Starting My First Online Business: Mistakes & Lessons Learned (First Product FAILED)
First-Time Product Creator? Before You Launch: Read This If You’re Creating Your First Product. My First Product Was a Total FAIL — Here’s What I Learned Starting an Online Business! Don’t Make These Mistakes I Did… This is What I Wish I Knew Before Selling My First Product Online.
If you turn on the news, vaping and e-cigs are the next big business. The first product I started selling online was e-liquid, and the mistakes I made were detrimental from the start. In this post, I’m breaking down the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to opening an online business, especially one in a regulated industry.
PS: I made you a video to go along with this (watch it after reading this down below)
This Is My $3,000 Mistake
Hey, I’m Blogging Brandi, and I’m going to teach you how not to make the same $3,000 mistake that I did when I invested in this product for my business.
One of the biggest questions I get asked is: How do I start a business of my own?
Be sure to stay tuned until the end of this because I’m sharing a very simple checklist to help you run through the process and start a business—so you don’t have to make the same $3,000 mistakes that I did.
How Do I Create a Product or Service to Sell?
My very first company was called Smoke Serendipity. If you’ve ever seen those e-pens that you smoke out of, you take the oil and it goes into the pen, so you put the oil in the pen, and then you can smoke the pen.
The funny thing is—it’s not really funny—I don’t even smoke. So I sold a product I don’t even use.
I bought the product and I private labeled this product from China and rebranded it as my own product. I spent $2,000 or $3,000 ordering this product on Alibaba. I had searched out the company and ordered this product online, thinking, “Hey, it’s a booming business and everybody’s trying to do eLiquid.”
Somebody actually gave me the idea. I saw all these people vaping and thought it would just be a great business idea because everybody else is doing it, right?
First Mistake: Buying Before Selling
The first mistake was that I actually purchased the product before ever even offering it for sale. Nobody even knew what I was selling—I didn’t even know what I was selling!
Essentially, I was creating a product for an audience I didn’t have and selling it to them—saying, “Hey, buy something that I don’t even necessarily believe in.”
I created this Smoke Serendipity product, and there ended up being probably 100 SKUs of it. I had green tea, strawberry, blueberry—every flavor you could imagine—and I wasn’t even sure if strawberry or blueberry was going to sell. I just said, “Give me 10 of everything.”
Investing in merchandise is not necessarily a great idea. Sometimes it might be better to fish around first and make sure that people actually want to buy the product or service you’re selling.
Second Mistake: Building My Own Website
The second mistake I made was deciding to create a website to put all my products on to sell to somebody.
Let me remind you—I had never created a website. I had no idea what I was doing. I can’t exactly remember the name of the website I used, but it was something like Shopify, where it’s pre-built and you can just add your products to the list.
It’s supposed to be super simple and easy to use, but it took me forever to build this website. I probably built it three times. I wasted an entire Christmas building this website and adding all these SKUs when I could have just hired someone to do it for me and saved myself a lot of time.
I could have focused on sales and realized what was really going on with the business.
Third Mistake: Advertising a Vape Product
The third failure with this Smoke Serendipity product was I didn’t realize that anytime you’re trying to smoke something like a vape pen in your mouth, that’s not really a good thing when you’re trying to advertise.
I tried to advertise on Google Ads and Facebook Ads and quickly learned there were all these laws and regulations around smoking products.
I quickly figured out that these rules can hamper your business, especially if you’re trying to advertise for someone to come and buy your product.
I thought, “Hey, I’m going to create this product to sell, put it on my website, run Google ads, and people will just start buying.” That was a complete mistake.
Google banned every keyword I came up with—smoking, vaping, sensation, smoking sensation product—they banned every word you could think of.
So I quickly learned that advertising this way was not going to be a route for my business.
More Challenges: Age Restrictions and Marketplace Rules
Since this was a smoking product, in many states, you had to be a certain age to buy it. The product had to be listed almost like XXX Adult products—it’s just not a good feeling when your product is regulated like that.
Children or certain groups of people were blocked from even seeing your product.
Next, I tried to sell Smoke Serendipity vape oil on Amazon and eBay. That didn’t go well either, because I learned you can’t sell it on those sites.
I saw some people selling it on eBay, but they were really weird about how they listed the product—listing it as an essential oil or changing the keywords a little bit.
To me, when you start doing that, you risk getting your store shut down.
