I skipped the June recap because transparently, there was nothing going on in my business.

Life got in the way and I didn’t make much effort to try anything new. Just kept the ads running with no iterations… and as you can imagine, ad fatigue kicked in and results weren’t the best (more on this later in the post).

July was when I finally got some breathing room and was able to try some new things out.

In the spirit of transparency, I’m walking you through what’s working, and what I’d change if I had to do it all over again.

Due to the sensitive data in this post, access is limited to paid subscribers.

July Recap: The Numbers

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I’ve made the mistakes, burned through cash, and learned lessons the hard way, so you don’t have to.

This series is everything I wish I’d known when I started: the wins, the failures, and the raw, unfiltered story of launching a direct-to-consumer supplement brand from scratch.

It still amazes me how a random idea one afternoon turned into a real, revenue-generating business.

In the spirit of transparency, I’m walking you through what’s working, and what I’d change if I had to do it all over again.

Due to the sensitive data in this post, access is limited to paid subscribers.

May Recap: The Numbers

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I’ve made the mistakes, wasted the money, and learned the hard lessons… so you don’t have to. This series is everything I wish I’d known before I started: the wins, the failures, and the real story of launching a supplement brand from scratch.

If you’re dreaming of starting your own, or just curious how it’s really done, you’re in the right place.

It’s my birthday week so I’m dropping all the sauce.

In the last post, I wrote about the basic set up to get started with your ecom idea.

Incase you missed it:

Now the fun begins..

Let’s jump into it.

How To Test Demand With $0

Yes. That is not a typo. ZERO DOLLARS.

That’s all it took to figure out if my idea was actually worth pursuing and dumping five figures into.

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I’ve made the mistakes, wasted the money, and learned the hard lessons… so you don’t have to. This series is everything I wish I’d known before I started: the wins, the failures, and the real story of launching a supplement brand from scratch.

If you’re dreaming of starting your own, or just curious how it’s really done, you’re in the right place.

Let’s jump into it.

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This is what I needed when I got started:

• Identify a problem

• Business name/domain

• Package design

• Landing page

That’s it.

Identifying a Problem

In the summer of 2024, young Lemon was going through a rough patch at work.

Early mornings, late nights, constant pressure to perform at a sales role. It wasn’t anything I wasn’t used to already, but it was starting to take a toll on me.

After browsing the sales subreddit, it seemed like this was the sentiment across the board.

So I thought to myself, if I could present a solution that helped sales reps feel more calm in stressful situations and make it easier for them to hit quota.. this would be an overnight success.

My target audience was:

• Men and women

• Ages 25 to 50

• In sales/high-performance careers

• Problem: They feel stressed out from their careers and require a solution to feel calmer and happier

• Pain: Stress and anxiety result in lower job performance, less money, and potential job loss

• The outcome: A convenient solution that makes sales reps more relaxed/confident in their career and results in higher quota attainment

Based on my personal experience, I knew this problem all too well and would throw any amount of money to solve it.

I slept on the idea for a while until one day, BowTiedBull wrote an article about potential ecommerce businesses to start today.

One of said ecom businesses was anti-stimulant gummies since most people are jacked up on caffeine.

This was perfect. It validated exactly what I was thinking. A stressed out corporate worker could just pop a few gummies during the day and feel relaxed before a presentation, forecast call, client meeting, etc.

This was a pivotal moment in my ecom journey as I viewed it as divine orchestration.. or a message from The Universe to start that relaxation supplement business today.

And that’s exactly what I had set out to do.

Business name

While this wasn’t the most important part of getting started, it still served as the foundation of my brand.

It had to be catchy and memorable. That’s really all I cared about.

I took to ChatGPT to mess around with a few words and combine a couple words that described the feel I wanted to go for. I landed on a blend of “Calm” and “Comfort” which got me to “Calmfort”.

I went as far as saying it out loud a few times to make sure it rolled off the tongue properly.

Wanted to especially make sure influencers in the future would have no problem in pronouncing it.

Checked GoDaddy to make sure the domain was available, and it sure was.

If you land on a good name but the domain is not available to purchase, I would strongly suggest finding another name.

The whole process took about 10 minutes.

Total cost? $15 for the domain.

Package Design

This is where I spent the bulk of my time.

I messed around a bunch on Canva and probably went through 30 different variations of what I wanted the label to look like.

Pro tip: If you’re strapped for cash and find the Canva subscription is too expensive, you can use sites like Gamsgo for cheaper, shared family plans.

It had to be eye-catching and showcase a calm feeling.

