Doug: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug Show. I’m Doug Cunnington, and today I’m gonna give you an update on a few different areas. Number one, I’ll let you know what’s going on with the Etsy Print on Demand shop that I’m setting up, the challenges that I’m having, the things that I’m doing wrong, and the.
Very small amount of success that I’m having. I’ve also dabbled in another print on demand area, which it’s a little bit disconnected, but we’ll get into that. Also talk about, uh, reading earlier this year, I think I was like, oh, I’m gonna read more books and blah, blah, blah. And I have been reading a lot, but not as much as I thought I was going to be.
And I’ve still been getting more books, so kind of have a backlog at this point. And then I’ll also just give you a little update on things that I’m into, number one, but also things that you may want to create content about. And it all, it all kind of fits together in an online sort of business kind of way.
In the last episode, I think I talked about, you know, business failing and my revenue dropping dramatically. And you know, part of it is doing less work. Part of it is purely intentional. The other part is the volatility of online business in most people that. Listen and watch the show. You’ve been following along for a little while.
So, you know, niche sites, content websites were huge for many years. Big industry. There were. Huge businesses set up to help support the industry. Maybe like link building or content improvement, or maybe someone came up with a WordPress plugin that specifically served the Amazon affiliate community, that sort of thing.
So as that business kind of went away, like people shift and the thing is all the people are still out there. Many people, uh, stopped consuming content around this specific area, and I’m sure they’re consuming something else. But I have so many questions that popped up. A lot of people emailed me, A lot of people left comments on YouTube basically asking What is working now?
So you’re telling me that niche sites don’t work well? What’s working now? Well, there’s a lot of stuff that. It is working. It’s really hard to tell if you’re on the YouTube side of the world. Uh, or actually, I mean, I guess all it’s either YouTube or social media is probably most of the places where people are getting information.
There could be some newsletters out there, but essentially, you know, you still have to watch out for the same kind of stuff where people are selling something. Specific and you can’t really tell if they’re telling the truth because they have a financial incentive to tell you that whatever it is is working and.
Gosh. I mean, I remember when I first got started, I bought this, it was this horrible like link building software, but I remember watching a guy like doing a demo and he was like, this is how I set it up. And I mean it to describe it now, it sounds so stupid. Like why? Why did we even think that it would work?
I mean, it kind of did work, but. It was short lived. But anyway, the software would like set up a blog spot.com blog and then like publish garbage over there and then links would be inserted and there were multiple tiers of links and it was just nonsense. The whole thing was nonsense. Just to create a few layers of like, uh, websites and websites that pointed to other websites that eventually pointed to your website.
And Google would actually rank that stuff, so kinda crazy. But I do remember like watching someone set everything up. It took hours. The software costs like $500 a year or something like that. And I was like, okay, this, this guy knows what he’s talking about. And. I now think back, I’m like, this dude probably didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about at all.
He knew how to use the software, but there’s a strong chance he was getting paid $250 ’cause the software cost 500. And back in those days, the commission rates were often 50%. So there’s a good chance like every time he sold one of those, he got half of the revenue and it was. It was so, like I said, it was so silly, like thinking back and describing it out loud, like why, why would that, why would that be a good use of time or anything?
Like it’s really not providing much value in the world. So anyway, it’s hard to tell if people are telling the truth, if they’re earning $250 every time you buy some bullshit software or a course or whatever. And you know, actually I’m thinking back. To no one that I interviewed, but someone that I chatted with and they were like, oh yeah, like we’re doing, um, you know, we’ve moved over to like TikTok affiliate and we have a course set up and blah, blah, blah.
Or someone was like, Hey, yeah. We’re, we’re doing awesome on Instagram. We’ve set up a course. It’s $500 to build whatever, get a hundred thousand followers in 30 days and blah, blah, blah. It’s just all like so sensational and these motherfuckers are good salespeople and they make it sound, uh, so convincing, so believable sometimes.
There’s a grain of truth. There’s often a grain of truth, but then it’s really a flash in the pan, especially with like the Instagram thing that I’m thinking of. It’s like algorithms change so quickly. It’s just like this person had a 60 day run of like, great. Um, success and growth. And then I was like, you haven’t proved the longevity on this at all.
And in fact, I think, you know, there’s no longevity anyway. So I’m describing a conversation, uh, that I, I did have. But anyway, the whole point is there’s a lot of people still trying to sell. Like crazy stuff, so it’s hard to tell. And we, I’ve interviewed people and I see like, uh, the, the newsletter business, the local newsletter business seems legit.
