💼 UNCONVENTIONAL CAREERS

Make An Extra $5,700+ Selling Phone Cases 🤳

🔥 Opportunity: Print-On-Demand

🔎 Case Study: OhSoPrettyCases, $37K MRR

I’ve been SO curious about eCommerce for what feels like forever and funny enough, not just 1, but 3 clients, are in the middle of building out their print-on-demand eCommerce brands/stores. Something is in the air (*cue Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas)

Print-on-demand (POD) is a business model in which a product is printed and fulfilled only after it has been sold.

Why Print-On-Demand as a Business Model?

You don’t have to worry about dishing out a ton of cash upfront OR stocking huge amounts of inventory in hopes of selling out.

Also, with new plenty of online + AI tools available, like Canva and Leonardo.ai, creating products and uploading them to your storefront has never been easier (I should know, I did it myself - see HERE).

In my quest to learn more, I stumbled upon the below video from Chris Heckman who did a full overview of how to start a POD business with OhSoPrettyCases as the case study (he himself is a multi-millionaire from creating an eCommerce store and selling it).

OhSoPrettyCases has been an Etsy seller since 2017 and has a total of 196,132 sales. If each phone case is ~$19, that would mean the gross profit over those 7 years in business is $3.72 million.

To hit $5,700/mo (gross) you’d have to sell 300 cases - seems daunting, but what if you had 1 design per month that was a viral hit? I don’t know about y’all, but my mind is RACING WITH POSSIBILITY.

Though Chris focuses on phone cases, this isn’t the only medium you can go down. There are plenty of products you can create that are unique, and stores like Printful and Printify are constantly adding more manufacturers and offerings to their platforms.

If you want a simpler overview of how to kickstart your POD business, scroll down to the ‘Creator Corner’ section for 5 steps I took to help my boo thang create his design and place his first sample order within an hour.

Reply to this email and let me know what you think about this unconventional side hustle or career. What would you create?

⚙️ COOL TOOLS

Since we’re on the topic of eCommerce, I wanted to give y’all a deep dive into some of the players in the game + how to utilize some AI tools to speed up your process.

Whether you want to do POD or actually go through the process of finding manufacturers to create your own product from scratch, this will help get you started!

• Printful or Printify: Create and sell custom items

• Redbubble: Make specialized gifts

• Zazzle: Platform to help designers create their own products

• Cotton Bureau: Merch for designers and communities

• Kindle Direct Publishing: Self-publish paperbacks and eBooks

• Lulu: Book printing for authors and publishers

• Teelaunch: Connecting e-commerce brands with factories

AI Tools:

Vexels: AI quote, mockup, and logo generator

Creative Fabrica: A suite of AI tools that help with creating art, text, patterns, and remixing existing images

Kittl: Enter keywords into a text prompt and let AI generate graphics

🤖 CHATGPT

Business can be hard, but utilizing tools like ChatGPT can take the guesswork out of things that you, a new or aspiring eCommerce business owner, might not know about.

I stumbled upon this article by Write Sonic that has a list of 20 prompts related to eCommerce that I found super insightful for myself and my clients. Below are my 3 favorites from the article:

Prompts of the Week:

️ PODCAST

These past 3 weeks in Austin really shook up my life… in a great way. Lots of breakdowns that lead to MAJOR breakthroughs.

I’ve been conducting Quitter research in anticipation of our Quitter Beta Program in December, and I’ve been speaking with SO many of you live - It seems like we’re all going through some major upgrades and perspective shifts (the cosmos be cosmo-in?! 🌙)

I talk a lot about what I call the ‘Quitter Hangover’ - it’s similar to that of an alcohol-induced hangover in the sense of feeling like ABSOLUTE GARBAGE after processing the ‘poison.’

It doesn’t feel quite so bad while you’re in it, but soon enough you’re telling yourself “I’ll never do that again” as you nurse your body back to recovery (sound familiar?).

In the case of a Quitter Hangover, the ‘poison’ was your corporate job (or your shitty ex, less-than-desirable living situation, and/or the habit you want to kick but has you by the metaphorical balls).

The Quitter Hangover is applicable to ANYTHING you’re actively quitting in pursuit of something better.

In Episode 122, I talk about the Quitter Hangover, how to process and move through it, and how to address the voice in your head that’s the meanest lil’ B when you’re in the middle of any transition in life.

🤳 CREATOR CORNER

I was debating sharing this because of the ‘Rated R’ branding (I’m sorry if it’s offensive LOL), but for the sake of documenting the process, I feel like I need to share it.

I’m also pretty proud of my design skills here, so there’s that.

My boo thang (soft launch?!) is a comedian who also happens to enjoy making comedic music (here’s a recent example of what mainstream music is in the comedy world).

He’s had the dream of creating a merch line to compliment his brand for a while… and it just so happens to revolve around the viral term… ‘Gluck’ 🐓

🚨 NSFW 🚨

For those who don’t know, go to Urban Dictionary 😂 AGAIN, SORRY.

Here are the steps we took to make his dream a reality:

1️⃣ Optional: Snag your favorite beverage, put on some vibey music, and puff, puff, pass 💨

2️⃣ For the design, I used my iPad + Apple Pencil with the App Procreate to draw it. There are plenty of other programs you can use for this, like Adobe Illustrator.

If you’re looking to create a more simple design, like a shirt with a quote or simple graphic, you can use Canva (see my own merch mockups below):

3️⃣ Create an Account (we used Printful)

4️⃣ Choose Your Product (we chose a simple hoodie to start):

5️⃣ Upload Your File + Order!

In the words of bae - Gluck, Gluck, Go 🥴

We ordered 1 as a sample to ensure he was happy with the quality of the garment, sizing, and placement of the logo before allowing others to purchase it.

The next step for you would be to link it to your Squarespace, Etsy, or Shopify website so you can start selling it (more on websites in a future newsletter).

Now that you know how to create merch, what ideas are you bringing to life?! Reply to this email and share it with me!