Dad makes me split my measly teenage pay in half. Instead of paying rent, half went to a bank account so in 8 years or so I would have a good downpayment on a house. In true teenager fashion I spent the other half in it's entirety, drinking, done up shitbox car, you name it.
Realised I wasn't earning money fast enough to keep up with my lavish spending habits. Convinced dad to let me "invest" other half of savings into starting a business.
-Used entire savings to import varieties of generic pandora beads when they were all the rage. Made a killing on ebay before pandora prohibited the use of "pandora" style" in the title. Did not listen. Out of court settlement for 5k. This saw the demise of generic pandora charms on Ebay. Sold off entire catalogue (over 200 variations of charms) in good timing, the popularity was starting to wane.
-Inspired by rise of Kogan (self made millionaire by importing from alibaba and selling in Australia) I tried my hand at importing consumer electronics with profits made from Pandora venture. I would identify the exact factory kogan would import (at the time had friend who worked in warehouse) and bought the same thing in although in much smaller quantities. Kept getting buried because kogan also sold these products on ebay and had the keywords stitched up. Made my own website and began to learn the ins and outs of SEO. Things began moving quickly but not before many competitors popped up (at this time SEO was just pointing hundreds of links at a domain and minor onpage optimisation). Seeing the writing on the wall I got out with some profit as people were starting to get into price wars (race to the bottom).
-Began domain Flipping. Inspired by stylate.com (now defunct) I got into domain flipping. I would buy brandable domain names, pay a VA $10 to come up with a logo and sell it as a package. Sold each domain for $250. Used SEO and outreach to other business blogs to drive traffic. Sold around 15 domains/month. Not as many as I thought and the time conversing with the designer and tracking down awesome domain names was very time consuming. Got out. Still ahead.
-invested 40k in pebble watches kickstarter - 400 watches @ $100 each (back when you could invest in commercial quantities of items 4 x 10k campaign level). knew they would sell because they were so overhyped, the media did not stop reporting on them right up until their release. Received 400 watches, was only one who had pebbles in Australia. Pebble press release says that they are unable to fulfil demand and a 3-4 month wait ensues for non-kickstarter backers. While I was wondering how to sell them a website with 100 pebbles showed up in Australia. They sold within a week at pebbles MSRP. I now had the only pebbles in Australia. Registered exact match pebble domain and set up a website. Sent three "giveaway pebbles" to media outlets which drove most of my sales. The amount of hatemail I received about the price difference was ridiculous. Proceeded to sell them at $499 each, much to the loathing of my customers.
At this stage I was doing pretty well but argument with dad ensued (part of the deal was he still had control over the money) and he cut me off. Said it was silly to squander such a large amount and it should be used on a downpayment for a house.
Started over with nothing. Discovered affiliate marketing. Minimal investment utilizing skills I had already learned over my time in business. Near instant success. This is what I do now.