Newsletters in general, like there’s writing, there’s, uh, networking. You could see the potential. It’s email based, so it’s very clear that you can. Have ads in the emails or promote a product that is legit like a, like an actual physical product. Or maybe it is a local newsletter and there’s painters that want to do a promo, like that’s very clear.
You can send the email out, reach people in the local audience and advertise a business like that. All makes sense. Online directories. I think there could be a path there, but I think there’s some exaggeration on like either how effective it is or how easy and that sort of thing. That said, I think there’s still a path.
I mean, it, it could be sort of a local directory or like, um, industry specific. That sort of stuff does make sense to me. So anyway, it’s tough out there and I’m not sure what is working ’cause I’m not trying everything and I have, I. I have like low interest to actually, uh, try a bunch of different businesses.
I mean, it’s just not what I want to do at this point in time. I think it could be an interesting way to build a, you know, YouTube channel or whatever, whatever kind of content you want to create that would work. And I’ll come around to like content that maybe is viable or at least an approach. And partially I’ll talk about things that I’m into, but.
Let’s, let’s talk about the Etsy store. So I am going along with the, uh, giftable, I think it’s Gift Lab. I’ll put a link in the description here. But basically, I interviewed Emily a couple times, so Emily Odio Sutton, she made something like half a million dollars in two years over on Etsy with.
Essentially print on demand in some digital products, and most of these are like gift based now. The course is very good. It shows you how to set things up and the keyword research you might do very basic if you’re seasoned in the SEO keyword research space, like this sort of keyword research is much simpler than what we were doing for niche sites and content websites in general.
The, the course is very good as far as like giving you tips and moving you through. I. Went through a lot of it, mostly on the setup side, but I need to actually pop back in because I am struggling in a couple areas. So I have a few products set up. It’s quick to set up a shop, but you have two main areas, so, um, I think it’s.
Printable. Is it printable? What is it called? It is Printy. Yeah, it’s printy. It’s printy over there. And essentially that hooks you up with print on demand vendors and it’s, uh. Pretty good platform overall. It links up directly and in a very straightforward way to Etsy, so they, they have a great interface and you can like create a product over on Purify and say, publish it over on Etsy and a few minutes later it’ll pop up on your store.
I had my store set up over on Etsy and print Deify. Set up as well with my billing information, all that stuff within like two hours. Very straightforward. I don’t think I made any major mistakes or anything. And the way it works is someone would find your shop or whatever, they would buy something over on Etsy, and then Etsy tells FY to order this product here is.
The information about it and who to ship to and all that stuff. And then you, you’re actually charged. So like print, afi, uh, bills me, and then I think somehow the, the, uh, the payments are reconciled. So Etsy accept the payment and then. Eventually I’m able to get money out, but like I have to pay upfront for the, the print file.
So I’m actually billed, but that’s like the cost of goods. And then later I sell that. So, and it’s printed on demand, so it’s not like I have inventory sitting around or anything like that. So. This the general idea of how this works and why you have to have like two different interfaces and two different accounts and they’re linked up and they talk to each other.
And once it’s set up, it’s pretty straightforward. But that is the thing you have to figure out. ’cause I, I knew that I could set up a set Etsy store for years. Right. But I was like, how did, how did they get the print on demand stuff? Do I actually have to like. Make the shirts and then have them here at my house and send them out.
You don’t have to do that at all. It’s all, it’s all, um, fulfilled by the vendors out there and, you know, the shipping costs are included and all that kind of thing. So pretty straightforward. The one issue that I am having is, uh, the interface. So I’m like looking at the print file interface over there and there’s just, there’s so many different.
Areas and I don’t know where to go for everything. And again, it’s probably just a few minute video that I need to watch inside Gift Lab, but I have not done it. Like many people, I just need to read the manual. But for whatever reason, I’m like, okay, I got it kind of going. I’ll click around and I’ve been able to figure out how to like order samples and stuff and print a file, will send you a promo every now and then.
It’s like, hey, you wanna order a sample? You save 10 bucks. Downside is I am trying to get like, really nice material. So I’m, I’m doing t-shirts and, and sweatshirts in the short term because that is what, uh, my audience was asking for specifically. So I wanna make sure it’s high quality and good material, so it’s more expensive.
