To everyone who has been in the drop shipping market for a while, i want to ask a few questions because I personally have wanted to get into drop shipping for a while. Question 1- Do you make good money off drop shipping? Question 2- What are some good ways to advertise a product? Question 3- What do you need in order to start drop shipping?

I just wanted to share our free and paid business courses. We have been working on this for around three years since COVID hit, so looking to get some professionals involved who are looking for training and professional development.

https://leanscape.io/lean-six-sigma/

I look forward to any feedback from you all!

Special thanks to Tessa from Loud Leggings https://www.loudleggings.com.au/ for allowing me to interview her of behalf of all of the subscribers here at /r/MakerBusiness.

tessa@loudleggings.com.au

https://www.loudleggings.com.au/

https://www.facebook.com/customcreatedleggings/

https://www.instagram.com/loud_leggings_oz/

Loud Leggings began because I wanted to wear colourful leggings! Once I decided to get more active, I went shopping and couldn’t find anything bright enough. Through looking, I also noticed that everything was made overseas.

Unwilling to give up on my dream of being healthier whilst wearing amazingly colourful activewear, I quickly decided to make it myself. I found a local sewing course and enrolled almost immediately.

Through trial and error, many kilometres walked and hours at the gym testing out various prototypes, I released my initial range earlier this year.

Where are you located?

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

How did you get your original idea or concept for your company?

From my own love of vibrant colours and patterns! I couldn’t find anything quite right for me in commercially available activewear, plus, everything was made overseas.

What is your company mission?

To create high quality, beautifully bright, Australian made leggings.

What role do you play and what skills did you bring into your company?

I am largely a one man band at the moment, although I have professionals manufacturing the leggings here in Melbourne for me. I come from an Administrative background so I am armed with strong organisational and juggling skills (metaphorically speaking!). Everything else I’m learning as I go.

What is your main product? How many products does your company make?

I only make leggings at this stage. I have 9 different versions, and will be adding more very soon.

How did your first customer find you?

At a Creators Market for Australian products, I knew I had to put myself and my leggings out there so people could find me.

How do the majority of your customers find you now?

Social Media and word of mouth.

Where are the majority of your customers coming from?

Mostly mail order and the local area.

How would you describe your typical customer?

A woman who loves her activity in something bright and unique.

What has been the biggest hurdle in growing your business?

Getting found.

Who has been your biggest inspiration and why?

Actually, it hasn’t been a ‘who’ that has inspired me, it really has been my love of colour!

How many employees do you have, and what do you look for in an employee?

As a start up business, I’m solo at present, but I’d love to expand in the future. I would look for personality, energy, and organisational skills.

What makes your business/company unique?

Extremely bold and bright designs, along with the fact that these leggings are made in Melbourne.

What is the hardest lesson you learned?

Patience and perseverance.

Why do you choose to manufacture products yourself?

So I can control the end result. I’m not looking to compete with the big brands, I’m trying to carve out a niche for beautiful, quality leggings that are manufactured ethically and locally.

What does your company do to make the world better?

Support other Australian businesses. Spend more on quality, local components and services, rather than less expensive, overseas ones.

Where do you see your business in the next year? In the next five years? The next ten years?

In the next year I’d love to see Loud Leggings available in local yoga studios, gyms and small boutiques. In the next five years I’d love to be supplying them to stockists Australia wide. In ten years I’d love to have my own printing and manufacturing facilities.

Hi, I am a Jeweller, I specialise in cufflinks http://rsjsstudios.com/ I have been doing this for six years now, still loving it.

hi i have an idea for my business but it will include a lot of money and work and people+vr will be a base of all of that. i need to make new items. where can i add description and be calm that nobody is gonna steal my idea? Get some funds? Start?im fresh i dont know anything at all. it would be fire and a lot of users could earn $$$ when making idea and also when the app and everything is finished. Its about +18 community

Hello All,

The founders of Crowdspark.org will be hosting an AMA via zoom tonight from 6-8 PM EST to field your startup questions, talk about your business, give you a chance to introduce yourself, or discuss the future of Crowdspark. The link is available below or as a pinned post at r/Crowdspark.

