About

I wrote this post to share my story and all the types of online businesses I have started along the way as I tried to make a full-time living online (as well as what I’m working on next).

My WooCommerce store

Using an eCommerce business model called Dropshipping, I launched my first online store in January 2017.

This is my WooCommerce store’s sales over the last 5 years.

So this is between Jan 2017 – Dec 2021 (~5 years) and if you’d asked me what I was doing with my life at the start of Jan 2017, I would not have said Ecommerce.

I sort of stumbled into it.

I feel like that’s how most people who make money online and are successful have got to where they are today.

I’m not saying I am successful, but I am more so wanting to point out that for the last 5 years, I have made money online doing the one type of “make money online” business model consistently and I think that’s rare in this industry.

How I built my first full-time income online

If I look at the people around me who are consistently and predictably making money online each month, they all share one thing in common.

MOST of them did not start an online business and then make millions from it.

They had to try and fail at a lot of other different types of businesses along the way to get to their final one.

But the skills you learn along the way are an incredible step in this online business thing.

For me, I started doing small business websites where I would design and develop them for $1000-2000. I was young and didn’t realise I was undercharging, so instead of raising prices I just tried to build them faster.

Skill acquired: Build a website in a very short amount of time
Skill acquired: Understanding the importance of creating systems to manage a business.

So I’d learnt to do these two things while trying to build a web agency.

At the time, I built these skills as I reacted to the web agency growth. I didn’t consciously try to build websites faster or make systems of everything. They were developed out of a necessity to build websites quicker (with fewer resources) so I could increase my margins.

So I had developed these skills…

and then I saw an ad that went something like “Start an online store and sell products you don’t even own”.

I clicked the ad, signed up for a webinar, watched the entire presentation (was smart enough not to buy the course) and boom!

Within 24 hours I had a WooCommerce store online and live (looking very professional) and I had added heaps of products from AliExpress.

I had ads going the next day and got my first sale.

Within 10 days I did $1000 in sales in a single day (it’s burned into my head – I’ll never forget that moment. I was in Whistler, Canada, on a ski chairlift and I refreshed the poor quality mobile app that WooCommerce had at the time).

$1,000 in a single day. While on a chairlift!

And I finally got out of debt!

During these first 3 months I managed to even pay off my credit card debt.

Here is my bank account as I got out of debt and paid off my credit card in these first 3 months of Ecommerce:

For the longest time I had been in $5000 debt and I could never seem to get out of it.

The below screenshot was in Jan 2017 and I have $4,882.19 owing on my credit card.

Then I started dropshipping and this screenshot below is of my Credit Card a month later at the end of February…

See where it says the closing balance is -$7,647.26? That means I had over-paid my credit card. I had paid more than I owed. I had never paid off my credit card, let alone over-paid. It was insane.

Then a month later at the end of March....I had OVER-PAID my credit card by $21,831.83.

And… I had paid off my debt.

The financial year ended a bit later here in Australia and, at the end of June, I paid off most of my university debt with some of the profit I had made with this ONE PRODUCT.

Failing is not wasting; it’s learning

I failed with the web agency, but the skills I’d developed that allowed me to build a website fast were the only reason I was successful with Ecommerce.

The biggest piece of this whole online business thing is to just keep going. Don’t give up.

Keep your skills up so that when the opportunity comes, you’re all-in 100% with your time and effort, and off with a sprint instead of a slow start.

Now, let’s get into the path I took to get to where I am today (which we’ll cover at the end of this post).

When I see people making money online I love to hear how they got there (and how messy their path was) so that I don’t feel so bad.

So while this post might seem a bit all over the place, it resembles my path to finally building a successful online business – and I quite like that.

So, without further ado…

Let’s start with 2015…

2015 – The year of the decision

In 2015 I decided I was going to move to Canada the next year and I couldn’t have been any more excited.

I was working at a medical device company mainly doing website design and development.

The job itself paid alright (from memory about $65,000 AUD / year) but it wasn’t the job for me.

If you’re like me, you move fast.

You have an idea, you build it that day and you put it into the world.

If someone had to ask me what I like most about myself in a business sense, it’s that I work hard and deliver fast.

I decided I wanted to do YouTube videos, so I did 200 videos in about a year and a half.

I’m the type of person who works best with no limits and I have lots of ideas, so working in medical definitely didn’t suit me.

Everything I did had to be reviewed by a separate regulatory team who ensured it met the health code standards of Australia.

And I was getting a salary (there was no way I was working after hours)… but I wanted to do something after hours, I wanted to build something. The day felt wasted if I just came home from work and watched T.V. – that’s never been the type of person I am.

So in my free time, I started doing small business websites.

I would get home from the medical company and work on client websites until I went to bed.

