy; coding and programming are completely alien to me, if I am to be honest. I can write, edit, and translate; those, I’d say, are my skills. Since I’m cannot sacrifice anything but my time, freelancing and dropshipping seem like the natural avenues.

«Se trata de escoger entre la dictadura que viene de abajo, y la dictadura que viene de arriba: yo escojo la que viene de arriba, porque viene de regiones más limpias y serenas; se trata de escoger, por último, entre la dictadura del puñal y la dictadura del sable: yo escojo la dictadura del sable, porque es más noble». ― Donoso Cortés

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My list of Spanish-language resources and a thread full of them.
PM me with any Spanish questions; I will try to help you!

Post: #158

(06-14-2018 04:15 PM)Gótico Wrote:  

(06-14-2018 03:37 AM)the-dream Wrote:  ^ Just make a PayPal account and put your age as 18, they won't verify it until you've reached a few thousands dollars. What are your skills or expertise, not necessarily online?

Thank you for responding. From what I gather, the best course of action would be to make my first few hundred to convince my parents it’s not a scam; after that, they should be willing to let me do business under their name.

I have very few skills. I’m not particularly tech-savvy; coding and programming are completely alien to me, if I am to be honest. I can write, edit, and translate; those, I’d say, are my skills. Since I’m cannot sacrifice anything but my time, freelancing and dropshipping seem like the natural avenues.

If you can convince your parents to get on board you may want to setup a corporation or LLC and elect to be taxed as an S Corp instead of your mom or dad doing it as a sole prop. Reason being if you actually wind up making some money you potentially bump them into a higher tax bracket causing them to pay a higher % tax on their jobs earnings and their jobs earnings causing you to pay a higher % tax on your business earnings

Post: #159

(06-14-2018 05:46 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  If you can convince your parents to get on board you may want to setup a corporation or LLC and elect to be taxed as an S Corp instead of your mom or dad doing it as a sole prop. Reason being if you actually wind up making some money you potentially bump them into a higher tax bracket causing them to pay a higher % tax on their jobs earnings and their jobs earnings causing you to pay a higher % tax on your business earnings

Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that, although marginal rates are the least of my troubles at the moment. I’d have to start making money before I could even pitch the idea to my parents, who are likely to oppose it — I understand them, frankly. For all they know, this is all a scam that will get me into trouble. Besides, going through all the bureaucratic steps is a bother.

By the way, would you advise me to register for Merch by Amazon? I’ve been reading case studies, along with your previous posts in this thread, and the figures are certainly compelling. I do know it takes months to get approved, though. Could I just sign up under my real name, start building the social media profiles to target my planned niches, and come back to the account when I’m 18? If I give it a year or so, it should be approved, and I’d have aged accounts to assist on marketing efforts.

«Se trata de escoger entre la dictadura que viene de abajo, y la dictadura que viene de arriba: yo escojo la que viene de arriba, porque viene de regiones más limpias y serenas; se trata de escoger, por último, entre la dictadura del puñal y la dictadura del sable: yo escojo la dictadura del sable, porque es más noble». ― Donoso Cortés

---

My list of Spanish-language resources and a thread full of them.
PM me with any Spanish questions; I will try to help you!

Post: #160

(06-15-2018 01:47 AM)Gótico Wrote:  

(06-14-2018 05:46 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  If you can convince your parents to get on board you may want to setup a corporation or LLC and elect to be taxed as an S Corp instead of your mom or dad doing it as a sole prop. Reason being if you actually wind up making some money you potentially bump them into a higher tax bracket causing them to pay a higher % tax on their jobs earnings and their jobs earnings causing you to pay a higher % tax on your business earnings

Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that, although marginal rates are the least of my troubles at the moment. I’d have to start making money before I could even pitch the idea to my parents, who are likely to oppose it — I understand them, frankly. For all they know, this is all a scam that will get me into trouble. Besides, going through all the bureaucratic steps is a bother.

By the way, would you advise me to register for Merch by Amazon? I’ve been reading case studies, along with your previous posts in this thread, and the figures are certainly compelling. I do know it takes months to get approved, though. Could I just sign up under my real name, start building the social media profiles to target my planned niches, and come back to the account when I’m 18? If I give it a year or so, it should be approved, and I’d have aged accounts to assist on marketing efforts.

I think Merch is an amazing program, you can make good money without any of the responsibility that goes with running a business. Go ahead and signup while some people wait a year or longer to get on other people report getting on in like 3 days or 3 weeks. I think soemone on this thread or another said they signed up and were on within a week or so.

It can't hurt setting up social profiles but really nothing you yourself can do will come anywhere close to amazons organic traffic so for me I spend more time just making shirts than trying to market shirts, I let amazon search algorithm take care of that.

