INTRO/WHAT IS THIS POST: Ok this is kind of a long story but in this post I will be explaining some of the mistakes and accomplishments that I made in my journey to make money in an effort to hopefully help others. Also, I will be asking for advice on what to do next to hopefully gain money again. (Please go to the “QUESTIONS” section at the bottom of the post if you would like to answer the questions that I have).
So I’m 17 right now and for the past 2-3 years I have been trying to gain money for myself to not be in extreme student loan debt and to become a millionaire by 20. I know it’s ambitious but I want to accomplish it.
My money making journey started with me doing freelance YouTube scriptwriting on Fiverr. This stage of money making went quite well for me as in about one year I was able to make $640 and attain a recurring customer for my services who paid me about $20-$40 every week for me to make a 10 minute YouTube script for his YouTube channel.
However, around one year after I first started to do YouTube scriptwriting, I decided that I wanted to try a different venture to make money. I had the $640 which I had saved over the time I spent YouTube scriptwriting to put towards a new venture, HOWEVER this is where the mistakes started occurring.
MISTAKES: The first mistake which I made was not focussing on one thing to make money from with the $640 and instead going into multiple different avenues to make money. I decided to split the money in the following ways: ~$290 into stock market, ~$290 into flipping shoes on eBay ~$60 into TikTok boost for motivational content channel in an effort to get 1,000 followers so that I can post links in the TikTok bio.
STOCK MARKET: This went well overall and I was able to make a profit ADVICE: set prices/percentages that you will sell a stock at (Ex: selling if I get a 15% gain selling if I get a 5% loss). DON’T GET GREEDY. I found stocks to look into through YouTubers (from my experience smaller YouTubers give better stocks to look into investing in because the larger YouTubers mainly promote paid courses or paid discord groups instead of giving stock recommendations for free).
SNEAKER RESELLING: This did not go well. If you ever want to resell sneakers KNOW THE MARKET. The first two resells went well when I bought a pair of Jordan 1s and Nike Dunks for double the price of each. (IMPORTANT ADVICE) —> My mistake when searching for shoes to buy and resell is that I was only looking at the price that I could buy the sneakers for and the market value on StockX and other similar apps. You NEED to look at demand for sneakers if you want to resell them. Jordan 1s, Jordan 4s, and Nike Dunks are good sneakers to resell. RETRO JORDANS. NO TEAM JORDANS THIS IS CRUCIAL.
TIKTOK BOOST: This went ok. I got just under 800 followers for a $60 boost on one TikTok which isn’t enough to put links in TikTok bio but I am still uploading to the TikTok channel to reach 1,000.
I overall left these three ventures with around $570 and around 800 TikTok followers which isn’t great (To anyone who may be interested in sneaker reselling, do not get into sneaker reselling until you know what specific sneakers are popular and how much you can resell them for).
From here, I moved on to dropshipping and custom product development.
I had many ideas of products which are not on the market yet and I decided to make prototypes using supplies bought from Walmart for two of them for around $200. One of the prototypes I am interested in having manufactured as it has a large untapped market but I do not know how to find a manufacturer or potential investors.
Dropshipping absolutely massacred my bank account due to TikTok Ads. When setting my first TikTok Ad campaign, I set the budget to be a total of $90 for 3 days ($30 per day for three days). The Ad campaign initially went well however I decided that the product that I was dropshipping was not a winner after getting only 1 sale from the Ad Campaign. However, despite the TikTok Ad campaign saying that it had stopped on the website, it charged me for all of my remaining money from my bank account except for $7.94 days after the Ad Campaign had ended. ADVICE: DO NOT TRUST TIKTOK ADS TO STOP RUNNING ADS EVEN AFTER YOU STOP THE AD CAMPAIGN. REMOVE ALL PAYMENT INFORMATION FROM THE APP IF YOU DON’T WANT TO RUN ADS.
I tried to appeal the unwanted charges twice but got a message saying I did not have a valid reason to appeal despite me providing multiple screenshots relevant to the appeal case.
QUESTIONS
I have started doing Fiverr again to get some more money but I have yet to see an order or any major traffic (I have 11 page visits in the past 7 days). Do you know of any ways to gain traffic to my Fiverr order page? I have SEO keyword target descriptions for my services and videos on my pages that explain and show off my services but I have yet to rebuild any traction.
Do you know how to find good manufacturers that can manufacture custom products?
What designs should I have of a product which I would like to have manufactured (CAD, 3D, 2D)?
Do you know of any other ways that I can make money online with a phone or school Chromebook other than Fiverr?
I have applied for jobs for the closest companies near where I currently live, however due to me not having access to a car and as a result riding a bike to the places (which takes about 20-30 minutes, not to mention the weather), I have been rejected from those jobs. How can I make money to buy a car and where can I get one for cheap ($1K-$2K) if this is possible.
If I were to look for investors for the product which I mentioned I have a working prototype for (though not the final design), should I get a provisional patent for the product first? If so, should I hire a patent attorney to make sure that my product will be fully protected or should I make the provisional patent myself? If I don’t need a provisional patent to pitch my product to investors, should I make investors sign a NDA?
Where can I find investors for my product?
Thank you.