I was undercharging, had no spare time and the threat of losing work to India and other countries was becoming all the more too real for us web designers.

I wasn’t happy in the medical company, I was chasing my tail after-hours and eventually, it all got too much.

I had no holidays planned, the house I was living in was dark and mouldy and nothing seemed to be changing anytime soon.

My girlfriend at the time mentioned that she had family who lived in Canada and we had always toyed with the idea of going there to visit them.

That idea turned into our escape (my girlfriend didn’t really like her job either) and so we took that as our out; our big change.

Shortly after, we made all the plans and halfway through 2016 we put in our resignations and off we were to Canada!

2016: Feeling very stuck

I started Ecommerce and dropshipping in 2017 and managed to do nearly $400,000 in my third month with ecommerce and earn my previous years salary in just those 3 months, as you can see below.

But this was AFTER 6 months of being in Canada building up massive amounts of anxiety.

We Australians can go to Canada on a working holiday visa which lasts for 2 years.

In January 2017, I was very conscious that I had been in Canada for 6 months and all I had done was try and keep my head above water.

I was set on making this web agency that I’d built after-hours my full-time thing.

I tried A LOT of different things at this stage (I laugh at it now).

• I paid someone on Upwork to type “electrician Vancouver”, “architect Vancouver” etc into Google, go to their contact us pages and if their email address was there, put it into a google sheet. At the end of this, I had 200 email addresses in a google sheet. I emailed them all out (using Gmail bulk send haha – incredible, right?) and I actually landed 3 websites
• I cold-called these people also and said I could make their website better (cringe)

I knew something was wrong when I was hoping people wouldn’t go ahead with a website after I sent them the quote.

I didn’t want to do the work. I ended up hating building websites for people. I’d fallen out of love with it.

I had become aware that:

1. The client has the power
   You could design a gorgeous website, but the client has the last say. You make the changes they request and now the site doesn’t look so hot
2. You work when the client is available
   While it might seem like you’re working for yourself whenever you want, I found this wasn’t the case. I was so keen on wrapping up the projects so I could collect the final balance and move onto the next project, that I found even a 24-hour delay in them providing feedback was annoying. It just felt so slow.
3. I realised that the design of your website doesn’t matter as much as you think it does
   Above all, I started to get more and more interested in making money online and I was consuming a lot of content. I saw all these people making tens of thousands per month blogging and having ecommerce stores and their stores were very basic in appearance. I started to wonder if what I was doing had much importance; stressing with clients over their design but knowing they weren’t doing any advertising or getting anyone to their website. I just started to really question everything.

These three points above are very important learning experiences for me and we’ll come back to them later on.

Part of how I managed to break out of my rut and scale my WooCommerce dropshipping store to millions each year with staff is the fact that I let go of pretty much everything I knew and had learnt. And I did this consciously (more on this in a bit).

So, here I am at this stage – I’d got to Canada with all this excitement and ambition and 6 months into my 2-year time limit to stay in Canada – I had spent it building a business I hated doing, which took up all my time.

And worst of all – I did it all from home, so I had moved to this new amazing country with epic scenery and I had made no friends and done nothing. I had been glued to my computer??

2016: I realised the value in offering a Productised Service

A productised service completely changed the way I handled selling websites and was one of the main factors in me developing the mindset that enabled me to see the amazing opportunity that exists in Ecommerce.

Previously, when I would sell a website to a small business, I would call them up and ask them about their website, specifically to get an idea of how complex it needed to be.

We would scope out any complex functionality they wanted (like the ability to take booking on the website for a hotel or the ability to have their form data sync into their CRM – things like this).

Based on that, I would try my best to estimate the time it would take to complete making the website and then I would send them the quote, they would approve and I’d get to work.

I would ask them to:

• Send things like 3 examples of websites they wanted theirs to be similar to.
• Tell me what pages they would like on their website
• Send me the content that they wanted on each page of their website in a word document with images

And using this content provided by the client, I would try to find the best way to layout the content on each page.

With this system, there were a lot of issues.

Firstly, scope creep. The “I need a contact form” would turn into “I need a contact form and I need it to send the data to SalesForce” and then into “I need the contact form to send to SalesForce, but if the user is logged in I want it to go to Person A’s email instead of Person B’s email”. So, I would need to re-quote them and, again, estimate my time.

Secondly, clients would take ages to get their content to you. Worst – I didn’t even blame them for this.

Running a business is demanding. I didn’t really understand it at the time being so young, but now it makes a lot more sense to me. When you’re busy in your business helping your team, dealing with unhappy customers, paying invoices, keeping your accounting up-to-date and running your ads – the last thing you’re going to have time for is sitting down at the computer and writing content to send to the new web guy.