Starting with the colors, blue was a top contender for that calm feeling. I also thought waves were a very soothing design feature.

As for the font, I thought it would be best to use rounded characters as supposed to something more blocky or sharp.

This process was entirely based on vibes and no real science. After all, the design is meant to invoke a certain feeling which is usually harder to break down into an exact formula.

But if you’re struggling with what works here, books like Color for Men by Carole Jackson are a good starting point in understanding how color affects the way we see things.

Here’s a quick checklist I used when creating my design:

• Product name (and slogan)

• Include “Dietary Supplement” on the front

• Net weight (I knew I wanted to go with gummies and estimated this for the early version of the package design)

• Info blurb and benefits (on the back side)

• Supplement facts with ingredients, serving size, quantity, etc.

• FDA disclaimer (if needed)

• Distributed/manufactured by: [company address]

This is all really high-level stuff and a lot of it can be tweaked as you continue with the manufacturing of the product.

It’s best not to get hung up on the details as we’re just getting started here and speed is the game here.

Once I had a decent design I was content, the next step was to decide how I wanted to have my gummies packaged. The two main choices were bottle or doypack.

A lot of gummy supplements use bottles which I personally find takes up a lot of space in purses, briefcases, and backpacks. So I figured doypacks were a) unique and b) travel-friendly.

Plus I could use this angle as a selling point down the road.

With my new package design ready, I went to Fiverr and found someone to create a mockup of my label on a doypack.

Total cost? About $50.

A day later, I had something that looked like this:

This image is very important because without having a physical product in hand, this image is the foundation of your ads and what goes on your landing page.

Landing Page

I now have my domain and a mockup of my product.

Next is a landing page.

This is another area I wanted to spend a lot of time on.

I used Shopify for this and signed up for a $1 trial that lasted 3 months.

Because I have a background in affiliate marketing, this part was a breeze for me.

You can either rip a landing page from a competitor or just make one from scratch.

I went ahead and purchased a theme off Shrine because I didn’t like any of the free themes off Shopify. I was very picky on this but in hindsight, I’m confident that a free Shopify theme would probably get the job done if you’re truly strapped for cash.

Then again, ecom is not for someone who is strapped for cash..

Anyways, I’ll put you on some alpha and quickly tell you the elements of a high-converting landing page, especially as you’re just getting started.

Note: Cashvertising is your friend here. Ask ChatGPT for a quick summary and incorporate these elements into your landing page.

Landing page checklist

(optimize your page for mobile)

Section 1 - customer acquisition:

• Start with a bold, emotional claim (eg. Feel [benefit] in 30 days or don’t pay a cent)

• Or use a question (eg. Wish you could press pause on your busiest days?)

Pro tip: On ChatGPT, look for a Meta Compliance GPT and run all your text through that to avoid any possible bans.

• Add a few differentiating factors in bullet form (eg. The only [product] with XYZ ingredients, all orders ship within 24 hours, love it in 30 days or your money back, etc.)

• Call to action (eg. Try [product] risk-free, experience [feeling] today, Order now)

Spend a LOT of time making sure this is near-perfect.

Section 2 - social proof:

• Instagram grid

• “See why thousands love [brand]”

• Case studies

• Customer testimonial

• Reviews

• Comparisons

• Before and after

• [X] times more effective than [Y]

• Influencers are great here, but if you don’t have a physical product yet.. you could also just get them to speak about it

Section 3 - the close:

Make this is a no-brainer for them. Consider including…

• Cost breakdown of the individual ingredients/competitors, and then showing how your product is more affordable in comparison

  • The goal here is to increase your perceived value. Make it appear that paying X$ is nothing in comparison to what they’re going to receive.

  • Therapy costing you hundreds of dollars? A calming gummy supplement is only a fraction of the cost! (exaggerated claim but you get the point).

• Subscribe and save options

• Some form of buy now, pay later (Shopify payment portal comes default with this)

• Add a free gift (ebooks and guides are common)

• Discount off their first order

Put it all together with some product images on Canva, and you have yourself a high-converting, early-stage landing page.

Total cost? $150 for the Shrine theme and $1 for the Shopify trial.

Conclusion

So far we’ve spent:

• $15 on the domain

• $50 on the product mockup

• $150 on the Shopify theme

• $1 on the Shopify trial

For $216, we’re now ready for the next stage: Demand testing.

Feel free to drop any questions in the comments below and I’ll be sure to get to them. Alternatively, you can DM me.

Thanks for reading.