So like the hoodies that I found, they’re like 50 or $60, like. My cost is 50 or $60, so it’s like really thick and really soft, and they’re very nice sweatshirts. Not like I want it to be comfortable. I hate it when, um, especially if you’re paying, but I hate to even get a free t-shirt and then it’s kinda rough or I don’t feel like it’s comfortable or whatever.
So anyway. High quality stuff. I’m able to order samples. I’m able to get kind of an idea of some of the analytics and other details around, um, just stats and sales and that sort of thing. But there’s a bunch of other stuff over here and I’m like, I don’t know where everything is at. So that’s just on the print device side.
Over on the Etsy side, same deal. Tons of areas to get lost in and I just don’t know where to go for certain things or, I mean, the thing is like it’s operating, but I may be able to do a better job in certain areas, but I just don’t know where to go. So the interfaces are not necessarily complicated.
There’s just a lot of stuff, and I think if you think back maybe the first time that you were. Installing WordPress and you have like a C panel with all these different areas you can go into. Some are highly technical, some are completely irrelevant. Some areas are things you’re going to go to once a year, and there’s just.
There’s just an overwhelming amount of places to go and I don’t know what is important. So again, you can kind of imagine it like when you first got hosting, when you first got WordPress, you’re like, oh, there’s all these plugins I can get. There’s all these different things out there. And I mean, print Deify is a platform and it’s linked up.
With vendors, like probably thousands of vendors. It could be, you know, clothing, it could be mugs, or it could be coasters or whatever, journals, whatever, like any kind of thing that could be printed on demand, like it’s that stuff. So there’s. So many different products that you can get into. So it’s a little confusing, a little overwhelming, but I’m only paying attention to the parts that are essential right now, which is why I am sort of, um.
Like unaware of things that I can go to. Maybe it won’t matter. Maybe it will in a few months. I’ll be like, oh yeah, if I just would’ve done these couple things, I could have just paid attention here. I mentioned I would figure out how to get samples, but that took me a while to figure out like where to click around and stuff like that.
Not that it was hard to find, it’s just I didn’t know where to go. And there’s like a million places you can click. I probably could have just watched a video on it and figured it out fast, faster than me just clicking around. So one other thing that I’m doing sort of intentionally that I know is not the best, uh, way to do it is I’m creating the products that I want to create in the short term.
Um, and I’m not doing any keyword research, which is like essential to the way that Emily approached. Uh, her successful stores that she set up. But the last interview that I did with her, she did mention like my, I guess she backed me up, like she didn’t, she didn’t say this unprompted, but I was like, Hey, I’m setting up a shop.
I actually have like maybe three different distinct like niches or audiences that I could approach. But I don’t wanna set up three shops. I know that’s gonna be more overhead, even though it could be fairly straightforward. And if I link things up in a certain way, like it, it should be straightforward.
But I know that it’s more overhead. It’s similar. Again, if someone’s like, Hey, I wanna. Set up a a niche site. This is back in the day of course, set up a niche site and they’re like, you know what, I’m gonna set up 30 niche site, not 30, but even three. Like, Hey, I’m gonna set up three sites. And they’re like, ah, you know, I’m doing this work anyway.
It’s all the same. I have a team working on it. And I would tell them, you still realize, well, they did not, they would ignore me, but I would say like, Hey, there’s still admin and there’s still overhead for each one of the sites. So you think it’s not much more work, but it turns out it’s a little more than you think.
Maybe it’s just the mental load knowing that there’s, you know, three sites out there instead of just like one that you’re focusing on. So I asked Emily, what if I just put these three different niches that don’t really fit together in one shop and see how it goes? And she was like, yeah, like that. That could be okay.
The reality is people are probably gonna. Either go directly there, like if I’m linking to a specific T-shirt, then they’re just gonna go directly to that T-shirt. Maybe if they’re curious, they’ll browse around, but they’re probably just gonna get that one shirt. Similarly, if someone is searching for a specific product, they type it in the search, and Etsy, they’ll land on the product and then they’ll get that product.
Probably not going to browse around and stumble upon the other products unless they’re just really curious. So that’s fine. It’s not a huge deal, and she said that could be okay. That said, I’m not doing any keyword research at this point. I’m just like, this is stuff that I want. Or in the case of the shirts and the hoodies and stuff, these are products that.
