Success story

How to Turn a Side-
Hustle Into an Adventure
Around the World
When Karolis Rimkus dials into our video call,
he’s looking particularly relaxed. It’s early in
the morning in Louisiana where he’s dialling in
from, so it could be the result of a good
night’s sleep. Or, it could be that this is the
look of someone who has just spent the last
eight months traveling the world.
Karolis, who is from Lithuania, is in the US
winding down his journey with his wife. The trip
was financed almost entirely with the money he
earned with his dropshipping store, which he
ran as a side-hustle while working full-time.
For the past seven years, the 9-5 defined
Karolis’ life. He worked in media companies
and marketing departments, always using his
skills to help grow other people’s
businesses. “I was always doing a job for
someone else, there was nothing of my own
that I had,” he says.
Then in early 2017, Karolis and his wife
decided to was time to make a change. They
hatched a plan together to save enough money
so they could quit their jobs and leave for a
three month trip around Asia.
Well, in the end, things turned out a little better
than that.
Karolis’ business helped him save enough to
turn their three-month trip into a eight-month
venture that took them around the world. They
visited China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia,
Philippines, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand (again),
Cambodia, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Japan, and
finally ended their travels with a road trip
across the United States from LA to New York.
Post Contents [ show ]
Early Signs of
Entrepreneurship
Thinking back, there were early indications that
Karolis had a future in entrepreneurship . When
he was a teenager, he spent time building his
own websites, always testing out new ideas
that he felt certain would take off.
They were, in the order that he can remember
them, a forum for discussing all kind of music,
a blog that listed natural disasters, and an
elaborate way to make money by funneling
website traffic through a series of links. They
all tended to fizzle out in the end though.
Still, like all entrepreneurs, he didn’t let past
failures get in the way of new ideas, and the
itch to start something new has always
been there.
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How to Make Money
Online: Exploring the
Options
When the world came calling, Karolis got
creative in the ways he could hustle to make
some extra money for their trip. He needed to
find something he could work on while still
holding down his full-time job. Karolis turned
to the internet, looking for ways that he could
use his skills in marketing to make money
online.
He tried affiliate marketing , but it was
complicated, time-consuming, and the results
were underwhelming. And in the end, he just
wasn’t interested in it.
Scrolling Facebook one day, he
discovered dropshipping. A friend had posted
an article about entrepreneurs who were
generating mind-boggling amounts of revenue
with their stores. It made him curious. As he
started to look into it more, he read about how
to use the dropshipping model to build an
online store quickly, easily, and with less
financial risk.
Dropshipping doesn’t require the store owner to
invest in any inventory. The supplier holds onto
all of the stock, and the store owner only pays
for the item once it’s been sold. Then the
supplier will ship it directly to the customer.
It’s a fulfillment model that’s used by huge
companies like Walmart, Best Buy, and Costco.
For new entrepreneurs and side-hustlers, it’s a
business model that works especially well,
because it lets you open up a store and test
your product ideas within the market, without
running the risk of buying up a whole lot of
stock that might not sell.
Karolis was looking for a side hustle that he
could set up quickly, didn’t require too much
financial risk, and one that he could work on in
his free time in the evenings and weekends.
Dropshipping ticked all the boxes.
Finding a Side-Hustle
Routine
For the side-hustler, who only has a limited
amount of time to work on their business,
finding a good routine is key. From Monday to
Friday, Karolis would work at his full-time job
as a brand manager, but his Sundays were
always reserved for dropshipping.
On Sundays, he’d go back into the office, which
was now empty and distraction-free, and spend
from the morning to the evening working on his
store.
When you’re a side-hustler, the ongoing
challenge is juggling competing priorities.
Everything and everyone demands your
attention. Your full-time gig, your side-
business, your friends and family, and your
personal interests are all competing for your
time and attention.
Although he blocked out Sundays to work on
the business, he found that the store quickly
consumed a lot of his free time.
“When I got hooked on it, I was thinking about
it probably 24/7,” he says.
He admits it was sometimes a difficult
sacrifice to make. “Finding spare time to work
on the website was challenging. I had to not
do anything with my wife on Sundays. I had to
skip fun things that people were doing. You
really have to be dedicated.”
Setting up Shop and
Deciding What to Sell
When he started, Karolis quickly realized that
there was so much that he didn’t know. “I had
an understanding of how things worked
because I worked in marketing, but not how to
build a website, how to sell a product, how to
source a product,” he says.
To decide what to sell, he looked towards his
interests. “I read that people recommend
testing out a range of products, and to not fall
in love with your products, but I knew that if I
were to do something that I didn’t know much
about, it would be hard for me.”
So, he chose the one interest that literally got
him out of bed in the morning… running.
“I’m an avid runner, I’ve run marathons and
races and trained five times a week,” he says.
When you’re beating the pavement with that
kind of intensity, you become intimately
familiar with the qualities that you need in
running gear. With an eye for this kind of
quality, he was able to find great products for
his store, and separate the best from the rest.
To help find products to sell, he turned
to Oberlo. The app would allow him to connect
his online store with dropshipping suppliers,
pulling in the details of their inventory with the
click of a button. He signed up for
a Shopify account, connected his store with
Oberlo, and got to work.