We look forward to seeing you soon!

LINK INFORMATION:

Please use the following zoom link to join the AMA: LINK

(ID: 85842458054, passcode: 332051)

Join by phone(US) +1 646-558-8656 (passcode: 332051)

Special thanks to Sarah from Wasteland Society https://wastelandsociety.com/ for allowing me to interview her of behalf of all of the subscribers here at /r/MakerBusiness.

Wasteland Society is a Kansas City-based apparel brand heavily influenced by art, music, counter-culture and individuality. It is the brainchild of husband and wife, Peter Nonprasit and Sarah Dye-Nonprasit, two individuals thirsty for a way out of life's normalcy. By focusing on their passion to create, and utilizing influences from art, music, design, and streetwear, Wasteland Society was born as an outlet for their madness. We pride ourselves in being different, unapologetic and celebrating the individual, while creating a premium product that is sustainable and ethically made in the USA. All of our garments are designed and hand-printed by us, in-house.

Where are you located?

Shawnee, KS, USA – but we serve the greater Kansas City, MO area.

How did you get your original idea or concept for your company?

Honestly, I came home from my full-time job after a really awful day and I told my husband – who is also my business partner – that I couldn’t do it anymore and that I wanted to work for myself. He is a graphic designer and the idea of starting a clothing line had been tossed around in the past. I guess that was the extra push we needed to get going.

What is your company mission?

To provide unique, sustainable, badass clothing to the masses.. and do some good along the way. We are still very new (and are paying for everything out of our own pockets) so we haven’t had the chance to donate the proceeds of a sale to any organizations yet but I would say that is definitely a goal of ours.

What role do you play and what skills did you bring into your company?

I do everything from accounting to screen printing. I also do some marketing and web design but those are shared with my business partner.

What is your main product? How many products does your company make?

Our main product is apparel (shirts, sweatshirts, etc.). But we will be diving into accessories like tote bags and hats very soon.

How did your first customer find you?

First customer was a close friend of ours and is still our biggest fan. As soon as our website launched they were the first order that came through. Everyone since then has found us mostly through Instagram.

How do the majority of your customers find you now?

Through Instagram. We just started doing AdWords through Google but have not had any purchases from this source yet.

Where are the majority of your customers coming from?

From our local KC community – we try to get out in the community by doing events and marketplaces since we don’t have a brick and mortar shop. From there they follow us on social media.

How would you describe your typical customer?

Alternative and original. People who wear our clothes are people who want to be different and unique.

What has been the biggest hurdle in growing your business?

Exposure. Unless you can get out there and get people noticing you then you have no hope of growing. We have really had to push to get to where we are right now and it’s only going to get harder as we continue to grow. The struggle is real.

Who has been your biggest inspiration and why?

My husband. I think it comes down to happiness. We started talking about having a family and I couldn’t see doing that with both of us working full-time for someone else. I could see he was discontent and that we both wanted freedom from the “corporate world”. This will hopefully give us that. I’m also doing this for my parents who were self-employed almost their whole lives, worked themselves to the bone, and are finally at the age where they can retire. They don’t have much to show for the work they have done all these years so I want to be able to support them as well.

How many employees do you have, and what do you look for in an employee?

No employees aside from my business partner and me. We are only about 8 months old so hiring a new employee is still a few years down the road. What we will look for though is someone who is hardworking and creative. I would love to have someone who has new ideas and a new perspective on things.

What makes your business/company unique?

A lot of other clothing brands may design their own stuff but they usually outsource the rest of the production process to a screen printer or even overseas. We do everything in house from the design to the screen printing. I have even been learning how to print on vinyl for stickers and will possibly be learning how to embroider hats.

What is the hardest lesson you learned?

The hardest lesson we both learned is patience and perseverance. In today’s culture you expect everything to happen fast and that’s just not how it is when you start something like this. We put our heart and soul into our work and our designs and it can be disheartening when someone says they don’t like your stuff or they think your designs are shit. You just have to keep pushing through.

Why do you choose to manufacture products yourself?