Post: #161

***Update***

I have a few big updates on my journey, progress, new business model's I've been training and a Facebook group I created for RVF guys.

1. I created a Facebook group for RVF guys interested in exchanging money-making tips, strategies etc in one place vs. a forum with multiple threads. The group is private, but if you're interested send me a message and I'll invite you. Even you JamaicaBound Wink

2. I recently started a new dropshipping store, in addition to the one I already currently run, but my main business models of late have been SaaS (which I actively run), and my consulting business which is generating A LOT of side-income, and may be viable as a main business model.

3. Dropshipping is very viable right now. There is a saturation in the amount of people trying D/S, but because of this there are a lot of people who are horrible at it. Customers are skeptic of the average website; so to stand above the rest you need to focus on two areas (well 3, really): 1) A solid brand + website (this means cohesive advertising), 2) a great UX (user/customer experience), and 3) customer education (it's not enough to sell people now, you need to teach them + provide value before asking for a sale).

4. The best stores I've seen start as dropshipping, they make $50,000-$100,000, expand into POD + custom merch. So when picking a niche, I would recommend 100% thinking about the long-game (I.E POD + custom merch).

5. I like Amazon, as it adds trust, but I still think building a Shopify website using a custom theme destroys Amazon, and most of my 6/7-figure Amazon friends that are crushing it there want to create their own Shopiy site, brand etc..The conversion rate is higher, you can build a great email list, and if you use ClickFunnels, the conversion rate skyrockets.

That's about it for now...Be sure to message me and join the FB group - the alchemy of making money online.

Hope all is well.

Ryan,

Post: #162

(06-18-2018 07:57 AM)jamaicabound Wrote:  It can't hurt setting up social profiles but really nothing you yourself can do will come anywhere close to amazons organic traffic so for me I spend more time just making shirts than trying to market shirts, I let amazon search algorithm take care of that.

While Amazons organic traffic is great, this true.

Even with the great organic traffic that Amazon has, nothing beats paid advertising. As my mentor years ago said - if you can't pay to acquire new customers, you have a hobby, not a business.

I'm not saying paid traffic is easy, but it blows organic out of the water once you have a hang of it. I'd rather not rely on SEO luck. I know it works, I 100% agree. But compared to paid traffic, it's night and day.

Post: #163

(06-18-2018 11:33 AM)WeekendCasanova Wrote:  

(06-18-2018 07:57 AM)jamaicabound Wrote:  It can't hurt setting up social profiles but really nothing you yourself can do will come anywhere close to amazons organic traffic so for me I spend more time just making shirts than trying to market shirts, I let amazon search algorithm take care of that.

While Amazons organic traffic is great, this true.

Even with the great organic traffic that Amazon has, nothing beats paid advertising. As my mentor years ago said - if you can't pay to acquire new customers, you have a hobby, not a business.

I'm not saying paid traffic is easy, but it blows organic out of the water once you have a hang of it. I'd rather not rely on SEO luck. I know it works, I 100% agree. But compared to paid traffic, it's night and day.

Here's why I don't use paid advertising for Amazon. You don't own the platform so your driving customers to an amazon shirt page which is also going to show "sponsored products' and also "people who bought this also bought this" and now your paying to drive traffic that may or may not leave your page and go buy another product.

Also with Amazon you have no way of putting a FB pixel or Adwords tracking into the checkout so you have 0 way of knowing how much an acquisition is costing you or whether your sales are organic or comming from the paid ads.

For that reason I would never spend a penny driving traffic to Amazon, although if I had a Shopify site I'd be all about it.

There used to be a workaround using AMS and Amazon Vendor to run PPC sponsored ads but I heard they stopped allowing it, to me that would be the only worthwhile way to advertise.

Post: #164

Are instagram influencers rly still a viable option? it seems every person with over 100K followers asks for such insane prices per post these days.

This BIATCH! with 250K followers is asking for 1800 euros per post lol?! another one with 50K asking for 300 AUD?

I'm thinking of just going the FB ads route until I find a winning ad, what do you guys think?

Post: #165

(08-20-2018 09:18 PM)Aviel Wrote:  Are instagram influencers rly still a viable option? it seems every person with over 100K followers asks for such insane prices per post these days.

This BIATCH! with 250K followers is asking for 1800 euros per post lol?! another one with 50K asking for 300 AUD?

I'm thinking of just going the FB ads route until I find a winning ad, what do you guys think?

I tried a number for them (albeit smaller budgets) to no avail on my shopify store. Best bet is to learn facebook ads and at least then you are not committing so much money without any result.

