Triumph: How I Made My First Million Dollars Online (2024)

Introduction

How I made my first million dollars online by the age of 23. Now, my first million was by far the most challenging but also the most rewarding. Now, a million dollars is significant. Don’t get me wrong. Having money is excellent, and it solves all of your money-related matters. But the lessons, the memories, and the struggles I learned from in making my first million dollars that I’m sharing with you today are worth more than a million because even the skills to make a million dollars will stay with me forever and can be shared and guided.

So, in this article, I will share with you the principles that I learned that helped me make my first million dollars online and the specific business models that I used to do it. So that hopefully, whether you follow my path or not, you can learn something and do it for yourself.

Making My First Dollar Online

I want my readers to understand how I made my first million dollars online. We first have to talk about how I made my first dollar online, which started in 2019 with the drop shipping business mode. Now, as everybody knows, drop shipping promises the laptop lifestyle, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and traveling while working on the beach. Even though I knew most of the dream around drop shipping was marketing fluff. I knew I could make good money with it and felt I needed to try it.

Now, this choice to give it a shot. This led me to failure after failure. I remember testing around eight different products, shops, and ideas, all vastly different. I vividly remember every time I set up the Facebook ads, I just sat on my computer watching it spend my money without getting any sales. This was also a financially difficult time, as I had just decided not to attend university. I quit my full-time job. That was about four weeks away from getting my real estate license.

Since I needed money before I got my license, I took a job at Starbucks, which I completely hated, and only worked out for about five days. But during those five days. Something interesting happened in the back of the Starbucks. I was sitting at the desk, watching the training videos on YouTube. Even though I always keep my phone silent, I got a notification. It played these Shopify and cha-ching order sounds I had never heard before. 

This was the first money I had ever made online after weeks of trying, and it was still for a loss. The shop wasn’t profitable after the ads and the website costs, but that didn’t matter to me. I just sat there at that moment because I knew I would figure out how to make it work. I didn’t know how, but I knew I would. I felt like God was giving me the green light, but little did I note that I was in for a lot more failure before I made my first million dollars online.

So, I still want to go to real estate school and get my license, and after I committed to that business, the lockdowns started in 2020, making in-person business much more challenging. So, I went back to figuring out remote work and online business. The thing is that real estate and most other business models are pretty expensive to be in. Since I had no money, I spent a few thousand dollars each month to stay in business. So, I had to figure out something quickly. This led me to return to drop shipping since it’s a very affordable business.

I was so broke that I had to figure out how to start to drop shipping for free. This is why I learned about marketplaces. When I learned that you can drop ship products on a platform like Etsy, where they’ll drive all the traffic for you and run ads without you having to spend anything. It was only up from there, instead of drop shipping cheap products from China, which took weeks or even months to arrive due to the international situation. I started to sell digital products and print-on-demand products.

Print-on-demand products work like drop shipping, except you’re selling white-label products, which are products like mugs, t-shirts, posters, or face masks with designs uploaded to them. Since they’re printed and shipped from within the U.S., the customers get their items quickly, and Etsy allows sellers to integrate directly to print-on-demand platforms, like Printify. When I figured out this existed, I could make and post as many products as I could think of on Etsy, and they would drive their organic traffic to my products.

I felt like I had found a money-printing glitch. I spent several weeks posting as many products as possible for sale, and the sales started coming in. I also didn’t really have many options at this point because I was losing a lot of money every month, just trying to stay in business, so I had to make something work. Now, I was hardly making any money at first. But I could see a bunch of other shops selling print-on-demand and digital products. So, I knew that scaling to over seven figures was definitely possible. That’s all I needed to know.

Once I knew it could be done, I started to analyze my shop to see why I wasn’t growing like the others. First, I noticed that I wasn’t following obvious advice. I was trying to avoid competition and selling products that nobody else was selling. I focused too much on market and product research instead of making good products. I was also penny-pinching, so I would not invest that much back into the business unless it was clearly obvious that I needed to.

Making My First 10 Thousand Dollars Monthly Online

I identified that I was penny-pinching and shying away from selling in competitive niches on Etsy. I ran my business like a beginner, and identifying my problems gave me another green light moment. Where I knew I was going to be successful with this business. Fast forward about eight months after I decided this would be my business by staying consistent and following my plan. I could scale my shops to the point where they made about 10 thousand dollars a month.

I vividly remember the first month I took home ten thousand dollars a month in profit after tax. I wasn’t that surprised. It had felt like it was a long time coming. This was a beautiful, full-circle moment because, just eight months before, I was dreaming of becoming a drop shipper. Even though it didn’t look exactly how I thought it would, the result was the same after reaching 10 thousand dollars a month. I felt like I had broken a mental barrier because that seemed like a lot of money at the time.

This paved the way for making my first million dollars much easier. Now, there were two major changes that I had to make to reach that first million dollars. The first was by narrowing down what I did, and the second was by building a system. I reached ten thousand dollars a month by opening several shops and posting many products. My businesses were kind of all over the place. I was scrambling to get to that point. I had to dial in and focus my shops on fulfilling one need at a time. 

Scaling Down My Business

When I could do that, everything else started to fall into place. Instead of splitting my effort into three or four different shops when I decided to scale one at a time, I was able to put 100% of my focus into scaling that business. Second, I had to build a system that allowed me to make better products, make more products, and get those products to sell. I use a few different systems for each part of my business.

I think that systems, in general, are essential for business success, and overall, it sounds really easy because, honestly, it is what I found was that when you have the right business vehicle, which, starting for me, was selling digital products and print on demand on a marketplace platform like Etsy. You have a blueprint or a path to follow. The hardest part is doing the work; everything else is simple and honestly easy. Making my first billion dollars online was a battle against myself.

In my mind, that kind of statement sounds elusive from the other side. But it’s amazing when you can focus on something and put effort towards that goal. You can achieve most of the early failures I encountered because I was doing things I thought were right. But in reality, it was just out of ignorance when I put that aside, and I started listening to the successful drop shippers and the successful shop owners.

I was able to reach the million-dollar mark. As cliche as it sounds, I think it really comes down to your mindset and your attitude towards the work for me. Making my first million dollars online came down to finding the right business vehicle and building systems to make the job efficient. Then, just doing the work. In the end, not every business vehicle is right for everyone.

Sealing the Deal: The Journey to ‘How I Made My First Million Dollars Online

Ultimately, the journey to my first million was not just about the destination but the transformation. The struggles, the failures, and the small victories were not mere footnotes; they were the essence of this adventure. They taught me resilience, honed my skills, and showed me that true wealth lies in the balance of my bank account and the experiences that shape me.

This article has been a chronicle of how I made my first million dollars online and a testament to the spirit of perseverance. It’s a narrative that inspires you to embark on your journey, with the knowledge that the path may be fraught with challenges, but the rewards are boundless.

As I shared the principles that guided me and the business models that bore fruit, my aim was not just to recount my story but to light a path for you. Whether you follow in my footsteps or carve your trail, know that the potential to achieve greatness lies within your grasp.

So, take these lessons, these memories, and these skills, and venture forth. Your million awaits, not just in the form of currency but in the wealth of knowledge and experience you’ll gain. And remember, the journey to ‘How I Made My First Million Dollars Online’ is not a solo trip—it’s a shared voyage, and I’m here to guide you every step of the way.

By the way, I wrote an article that went viral on “How to Become a Millionaire in 2024 – 8 Best Ways”, and you can check that article out by clicking right here.