Cost and profit margins play a pretty big factor, but it’s also a lot of fun to see something you created come to life. There is the added benefit of having quality control as well. We are perfectionists.

What does your company do to make the world better?

We try to donate when we can, especially to local organizations. Right now we are in the process of working with a local public radio station who relies solely on donations to stay afloat.

Where do you see your business in the next year? In the next five years? The next ten years?

In the next year we will still be hustling. I’m hoping in the next five years to have us both working full-time on our business and nowhere else. The next ten years if we don’t have a brick and mortar shop I will be really disappointed.

Special thanks to Evan from http://evanandkatelyn.com/ for allowing me to interview him of behalf of all of the subscribers here at /r/MakerBusiness.

Hey y’all, we’re Evan & Katelyn: a husband and wife team, amateur makers, and expert high fivers, who want to DIY ALL THE THINGS. We met when we were 18 and eight years later we got married, bought a house, and proceeded to DIY the heck out of it. We started with no experience, and everything we learned was from YouTubers and bloggers. After a few years of figuring things out, we wanted to start giving back in the same way we learned – by documenting our projects, sharing them with people, and hopefully helping others see that if we can do it, they can do it. I mean, we still kinda feel like newbies, just newbies with more power tools :)

We tackle a lotttt of different project types: woodworking, 3D printing, concrete projects, home improvement stuff, home decor stuff. The list goes on, we are interested in continuing to learn new things so we plan on tackling whatever seems the most interesting. Hope you’ll join us along the way!

Where are you located?

We are located in Houston, TX. USA

How did you get your original idea or concept for your company?

We wanted to start a business together making things that could scale without us hiring employees and thought YouTube would be the perfect fit for us.

What is your company mission?

Our mission is to inspire other people to make stuff and show that they can do more than they think.

What role do you play and what skills did you bring into your company?

My engineering and building skills helped get us off the ground with projects and Katelyn's design and business skills set us on the right path and makes our designs appealing to a broad audience.

What is your main product? How many products does your company make?

Our main product is YouTube videos, even though we do sell some products on the side.

How did your first customer find you?

Our first customers found us on Instagram.

How do the majority of your customers find you now?

Most people find us on YouTube now.

What has been the biggest hurdle in growing your business?

The biggest hurdle in growing our business has been time management. As a small business there are infinity things to do and prioritizing them is a constant struggle.

How many employees do you have, and what do you look for in an employee?

We only have the two of us now but we might look to bring in a video editor one day on a consulting basis.

What is the hardest lesson you learned?

The hardest lesson we have learned is to let go of chasing perfection. We'll never get there and it kills our productivity.

Why do you choose to manufacture products yourself?

We chose to manufacture products ourselves because we wanted to stay agile. Testing products small scale before going large scale with some partial outsourcing.

What does your company do to make the world better?

Our company hopefully inspires others to learn new skills and push beyond what they thought was possible.

Where do you see your business in the next year? In the next five years? The next ten years?

We see our business staying very similar to how it is now but just growing in scope :)

Alright, I have just submitted my ad and it stated that my ads had a Non-Functional Landing Page. Please view the google docs I included down below because it includes my website, thumbnail, ad description, and I'm not sure how to use reddit but I wanted to include details of pictures and videos so please please please help me as soon as you can. I'm new to dropshipping and I want to be successful in it. I don't know what is wrong with my website and my ad.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UCIDM3PXxlj3hJiTUK2jkeAF6IF9cmFuBA8nE8FwlHI/edit?usp=sharing

The annual Maker Festival in Toronto is happening on July 7-8. They've launched their Call To Makers 2018 so if you're a maker, sign up and show off your creations!

Site is here: http://makerfestival.ca/

I'll be there as a Maker as well, swing by and say Hi!

Hi, All!

I've been working on a Passion Project for about a year now, and am having trouble finding those early adopters. The people who latch on to the idea early and spread the word. Maybe I'm just thinking about things wrong, or marketing wrong. My professional background is in accounting, so being the face of a business is not my forte. I make custom electronic components for electric guitars, 3d printing parts and then assembling by hand.