So I learned that listing my products on eBay and trying to list them on Amazon was a really risky move.
Finding a New Approach and Realizing the Mistake
After going through all the work to open my store and learning the rules, someone gave me the idea to reach out to magazines or websites that already sell vape products or smoke sensation products and see if I could get featured there.
That actually led me to meet someone who taught me more about the product I was selling than I originally knew.
I had named it Smoke Serendipity. It never crossed my mind that people who use vape pens don’t consider themselves smokers.
I was selling something completely different than the people I was selling to.
Like I said, I’m not someone who would use this product—how would I even know?
I was trying to sell a product to people I don’t even use or technically believe in.
When It Just Doesn’t Feel Right
It started to feel wrong, and I just said, “You know what? This really isn’t the business for me.”
Even though I’d invested all this time and money, after meeting that person and going through the regulations, I realized I was talking to a completely different audience with the language I was using.
I’d already bought $3,000 worth of product, had it shipped from China, and paid taxes. It was a complete mess.
Morally, I didn’t want to sell something I didn’t believe in.
That’s probably the first point of this story.
What Did I Do With the Product?
You’re probably thinking, “Okay Brandi, what did you do with this product now that you have all this on your hands?”
Well, what you do is liquidate it and try to get rid of it in any way possible.
I called liquidation companies, emailed them, and then I went to a flea market to try to sell what I had left.
I think I sold maybe 500 units at one flea market, sold a little here and there, but it just wasn’t something I was passionate about.
Not a Complete Failure, But a Big Learning Experience
I don’t want to say it was a failure overall because it wasn’t a complete failure.
If your product isn’t selling, you try to liquidate it.
People don’t want to buy a product that can expire, and they don’t want to buy a smoke sensation product either.
I learned how to create a product and how to liquidate a product all within five or six months.
That was the first product I created and a big learning experience.
What I Learned From This Journey
Ultimately, I lost my butt and decided selling eLiquid wasn’t for me.
Morally, it was wrong, and something in my heart said, “I can’t do this anymore.”
The product expired, which is a crappy part about having something that sits on a shelf and expires.
Even though I lost money and was stuck with the product, the great thing about starting a business is that you learn from it.
I learned how to:
- Design a logo for my product
- Create a website for myself
- Private label my own products (literally bought products from China and had them shipped over on a boat or plane)
- Design product labels, including disclaimers and packaging requirements
- Import and export products from China
I also learned:
- There are certain things you cannot advertise on Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Amazon, or eBay
- How to liquidate a product if nobody wants to buy it
Moving Forward: From Failure to Resale Success
I actually have been trying to liquidate this stuff for years.
That was my business mistake—I failed, lost money, but I learned from the craziness.
Now you know how to create a product or service, how I failed, what I learned, and how failure doesn’t necessarily mean failure—it can be the next step to your future product or service.
Because by doing that, I actually started a resale business, which is now Ambay Exchange.
I sell on Amazon and eBay, but I don’t sell the Smoke Serendipity vaping product anymore—I sell other people’s products or services.
It led me to the next step in my business.
Final Tips and Free Checklist for Starting Your Own Business
Then I learned about email lists, social media, and just how one thing led to another.
If you want to get started in your own business, I know it can be crazy, so I created a checklist to help walk you through the process—from creating your first product or service to getting your website set up, your email list, social media, and everything you need.
⬇️ DOWNLOAD MY
STARTUP BUSINESS CHECKLIST — HERE
Product Development 101 — Download HERE
JOIN MY FACEBOOK GROUP FOR BOSSES
I’m Blogging Brandi, and you’re hearing tips and tricks from behind my business, how I got started, so hopefully, you don’t make the same mistakes I did.
If you like this video, hit the like button below, share it with your friends, thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next episode!