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Understanding The Basics: Affiliate Marketing vs Ecommerce

Making money online will only ever scale when you’re able to get paid while you’re asleep. Otherwise you’ve likely bought yourself another job (I’m looking at you agency owners).

And the only real way to make money online while you’re *asleep* is by either..

a) Selling your own product online and recognizing profit (ecommerce), or

b) Selling someone else’s product online and receiving commissions for every sale/action (affiliate marketing)

Those are the main differences. That’s it. It’s really that simple.

Both require knowledge to some degree of being able to sell. That’s often why having a background in sales in your career will give people an advantage when starting their wifi money journey. But we can still make do without it.

The goal for many is often times to get good at affiliate marketing first, and then move into ecommerce to build something real long term.

I would recommend to be well-versed in making ads online and copywriting. This will decrease the learning curve and give you the best possible shot at making this work.

I’ll cover how to make a high-converting ad in a future post but for now get familiarized with Canva for visuals and read Cashvertising for copywriting (read the sparknotes or ask ChatGPT to summarize the keypoints if you’re short on time).

If you want to take copywriting a step further, there are some prompts you can use on ChatGPT and knowledge articles you can use on Claude that produce some quality headlines (step-by-step guide in a future post), but for the sake of getting started, Cashvertising will suffice.

Now that you have the baseline skills to succeed in making money online, let’s jump into the costs.

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Startup Costs & Investment

Affiliate Marketing

It goes without saying that affiliate marketing is the far cheaper option if you’re strapped for cash. In fact, this is where I began my online income journey.

Depending on how you’re planning to sell things online, you really only need around $500 when starting off to be safe before you can make your first dollar online with affiliate marketing.

I chose to go the blogging method when I was in college since it was the cheapest form of affiliate marketing and this is what my stack looked like when I got started:

• Canva

• Domain name

• ChatGPT 4o

• Ahrefs

• SurferSEO

(I’ll cover all the different forms of affiliate marketing and the pros vs cons of each in a future post. But long story short, blogging was the best low-cost way to get started with affiliate marketing but required a lot of sweat equity to get the ball rolling.)

The main benefit of affiliate marketing is being able to jump onto the next offer whenever it runs dry.

You are not bound to any company at all. You hold no inventory. You simply sell someone else’s product for as long as it benefits you, then move on to the next product. That is your advantage as an affiliate marketer.

Ecommerce

If you’re unable to sell anything online from affiliate marketing, I would strongly advise against ecommerce. It’s a whole different beast that can easily drain your wallet if you aren’t smart enough.

In my experience, things tend to move faster in ecommerce with a higher likelihood of things breaking.

There’s a ton of moving parts (customer service, product-related issues, advertising, 3PL, manufacturers, etc.).

Personally, I’ve had to dish out close to around $10,000 to get started in ecommerce. This included things like:

• Canva

• ChatGPT

• Domain name

• Shopify subscription

• Shopify plug-ins

• Product samples/inventory

• Ad spend for demand testing

• 3PL providers

and so much more.

The main benefit here is having a product/business that you can really call your own. For many people (myself included), this serves as a motivating factor in building your brand from ground-up.

I often found myself nitpicking over the smallest details just to ensure everything was perfect… something I would not bother to necessarily care about while doing affiliate marketing.

The downside? Basically the inverse of affiliate marketing.. if the brand crashes and burns, you go down with it. There is no other offer to jump to next, and you’d have to start all over again. Again, keeping things really broad here.

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Effort & Time Commitment

Another reason why I recommend getting started with affiliate marketing first is because of the effort and time commitment needed to start seeing results compared to ecommerce.

You don’t need to worry about the product itself and can start pumping out ads/content right away to drive traffic to an offer.

But if you have the money, skills, and work remote (or at least have a cubicle), that’s the perfect set-up to excel in ecommerce.

Personally, I would work on affiliate marketing while I was in the office with an open-floor plan sitting right beside my boss 5x a week, 10 hours a day. No excuses. (thanks laptop privacy screens).

Writing blog posts, making ad creatives, and checking up on your ad performances is a lot easier to do when you’re in the office. But if you’re trying to do ecommerce? Good luck being able to jump on a call with your manufacturer/3PL team with your manager right beside you. It’s not impossible depending on your workplace set up, but it definitely becomes a lot harder.

Earning Potential

Depending on how you’re doing affiliate marketing, you can often see results within 24 hours. I briefly did affiliate marketing with TikTok Shop some time ago and made money the very same day I started.

My blog took about a year to make my first dollar. It was slow and steady but ultimately my goal was to create a digital asset that I could sell for some event-based income as opposed to chasing only commissions.