Building a Store and
Getting the First Sale
Progress at the beginning was slow. “I had to
try a lot of things,” he says, “But really, that’s
the interesting part.” Embracing the entire
process, through the easy and the difficult
moments, is important, he says. “It makes it
rewarding when you succeed in a smaller part
of the journey, such as nailing the product
page.”
Slowly, his store began to come together. He
spent time adding new products and tweaking
his store’s design. He jumped into marketing,
setting up social media accounts on Tumblr,
Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram.
He got creative with his tactics and tried
reaching customers where they were hanging
out online. “I was going through runners’
forums with my personal profiles, reading
people’s concerns about their situation with
bad shorts or terrible headbands, and was
offering a suggestion on what to improve, and
sliding in my products here and there.”
Traffic began to trickle in.
By now, he was two months in to building his
store. And yet, no sales. Nothing.
“I was at the point where I thought that this
was going to be like every single endeavor of
mine in internet marketing, which always
failed.”
He was frustrated. Once again he’d spent so
much time building something that was
doomed to failure.
Wait, What’s Going
Wrong Here?
It was time to stop, step back, and take a look
at what was happening. If people were coming
to his store, but not buying, there had to be
something going on that he wasn’t seeing.
He used heat mapping tools to see which areas
of his websites customers were spending the
most time, and which bits needed tweaking.
“I can’t emphasize enough how many tests with
the website I made. My most valuable insights
came from hotjar.com , where with just a few
dozen customer behaviour recordings you can
see what’s wrong with your website and where
to improve.”
He changed up his marketing strategy and
decided to focus on doing one channel really
really well, instead of spreading his effort too
thinly across many channels. He doubled down
on his Instagram, the channel he was most
familiar with. He focused on creating a
cohesive look for his content, and establishing
relationships with influencers to help promote
his products.
And then it happened. All of a sudden… ka-
ching!
His first sale.
This Thing
Works! Growing the
Success of His Store
“It was a very rewarding moment!” he says.
And it was just the motivation he needed to
keep going.
And as he began to grow his store and sales,
Karolis discovered the things that were worth
investing his time in:
Customer service was a big focus for him
since the beginning. “I try replying in as few
hours as possible, making it easier for people.”
He found that he could reduce the number of
refund requests with excellent customer
service. For anyone requesting a refund, he
dealt with their request quickly, politely, and
offered them a coupon for their next purchase.
This tactic worked, and often ending earning
him even more sales.
When it came to products, attention to detail
was key. Rather than adding a huge catalog of
common, rather ordinary items to his store, he
spent hours searching for products, carefully
curating only the best quality, best-looking
products for his store. He spent time crafting
his product descriptions, aiming to provide
more information about the products than a
customer could find on another website.
To get the word out about his store, Karolis
turned to social media. But instead of spending
money pumping out ads promoting a business
that people hadn’t heard of yet, he focused
instead on building a trusted brand.
Karolis tapped into the passionate community
of running enthusiasts that were already on
Instagram, posting motivational content and
advice to help them improve their running
practice.
To help his content reach a broader audience,
he came up with a creative influencer
marketing strategy.
“At first I did a lot of influencer outreach. I
would offer micro influencers, people with like
8,000 followers, an item they could make a
giveaway with, or just send them a few free
items in exchange for mentions. It worked, and
I was growing and making sales.”
When his page grew to over 15,000 followers,
he switched up his technique. With a powerful
audience of his own, he now offered up-and-
coming influencers a chance to be profiled on
his page. They would buy something from his
store, take a photo of themselves wearing it,
and he would repost their photo on his profile.
This clever win-win tactic turned the table on
traditional influencer marketing strategies and
helped him boost his sales, his credibility, and
his audience all in one hit.
Hitting His Highest Ever
Sales Month
As springtime was approaching, and the
weather got warmer, Karolis knew that people
would start to run more. This meant they’d also
be looking at refreshing their running wardrobe.
Now was the time to step things up.
He upped his posting schedule on Instagram
and Facebook and began to work more
extensively with influencers, branching outside
of his core market to reach new audiences.
One of his best influencer partnerships
surprised him. He contacted a suburban mom
blogger who he had noticed was gaining
influence on Instagram. While she wasn’t
known with the running or fitness scene, she
had a loyal following of her own. He got in
touch with her and offered to send her free
products for her to review. When she received
them she posted pictures of her children
unwrapping the package on Instagram Stories.
Her fans loved it, and trusted her
recommendation, and he watched as sales
started to pour in.
“Don’t hesitate trying out ideas,” he says. Like
his winning influencer, you never know what
you might get. “I would not have known if I
hadn’t tried it.”
By the end of May, thanks to a killer Instagram
strategy and great timing, he’d come away with
over $5,000 in sales. Yep.
Over ten months, Karolis made $14,960 in his
store.
The Life of a Digital
Nomad
When Karolis and his wife left for their trip in
September, the business came along with him.
After all, it was generating an average of
$2,000 per month in revenue, and by this point,
he was only spending a few hours a week
working on the business.
In the true style of digital nomad, the whole
world became his office. Some days, he’d head
to a hammock by the beach, and work in the
sunshine with his laptop, the sound of waves
crashing in the background.
Other times, it wasn’t so glamorous.
In Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, facing an
important Skype call, he was forced to build a
makeshift workstation in the tiny bathroom of
their hotel – the only spot in the entire room
with a reliable internet connection and a
working power socket.