People in my audience have literally asked for like, Hey, I want to get a t-shirt. That’s like a wicking material that I could work out in with your logo. So I created, that was one of the first ones I created. That is literally something people ask for. So that’s what I did. I don’t know if it’ll be like a big hit.
I mean, people are not randomly going, trying to find my podcast and then buying the merch for it. It’s like they’re in the audience and I’m giving them a way to buy. Shirts and other stuff like that. I am going to, uh, one of these financial independence retreats that I go to called Camp Phi, coming up in a few weeks and.
I was like, you know what, I’m gonna get some temporary tattoos. So the place that I got most of my stickers made is called, uh, sticker, uh, sticker Mule. Is that the name of it? Yeah, I think it’s Sticker Mule. And I’ll put a link, uh, for that. But I, I think the stickers are some of the highest quality that I’ve seen.
They’re like dishwasher safe and all that. They have other products too, I think. You know, t-shirts, other prints on demand stuff, but they also have temporary tattoos. So I actually created a few temporary tattoos and I’m gonna. Put them on my, my other non tattooed arm. And, uh, I think it’ll be pretty funny.
They’re sort of silly. They’re like inside jokes, uh, for the podcast listeners and they’re inside jokes for people in the financial independence community. So, kind of funny. Definitely an insider thing, otherwise it’ll just look totally silly. So like when I go out, um, it’ll just look ridiculous and I’ve, I’ve put a temporary tattoo on.
OI think one other time it, it lasted a few days and these are like full on color, like bright. Um, so that’ll be pretty cool. And they’re reasonable size. I mean, I was like trying to, I got ’em in the mail yesterday. I was trying to like, just sort of place ’em on my arm and see how much space they’ll take up.
They’re pretty big, so I think it’ll be fun. And the thing is like that, I don’t know, maybe I could link it up to Etsy, but I don’t think so. So I have like a, a shop on. Sticker Mule. And then I have my Etsy shop, and it’s a little confusing, but I mean, it gives people a way to buy stuff either way. And I don’t have to fulfill it.
I don’t have to like, have a bunch of these, um, in stock at my house and then send them out print on demand. They do all the fulfilling. It works pretty well. One, uh, quick, quick plug. I, I was reminded of this the other day. So I, I still have some hosting ’cause I have a couple websites, um, associated with this podcast, the other podcast.
And the thing is, I let some of my other hosting packages just go away. Literally a site was live and it might be making like 20 bucks a month. And I was like, you know what, I’m just gonna let it go. And it’s crazy when I think back. How much money was invested in it, tens of thousands of dollars. And literally now time has passed, the world has changed.
People don’t go to websites in the same way. Google, SEO, blah, blah blah. So I literally, um, turned off the renewal and I was just like, I’m just gonna let it, let it go away. That said, I still have hosting and people probably still do need hosting out there for, I mean, people are. Creating apps and other stuff, but it’s still, I think, viable in a good idea depending on what you’re doing, to have a website where you can publish things.
And I’m trying to simplify and reduce expenses and all that kind of stuff. Letting domains go, letting hosting go. And I’ll plug, uh, MDD hosting, so that’s where I still have a hosting account. That is one of the, gosh, I must have had an account with ’em for. 10 years at this point, and I’ve had multiple hosting accounts with them, and they’re a small company.
I think they’re out of Indiana, basically. You’ll be able to get a pretty good deal with them and they don’t, I. Jack up the prices as much as some of the other companies. ’cause I was like, I was thinking, oh yeah, you know, used to be able to get hosting for like a few dollars per month with an intro deal and the prices have gone up pretty dramatically.
So if you are looking to switch to cheaper hosting, I’ll put my link in there. I’m an affiliate so I get a commission if you do sign up the MDD hosting small company. Very quick to get support and any issues that you might run into. Like I had, uh, like a billing question. I was just sent a support ticket and within an hour or two of, I got an answer back.
So a small company, they do a nice job and I mean, it’s almost like a mom and pop. I know. I’m sure they get. You know, they’re server space from AWS, just like everybody else, but a little plug for MDD hosting. Again, just smaller company, not one of the huge ones that, um, you know, you sign up for the, the, the super cheap referral, uh, first year bonus thing, and then next thing you know, it’s like, I think like whatever I just canceled, I think it was gonna be like.