On top of this, when I was done with my changes, I would send it to the client to review and sign-off on / provide feedback on, which was another chance for the busy business owner to pause the project for a few days.

As you can see, the above system was very fluent and its complexity could change at any moment. There was also a lot of potential for bottlenecks, especially when it relied on getting something back from the client.

Luckily, at some stage in all of this, I came across the idea of a “productised service”.

Where you take a “service” and sell it as a “product”.

A website would normally be sold as a service. I need to talk to the client, work out the scope of the project, give them quotes and make changes along the way until the service is complete (they get their website). The limits were all set by the client and whatever they wanted, I’d do – I’d just charge them for my time to do what they wanted. That’s a service.

And the worst thing about all of this is that, when selling a website, I would ask for a 50% deposit upfront and then the final 50% would be collected from the client once they were 100% happy with the website.

This was a massive issue as clients were running their business each day and could take a long time to reply to your emails.

Turning this website service into a productised service starts with the sales process.

Instead of selling a website in a way that involved me scoping and being fluent with the needs of the website, I sold the website as a strict set of guidelines.

I turned selling websites as a service into a productised service by saying things like this:

• You can choose from any of these three website themes here
• Your website will be handed over to you with dummy text and dummy images. You can add your own content anytime you wish.
• From the day you pay, I will give you back your website within 7 days (I even got this down to 24 hours and called the business onedaywebsites).
• Your website will come with the pages Home / About / Contact / Services / Gallery. You can add more pages if you wish using the software.

And if the client’s needs were more complex than this, I would let them know that my business was not the best fit for their needs and recommend someone else.

I wish I had learnt about this concept much sooner than I did in my website design stint, but I only heard about it towards the end and sold maybe 10 websites in this style before my WooCommerce store took off.

But let me tell you – these 10 websites were not only the easiest websites for me to set up and deliver to the client, but they also gave me the most profit and they looked better than any other custom website I had done.

This idea of a productized service really shaped the way I saw selling online.

To sell something for more profit, you don’t necessarily need to make it more complex. You just need to put out the best quality product that you’re able to, be very specific about what the product will do for your customers and then only sell it to people who’s needs will be met by the product you’re offering them.

By doing this, you do less work, the client gets a product that specifically matches what they need (and expect from you) and the deal is completed much faster with less issues.

Here are two websites I built using one of the themes I let clients choose from. I still love them to this day and, considering the fact that I’d never really tried to build a business before myself, the fact that I added this newsletter signup box above the fold, right at the top of the page to collect leads for the business, still makes me happy.

Going from offering a Service to offering a Productized Service was a game-changer for the way I approached business.

But my head really exploded when I started to learn about Ecommerce and selling physical products.

You have this product that you make once and then you sell it over and over again (sometimes 500+ times in a single day) and you never have to speak to the customer or send them a quote?

Or wait for them to email you back?

Yeah.. so the idea of Ecommerce when I first heard about it just made so much sense to me.

So I gave it a go…

2017: I Started Dropshipping

This is where it all changed for me – I started making some real money.

The New Year passed and it was the first week of January 2017 and I knew one thing; I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing.

Luckily at this time, during my hopeless scrolling through social media, I was targeted with an ad, and the ad took me to a page where I could register for a webinar that promised to teach me about something called “Drop shipping”.

What is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is an ecommerce business model where you sell a product to your customer and then you get the actual supplier to send it from their warehouse to your customer (and you never even had to see the product).

The BIG change to Canada so far had resulted in no change at all and worse – I could feel it affecting my partner’s time there. Me being at the computer wasn’t the excitement and new adventure we had both wanted for ourselves and there’s no worse feeling than knowing you’re affecting someone else’s time.

So after the webinar, I built my WooCommerce store that same day and I had ads running the following day.

This was about mid-January, 2017. I’d guess around the 17th (I tried to check Facebook ads but it doesn’t let me go back that far, unfortunately).

So here I was, about the 17th of January 2017, with this random Ecommerce store I had started that week and I couldn’t believe it. After running ads for about a week, this random Ecommerce store I had started was making me over $1000 a day in sales every day on autopilot, with 30% of that being profit.

And that was in USD. Being Australian – $350 USD is nearly $500 Australian Dollars, in profit, every single day.

I was mind-blown. If you ever do decide to give Ecommerce a go, you’ll realise that there are milestones that really hit home for you.

Your first sale, your first $100 / day profit and first $1,000 / day profit – these were all ones for me and I’ll never forget that feeling.

But this is exactly what I said at the start of this post.

Remember at the start of this post where I mentioned that the secret to making money online is just fumbling around, learning new skills along the way until an opportunity presents itself – an opportunity that is prime for the skills you’ve acquired through all your failures?