Post: #166

Ya man! these instagram hoes are too expensive and I don't feel they are worth it. The ones with lower number of followers just accept freebies only but I haven't tried them yet (I'll try two and see how it goes)

I think FB ads are great, but I'm also trying to create a brand, this is where instagram comes in.

Post: #167

(08-20-2018 09:18 PM)Aviel Wrote:  This BIATCH! with 250K followers is asking for 1800 euros per post lol?! another one with 50K asking for 300 AUD?

It better be an indefinite post and not a transient story post.

Post: #168

You need some perspective. 250K people seeing the ad for 1.800€ is a steal when comparing this to what businesses used to need to pay for it. This is a fraction of what you had (and still have) to pay to reach this amount of people with a magazine or TV ad. And the difference is that your "ad" is often viewed more attentively on Instagram and more positively (less regarded as "Hey, they are trying hard to sell me something here.") And an ad on TV "disappears" also after you've viewed it, just like magazines are often not read 2 times or more.

Post: #169

Does Ryan's RVF FB group still exist? If so, can someone invite me to it?

Post: #170

(08-31-2018 09:59 AM)Eddie Winslow Wrote:  Does Ryan's RVF FB group still exist? If so, can someone invite me to it?

Likewise

Post: #171

I started a POD website last month after reading this thread and have had some success with it already. I have some info for anyone here that's interested.

I am using shopify with custom cat as my fulfillment provider and running facebook ads for traffic.

If I had to do it over again, I would have gotten all of my designs, t-shirt mockups, and ad creatives done before I started the shopify free trail and running ads. It was a lot trying to clusterfuck doing everything at once, setting up the website and doing all the creative work. I ate into my free trail on shopify too much while I was still making designs and creatives. Big mistake. Focus on one thing at a time. Do your creative work up front and then build out your website and social media.

As far as getting designs and mockups go, I was pretty disappointed by the quality I got on fiver and didn't end up using any of it. What I ended up doing was getting a free trail of adobe illustrator and doing it myself. End result was some designs that didn't suck. In the future it would be nice to find a good designer to do this work but for now I can whip up designs quickly.

You can get a 7 day free trail of illustrator but you can stretch it out longer if you keep the app open on your computer after your time is up. Same with photoshop.

The mockup generators you can find online are subpar for the quality of website I am looking to create. You can get better quality using photoshop and finding psd mockup files on the web. Again, you can use the photoshop free trail for this. If you do some digging you can find a ton of super high quality mockups with great backgrounds to use and it looks professional.

Setting up shopify is easy once you get the hang of it, way easier than setting up a wordpress site. There are some step-by-step checklists out there you can follow to put everything in place. It is very seamless to integrate the POD apps and sync it with facebook and google analytics.

Along with shopify I also created a facebook account for my brand so I could start running ads. I didn't focus too much on the facebook page, just filled out the basics and made a simple logo for the profile picture. It looks like facebook is placing most of my ads on instagram and people are buying from there on mobile so they don't really see the FB page anyway.

This brings me to the ads. Getting enough of a grip on facebook ads to start making sales isn't rocket science. I ran two ads that didn't work out and on the third ad I started making sales.

Learn the key metrics with FB ads so you aren't throwing money away and also so you know when your landing page or offer is the issue.

The first ad I ran failed probably because my ad creative wasn't attractive enough to get people to buy. The second one I think my pricing/offer was too high and my landing page needed work. I kept that design on my page buy I'm not going to run ads for it again.

For the third ad I used the same shirt as the first ad but spent some extra time making better ad creative, wrote better copy, and also revamped my landing page. That was what it took to start making sales.

The name of the game is putting together something that is attractive enough to get the impulse buys from people who are just scrolling through their phones.

As someone who doesn't wear graphic t-shirts or buy anything from my phone, this is strange to observe.

I think I could really step this up to the next level by continuing to build the brand with high quality content on the website and on social media.

We will see where it goes from here.

Post: #172

So most of your sales are coming from the instagram placement? It’s funny since most “FB ads gurus” are always suggesting not to do use instagram ads

Post: #173

Yeah for this ad I am running right now like 90% of the traffic and all sales have come from instagram. My first ad it looks like was placed almost entirely on FB. The second ad was mostly FB and some instagram.

Technically you can tell FB not to run your ads on instagram but I set it to auto and let the algorithm work. It's working at this point so why change it.

I haven't read much into the guru opinion on FB ads and I try to only look for info when I really need to solve a problem. Maybe I am fucking up and doing it wrong. Time will tell!

Post: #174

I have no knowledge of Facebook ads but it sounds like you're onto a winner, GM!

"Gurus" wouldn't be gurus and wouldn't be sharing their techniques if they really had a winning formula. They'd be printing money and keeping quiet so their method doesn't become saturated or patched.

Post: #175

I’m running two IG ads and will see how it goes