It’s gonna be like 400 bucks for the year. So you know, it’s a decent chunk. Plus they had some other add-on stuff. Anyway, check it out. If you do need hosting, if you’re thinking to switch to cheaper hosting, it’s one that you should have a look at. Okay. Hopefully in a few weeks I’ll have a good update on what I’m doing with the Etsy stuff.
The reality is I have a couple other designs that I have created in Canva, but I haven’t created, um, like the, the new products yet fairly straightforward. I’m not doing anything too fancy, but one thing that I, I think could be good, it, it. Like, I’ve basically created like stickers with like city names on them and people like it.
I’ve been given them out, um, around town here, but I was like, oh, those T-shirts would be nice. I could also do mugs and I could do other stuff like that. Again, location based places that I have lived, for example. So again, they’re purely like, it’s, it’s. Yeah, like my background. So it’s kind of interesting, but obviously other people live in those cities and or vacation there.
But that’s just a, a little idea. And I mean, you could extend this out. I live in Colorado. There’s a, uh, a lot of mountains and people would have like the names of mountains and like little mountains in the background. So there’s an area there that I think could be interesting. I’m not gonna sell, you know, millions or even thousands of any.
One of those. However, at scale, if you actually have a lot of these different products, people are like, oh yeah, like I, I went on vacation to that city and I find it very interesting. So I just need to sit down, drink a bunch of coffee and create these products and like kind of get it rolling. So moving on to the reading update at the beginning of the year.
I said I was gonna read more and like spend, I think I was like, ah, I’ll just, you know, read like an hour a day. And I’ve gotten up and down. I’ve been like more active doing other stuff. So I have been playing a lot more guitar and like hanging out with like people. And I’ve actually been trying to do just like more, uh, lightly social stuff, even if it’s, you know, like last week I texted my buddy, I’m like, Hey, do you want to like, uh, let’s grab a coffee and we’ll just like walk in the morning.
So stuff like that, it’s really easy for us to like not take the initiative to ask and people are usually down and these are my friends, so it’s like not, it’s not like weird or putting myself out too much or anything like that. It’s just like, Hey, we haven’t talked in a while. Let’s go do this thing.
We’ve been playing music, guitar, that sort of stuff. So it’s not, it’s not fully wasted, but I have been ordering books. Way more often. So I’ll, like, I started reading a book and they reference another book and then I’ll pop over to eBay and then just see if they have it available as a used book, which often they do.
And you could buy these books for like four to $5 depending on like what the book is. So I’m going to Yellowstone before too long. I’ve been many times. One of my favorite national parks, my favorite national park. So I’ve seen these books in the past in the gift shop, like this one here, death in Yellowstone, and its accidents in full hardiness in the first national park.
And I haven’t purchased these. ’cause you know, you go to the gift store and uh, the list price on here is 1895, which is not actually too bad for this, uh, thick book. However, a lot of times it’ll cost even more in the shop and I’m like, ah, I’m just excited ’cause I’m in the shop and all that. But anyway, I think I bought this for like $4 and then I.
I like to read books before I go on a trip to those places. The other one that I got is, uh, the slash autobiography here, the guitarist from Guns N Roses, uh, one of my heroes. And my buddy was telling me that he was reading it either for the. He may have been reading it again, but it, it’s been out for a few years.
So anyway, he was reading it and he was like, dude, you gotta check out this book. So, and he’s a huge GNR fan. I think I. He’s a couple years older than me, so I think he got more into Guns N Roses than I did. But anyway, I was like, I really did love Guns N Roses. I didn’t get, um, into the music as much, the deeper cuts and that sort of thing, but I did like them a lot.
I was just a little bit younger. I read the Duff book and that was great. I didn’t realize, I didn’t realize how much I liked Duff, but anyway. I got that book, the slash book, which should be very fun to read. I was shocked. This the slash book number one, it has some like pictures in it. Not a ton. I mean there’s, it’s mostly text, but uh, there’s a handful of pictures in here.
The thing is. This book is 450 some odd pages. It’s way longer than I expected, and it’s not like giant print or anything like that. There’s a handful of photos. It’s not like filled with photos. So anyway, I was a little surprised. I’m excited to get into that book. I should read a little bit more, but there’s a bunch of other stuff I’m doing too.
So, quick side note, I, I had like a little. Sort of a home really. It was a car project, but we’re about to go on a drive and I was like, you know what our, I sold my truck. We have the CRV that’s about 14 years old, and the headlights are, they were, they got hazy. You know, the, the plastic it gets. Weathered sand hits it from driving and it’s just not as clear.
