My Journey To Financial Freedom - Allow Me To Introduce Myself: C. Wesley, the Serial Entrepreneur.

Hey whats good Steemit Universe?!

I'm pretty hyped to be writing my first post on Steemit. I did some research on this crytocurrensy platform, after a friend of mine sent me a list of the different digital currencies to check out.

This s(t)eems to be right up my alley, being that I'm just getting into Internet Marketing as one of my business hustles.

Let me give you some details of my background.

I was raised in Southern California, I moved to the High Desert from Los Angeles, about a year or two after the LA riots, those were some of my earliest childhood memories. My dad owned a janitorial business; he also had candy vending machines in the area we lived in. So this why I understood the concept of business at a young age & have always been business minded.

My mom did not necessarily nurture my business aspirations as a kid. I remember one weekend I suggested we have a yard sale to sell the toys I didn't play with anymore; she pretty much blew the idea off. No yard sale took place as you can imagine.

When I got into middle school I did convince her to lend me the start up capital to sell candy at school. I would stock up a variety of candy at Costco and sell it at school. All this while playing basketball and baseball (I love sports, sports will come up a lot). The school did not take too kindly in this, so one day I was brought into the discipline office and was told I can only sell products that are affiliated thru school fundraisers, and was asked to stop. Criminal right?

As I got into high school I started to focus more on sports. This is where I fell in love with football, but my business mind was still going. As a freshman I took "Intro to Business"; one of our extra credit activities was Fantasy Stockmarket. I was pretty good at it.

That same semester in 2000, I suggested to my parents we should buy some stock in Walgreens. I picked Walgreens, because I remember the summer going into the 7th grade. My family took a trip to the midwest and down south, I noticed a lot of Walgreens, but they were not any on the westcoast, two years later they start popping up in California. My parents pretty much ignored me, I even had the investor packet sent to the house!

In 2002 as a junior, I took "Web Design". In this class I was introduced to eBay, this was the golden age of eBay. Not the corporate slurper it is now. (I will discuss eBay later). I was not 18 yet, but I lied about my age and signed up. I was able to buy things on there, but I could not sell them. One of my first purchases was some wholesale cell phone antenna boosters; remember this is early 2000s and cell phone reception was TERRIBLE. I got the cell phone antenna boosters and sold them at school, while playing football, basketball, and running track.

I graduated in 2004 at the age 17. I went to the local community college Victor Valley College and played football. I would sell my old Jordans on eBay every now and then, but never really considered it a business. My focus was on football at the time. In December of 2006 I received my AA degree, while at the same time I received a football scholarship to New Mexico Highlands University. At this point my only focus and aspirations were making it to the NFL. In 2009, midway thru my senior season, I shattered my collarbone and missed the remainder of the season.

In 2010 I received my Bachelors in Criminal Justice, you're probably thinking why would I major in Criminal Justice, since I'm so "business minded", why not business? I took a few business courses in junior college and my first semester in New Mexico, but I wanted to learn something different and the law was the subject I wanted to learn at the time.

Back In Business Mode

After receiving my degree I moved back to California. I tried to find a job but to no avail; the best thing I could get was working at a Nike retail store paying minimum wage, plus I had to drive 40 mins just to get there, that was definitely a no-go. With no job I had to think of a way to make some money. During this time I picked up the book "Think & Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill. This book blew my mind and confirmed that the business, hustling, and financial freedom lifestyle was the way to go, and I had the right business mind state since a kid. And this is where I reverted back to eBay. This is also during the time I learned about establishing LLC's & non-profits , seller's permits and Federal Tax ID (EIN) and all that jazzy business stuff.

My First Real Business: On eBay

I dusted off my old eBay account and created a sellers account. I sold off all my old jerseys I didn't wear, Playstation 2 and games, old vintage cameras, CB radios, and some other miscellaneous things. At this time I didn't have an official branded "eBay Store" but I was still selling items at a good rate. Running out of things to sell around the house, I had to think of what new items I could buy and make this a REAL BUSINESS HUSTLE.

