We said we'd share our journey (story) with many of you who have asked us how we got to where we are today; How we became to be an Ecommerce business, so here we are:)We share this with others in hopes that it will inspire: to follow dreams, to follow a passion for taking action, to stay the course full speed ahead through challenges when the going gets tough. We hope to provide tips and knowledge we've learned along our journey that will help others with their own journey. We hope to answer questions that our readers have to help others move forward with their own accomplishments.
With busy lives for all of us, we thought it best to share our story in segments; parts that are numbered, which will not only make reading easier for our viewers, but it will help us to try and stay focussed so we don't forget to share important things. After all, it's been a year and a half and boy, have we learned a lot!
We will try and write a new post every 2 weeks, because remember, we also have to run our Ecommerce business, Up On Retail. We hope you keep coming back!
We'll share doors that opened and/or doors that closed around the topics of dropshipping, affiliate marketing, Ecommerce, Amazon selling, Ebay selling, Etsy selling and private labels.
We are Canadian in Canada but many of our colleagues are in the US, UK, China & India so the information shared will be of benefit to readers around the globe.
And so it begins - Part 1:
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| Summer 2015 |
The most important highlights about me when it comes to work are:
- I worked for 20 years for small businesses, large businesses & global corporations before finding myself laid off and on a new path of nothing but contract jobs
- I worked contract jobs as a consultant, and as an employee for 4 years for education, not-for-profit, government, small businesses & corporations before and during opening a registered event planning business, planning celebrations, corporate gala's, product launches, etc.
- After 2 years of being in business event budgets were cut in many companies and many events were planned using in-house staff, or the fee to pay someone like me was cut by less than 1/2. I folded the event business & continued to find contract jobs, although it became much more difficult to find these as well.
- I opened and registered a social media management business and took on small business clients immediately, and still have less than a handful of clients today.
In early 2015 I had an epiphany, (an insight into reality) that i would never earn the type of money i desired to live the lifestyle i want to live at this stage in my life if i continued to operate my social media company due to competition as well as the challenge to convince businesses not already on social media the value of its results. I'm 56 years old. This is when my focus changed.
I honestly don't recall where the information, or should i say the word 'dropshipping' came to be in the forefront of my mind, but it did. (Did I tell you that I do believe that we attract what it is we need and desire into our lives if we focus on it?)
I feel that since I had decided i needed a new money-making path, somehow my attention was drawn one day to the word 'dropshipping' while on the internet.
At this point I knew nothing about dropshipping, what it was or how it worked, so my research began with tons of enthusiasm.
Dropshipping or Drop Shipping is basically as follows:
1. I advertise a product for sale on an ECommerce website
2. A customer buys the product from me and pays me for it
3. I order the product from my dropshipping company, pay for it at a lesser price than what the customer paid me for it
4. The dropshipping company ships the product directly to my customer
My initial research showed that tons of people were making tons of money by having a dropshipping business. This was for me! I could do this because i didn't have a 'pot of gold (or money) sitting around and I didn't have to put out any money up front since the customer paid me first before I paid my dropshippiing company for each product.
I immediately:
- thought of a business name (this always takes a day or two, or longer) [I'll write a later post about this]
- checked to make sure this name "Up On Retail" was not already registered to another business
- registered the business as an ecommerce business (I'll write a post about these later)
- purchased the domains uponretail.com and uponretail.ca from Hover.com (Twocows Inc.) [I have used them since opening my first business and have been happy with their service].
I was on my way to setting up my ECommerce dropshipping business!
I will continue with my investigative journey about becoming a dropshipping business in 'Part 2 - How Did It All Start', but what you need to know now is, I didn't end up becoming a dropshipping business afterall.
Up On Retail