Here’s the transcript from the video:
00:00:00 this is my $3,000 mistake hey I’m blogging Brandi and in this video I’m going to teach you how to not make the same $3,000 mistake that I did when I invested in this product for my business one of the biggest questions I get asked is how do I start a business of my own be sure to stay tuned until the end of this video because I’m sharing a very simple checklist to help you kind of run through the process and start a business so you don’t have to make the same $3,000 mistakes that I did how do I
00:00:37 create a product or service to sell my very first company was called Smoke Serendipity well you can see this so this is smoke Serendipity or this was called Serendipity and if you’ve ever seen these e pens that you smoke out of you take the this oil and it goes into this pen and so you put the oil in the pen and then you can smoke the pen so the funny thing is it’s not really funny is I don’t even smoke so I sell a product I don’t even use I bought the product and I private labeled this product from China and rebranded it as
00:01:23 my own product so I spent $2 or $3,000 ordering this product on Alibaba if you’ve ever heard of alib Baba I had searched out the company and I went and I ordered this product online and thought hey it’s a booming business and everybody’s trying to do eLiquid and somebody actually gave me the idea and I saw all these people vaping I thought it would just be a great business idea because everybody else is doing it right first mistake was that I actually purchased the product before ever even offering it for sale so nobody even knew
00:01:58 what I was selling I didn’t even know what I was selling but essentially I’m creating a product for an audience I don’t have and selling it to them and saying hey buy something that I don’t even necessarily believe in I created this smok Sy Deputy product and there ended up being probably 100 SKS of this and I had green tea and I had strawberry and blueberry every flavor you could ever imagine and I wasn’t even sure if strawberry was going to sell or blueberry was going to sell I just said well give me 10 of everything so
00:02:26 investing in merchandise is not necessarily the Great idea sometimes it might be a good idea to kind of fish around and make sure that people actually want to buy the product or service that you’re selling so the second mistake that I made when I started this smoke Serendipity business was that I said okay I’m going to create a website to put all my products on to sell to somebody let me remind you I’ve never created a website I had no idea what I was doing and I can’t exactly remember the name of the website that I
00:02:58 did but it was something similar to like like a Shopify where it’s pre-built and you can just add your products to the list it’s supposed to be super simple and easy to use it took me forever to build this website I probably built it three times I wasted an entire Christmas building this website and adding all of these SKS to the website when I could have just hired someone to do it for me and saved myself a lot of time I could focus on sales and realize what was really going on with the business the
00:03:29 Third failure that happened with this smoked Serendipity product was I didn’t realize anytime you’re trying to smoke something like a vape pen in your mouth that’s not really a good thing when you’re trying to advertise so I tried to advertise on Google ads and Facebook ads and I started learning there was all of these laws and regulations around this smoking product quickly figured out that those things can hamper your business especially if you’re trying to advertise for someone to come and buy your product
00:04:04 I really thought that hey I’m going to create this product to sell I’m going to put it on my website I’m going to run these Google ads and people are just going to start buying that is a complete mistake and that was absolutely not true Google banned every keyword I came up with it said smoking or vaping or sensation smoking sensation product they banned every word that you could think of so I quickly started to learn that that was not not going to be a route that I could go for advertising my business other thing to think about on
00:04:35 that is since this was a smoking product it meant that in a lot of States you had to be a certain age to smoke the product the product itself had to be listed almost like the XXX products it’s just not a good feeling when your product is regulated so children or certain genres of people are not able to see your product because it’s essentially blocked from their View doing next I tried to sell this smok Serenity product Vape oil on Amazon and eBay and that didn’t really go over well either because I quickly learned that
00:05:13 you can’t sell it on those sites and I saw some people selling it on eBay but they were really weird about how they listed the product they would list it as an essential oil or change the keywords a little bit and to me when you start to do that you risk getting your store shut down so it’s one thing that I started to learn when I listed my products on eBay and tried to list them on Amazon was that this was going to be a really risky move and I could essentially get my store shut down once I’ve done all this
00:05:45 work to get it open after I’ve gone through all this and starting to figure out these rules and regulations around the business I began to get the idea or someone gave me the idea well hey why don’t you work on reaching out to magazines or websites that already sell Vape products or smoke sensation products and see if you can get featured on their website so that was something that I tried to do and that’s when it actually led me to meeting someone who taught me more about the product that I was selling than I even knew originally
00:06:18 I had called the product smoke Serendipity it wasn’t anything that ever crossed my mind that hey people that smoke these Vape pins or vaping not smoking so I’m have a product called Smoke Serendipity when it should have probably been like Vape Serendipity or something to do with vaping because this person informed me that the whole lingo of smoking is kind of vapors don’t like to think of themselves as smokers so here I am selling something completely different than the people that I’m selling to and like I said I’m not
