George Kamel - The Truth About eCommerce Side Hustles

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

Savvy or Scammy: The Truth About eCommerce Side Hustles How To Make Money Online Start Your EveryDollar Budget Now! Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up guys, it's George Camel here, and I've got a big question for you. What do all of these creators have in common? Over the past few years, I've generated millions with drop shipping, and recently, I sold my store for a life-changing amount. The past few years, I've managed to make over seven figures drop shipping. With how popular drop-shipping is becoming, it is now a high-level skill that can be making you some serious money online. Well, they're all claiming to have made boatloads of money super fast through drop-shipping.

I see you, I'm on, zero to $100,000 in 60 days. Must know 99% of my channel is literally drop shipping. What are you doing on YouTube? Buy yourself an island already, my guy? And this is just a few of these creators out there. And there are so many others that are promoting dropshipping and other e-commerce businesses as lucrative side hustles that you're missing out on. And for the low, low price of $699, you can purchase their drop-shipping PDF tutorial e-course

to become just as young and successful as they are. Not actually young, but, hey, enough money can buy you your age back. Isn't that right, Paul Rudd? Who would have thought? Not me. So is it legit? Should you hop on board the e-commerce train and buy the course and start making 10 bands, 10 grand, geez, stacks, beans, greens, potatoes, tomatoes, lambs, hams, hogs, dogs a month? You name!

Or is this just another get-rich-quick scheme that makes them richer and you broker? Well, I'm George Campbell, and today we are digging in. into which e-commerce side-hustles are worth your time right after you like and subscribe to this channel. Don't be shy. You know you want to do it. Just a little tap-pity-tap. Bada-a-Bing-Bad-a-boom.

You made me and the algorithm very happy. Now, drop-shipping isn't the only e-commerce side hustle people are tapping into. There's also stuff like online arbitrage, FBA, which stands for fulfillment by Amazon, eBay flipping, and more. But drop-shipping is just the buzziest. That thing has got more buzz than Toy Story for.

You are a sad. strange little man. And while drop shipping in some form has been around for decades, it wasn't until the rise of Amazon and eBay in the early 2000s that it really took off. Much like Britney Spears' career and much unlike my pubescent dating life. A few years later, drop shipping went boom again when platforms like Ali Express and Shopify popped up, making it even more accessible to everyday people like you and me. Now, if you're new to the game, here's what drop shipping is in a nutshell.

You set up an online store, but you personally don't stock any product. sold there. So when a customer places an order through your site, you purchase the inventory from a wholesaler at a discount, and the wholesaler sends the product directly to the customer. You get what's left over, otherwise known as profit. So instead of having a garage full of shake weights you've got to get rid of, you're just the middleman for the wholesaler. Make sense? Also, if you have a garage full of shake weights, what went wrong? Just take us back to the beginning. So on paper, drop shipping Sounds amazing. No inventory to worry about. You don't even have to purchase the product until you've already made the sale and have been paid by the customer. Sweet deal so far. Doesn't take much

investment or risk on the front end because you didn't have to buy 12 pallets of shake weights to resell. So you don't need to store the inventory. The wholesaler fulfills the orders you get, and you can run the shop from anywhere, and you don't have the heavy costs up front. So this sounds like easy money so far, right? Well, actually, no, it's not easy money at all. But that's what a lot of the viewers coveting the riches of these YouTube dropshippers don't realize. You see, a big appeal of drop shipping is that your supplier does most of the heavy lifting. But here's the thing. It's also its downfall.

Where other retailers might have a 50 to 60% profit margin, you might be only looking at 10% to 30% profit margin, meaning you've got to do way more volume to see some legit profit. Now, this also means you have to generate a ton of traffic to your store page using things like targeted ads, which can get expensive real quick. Plus, generating traffic will be even harder because most drop shipping sites only to have about 3 to 8% repeat customers. That sucks. Think about this. Only three of every 100 people that come to your site will ever come back.

I mean, if only 3% of McDonald's customers came back, they would have to shut down those golded arches faster than you can say shamrock shake. I've never tried the McDonald's shamrock shake ever in my frickin' life. And this means you'll literally be a hamsterer on the cruel, cruel wheel of traffic generation as long as your store exists. And by the way, have you tried to get the attention of someone on the internet lately? It's nearly impossible. I can't even believe I've held your attention this long. But it begs the question, why don't customers typically return? Well, it all comes back to the handy-dandy wholesaler saving you all the work.

