Flashback to when I first discovered e-bay. After finding an item I needed (at a ridiculously low price), I decided to use e-bay again. My second shopping experience was equally positive. And it was fun! So, I decided to get rid of some stuff that was just sitting around the house collecting dust. I had a blast selling things I no longer needed, and I made a little bit of extra money to play around with. I was having so much fun, I decided it would be a good idea to open my own e-bay store. Without doing much research at all, I bought about $300 worth of merchandise from a reputable wholesaler (small, relatively weightless items that would allow for reasonable shipping costs), and I set up a basic store. My items weren't selling, because hundreds of other sellers (all of whom had a better idea of what they were doing than I did) were promoting the same merchandise.
In brief, I sold some merchandise, and I bought more from wholesalers, but I never sold enough to make it worth my while - I barely earned back what I spent on inventory. Postage fees and e-bay fees kept rising, and I was no longer having fun, so I liquidated what I could and closed my store. Lesson learned, right? Well... not exactly.
Shortly after closing my store, I quit my job to move out of state. In my new surroundings, I found a few odd jobs here and there, but no stable employment. Looking for a constructive way to fill my time, I turned to the internet again. I decided to try writing product reviews on SharedReviews, and that earned me a little bit of money. It wasn't a steady source of income, but it was a free way to make a little bit of spending cash. As my reviews started to progress from dull and monotonous to informative and helpful, I started publishing articles on the same site. Granted they were not stellar pieces of work, but I was eager to write more, and I began looking for other ways to express myself.
That's when I came across Squidoo. When I first created an account with them, I felt a little intimidated, as it was an entirely different format than what I had gotten used to. I didn't publish anything for over a year. Finally, I decided on a topic for my first lens and went to work on it.
I was more concerned with self expression, but making money was always in the back of my mind. However, I did not do any research regarding how to make money creating lenses. Gradually, I added more content and, eventually, I started to wonder why my lenses were not making money. That's when I finally did some research, and I wound up having to make major amendments to my content, titles, tags, etc. That's still a work in progress but, last month, I got my first payout. (A very, very small one, but it's a start).
At some point during the height of my lens building, I decided to set up a free shop in CafePress. Thinking that some of my landscape photos would look stunning on calendars and postcards, I added a few products to my shop. And promptly forgot all about CafePress to work on my publishing.
Very recently, I logged back into my shop, noticed I had made a minuscule amount of money and wondered how I could build on that. Adding more products seemed like a good start, so that's what I set out to do. Which quickly reminded me why I gave up on CafePress in the first place. I had no idea what I was doing, I was having trouble putting my photos on the products, and I was put off by taking the time to read up on it and learn how to do it.
To make it seem less overwhelming, I decided to do the research in small doses, rather than give myself a crash course and forget most of what I learned before I had a chance to try it out. I'll be posting my progress here, and if anyone has any info or tips they'd like to share, feel free to post a comment.
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