We live in a world where being eco-friendly is quickly shifting from being a trend, to being a necessity, and one of the most impactful entities on the environment and human welfare is businesses.

Here is how the cycle works:

1. Company A creates product X to soothe your frustration (loneliness, need for social recognition, boredom…).
2. People get super excited about X, praised as the best product ever. Sales are skyrocketing!
3. Product X no longer works as good as new (broken battery, slower than usual…) and people get frustrated.
4. Repeat the above steps and replace X with another letter.

The issue with this model is that although it is an economical cycle created to sustain profit since the 20’s, it is a straight line in terms of product lifecycle. This leads to increasing amounts of waste that directly impacts us.

However, not all is lost and this is why I am here to offer you 5 ethical business ideas! They will be more or less easy to implement and will definitely have a positive impact on our planet!

1. Compostable packaging company

Ok, you’re not going to start this one in 5 minutes, but hear me out!

Try to picture how many plastic or non-recyclable packages you throw away every day/ week/ month.

Can’t figure out which ones I’m referring to? Here’s a few of them:

Now imagine if you replaced traditional sticky-tape with eco-paper tape? Plastic packaging with compostable plastics (made from corn or potato starch)? Plastic bottles with glass or cardboard bottles?

Your market could include medium or large retailers, industrials and/or SMEs.

2. Compostable disposable products

A similar idea as above. What if you sold disposable products that naturally decomposed in nature?

Not only will you secure a recurring revenue, but you will also do us all a huge favour!

I’m talking toothbrushes, razors, shampoo, toothpaste, cutlery, etc.

What if we all used bamboo toothbrushes, edible knives and forks, or even bamboo razors?

If you want to start safe, you can create an online store and start drop shipping products from Etsy or other suppliers.

Then when you feel ready to grow, you can develop stronger relationships with larger suppliers and even make your own products!

3. Self-caring home grown food

This project is for the plant-loving engineers.

One way to completely eliminate both packaging and transportation is to grow your own food.

However, we don’t all have a garden, let alone the motivation to take care of it all! (I always get told off for forgetting to water the plants…)

So what if you could sell pre-planted herbs, vegetables, and fruits that come with their own automated caring system.

You would only have to fill up a water tank and it would know when to water them, how much, and how often.

That way you would spend 5% of your time taking care of your plants and 95% enjoying them!

Don’t where to start? Here’s a little tip for you!

4. Charity/Non-profit linked businesses

While this might not be a business in itself, helping a charity or non-profit out is a great way to do some good!

There are many battles to be fought so start out by choosing what deeply matters to you and find trusted charities to donate a portion of your income to.

I personally love oceans and care a lot about them as a surfer, so my go-to would be the Surfrider Foundation or the Marine Conservation Society.

5. Nature themed organic sustainable clothing brand

This project is twofold. You will make money selling organic products AND raising awareness by making people love nature even more!

Imagine a cute sloth illustration, a personified bamboo, or a funny lama. The possibilities are endless and the good news is you can start right now from wherever you are reading this!

Here are some illustrations to get your imagination started. And if you want to take things further by having your own exclusive designs, you can either create them yourself or hire a professional designer on Fiverr or Upwork!

Sloth by OpenClipart-Vectors

Final words

Thank you for reading this!

There are tons of sustainable and ethical business ideas to be brought to life. These are just a glimpse of what’s possible.

Of course the scale and ambition of your project will depend on your background, knowledge, and resources. But remember, however small you start, you are making an impact on the planet.

“Remember, the most common thing about common sense is how uncommon it is.” ― Jason Jennings

Originally published at creazymakers.com on July 2, 2018.

5 Ethical Business Ideas You Can Start Now! was originally published in Creazy Makers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“God dammit! Why the f**k is this function not working already?!!” — Someone coding right now

I often find myself stuck on what are probably simple concepts for some pro-grammers (boom boom pun!). And it takes me anywhere from 5 minutes to several hours to find what I need to do using our dear Mr. Google.

But this era has ended ladies and gentlemen! You will save countless googling hours with the trick I am about to describe!

If you never experience this because you have 15 years experience I invite you to go directly to the comments section and share your wisdom!

The time saving Trick!

This tip is actually pretty simple and straight forward. Create a “Random code” folder and create a blank file to run little code snippets in it.

For instance, if you code in JavaScript you would create a “code.js” file in your “Random code” folder and use it to experiment.

Here is the drill:

1. You get stuck making a piece of code work. (i.e. Can’t extract the right object properties while looping through it)
2. Google “How to do X with Y?” (i.e. “How to loop through an object’s properties in JavaScript?”)
3. Open the W3Schools or MDN (Mozilla Developers Network) link to know how the core concept works.
4. Open your blank file and experiment JUST this particular concept in it. (i.e. Create a random object and try to console.log each property by looping through it)
5. Go back to your main project and apply your newly acquired knowledge!

For very simple things you can skip steps 2 and 3 all together and jump straight into your random code file.

It still doesn’t work Karim!

Please don’t throw rocks at me yet!

Obviously this is not a solution to all your problems. So if you still find yourself stuck, consider doing more research through different mediums. Chances are someone had the same issue before you!

