It all started with a viral online store I made on a beach in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico.I was 19. It was winter break. School was starting in a few short weeks, and I was very short on cash.
I loved Photoshop. I'd even designed merchandise for my fraternity. Being a Millennial with an allergy to hourly wages, I knew I had to find a hustle.
The lightbulb moment: St. Patrick’s Day is coming up. There’s 40,000 students on campus at U of I! If I sell like...a hundred shirts at $7 a pop...that would do it!
Don’t laugh at my “big dreams” of making $700. That seemed like a lot of money at the time. You were 19 once, too!
Now I co-own Campus Ink in Champaign, IL – a screen printing business that drives growth through a creative strategy. We use online stores and a nationwide network of sales representatives at colleges and universities.
Hit the ground running to get ahead"Build a solution to get your idea rolling, then work out the details later. If you wait for a perfect solution, you'll never start." That's the exact mentality that got me started.
My first online store was just a Google Site. It was the only way I could figure out how to accept Paypal payments. Nothing fancy or complicated.
Keep in mind, no one had any idea how e-commerce worked at this point.
Shopify was just an idea in someone’s head. Amazon was a respectable company, but not part of everyone’s day-to-day life. Ebay was probably the easiest way to sell your own products online.
But I knew if I could capture this market – the enthusiasm for St. Patrick’s Day on campus borders on madness – I’d have customers. I’d make sales. I’d get my $700. I’d have an awesome semester.
My first online store blew away every expectation I had. We made more than 1,000 sales on our first online store. And because of that online store, I own a print shop.
Talk about hitting the ground running. It got out of hand!
Read the full article here:
https://www.printavo.com/blog/how-to-make-viral-online-stores