At first I bought handbags. I would go to the Coach outlet in Barstow, which is about 30mins away. I would buy handbags at the outlet and sell them on eBay. This was good because a lot of people in middle America does not have access to this stores. Only issue was, the profit margins were slim.

Cali West Boutique Was Born

It is now Fall of 2011 and I noticed a trend, women were starting to wear leggings. At this point I knew about Alibaba and found a leggings wholesaler, so I bought a nice amount of leggings. Very ignorant in my product research, I bought the basic colors and they did not sell well. I learned quickly you can get basic colors anywhere, I needed PRINTED leggings, with designs. I eventually sold enough basic colors leggings and was able to purchase printed leggings and my eBay business took off.

I focused on the women's clothing and expanded into bodycon dresses, plus size lingerie, hair extensions, and even some portable phone chargers. Business was going great, in March 2012 and 2013 I received Top Rated Seller's award. In February 2014 my business was victim of the eBay Purge and this killed my business and livelihood. Google "eBay purge" and you will see how eBay have killed hundreds of small businesses. I will write a future post about this in details of what happened.

From 2015- Present

After being purged off eBay I started my own website, but I just lost all the momentum and was not getting remotely close to the amount of traffic and "eyes" on my products compared to when I was on eBay. I spent about a year trying to resuscitate Cali West Boutique, my HUGE mistake was not having my own website, along with my eBay store. I had no money for marketing so the website became I was living off my business, a failure compared to being on eBay.

I eventually found a tutoring job, along with selling items on Craigslist and other platforms online. Looking for new ventures to make money online I came across Internet & Affiliate Marketing, Digital Products, and Domaining.

The Beginning of My Internet Marketing Venture

At first I didn't not understand the concept of Internet Marketing, but once I got the concept. I became interested in affiliate marketing, digital products and domain names.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is beautiful because you do not have to spend money on products. All you have to do is find a niche, drive target traffic to your website and convert a sale and it intertwine with Domaining.

I have a couple of affiliate sites you can checkout:

http://www.NewEBikes.com - My affiliate website in the electric bike niche.

http://www.BestHotelsInLasVegas.com - My affiliate site for Las Vegas travel niche. I actually bought that domain name at an auction, so you can see how it intertwine with Domaining.

Domaining

Buying/Selling and investing in domain names can be a profitable way to make money online. Think of domain names as virtual real estate. You have the raw land ( domain name) and you build a commercial plaza on the raw land (your website) and you can potential make money off your website if its an affiliate site or have ads running on the site. You an eventually sell the website for a nice size profit.

I currently have 25 domain names in my portfolio. I written a eBook "The Passive Income Domainer" which you can get on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Passive-Income-Domainer-Domain-Names-ebook/dp/B01N171550 ; Great transition into digital product.

Digital Products

Digital products are great because of the low cost of the product. You're pretty much just selling knowledge based product, also known as info products. These can be inform of an eBook, videos, or online courses. There are plenty of platform out there that allows you to write digital courses for people to pay for.

My website http://www.HustlePrep.com is my internet marketing website, where you can find me writing on all types of ways to make money online. I write about eCommere, branding, domain names, and the mind-state of having Financial Freedom. I also talk about different way about making money without having a "9-5 job". Such as working for DoorDash doing food deliveries, Lyft, and Uber.

Did You Make It This Far?

If you did I'm glad. I hope you will follow me on my path to financial freedom. I would like to network with anybody with the same mindset and follow them also. I'm also knowledgeable in real estate investing: wholesaling and flipping. My goal is on here is to help people become financial independent and contribute to excellent content and become an influential on here.

Follow Me On Social Media

Instagram - @Dubnifico
Twitter - @Dubnifico
Facebook - Facebook.com/dub.wess

Peace!