This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
What's up Cytosol School listeners? This is Chris Guillebeau. Welcome back. Got a great story for you today. It's all about a Florida man who earns more than $100,000 selling t-shirts with no inventory. Now, if you have a good memory, you might recall that about three
weeks ago in episode 55, we had a very popular story about someone else who earned a lot of money. In her case, I think it was $17,000 in a single month also selling t-shirts with no inventory. But what you'll hear about today is actually a different model, different platform, and a different process. So apparently, there's more than one way to make a lot of money designing and selling t-shirts. And I'll tell you all about this one in just a moment.
And now our story. From Jacksonville, Florida, Benny Hsu felt like he had struck gold, and he didn't even have to dig around in the river. A former app designer who was curious about how to sell something to people he didn't know, Benny had a goal of entering an all-new line of work. He'd always been interested in fashion, and in particular, t-shirt designs. He first assumed that the best way to make and sell t-shirts was to actually make t-shirts.
But when he researched screen printing, he realized there were a number of problems with the traditional method. First, there was a big initial investment, then he'd have to ship out all the orders. And even though he was based in Florida, he wanted to travel, so having the responsibility of shipping out orders every day wasn't convenient. Lastly, even if those challenges could be overcome, how would he know that people wanted his shirts before he placed that big order? It all sounded risky and unattractive, so he put the idea on hold. But then a new technology and platform called Teespring came along that allowed
him to create shirts with as few as 10 orders and without carrying any inventory at all. There was, however, just one problem. He had no email list or other potential base of customers. He did, however, have the power of observation. Having watched other people use online ads to target customers based on specific demographics and occupations, he decided to try growing his customer base through specific advertising. Now this took a little while to get going.
21 times in a row, he tried to sell his t-shirt designs on Facebook with a goal of recouping his advertising costs and making a reasonable profit. And 21 times in a row, he failed. The key point is these failures weren't huge. He spent a maximum of $10 on each experiment. And each time he kept detailed notes on what went wrong. Finally, on the 22nd attempt,
he found a winner. Before he'd reached his $10 cap in ad spend, he had a sale. This time he let that ad campaign continue to run. At the end of the campaign, he'd spent just over $80, but he'd earned $112 for a profit of $30.53. Making 30 bucks wasn't enough to put Benny on the path to riches, but he was encouraged by that success. He knew that
the failed experiments had been heading in the right direction all along, so he kept optimizing and fine-tuning them. Every morning, he'd wake up and immediately check his numbers to see what had happened overnight. Every night, he'd upload new designs in anticipation of another day's tests. He had more successes and more failures too, but his strategy was to quickly drop the failures and keep rolling with the winners. One month in, he'd made up for the failed campaigns and come out even, having spent and made nearly $1,000. After
that he had a proven process and it was smooth sailing. Just like Elaine in that other episode who was using a different platform and process, also to sell a lot of t-shirts without any inventory, once Benny found a formula that worked, he doubled down. And then he started spending a lot more than $10 on ads. By the end of the year, in fact, he had spent $51,000 on Facebook ads, but he was only spending money on ads that worked, or at least he was only spending a lot of money on ads that worked. Whenever there was a failure, he would simply stop running that ad before the cost got too high. So he spent $51,000 on ads, but by the
end of that year, he'd been paid nearly $153,000 by Teespring, the print-on-demand platform that would actually send out those shirts to buyers. So if you take that income and subtract the expenses, it comes to a profit of $101,971.36. Even after building apps and trying other ventures, it was the first time he'd ever hit six figures online in a single year. All right, so let's talk about what we can learn from this great success story. I really love what Benny was able to accomplish. Remember, he had no email list. People often think it's
really difficult to get started in these things if you don't have an existing audience, you don't have that email list or a lot of social media followers, but Benny didn't either. This is all about optimization. His success here had as much to do with split testing different Facebook ads and making adjustments as it does with design. So it's not so much about being the greatest fashion designer, it's about figuring out what people wanted and then giving it to them. So if you're a creative person, but you also like to geek out on numbers and data, especially comparing different sets of tests over time, something like this might be good for you. Now, I do usually tell people to be careful with spending
a lot of money on Facebook ads or any other kind of advertising, especially in the beginning can actually be a good way to waste a lot of money. But here in this story, there's a really clear difference. And the difference is he invested a small amount of money. He went really slow. Even with 21 failed experiments, his maximum loss there would be $210. Since
each experiment had a cap of $10 per ad campaign. And it was only once the experiment started working that he began spending a lot more money. So the time to start spending thousands of dollars on ads is when you start making more money than you spend and not before. Congratulations, Benny. I can't wait to see what you do next in the world of t-shirts, Facebook ads, app design, or anything else. And for you over there, it may not happen
exactly like this, but maybe this gives you an idea. And hopefully it not only gives you an idea, but you're actually going to go and take action on that idea. That's what Side Hustle School is all about. It's not just about being inspired, it's about taking action on the things you learn so that you can create your own freedom, your own security for yourself, that backup plan, even if you love your job. If you want to learn some more about how this particular hustle works, see a link to Benny's blog, learn more about Teespring and a couple of other resources for designing t-shirts and selling anything using Facebook ads, just come to sidehustleschool.com/7373. You can also ask a question for the show or
see where I'm going for the next Side Hustle School workshop, where you can learn more about how to apply these lessons in a small group setting. And of course, if you like the show, let me know on social media using hashtag #sideustleschool. I'm Chris Guillebeau, and I hope to see you tomorrow with another great story.
