Twenty-Fifth Month of WA - Returning To My Roots?

Just a few days ago, I posted a blog post here on Wealthy Affiliate giving my report for my Twenty-Fourth Month of WA. That blog post and the post before both came late. I promised to put in more effort and that's exactly what I'm doing. Let's kick things off with a WA post on my Twenty-Fifth Month of WA!

Here's last month's post if you missed it: Twenty-Fourth Month of WA - Two Years At WA!

My E-Commerce Roots

Back before joining Wealthy Affiliate, one of the first online business models I took action on was dropshipping. Around the beginning of 2018, before I was even old enough to work a job, I started looking into dropshipping.

I wanted to find a way to make money online and eventually I came across dropshipping success stories. I wanted to give it a try so I bought an $100 course with the little money I had and built my first dropshipping store.

After running some Facebook ads for a little bit, I got a few sales! But what I didn't realize two weeks in was that I had to manually order the products for my customers. Then when I started ordering products for my customers, my Aliexpress account got suspended and I ended up refunding all my customers.

With no money left, I had to close my store.

I Rebuilt My First Store

After messing around with about five different failed e-commerce stores while blogging, my brother asked me, "Why don't you restart the first store you built?"

For the five different failed stores, I could never make a sale. However, I was able to make sales on the first store I ever built so I decided to return to my roots.

And a month later, I've made the most sales I've ever made in my life.

Here's the dark truth though. You see that dip at the end? I cut all my ads.

I was very deep in the red. Overall, the numbers came out to be something around negative $1,000 USD.

But just because I'm losing money, I'm not going to give up.

The one thing Wealthy Affiliate has taught me in the last two years is that you should always play your business for the long term.

The other thing I learned in the last two years is that there are tons of different marketing strategies that must be tested.

My store was so close to being profitable towards the end. I just needed one more sale per day to keep the ads running.

For the next month, I want to solidify my store as a brand rather than "just another dropshipping store."

Thus my main efforts will be focused on improving my site's organic reach and following base.

Two Other Stores?

Admittedly, my store isn't in a very good niche for testing products. Because of how I branded my store, I'm locked to selling very specific products.

Having another store to test various products while I build out the brand on the other store is my strategy.

Originally, the store I was using as a general store where I sold all kinds of products, was in a simlar situation has my current branded store. The general store ended with an overall negative, but one ad was very close to being profitable.

I still have access to everything on my general store, but I decided to stop working on it because I wanted to implement some upsells and abandoned cart email sequences. I didn't want to pay for the plugins, however, so I devised a plan where I'll learn programming and create a custom solution for myself in a month.

I came to my senses now realizing that even as a semi-tech savvy Gen Z kid, learning a completely new programming language and then developing apps that will work perfectly in a month was out of my reach.

I decided that I'll just pay for the plugins. Making a profit is more important than perfecting everything.

There is also another store I didn't start by myself. I was at work one day when my co-worker started talking about e-commerce. He was talking about how he wanted to start a dropshipping store but was too scared. When he heard that I have experience dropshipping, he wanted to work with me.

And thus, I started a store with him. We have made our first sale, but just like the other stores, we are yet to become profitable.

Don't Worry, I'm Still Blogging

Yes, I started all these stores and they are a lot of work. But I can still blog and I will blog.

I'll be taking an indefinite hiatus from writing on the first blog I created here on WA. Without having much opportunity to play badminton and train, I don't have any motivation to write anything. Plus, I can't use anything other than Amazon Associates for now so the website makes hardly any commission. It is nice to see a sale every once in a while from this site though.

My main focus currently regarding blogging is on Medium. I found it's rather fun to write content on the website and a lot easier to make quick bits of money. For the month of August, although I wrote only two blog posts, I made around $4 from the Medium Partner Program. I've also been able to get the occasional affiliate commission which is really nice.

As I'm working a lot in e-commerce now, something I would like to change is my approach to my website in the MMO niche. I haven't published on the website in a long time. There are only a few posts on the website so I'm planning to delete the posts and restart with a fresh approach. Instead of writing reviews randomly and all sorts of posts on making money online, I'm going to focus the website on e-commerce tutorials and tips.

Let's Get Some Profit Going

So two blogs and three stores. It's time to turn a profit and my life around. I hope you enjoyed the report for August 2020. Stay tuned as I'm trying to make September 2020 the most exciting month yet!

Good luck to everyone working on their businesses!