My wife Monique and I knew an additional income was essential.
We made a plan to move from New York City to Abu Dhabi, so I could take a position at a local bank. Meanwhile, Monique would develop an online income to replace her job. Then, when my corporate career finished, we would continue to live abroad.
We knew that in order to achieve our goals, we’d need to learn how to participate in today’s “new economy.”
The world had changed and we were determined to change with it. That’s when we discovered ecommerce—selling online.
Since the early 2000s, the online shopping industry has been growing by billions of dollars per year. I figured that if we could even tap into that on a micro scale, the opportunity would be massive.
The Easy Way to Sell Online
I then discovered a way to make selling online simple: dropshipping.
Unlike a regular retailer, with dropshipping you never have to store the physical product you sell, your supplier will do it for you.
There are dropshipping services for every kind of product—sofas, backpacks, bathroom towels, phone chargers, water bottles, you name it. You just have to list the supplier’s product on your website—at your desired mark-up—and make the sale.
When the customer buys a product from you, all you need to do is process their order (platforms like Shopify make this easy) and your supplier will then make sure the order is fulfilled and the product gets delivered.
With this strategy, you can run your store from anywhere in the world. And if you outsource much of the workload, it can practically run itself.
There are two ways to get started: create your own online store or buy a ready-made one. Monique and I chose the latter.
Our plan was to purchase an existing, profitable website and operate it using a team of outsourced workers. That way we could minimize our time input while maximizing profitability.
We ran it as a side-hustle in the beginning, while I continued to work full-time. But as we scaled the first business, we purchased more. Everything we learned from our first purchase was applied to subsequent acquisitions with much less pain.
How Dropshipping Saved Our Retirement
Fast forward to today, and we now own nine revenue-producing websites. We employ eight full-time staff and several independent contractors to help us run our business.
I’ve also developed a comprehensive training program that covers absolutely everything you need to know to launch your first online store and start building your portable income stream.
By running multiple ecommerce stores, Monique and I have been able to develop a business that funds our retirement.
Monique has easily replaced her income from her financial services job on Wall Street. She has the freedom to work around the schedules of our kids, and she never misses their activities.
I retired in 2022 and we now run our businesses remotely from our new home of Paphos, Cyprus. The semi-passive nature of dropshipping leaves us plenty of time to enjoy the laidback lifestyle and perfect weather of this Mediterranean island.
Monique and the kids regularly visit her family in Istanbul, Turkey, and São Paulo, Brazil. We even combine business visits to new potential suppliers with our vacations.
As a career professional, I knew my job would end long before my income needs would. Dropshipping proved to be a long-term way to generate income that we can generate from anywhere and scale to the size that we want.
Investing in and operating profitable websites isn’t rocket science, but it does require focus and dedication. The big payoff is the freedom you discover once you have your strategy in place.
We are fortunate to now control our own destiny. You could be too.
Commentaires
Enregistrer un commentaire
Thank you to leave a comment on my site