When I asked Amy, the home-business expert, whether it’s a good idea to start a dropshipping business in 2020, she answered “Why not? What do you have to lose? It is a great source of extra money and maybe one day you will see it replace your current income”. It’s her personal experience talking. Amy managed as a stay-at-home mom to create multiple sources of income doing eCommerce.
As her eCommerce business keeps expanding, she now re-launches her Udemy eBay dropshipping course. We challenged her to try to list and sell products on eBay as quickly as 7 days. By making her first sale within 3 hours Amy proved what eBay dropshipping is all about – being the easiest way to get started with an online business, so I asked to interview her.
“I’ve been creating my own source of income online since the year 2000 and drop shipping since the year 2003. You may wonder if it’s still possible today to continue to make money drop shipping and my answer is absolutely YES and maybe more than ever before! “
Amy Hunt
How to Get The Courage to Start an Online Business
Where did your making your own income start, Amy?
“My mother was a pre-med major in college but chose to stay-at-home with my brothers and I. To make some extra money we would do a lot of different things at home to make to sell or offer services. For example, we created our own little business called TAAC-L, which were the first letters of each one of our names, and we would sell all sorts of things from vegetables from our ½ acre garden to a LOT of homemade crafts, which we would take to consignment stores. My brothers and I all also made money by cutting grass.”
I, myself, also remember hustling since I was pretty young, at 17 I was already making my own income, I was getting paid by hotels HR managers for finding them college students for part-time jobs.
What happened to you when you started your professional life and your family?
“In college, I wasn’t able to get a job because I was playing both basketball and softball while getting my major in Kinesiology & Education. Naturally, I would had this inclination to sell things, so I would design and print t-shirts and shorts and sell them for extra money while in college.”
Skipping ahead a few more years, Amy continued to explore. She continues, “To make a long story short, I got my masters in Education, got married and had 2 children, for which I quit my job so I could stay at home with them. Then the money got shortened by half in my household. My thoughts were, ‘Now what am I going to do to make some money?’.
Is that when you started thinking about generating that extra income online?
“Naturally, I turned to selling things but now I had the internet and eBay is where I started, in 2000. I lived near an outlet center, where there were a lot of cheap items, so I would go to the stores and find good sales (and it got me out of the house) and list those sale items on eBay. I sold EVERYTHING!!! This was so much easier than creating my own products, making things and such. So, I continued to do this.”
The Best Online Business Opportunity is Dropshipping
Was there such a thing as dropshipping back then?
“At the time, the word DROPSHIPPING didn’t exist, but practically this is what I was doing. Someone I knew, through a family member, needed assistance selling more of her online store items on eBay and Amazon and she requested that I help sell her stuff on those platforms.
In my first 9 months I made $5,000 (great income for a stay-at-home mom in 2003) with very little efforts. Then next year I made more than 5X that amount and then it happened. The company had a falling out in the year 2006 and I no longer had access to the site.”
Amy is demonstrating here the importance of expecting ahead when you get started that on your journey you will fail one way or another, it’s part of the entrepreneurial game, good entrepreneurs learn to grow from it.
How did you recover from that?
“I struggled to get back to where I was from that point on and was very frustrated I wasn’t getting back to where I was with selling on Amazon and eBay, until I found a cashback website in 2011. This was like landing on a pot-of-gold to me!
Once I found a cashback website my eyes popped out of my head because now I didn’t just have an outlet store that I could go to (and now didn’t have to ‘go buy’ anything, or 1 website that I could dropship from), it was 1,000s of stores!
I was so excited!!!
I consequently started drop shipping from many different stores. I tried a lot of different products and many sold but I targeted in on Legos and trampolines at the time. My biggest seller was the most expensive Lego, the DEATH STAR (I love Star Wars and Legos!). I sold OUT many different stores online – Kmart, Walmart, Lego.com, etc. from selling so many of them. I would make anywhere from $20-$100 per sale. I had no idea, at the time, I wasn’t suppose to do this on Lego’s site. I was crushing it but then the dropshipping market started creating rules about selling from their stores. Stores started monitoring things more and banning people who were doing what I was doing, dropshipping.. Lego.com kicked me from their site (I still can’t order from there). That’s when I started looking into direct suppliers.”
Amy was lucky to do it at the time, today we use a 3-layered VeRO protection in DSM Tool only to prevent people from selling products they don’t have the rights to sell on eBay (Official LEGO products being one of them).
The first video I watched on your Youtube channel was about DSM Tool, what made you choose to use a software to run your eBay dropshipping business?
“I honestly couldn’t believe that there was such a thing as a website that could help me with so many drop shipping needs as this. I honestly would take a LOT of time listing and finding one item before DSM TOOL that when they showed up to my game I felt such relief. This website not only assisted me in listing my items and giving my products a better look on eBay it tracked the sales, it assisted with finding products and it helped save me so much time finding good selling products!”
So, the ‘easy-street’ progression for me was; selling products I bought at an outlet store complex, then drop shipping from a store, to a cashback website where I could drop ship from many stores, then DSMTOOL where I could dropship from many stores and direct supplier all while DSMTOOL inserted and monitored everything. Each progressively making selling easier and easier.”
Smart Online Entrepreneurs Generate Income from Multiple Channels
Amy, like many other online entrepreneurs, understands how important it is to generate an income online from multiple channels of income. After joining DSM Tool as a customer she was able to grow her income by talking about her experience with the platform on her Youtube channel.
Not only that it enabled her to gain more followers and increase the income from Youtube ads but also it was a great opportunity to take a part in the affiliate program of DSM Tool. Think about it, as the software company we get to choose who to pay to: Facebook – for ads, or Amy – for educating entrepreneurs on how to manage their business wisely. I think we should always choose to favor paying the educators, I hope you agree.
How did the Youtube channel get started?
“My experience led me to start my YouTube channel. Being a teacher by trade I wanted to teach others how to do drop shipping so I created a YouTube channel that combined these two passions in my life – teaching and making/saving money online. I was actually pleasantly surprised at how much my channel was growing.”
What other methods do you use to generate an income online?
“I continue to dabble in a LOT of different avenues of revenue producing projects as well as how to save money, including: courses on Udemy.com, designing and selling merchandise, selling products on Amazon and eBay, creating your own products and so much more.“
What would you say to a new online entrepreneur who considers getting started?
“You may wonder if it’s still possible today to continue to make money drop shipping and my answer is absolutely YES and maybe more than ever before!!!!
If you’re contemplating starting your own business my question to you is WHY NOT? What do you have to lose?
It is a great source of extra money and maybe one day you will see it replace your current income. WARNING though. You will be frustrated at times and you will catch ‘the bug’. What do I mean about ‘the bug’?
Well, once you see how easy it is to make money this way, it’ll be hard to go back to working your 9-5 J.O.B – Just Over Broke! Work for yourself, it’s so much nicer!”
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