But over the long-term, I made way more money with my blog than I did with TikTok shop.

That’s because the blog fit my lifestyle and I was able to stick to it for years. All I had to do was upload one post a day that I would type up during work. Going live on TikTok and filming content while in the office 5 times a week was a lot harder so it was pretty short-lived.

Ecommerce on the other hand will take a lot more effort but the payouts are plentiful. If you can nail the ads, product landing page (hopefully skills you picked up during affiliate marketing), and product itself… you’ve essentially created your own money printer.

Not only will you make money from the sale of each product, the exit income is large once you’ve built a real business (think 3-6x annual profit).

Your ecommerce business made $100k in profit? Congratulations, your business can be sold for approximately half a million dollars.

“But Lemon, you’re being too optimistic! I can’t possibly do these numbers.”

Then why are you doing this in the first place? Don’t even bother doing any of this if you think this can’t be you.

Not selling any dreams here, but you need a certain degree of optimism to push through the days where you can’t see the light.

TL;DR: Generally speaking, affiliate marketing is faster money with no exit opportunities. Ecommerce is slower but larger exit opportunities.

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Making The Choice

Don’t worry, I’m not going to say it depends. Get started with affiliate marketing if you’re starting from zero.

There’s limited downside and unlimited upside.

You need far less cash and time with affiliate marketing. The skills needed to get good at ad creatives and copywriting will only benefit you in the long run. If the brand you’re working with begins to go to shit, just jump over to the next offer.

Affiliate marketing gives you the opportunity to get good at advertising on different platforms (X, Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, etc.) without burning much of a hole in your pocket.

And most importantly, if you can’t sell someone else’s product.. what makes you think you can sell your own?

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So how exactly can I get hired at these tech companies without any experience?

Sinple: Create your own sales agency.

From a cost perspective, companies are better off outsourcing sales in a pay-per-lead fashion. Since you wouldn’t be considered as an employee, they don’t need to worry about paying for your benefits, training, vacation days, 401k/RRSPs, etc. The company only has to pay you when you bring them a qualified lead.

Companies have long contracts with their clients, so don’t hesitate to ask for +$500/lead (a few leads per week can replace a full-time income) because that $500 is nothing compared to how much a client is worth to them over a lifetime.

Here’s how to actually do this…

*Note: None of these links are affiliate links. They are simply my recommendations

Step 1: Go to Namelix, pick a brandable name for yourself, and buy the domain from GoDaddy or Namecheap.

Step 2: Go to Bluehost, create a website using WordPress and connect the domain.

I’m not a web designer so I’m not here to tell you how to make your website look *good* but we’re just creating a site for basic social proof. We really only need a homepage, about, and contact. Having a Clickfunnel landing page can also get you the same result.

Step 3: Whichever route you choose to go, head over to Canva (I highly recommend the paid version), make a logo however you want and then search for “isometric” under elements. These isometric elements are what we want to add onto the homepage of our website to look like a legitimate tech sales agency (because you are!)

Step 4: Have a friend/family record a testimonial for you and put that on the homepage as well for added social proof.

Now for the fun stuff!

Step 5: Find any company you’d like to sell for. I recommend going through Capterra and finding B2B software companies you may have the most industry knowledge of. Pro tip: also look at LinkedIn to see which software companies are hiring for SDRs/BDRs and message them.

Step 6: Find the relevant contact information through some digging on the company website or LinkedIn (this is where the prospecting skills that you’ll need for any sales role comes in)

Step 7: Send out emails to your prospected points of contact. I would highly recommend you check out Cold Email Mastery to learn how to send killer emails (a good skill to have). All we really want to do here is let companies know that they don’t need to pay for anything until we bring them a qualified lead (no downside, unlimited upside).

Step 8: Once you have a company under your belt, it’s worth asking if they have a script/talk-track you can use, but I would personally hit up BowTiedSalesGuy to have an effective script made depending on what you’re selling. Get familiar with the script, the product you’re selling, and the company’s ideal customer.

Step 9: Once you understand the ideal customer profile, head over to Klean Leads or UpLead to begin prospecting and your cold outreach using the script or through email.

Step 10: Book your demos in, collect your pay, and collect your experience to add to your resume. I would check out BowTiedCocoon to have your resume made.

And there you have it! In 10 actionable steps, you can create relevant tech sales experience to land any high-paying role you want, all while getting paid.

If you have any questions, please DM me on Twitter @BowTiedLemon or drop it in the comments of this post.

*Note: None of this is financial or legal advice. I am just a cartoon lemon on the internet

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