How I Made a Profitable Business From Home in Under 30 Days, for less than $20

It was nearing the end of March 2020, my college had just been closed due to the Coronavirus pandemic and I was beginning to face the realisation that I was about to have the next 6 months off with no work or school to attend.

I’ve always wanted to start a business. Ever since I was a little kid I have dreamt about running my own company and being my own boss. It had always been something that I’d thought about doing after university however, as I sat at home, knowing that I had nothing to do for the next while, I figured I may as well get a head start and see what I could do.

Later that day, an advert popped up on my Facebook newsfeed which intrigued me. Perhaps it was due to the fact that I had been searching for business ideas a few hours earlier, but it was an ad for Shopify – an online, e-commerce business where you can open an online store. Normally, it costs $29 a month to use this platform however due to the pandemic’s effects on businesses, the company was offering a free 3 month trial. This was perfect. I entered my details and voilà, I now had my very own shop.

I had done some research and, because I had no money, I found out about a method of selling called ‘drop-shipping’. Put simply, drop-shipping is when you list products for sale that you haven’t purchased yet, then when your customer buys something (at a slightly higher price set by you), you use their money to purchase the good, resulting in a profit. The benefit of this method was that there were no upfront costs on my part as I only had to buy the goods after I had already been paid by the customers.

In the real world, you can drop-ship any product, however it usually requires a lot of time and expertise to search through websites such as AliExpress and choose an item that will be successful. Therefore, I decided to hit another section of the market and start my own clothing brand. I had discovered a website called Printful which let me design my own clothes, from sweatshirts to hoodies and SnapBacks to backpacks. Once I had submitted my designs – a simple word logo on 4 different garments – I was able to upload the images to my store and start selling. By this stage, I had decided to purchase a unique domain name as I thought that it would make my store look official and might increase my sales, so I spent $14 for my ‘.com’ domain (although this was completely optional).

Now all I needed was marketing. Again, having no money definitely hindered my options so I began thinking about free methods. Instagram was what I finally went with; I set up a business account and inserted my website’s url into the bio. I needed some photos to post and came across a website called PlaceIt which allowed me to upload my designs to over 30,000 pre-taken images of models and garments. It was only $7 for unlimited, 1 month access so I paid it and began downloading some photos.

With every photo posted and with every hashtag clicked, I was growing in likes and followers. But sales were not coming. I took a detailed look at my new likes and discovered that a vast number were coming from accounts just like mine, small businesses trying to grow their own followers. I knew that these such accounts would never lead to sales as they weren’t real people – so I came up with a plan. Instead of waiting for customers to find and come to me, I would reach out to them.

I started by going onto profiles that were also selling clothes: Hollister, H&M, Topshop+Topman and began scrolling through the names of people who had liked their posts. I didn’t want to annoy people by begging them to buy my clothes, as that’s not how business should work, instead I sent each of them a direct message that said the following:

“Hey! We saw your profile and would love to work with you if you’re up for it. Let us know! Thanks :)”

I figured that this would be less intrusive than simply asking someone to buy something off my website and put control in their hands as they didn’t have to reply if they didn’t want to.

Within just a few minutes, I was getting responses back from people saying they’d love to work with me. This was great however I thought it would be best if I offered them something for it. Therefore, I told them that I would give them a code for 20% off my clothes (enough for me to still make a profit) if they agreed to post a photo of them wearing their new items once they arrived. This way, I would make some money and get free marketing in the process. The idea was a smash with lots of people agreeing to the deal.

An hour or two later, I was busy reading an article when my phone buzzed; I had made my first sale! The feeling you get when you score your first ever sale is indescribable, elation to the highest degree. What’s more it was a big one: $68.95. I had received just under seventy dollars in turnover for free and it felt amazing. The next step was processing their order, this is normally done automatically by Shopify but I had changed my settings so that I could fulfil the orders myself. I went onto my Printful app and purchased the clothes to the specifications that my customer had chosen. The total came to just $28.97. Therefore after deducting this total from the amount that the customer paid, I was left with a profit of $39.98 – just to reiterate, that’s almost $40 in profit without needing to spend a single dime. And it didn’t stop there; a few hours later I made another sale of $54.98 and shortly after that, I made a further sale of $34.99. My total profit for a single day of trading was $78.76. Not bad for no work, right?

Over the course of the next 2 weeks, I made 12 more sales, bringing my total profit to $278.43. I was amazed at just how easy it was to make genuine money from doing little to no work.

I kept up my usual method of sending messages to potential customers but as time went by, the sales dried up. Plus, with Instagram’s daily message limit coming into effect, I really wasn’t getting the desired results anymore. The promotions didn’t work as well as I had hoped either – for every post that went up I made just 4 sales in total. Sure, this added another $57.74 to my profits which was brilliant, but I had nowhere to go now.

I concluded that this would be the best time to close my store, having finished 28 days after I started with a grand total of $336.17 in profit.

I’m sure that if I spent more time and money, and really put effort in to this business, I could’ve made a lot more profit, but I was pretty happy with what I had made. I had managed to realise a lifelong dream of starting my very own business and it had been worth it. For anyone wanting to follow in my footsteps here are the steps summarised:

1. Go to Shopify and start a free 3 month trial

2. Decide on a type of business: clothes, jewellery, iPhone accessories – any of these work

3. Design your products using Printful or Printify and upload them to your website

4. Set up an Instagram page

5. Reach out to potential customers by sending DMs (remember to be nice and don’t beg)

And there you go, you now have your very own online business for free. Good luck selling!