Thread by @kobegatsby

HOW I MADE MY FIRST $30,000 BY COPYING A BIGGER, MORE SUCCESSFUL BRAND AND NOT TRYING TO BE ORIGINAL

This is a thread of the exact steps I took 3 years ago to make my first profitable brand online and how you can do the exact same today.

Let’s get this bread 🥂

Flashback to 2017, I discovered dropshipping and even though I saw the potential and everyone else seemed to be getting rich, I couldn't make any money.

For months I religiously allocated $500/m to testing various products with no luck.

Here are some of the EXACT ads I tested:

I spent hundreds of dollars and only made one $60 sale.

Nothing was working, but I kept testing and spending $500/m.

And during this time, I spent A LOT of time on instagram and aliexpress.

Scrolling around, studying different companies, but mostly looking for what every guru told me I needed..

A "winning product"..

A "winning product" is a product you find on aliexpress that has the qualities to make money.

So I spent all my time searching aliexpress and testing products I thought could be a winner.

I never found a "winning product" but what I did do instead was SO much better.

One day while I was scrolling through IG I came across an ad from @RidgeWallet and it caught my eye.

I immediately searched on aliexpress for "carbon fiber wallet"

I found one for $10 shipped, I was hype.

I knew ridge wallet sold their for $100+

So I figured I could get $29

This was dope because I know this product was good, I mean ridge wallet was killing it.

But after months and months of wasting thousands on buying instagram shoutouts and facebook ads that didn't work, I knew I needed to do something different.

I didn't think I could directly compete with them so I decided maybe I could make some money by going after small portion of their market...

So that's what I got to work on.

I researched everything about The Ridge Wallet..

Why people bought their wallets, what kind of people bought their wallets, etc.

I honestly thought figuring this out was going to take me a day or so but by using this little trick everyone has access to, it only took a few minutes.

I went to their instagram and clicked "tagged in"

This is a gallery of their most passionate customers.

Take some time and go through it yourself.

You'll learn that their customers like

- hiking
- guns
- jeeps

This might seem basic but it was honestly more information on a market than I ever knew before.

So I decided I would..

Create content that would fit a jeep page and buy shoutouts from every jeep page I could.

Here are a few of the actual accounts I found:

instagram.com/thejeeppub
instagram.com/roughjeep
instagram.com/jeep_wranglers

Here is the content I created (went to a jeep dealership and asked if I could take some photos)

So after building an entire website that positioned these wallets are the wallets for guys who liked jeeps, I launched.

I bought a $30 shoutout and made $150 in sales.

This was the best day ever, I knew that I had found something that worked.

I found a successful company, tweaked their offer (narrowing down to wallets for jeep owners) and it worked!

So I started buying more and more shoutouts from Jeep pages.

That led to videos like this

And tweets like this one:

I was sitting in the middle of a work meeting when this shoutout went live on a larger instagram account.

I couldn't stop checking my phone.

And I posted my first and only revenue screenshot ever.

https://twitter.com/kobegatsby/status/946864208758616064?s=20

I went on to do $750 that day from a $75 shoutout (I was scared to buy this shoutout too lol)

I ran these shoutouts weekly for months without really improving anything else on my website except better content.

If knew what I know now I would tested the offer to improve AOV:

https://twitter.com/kobegatsby/status/1321980416656515072?s=20

Could've made WAY more money.

This led to the store doing about $25,000 in revenue and someone on shopify exchange buying it from me for $10,000 (no this is not normal)

Now I know instagram shoutouts aren't what they used to be but who cares, apply this SAME system to another brand and traffic source.

That's exactly what I did to make my first $X,XXX,XXX in revenue (all by myself) in 2019.

If you rock with this thread then you'll love my emails (coming soon)

I'll be dropping more ideas and breakdowns of my businesses behind the scenes right here > kobesbrain.carrd.co

Let’s get this bread 🥂