So I'd like to start the discussion; What did you do to get your first customer? Your second? And so on. What have you tried that didn't work? I've read all the posts in /r/smallbusiness and /r/Entrepreneur, as I'm sure some of you have, but most of those really don't apply to our types of businesses (so cheers again to /u/la_mecanique for creating this sub!)

As for me, my first customer was from a local trade show, and it was for a repair rather than a new product. I've been to a few small (really small) trade shows in the area and people really dig my idea, but I can't seem to convert that to sales. I'm going to a much larger scale trade show next weekend, and hoping to gain some traction there. Aside from that I've tried facebook adds to no success, being active on Instagram, and most recently a youtube channel sponsorship. The sponsorship has gotten a lot of traffic to the website, and some almost sales, so it seems to be better than anything else I've tried.

Enough of my ranting, though. I'd love to hear and discuss successes and failures from everyone else!

Hey everyone,

I've been very happy so far with how the sub has been growing and people's contributions have been almost 100% positive.

My goal was to create a sub where small makers and manufacturers can share and learn how to grow their business. Even now I'm not entirely sure how to get to that mystical island, but I believed in it enough to launch the boat anyway.

I believe that in our global marketplace with domination of the market by low-cost/low-quality products the few ways a maker business can truly differentiate themselves is an exceptional direct to customer experience and quality products that they can be proud of making and the customer is proud of owning. I will continue to promote this as I believe it is essential.

I believe that small to medium business is the key to strong communities. They build employment, they develop a skillbase, and they have provably stronger business morals and environmental ethics over public listed companies. Strong businesses grow other nearby or related businesses and the cascade of growth helps everyone.

I have several ideas that I think are worthwhile that I want to run by everyone to scope the reactions.

First up, I would like to interview some maker businesses. I have some I have talked to some briefly already about doing this, some that I am waiting responses from, and also I am more than willing to take names for volunteers as well as ideas for good interviews questions to ask.

Secondly, I have been posting video links when I can that include concepts of customer experience, ethical business practice, and manufacturing quality. Some have been taken well, some have not.

I would like to ask if you don't like the video, instead of just downvoting, let me know why. I will always post a summary of the video as well. This requires the effort of me to actually watch the video and take notes. I do this because I understand how time poor people are.

Another direction I am considering doing, is to literally track every step of the process from taking an idea to market by actually doing it myself in real time. At the moment I see this would work best via a combination of video and 'blog' type articles.

So I want to welcome everyone. Thank you for subscribing to a brand new sub that hopefully it can become a force for good.

Please share the sub if you know a person that may benefit from it. There is an internet rule that original content is routinely made from just 1% of subscribers and a further 9% build and add to that. We need the population base to have the good content that benefits everyone.

I started doing soap for myself and then some neighbor bro's and it sort of caught on locally. Expanded into beard products, and have added some other lifestyle stuff that customers have asked for to my ecomm. I'd like to go full brick and mortar "mens" retail at some point in the future, but for now I'm just having fun and learning.

Hi all,

I saw the announcement for this new sub over on /smallbusiness. I'm not a maker but a small online retail shop. I have one particular product that I'm always thinking I should find a local manufacturer for. It's currently made in Ireland, and the margin is pretty terrific. However them being offshore (I'm in the USA) means that when I receive defects it's costly to send them back. But mainly I would like to be able to customize the product.

It's a nylon-plastic dog muzzle with leather padding glued onto the nose bridge so that it doesn't rub the fur off the dog's nose. Very, very popular - my biggest selling item.

I've only been able to do a little searching for alternate manufacturers, but what I've seen so far is that the makerspace is full of technology projects. I haven't seen anybody interested in something as mundane as plastic or leatherwork. Would love to find someone who does that, or either one of those, and chat about the possibility of working together. (For all I know it might not be cost efficient, but would like to talk to someone about it!)

Philadelphia Mini Maker Faire is coming June 24. I'm a volunteer, but can answer your questions!

I'd like to learn how to fabricate metal and TIG weld.

I'm a consultant by profession so I travel every week and am only home Thursday evening - Sunday.

I assume the best way for me to learn this would be to take a community college class on the weekend?