You see, they control the product quality, their product delivery, and the customer support. Meaning unless you've partnered with a diamond-in-the-ruffer who really cares, your customer's subpar service, eh, it's not really their problem. I miss the part where that's my problem. Now, that's not to say drop shipping doesn't ever work. I mean, you ever hear of a little company called Wayfair? They're a multi-million e-commerce company that's just drop shipping on steroids. But here's what I want you to think about.

Are you Wayfair? Do you have the time and money to create a successful platform and buy all of these ads on TV? And if this was just a side hustle to start, where are you going to get those things? The people who have success drop shipping, they have it because they put in the time and the work. Now, what is scamy, though, is some of these YouTube drop shippers that aren't actually making good money drop shipping at all. They just Photoshopped the images and they're making fortunes selling you mediocre tutorials to make you think you can do the same. And that is gross. And if you're young, it's what we call suss. You've been seeing me suss lately. If you were asking me

which e-commerce side hustles have the most potential, I would say eBay or Facebook marketplace flipping. Now that is something I can get behind. Because you can make some serious cash online just by flipping items, purchasing items that you clean up a little bit and you resell for bigger value. There are just better side hustles out there if you take a little time to find them. Heck, a retail job these days will pay you more per hour than you can make trying to get fancy with e-commerce. But don't worry, there are three things you can do that will help you figure out what side hustle job is best for you. So let's start with time. Think about how much time you can realistically put into this, before, during, and after.

And calculate roughly what you're actually making per hour when you consider all of that. Because it might turn out you spent a lot of time to make a little bit of money and realize, I made like four bucks an hour doing that. That sucks. Next up, look at talent. Now, I promise you don't have to suck at your side hustle. It could be something you're already really good at, something you love doing, like tutoring kids in math, helping fix people's computer problems, or selling dog hair. Unless you're in Delaware for that last one, for some reason it's illegal there. Gotta be a weird story behind it. But here's an example. When I was getting out of debt years ago, one of my side hustles was building websites for entrepreneurs and small businesses using Squarespace. I was always always I'm also a musician, and I would license my songs through different websites for people to buy to use in their films and videos. These are things that I was passionate about, that I was good at, that didn't take me a lot of time. And when you're good at it, it'll feel less like work and more like fun. I like to have fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. Lastly, outside of time and talent, think about your target.

Now, we're not talking about your local Target store here, though working part-time there could be a good side hustle. And you'd get first dibs on the hearth-and-hands summer line. anyone else excited about their seasonal stoneware? So stoked. Now, as you're looking through options, think about what your main target or goal is in getting this side hustle. Do you simply need help hang off dead

or get some breathing room in your budget? Do you want to serve others? Do you want to use your skills for profit? Are you hoping to turn this into a legitimate side business one day, a small business? Whatever your reason, be sure it makes sense for you, your lifestyle, and your goals. That way you're going to be way more likely to stick to it

and make some cash while you're at it. And when the money starts rolling in, put the extra income in your budget. There's always going to be a new, trendy, get-rich, quick train you're tempted to hop on. And just because Amman is crushing it at 19 with his how-to videos with 100,000 views on $100,000 a month,

it doesn't mean it will work for you. You don't have his swag. You don't got the Riz. Okay, you're not Amman. So swaggy. Side, dude. And if you do decide an e-commerce side hustle is a risk you're willing to take,

that's great. As long as you do your research and you know exactly what you're getting into. So if you want to learn more about how to make money online. I wrote an article on the best ways to do it, and I've got a link for you below. And if you've tried an e-commerce side hustle,

I want to know about it. Let us know in the comments, what you did, and how it worked out for you. But before you go, don't forget to like and subscribe to get more content like this. It would mean the world to me. Thank you guys for watching.

Until next time, keep it breezy and debt freezy. Okay, we got a workshop that one, guys. Now, keep it breezy and debt freezy. Is it me or is it the way I'm... Is it just a bad line? Keep it breezy. Oh, gosh. I'm not a man. I need more Riz.