Here is a list of tools I use when I’m stuck:

• Google
• YouTube
• Stack Overflow
• FreeCodeCamp chat
• Medium articles

That’s all folks!

I hope you find this trick useful and it helps you save time in the future!

Feel free to share it if you liked it and think it could help someone you know!

Originally published at creazymakers.com on June 8, 2018.

Save Time Coding With This Trick! was originally published in Creazy Makers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In my previous article, I talked about learning JavaScript as one of your first programming languages. If you are reading this with absolutely no coding background, you might want to check it out first!

Long story short, this article is about React and all the amazing things you can do with it. Sounds goods? Alright thank you and see you next time!

Just kidding! Let’s get started!

WHY React?

React is a bit like LEGO on steroids for coding. It lets you create components (building block) that you can reuse anywhere in your code.

It allows you to apply JavaScript functions to structure your HTML and CSS in a very simple way.

These components are either be stateless (basically static) or stateful (can be dynamically changed).

This means you end up with cleaner and tidier code for your apps or websites.

Yes, I said Apps OR Websites!

Alright alright… I know I said ONE language in the title because they are extremely similar in the way they works.

They? Who’s they?

React and React Native! You can use the former for web apps (used by Netflix, Facebook and Yahoo) and the latter for mobile apps.

WHAT can you do with it?

You can use React to build web apps and React Native to build both iOS and Android apps at the same time!

Let me explain…

React Native is called “Native” for a reason. You use ONE code source that you can mount in both iOS and Android native languages (you basically code it once and it works on both operating systems!).

Not only will your app be faster than if it was coded used a hybrid language (HTML) but it will save you tons of time!

And React? Well, you can use it to build dynamic web apps with reusable component either mad by yourself or others.

You can use websites like Material UI (Google style), Bit or many others to find ready to use components for your projects!

HOW to learn it?

What I am going to suggest will probably sound very boring… but it’s not!

I really suggest you read the Documentation (it took me about 1.5 hours in total including re-reading some parts to better understand them). It is very well made and easy to follow.

You can also look for introductory videos on YouTube such as this one or this one if you have more time.

If you want a more “hands on” approach you can also follow this tutorial made by the React official team.

WHEN to learn which?

Good question young padawan!

I’d suggest you learn React first and THEN jump into React Native.

React will be easier as it is mainly reusing existing HTML tags such as <div> or <h1> whereas React Native uses <View> or <Text> (not that difficult to understand but it can put some people off at first).

Now let’s go and show us what you can build using this marvelous technology!

Originally published at creazymakers.com on May 19, 2018.

One Coding Language To Rule Them All! was originally published in Creazy Makers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“If I had to create a startup, I’d create an app. But I’m not intelligent enough to do that…” — Probably someone you know.

Disclaimer: I am not paid to promote AppyGEN and I have no link whatsoever with the company. I am talking about them because I am genuinely impressed with what they have made.

This is what one of my colleagues recently told me while we had some office banter. The truth is, you don’t even need to know how to code or how an app works in the background to build one.

Othmane and his team built AppyGEN. It is a free tool to build, deploy and monetise android apps in minutes! You only have to come up with some creative way to make an appealing app from one of their templates and you’re set for some easy passive income!

The concept

AppyGEN offers a fully guided game-like experience to help you build your apps step by step.

Once you create an account and login, you are redirected to your dashboard where you can see things like your next challenges and your current “level”.

Each time you complete challenges, you level up.

But the real deal is building apps, launch them on the android app store and monetize them through ads.

What you can build

AppyGEN’s apps are divided in two categories, free and premium (the fancy name for paid stuff).

Some examples of what you can build for free are a video app, a wallpaper app or even a photo editor.

You can then customise it to fit your own style (i.e. Create a penguin themed wallpaper app and upload some cute penguins pictures) and publish it on the app store.

The website has a clear guide on how to publish your app, however this requires that you create a play store publisher account for a one off $25 payment.

Deployment and monetisation

Once your play store publisher account is set, you can publish as many apps as you want!

You can then follow the instructions to link the ad provider to your app in order to monetize it. And there you go! You are officially able to build an android app and make passive income from it!

Want to make your own apps?

If you are like “nah… this is too mainstream and easy.” then head over to my other course to learn how to code from scratch! And why not make an app of your own!

Originally published at creazymakers.com on May 1, 2018.

Build, Deploy And Monetise An Android App In Minutes. Without A Single Line Of Code! was originally published in Creazy Makers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Until a year ago, I was persuaded that you had to either be an employee or an employer. And in order to be an employer, you had to be an employee first for at least a few years. Then you would still work like a donkey, sleep a few hours per night and grow your belly faster than your business. I didn’t think there was a way to be both rich AND happy.

Spoiler alert: I am far from being rich at the time of writing, but what I am about to share with you are the words of multi-millionaires.

Money is an illusion

As soon as you understand that, your whole world is going to change. Ask yourself this one question: why do you want more money?

Some people will say “I need more money so I can travel more”, “to be able to quit my job” or simply “to enjoy life more”.