This is literally what happened to me. Out of nowhere.

I could build a WooCommerce website very fast yet I was deflated by how long websites took to sign off on, so I started selling websites as a Productized Services and saw the value in selling products over services.

Together, these things allowed me to identify the epic opportunity in ecommerce when I came across it and I went all-in.

I was drawn to the instant sale that Ecommerce facilitates and the rest is history.

2017-2021: Scaling with Ecommerce

After I decided to put 100% of my focus towards my Ecommerce store, I committed the next 5 years to building the best business I could.

The best thing about running my Ecommerce store is the fact that I have dealt with a lot of traffic to my store.

When you set up things like A/B tests and you’re getting 5000 clicks per month, tests take longer to identify a winner and thus you can only run so many tests per year.

When you’re dealing with 5000 clicks per day, you learn things a lot faster. For that reason, I am so thankful for my Ecommerce store and the way it has scaled.

Another benefit of dealing with a lot of traffic is the fact that I have been able to build a large email list.

We use Klaviyo as our Email Marketing platform for my Woocommerce store and we’ve had over 230,000 people be exposed to our emails.

Actually, that might be the thing I am most thankful for – being able to witness first-hand just how important having an email list is.

The above is actually a very slow period for the brand because our Facebook Ads account is currently disabled and it’s the week after Black Friday where buyers have just spent all their money the weeks prior.

One of the annoying things that can happen when you deal with Facebook is that they have bots that shut down your accounts and then you have to appeal and it takes days or weeks for a human to see that the bot was wrong and reactivate your account).

But having an email list to send emails to and make money with right now while our Facebook ads are not running is incredible.

Any business I start into the future, I will be prioritising building the email list and if you take one thing away from this article – it’s that you should do too.

It’s a euphoric moment writing an email in 10 minutes and making thousands of dollars in sales. It’s hard to describe and it takes a lot of effort and years to get to that point, but it is the end goal. Focus on it.

That’s why, here on WagePirate.com, you’ll see opt-in forms scattered all over my website. I have nothing to sell currently and I have no plans on selling anything anytime soon, but I just know that at some point I will want to call on my Mailing List and for that very fact, I am prioritising it.

2022 and beyond

Many years of hard work on the Ecommerce store later and here we are at the time I am writing this post.

I have basically no traffic coming to WagePirate.com right now, so if you’re still reading this – amazing! I really appreciate it.

I’ll end this article with a what’s next / look into the future type outlook.

To be direct…

Currently, I don’t want to talk about Making Money Online, running facebook ads and things of that sort.

Time will tell, but deep down I feel like I’m leaving that part of me behind.

Instead of talking about ways to make money, I want to talk about coding, WordPress, Blogging and YouTube.

Read: I am starting a new chapter of my life.

So, what does this new chapter include?

Well, I think the best way to let you in on my plans is to show you a list I wrote recently.

I asked myself these questions:

• What would my ideal day look like 1 year from now
• What is a business that I could be proud, that I couldn’t wait to tell strangers about if they asked me what I did for work
• What is a skill I could learn that excites me but is also challenging, interesting, a growing need in the job sector in case I need to get a job at any point in life
• AND… what is a business I could start that does NOT rely on advertising

And I eventually came up with a list (and ratioale) that looks something like the below:

• Blogging. Organic SEO. The thought of seeing a blog’s traffic grow over time really interests me
• Organic SEO means no reliance on paid traffic. I’m over getting Zuck’d and having my facebook ad accounts blocked for no reason, even with a Fb page score over 4/5
• Coding: It’s a skill that’s growing and I love learning new things. I work in WordPress so PHP was the obvious choice and so far I’ve been studying 1-2 hours a day and it’s been so interesting. I haven’t sat at a computer and forgot to eat lunch in a very long time, but learning to code and doing this is a sign that I’m going down the right path and feeding that desire to be interested in something at an ungodly level.

So yeah – I’m ready for the next thing and I am working to make my next business (hopefully) this Blog and my YouTube Channel where I cover all things WordPress, PHP and more.

What you can do next

So if you’re wanting to learn some of the things I’ve learned while running my online businesses and you’re also interested in Coding / WordPress / building websites and sales funnels etc, the best thing you can do is subscribe to my Mailing List (below) and subscribe to my YouTube channel.

I don’t even have any plans in the near future to send an email, but I know just how important building a list is – so I’m here, building it – walking the walk.

There should be a form that you can use to opt-in to my Mailing List at the bottom of this page.

If there isn’t you can click here to Subscribe to my Mailing List.

Other than that – browse around, read some of my How-to Guides and WordPress tutorials and I’ll see you in your inbox someday in the future.