A lot of times you’ll see this haze on sort of older cars and it’s fairly straightforward. You can get like a polishing kit and it removes the haze, so it’s just, you know, sanding it down essentially. And then going to very, uh, very fine grit to the point where you’re using a, a very light abrasive polish and it shines it right up.
So I’d worked on that yesterday. At the same time, I upgraded. That are headlight bulbs, so they just had the stock bulbs in there and I know you can get better bulbs that are either brighter or maybe they, the, the pattern is a little bit different. So we, we actually, I upgraded to maybe, I don’t remember there, you know, you always have it l several levels and different tiers.
So the cheapest ones and the most expensive ones. We got somewhere near the top. Which still wasn’t too expensive. I think it was like $60 for the two bulbs. So I worked on that yesterday. But I was thinking, you know, this would be a very reasonable side hustle if you have, if you have the, the tools, it doesn’t take very long to polish up someone’s headlights and you literally can like walk around and I’m sure.
You know, uh, different shops have this as an add-on, but you know, if you’re scrappy, if you were, if I was a kid again, like that would be something where I’m like, Hey, yeah, I’ll wash your car. Yeah, I could, I can actually, I see your fog, your headlights or foggy and, um, they’re, they have a haze and I could polish ’em up and I’ll charge you a hundred dollars for it.
If you had all the. Materials that you needed, the sandpaper and the other polishing stuff, and you had the equipment and you did this. Like now that I’ve gone through it, I could probably do it in half the time. Now that I understand the full process and I’m not reading the instructions and all that, not complicated at all.
You could probably do a pretty good job in like 15 minutes or so, 15, 20 minutes, depending on how bad it is. I mean, if you look at it, if there were like scratches or other big things that you had to work on, you would charge more, you would have to sand more down. But essentially, great side hustle, manual labor.
Something that people either, you know, don’t have the know-how, or they don’t have the, the, um, time to invest in it. But I, I was at the shop anyway and I was like, you know what, I’ll, I’m gonna take a look at that. And, um, yeah, so it took, took a little while, but very shiny. I was shocked at the difference.
Um, we haven’t driven at night yet, but I think we’ll be able to see a pretty big difference. Heck now in the summer. I mean, it doesn’t get dark until pretty late. The sun comes up early, so it’s probably low likelihood that we’re gonna be driving at night, um, until like the fall now that I think about it.
Yeah, we just, we’re not out that late very often. Okay. As we wrap it up here, I wanted to mention an approach that, uh, may not shock you. It may sound obvious, but as, uh, many folks know, I watch a lot of YouTube when I’m, uh, working out. I’ll have YouTube on. I watch different vloggers and I go in and out of like different, um, topic areas.
Right now, like I said, I’m into guitar stuff, so I watch people that do like guitar, uh, reviews. I watch people that do like pedal reviews and like equipment and stuff like that. And there’s a, a great channel, JHS pedals, and they’re out of Kansas City, I believe. I’ve seen some of their videos in the past, but I didn’t really pay much attention.
And then in the last little bit, maybe the last couple, few months, I started to get more into pedals and I saw them popping up more and more. They were on other people’s channels. And the thing is Jay Chase, Jay, JHS Pedals, they do awesome videos, very informative. Great. Um, just like nerdy information. So these, they don’t talk about it much, but I assume that the people that are pedal builders, these are all electrical engineers basically.
And the crazy thing is, so I have a computer engineering degree. I ended up really enjoying the analog circuits class and a lot of like. Double E stuff. So I took more classes in that analog circuit design area and did a lot of labs and like actually my like senior project was around like two amps and all these concepts of like amplification as it applies for like.
Musical instruments and stuff. So it’s funny, as I was listening to these guys talk, I’m like, they’re so nerdy and they’re def they’re talking about all the stuff that I studied in, in college and then pretty much never used it. I mean, I, I had a weird, um, sort of focus and I also like didn’t focus on like the.
The circuit design where, you know, some of my friends, maybe they worked at Intel or a MD or other like chip designers. So I did actually really well in those classes and pretty good in the uh, double E class. I did very well in the double E classes too, but I ended up doing neither of those. ’cause I didn’t really do engineering.
I went into consulting anyway. People are just obsessed with whatever they’re obsessed with. And as I watch like different channels in different areas. So the other stuff that I’ve been to, I’ve been watching a lot of van lines stuff. So people either living in a van or RVs or campers or they’re on the road in some capacity, and then it, there’s different like splits of, you know, people that live on the road, but it’s like you have the van.
