First $1,000: “I sell t-shirts for pug lovers on Amazon…”

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Hello, hello, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. This is Chris Guillebeau. Today's feature, your first $1,000. Your first $1,000.

How did somebody make their first $1,000 on their own? Not from a paycheck, not from their employer, but through an income generating side hustle. That's what it's all about. How did they get to that point and what did they learn along the way? So without further ado, and with that in mind, today's feature comes from Amanda Peterson in Kansas City.

She signed up for the Amazon Merch On Demand program. I think she actually heard about it from this podcast. So good work taking action. She signed up for that program and got to work. Within a few months, she had earned more than $1,000 and continues to earn income passively each month.

So that's pretty good, as I said, congratulations. But what about those early days? How did she in fact make it happen? What did it feel like? What did she learn?

Let's hear it from Amanda. I'll be back at the end with a quick wrap up. [Music]

Hi, this is Amanda Peterson reporting on the story of my first $1,000. It was actually inspired by this show. I heard an episode of someone who used the Amazon Merch program to sell T-shirts and other print on demand items.

So I decided to give it a try. You can register on the site and then wait for approval. Some people say that it takes three months, but for me, it was just over a week before I got an email with a login. From there, you just have to upload designs and make listings. It's a numbers game and you wanna have as many as possible.

I made some cheesy designs and before long, I had a notification of a sale. I'd made 96 cents, woo. Amazon handles all of the fulfillment, so at that point, the income was passive. Of course, I had to do a lot of work to get to that point and it was just 96 cents, but I knew that going in. Over the next few weeks, I added more and more designs and soon the notifications were coming in almost every hour.

It was in the second month that I crossed over the 1,000 mark and kept going. So what have I learned? You don't make much from each sale, so the goal is volume. Also, the more you sell, the more listings Amazon allows you to make. Over time, you want to remove listings that don't sell so that your percentage of items that sell goes up.

You can also add listings to other Amazon sites like Amazon Spain, Amazon Japan, and so on. Also, pay attention to what works. So far, my best sellers have to do with dogs. Dog lovers love to represent and pug-themed shirts are especially popular. One time I sold a dozen shirts that read pug princess.

I think it was for a bachelorette party where the bride was a pug lover. Once I saw that so many dog shirts were selling, I began thinking of more dog puns and other ideas to go big in the canine department. Anything with what I call generic motivational sayings also tends to sell. You know, shirts that say kuna matata or follow your dreams. Eh, whatever works.

I hope to get to 10,000 listings where every item sells at least once a week. My rough calculation is that if I hit that number, I'll be earning 4,000 a month completely passively. Until then, I'm going to keep uploading designs. Thanks so much, Amanda. I appreciate you telling us about your first $1,000.

Way to go with the, all the designs, the dog lover focus, the pug princess win. Congratulations, that's great. I think all of our listeners are going to go out and make pug princess t-shirts now. Well, maybe not, but listeners, you might want to check out the Amazon Merch On Demand program. It is one of those things where there are a lot of people doing it.

So it's very much a numbers game, as Amanda mentioned. You're probably not going to make a million dollars from it, but if you're not making any money at all through a side hustle, you know, not at all a bad entry point, right? Because what tends to happen with these things is once you make a little bit of money, then you get excited and you start learning more, you start trying to figure out, okay, what's my second project? So that's what it's all about. And I hope you found the story encouraging.

If you've got a question and update for us about your hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Thank you for tuning in today. Hope you'll take care of yourself. Do something for yourself as well. And of course, come back tomorrow.

New episode every day. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]

From the Onward Project.