00:06:53 someone who would smoke this product how would I even know that so I’m trying to sell a product to people that I don’t even use or technically believe in never smoked something started to just kind of feel wrong and it just led me to say you know what this really isn’t the business for me even though I’ve invested all this time and all this money after going through regulations and meeting someone who said oh my gosh the product that you’re selling isn’t even to the people that you’re selling to you’re talking to
00:07:21 a completely different audience with the language that you’re using and I’ve already bought $3,000 worth of this product had it shipped over here from China and paid the taxes on it and it was just a complete mess it was about morals and morally I just didn’t want to sell this product anymore you shouldn’t be selling something that you don’t believe in yourself that’s probably the first point of this story so you’re probably like okay Brandy well what did you do with this product now that you have all of this on your hands well what
00:07:53 you do is you liquidate it and you try to get rid of it in any way possible so I called liquidation companies I emailed liquidation compan companies and then I ended up going to a flea market to try to get rid of what I had left of the product I think I sold maybe 500 of it at one flea market and then I might have liquidated some I sold a little bit here and there but it just wasn’t something I was passionate about and it turned into I don’t want to say a failure overall because it wasn’t a complete failure
00:08:21 overall but if your product isn’t selling you try to liquidate it and the other thing is people don’t want to buy a product that can expire and they don’t want to buy a product that is some type of smoke sensation product either so I learned how to create a product and I learned how to liquidate a product all in the same five six months that I was in business with this product but that was the first product that I created and a big learning experience I don’t want to say mistake learning experience that
00:08:51 I learned from so ultimately I lost my butt and I decided that selling El liquid wasn’t for me it wasn’t something that I wanted to do morally it was kind of wrong and something in this little heart said I can’t do this anymore so this stuff is expired and that’s kind of like the crappy part about having a product that can sit on a shelf and expire even though I lost my butt and I was stuck with all of this product the great thing that you get from starting a business is you learn from it and you
00:09:18 learn from your mistakes so the first thing that I learned was how to design a logo for my product learned how to create a website for myself I learned how to PR label my own products I literally bought these products from China and had them shipped over here on a boat could have been a plane I’m not sure but they got here from China and I went through the entire design process of Designing this and learning a lot about designing your own product and what it should have on it disclaimers things like that so I learned how to
00:09:54 private label my own products so I learned how to Import and Export products from China not only private labeled them Import and Export them over here the other thing that I learned was that there’s certain things you can’t advertise on Google ads Facebook ads maybe even Amazon or Ebay and then I actually learned how to liquidate a product once you create a product or service to sell and nobody wants to buy it the good thing is if it’s a service it doesn’t matter but if it’s a product you have to liquidate it so I actually
00:10:22 have been trying to liquidate this stuff for years that was my business mistake I failed it it I lost but I actually learned something from all of the craziness that ensued from this now you know how to create a product or service or how I created my product or service how I failed what I learned and how failure how failure doesn’t necessarily mean failure it can be the next step to your future product or service because by doing that I actually started a resale business which is now M Bay exchange I’m trying to think because
00:10:58 I sell on Amazon and eBay so I came with This brilliant name called ambe by selling this product or service it taught me how to sell online for Amazon and eBay and now I don’t sell this product which is my Smack Serendipity vaping product but I sell other people’s products or services so it led me to the next step in my business then I learned about email list and social media and it just kind of one thing led to another if you want to get started in your own business I know it can be crazy so I
00:11:27 created a checklist to help walk you through the process from creating your first product or service to getting your website set up your email list your social media and all of the stuff that you’re going to need and you can pick that up in the description below this video and that’s where I put all the goodies so make sure that you’re checking those out I’m blogging Brandy of blogging brandy.com and you’re hearing tips and tricks from behind my business how I got started and hopefully you don’t make the same mistakes I did
00:11:55 if you like this video hit the like button below share it with your friends thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next video
ABOUT ME:
If we haven’t officially met, Hey I’m Blogging Brandi An EX-Corporate Kool-Aid Drinker, born to be Creator, Female Digital Nomad & Entrepreneur who LOVES RV Living! (oh and Sharing My Advice On YouTube!) Plus, I’m the creator of RVersity, my university for RVers & the name of my other YouTube channel! I’ve also been a licensed cosmetologist for over 17+ years and Graduated From College as a Finance Major… But I decided to quit my job, sell everything to start my own business (and if you’ve seen my story then ya know why I live in an RV aka how I ended up becoming a digital nomad or should I say a “nomadic entrepreneur”)! Now I help others who want to follow in my footsteps…
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This video was originally published on my old Bloggin Brandi YouTube channel and is part of my deleted scenes series.
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