Day 1
Decided to start some sort of online business to make some extra money and do something creative and fun. (maybe?) How hard can starting a new online business be?
Brainstormed by scrolling non-stop through Instagram and actually looking at the ads for various “side-hustles.” Got sick of that term real quick and also confused by people promising millions that had 12 followers and horrible video and audio.
Made a quick list of some various ideas and listed pros/cons/questions/ideas
- Real Estate
- Cons: Expensive, high learning curve, mortgage rates way up, dealing with tenants or real estate agents
- Pros: Cash flow to reinvest in other projects, tax benefits, in theory housing always goes up (Ignore 2008?)
- Print on Demand type business (POD)
- Cons: Need to be creative, need to market products yourself or take lower profit margins, how to create products? DIY has more startup costs, I mean what even is a Cricut?
- Pros: Once setup, can be run with minimal effort if outsourcing from Amazon Merch on Demand, Etsy, RedBubble, Shopify, Printify, CafePress. Otherwise, printing/packaging/shipping ourselves
- Something called Automated or Faceless YouTube Channels
- Cons: Seems to just be cluttering up the Internet, doesn’t seem fun and only vaguely creative
- Pros: Over time maybe get views with ad revenue but any policy change from YouTube could be the end of it
- Instagram Theme Pages
- Cons: See Above
- Cons: See Above and replace YouTube with Instagram
- Teachers Pay Teachers – TPT
- Cons: Lots of work and experience needed
- Pros: Once product is created, you can start making revenue
- FBA – Fulfillment by Amazon
- Cons: Lot of work, fees for keeping products stored at Amazon, need to source product from somewhere
- Pros: Money, but not fun or creative although we could start with books found at estate sales before moving on to Alibaba or something similar
- Crypto
- Cons: All. OK, we were tired at this point, but it seems too volatile
- Pros: Millions
Day 2
We decided to document the process in a blog format for reference and maybe could help others. Spent way too long finding a domain and got this one!
Started researching TPT, FBA and POD.
FBA fees seemed to be a problem, profit margins would be real small on books, lots of competition! Plus, it would take a lot of work, so decided to table this option for now.
TPT seems like a decent idea, we have some lessons already from many years of teaching. Decided to try making a few with Canva.
POD seems really interesting. We could create fun designs and then slap them on stickers and sell them ourselves. Sadly, we didn’t have the slightest idea how to do this so we started researching and came up with that Cricut machine again. Research on mailers and other shipping supplies was done, as was info on shipping costs and how to actually print stuff. Printify looks like a good idea if we didn’t want to invest anything at all, just have it all POD. This would limit inventory on hand and would be easier for making the stickers. We would lose profit on anything we sold but might be a good place to start to see if this would even be feasible at all.
Decided to start with creating and selling stickers. If we do it ourselves or have Printify handle it for us would be a future decision. Using ChatGPT, MidJourney to help with this sounded like a place to start, although we are pretty creative already.
Brainstormed some names, wanting to get an Instagram account and domain name that matched. Searched GoDaddy and Instagram for a very,very long time, luckily we were on a roadtrip. We found one that seemed to work and got over excited getting the domain before realizing the Instagram account was taken (with no posts, followers) and we really want both of them to be the same, so we kept brainstorming. Our first waste of money! Yippee! Soon after, we found another domain with the matching Instagram account and snapped it up quick. Our second business related purchase! Both domains were purchased from GoDaddy for 2 years each and since we already had an account there and are familiar with it, it was a little too easy.
Day 3
Registered and setup this domain with WordPress at Dreamhost using GoDaddy. Signed up for a Google Analytics account and Wordfence license. Set up email addresses at the domain.
WordPress Plugins:
- Site Kit by Google (For analytics and all kinds of fun stats)
- Smush (Image compression)
- Wordfence Security (Need a license key)
- WP Super Cache (Caching plugin to speed up your site)
- WP-Optimize (Clean up your databases, free options fine for now)
- WP Forms (Make the contact form)
- Yoast SEO (Search Engine Optimization, lots of helpful suggestions)
Weekly Summary
Summary: Brainstormed some businesses, picked Teachers Pay Teachers, Print on Demand, registered three domains (only needed two) and set up WordPress and plugins on one of them and configured some email addresses.
Cost: $90.04 for 2 years for three domains, $35.40 for Unlimited Shared hosting = $125.44 (Didn’t need one domain, so wasted $33.84)
Time: 11 hours
All New Accounts Needed: Credit Card, Dreamhost, Email, GoDaddy, Instagram, Email, Google Analytics