Life people. There’s some people that just like live in a car and they’ve, you know, maybe they take out the back seats and they put a mattress in there and they’re like literally living in like a small SUV, which blows. I mean, I’ve usually, they’re younger people, but not always. But I’m like, I could not fucking imagine doing that now.
I like financial independence. Some of those get a little under my skin slash. They’re talking about the nuances of, yeah, they’re just trying to like get views on YouTube. So I’ve started to like back away a little bit on those, but some are more interesting. Um, a lot of it’s regurgitated stuff and you see this a lot, but the overall idea here is whoever’s creating the content on these channels, they are obsessed with it.
So the pedal people are super into pedals. They’re geeking out over, you know, what transistors are being used and like, it’s so detailed and over the head of like so many people. Like there was a live stream with a couple. Of these designer engineers and they were literally like showing the wave forms and they were showing like, what happens if you change, uh, transistors or different op amps or if you use an LED and blah, blah blah.
Super in depth. Where I even had an education in that area and I’m like, I know the words that they’re using, but I don’t remember, you know, the cause and effect or the design implications of using like one op amp versus another. So obviously if people did not have a double E background, they would have absolutely no clue.
What they were talking about, but people watched, like thousands of people watched, um, and encourage you, if you play guitar at all, go over to the JHS Pedals, YouTube channel. Very funny videos. They, they are smart. They’re very smart, and there’s a lot of dry humor. There’s a lot of inside jokes. It looks like they’re having a good time and it’s, it’s pretty amazing like.
The level of sort of quality of the pedals and the people that use the pedals and that sort of thing. And then like, having the, the channel and you know, they’ve been in business for many years. I, I’m not sure how long, but a lot of these people started as hobbyist. So Josh, the founder over at JHS, he like started.
Modifying like preexisting pedals. I think this is like the standard route. So someone has some electronics background. Peop. You don’t have to be a double E by the way. Like you, you could read stuff and understand and watch videos and like all that kind of thing. It gets pretty hairy, but like. You don’t have to have a double E degree, right?
You just have to know electronics and be obsessed with it, and then you could learn all this shit. So I’m looking at some of my pedals on the floor. Basically, you learn how to modify a pedal. Maybe you’re like, oh yeah, if you, if you use a different, um, potentiometer. Then you’ll have like a, a different range that you can use.
Or maybe if you switch out this transistor, you put a different resistor in there, like you’ll create a low pass filter or you change the capacitor or whatever. So people would modify. These existing pedals and they, they would slowly tweak it and then understand how to design pedals. So he, um, started that way, started modifying pedals, and then started designing his own pedals and then started the YouTube channel.
And then, I don’t know the full path, uh, just kind of picked it up along the way. But people are obsessed with the thing that they’re into. And the thing is, other people are obsessed. Other people are out there watching the content. Even if, you know, I, I watch the Van Life stuff. I’m not gonna live in a fan.
I think it’s interesting. Usually they’re going to like cool places and stuff like that, but at the end of the day, like many folks, uh, emailed me, you started watching or listening to the podcast because of niche site material or SEO ideas or some other entrepreneurship thing. But here we are at some point.
You kind of just follow along because you like to hear the stories or whatever. My approach is, and I appreciate the support. A lot of people sent emails, encouraging stuff, uh, from the last episode where I, I was like, ah, the business is failing. It’s all okay. Every, like, everything’s gonna be fine. And I’ll be sharing some of the stuff that I’m working on.
Hopefully we’ll be able to make this work out. There’ll be enough revenue coming in so that I’m not, you know. Treating money, uh, or, or treating this as a hobby where I’m like, okay, I am. It’s gonna cost money for me to produce this. I want it to cover its cost. And that’s not a huge ask there, especially bringing the, uh, editing in-house where I’m doing it myself.
That said, if you have any questions out there, if you have ideas, if you have questions about the Etsy store, other things like that, let me know. I’ll put a link for MDD hosting if you wanna check it out, see if that’s a good fit for you. They have various packages, uh, various levels, depending on what you need.
I’ll also put a link to a gift lab. That’s the course that I’m going through for the print on demand giftable, um, approach that I am taking. And I think that’s it. I’m an affiliate for both of those, so I get a commission, you know the drill. Catch you next week.