All these are valid reasons, the only issue is that you only think of money as a way to get them done. There are many ways you can use to travel for little money, there are probably tons of other jobs you could do instead of your current one, and you can enjoy life better just by choosing who you spend your precious time with.

However, if you are like me, you probably want both money and happiness.

When it comes to happiness, every single person has a different definition. But for this article’s sake, here is a definition I personally think applies to the vast majority of us: Happiness = Reality — Expectations.

Have you ever wondered why so many rich people are so sad and so many less fortunate people are smiling every day? It is probably because the rich are not satisfied with what they already have and want more, and the less fortunate are not expecting anything more from life and are grateful for what they have.

Another big difference is that the less fortunate know the pain of lacking things that you need. Therefore they are more generous than the rich and happier because helping others is a great source of happiness!

So my advice is, remember the less fortunate when you feel unhappy and never let money corrupt your mind and ethics.

That said, here are actionable steps to help you grow your income and be financially free.

Your single most important asset

Is your brain.

Have you ever wondered why most people winning at the lottery end up where they were before winning? Or why some companies collapse after they have been inherited by the owner’s child?

Money comes en goes, and it usually is easier to make it go than come.

However knowledge comes and stays! And when some knowledge can be directly related to money, well you guessed it… Money comes and stays.

At the time of writing, I am just about to finish Robert Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad Poor Dad” book.

Although I (strongly) don’t agree with him saying that Donald Trump is a hero and a genius, I can still keep an open mind and admit his financial advice is valid.

The main point of this book is to say “If you want to make more money without working more, acquire more assets”. That’s it. However, you need to know what an asset is first (you can search for it on YouTube).

I wouldn’t have thought about this in such a simple and structured way if I hadn’t read his book. And that is the point of this section: keep learning!

Most people think learning is only done at school and college and then stops when you begin to work. However if you want to get ahead, never stop learning. You can read books (I will recommend some a few lines later), watch YouTube videos, read online articles (like this one), follow online courses (free and paid), …

The possibilities are endless.

One simple idea, endless possibilities

More assets, less liabilities.

As simple as that.

I like Robert’s definition of assets and liabilities “assets generate money and liabilities take money out of your pocket”.

With this definition, your personal house, a car or a mortgage are liabilities. Why? Because they create a cash flow that goes from your pocket to energy companies (bills, gas, …), taxes, the bank, …

Imagine you want a brand new car (a liability). Your first instinct might be to take a loan, buy the car and then repay the loan over the next 2 to 5 years.

The issue with this approach is that you need to create a cut in your existing income source (probably your salary) to be able to repay that loan. And even after you paid it in full, the car’s value has deprecated drastically so you can only resell it for a fraction of its original price.

Here is another approach.

You could buy / create assets that will generate enough money to pay for that car you want. Instead of using the loan to directly buy the car, why not invest the money in real estate, create a self sustaining business or invest in another business (buy shares)?

These assets will not only generate money to buy your new car, but they will keep generating extra income in the future! And all of this without touching your existing income!

Some assets you could start investing in right now:

• Trade in the stock market (I personally don’t like this approach as it does not create value for anyone).
• Peer to peer landing.
• Create a business (online or offline).
• Invest in real estate (buy, sell, rent).
• Build a personal brand online (get a decent following on any social media platform).
• Write a book and share your specialised knowledge.
• Build an app and sell it on the app store (or create in-app purchases).
• Invent something new, patent it and sell the patent to companies to produce and commercialise.

And the list could go on and on… You should ideally find something that you are passionate about (i.e. Are you a designer? Then check out how to put your art on clothes and sell it!).

Ready to be rich and happy?

Good! Then you got the following principles to help you get better emotionally and financially:

• Spend more money in assets, less in liabilities.
• Be grateful for what you have, yet seek what you want.
• Give back to your community without expecting anything in return.
• Create value adding assets (you will have a greater impact on this world creating a compostable cutlery business rather than buying and selling virtual stocks).

If you only follow these 4 steps, you will grow wiser, happier and wealthier than ever before!

Originally published at creazymakers.com on April 22, 2018.

Is It Possible To Be Both Rich And Happy? was originally published in Creazy Makers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

So, you want to make money playing video games? Well, I have good and bad news for you. The bad news is, it’s harder than it looks and the good news is, you don’t have to be a pro gamer.

However much money you will make and however long it takes, will entirely depend on you and your commitment.

But if you are consistent and patient, you might join the ranks of those top earners in the industry! One of the most astonishing examples is Ninja, who grew an insane following and was estimated to earn around $500,000 PER MONTH, after streaming for just 5 years!

Now don’t let this discourage you. With the techniques you’ll learn here, you will “only” need 1000 loyal followers to make a decent living.

In this article you will learn:

• Ways to make money playing video games
• The tools and platforms to use
• Best practices to start growing an audience

Ways to start making money playing video games

There are probably more ways however, I will only go into detail for 8 of them.

Donations

The first way you can monetize your gaming live stream, is through donations. People watching you can donate any amount they want to have their name pop up on your stream and leave a message. This is a good way to interact with them live and make them feel more connected.

Affiliate sales

You can earn commissions on affiliate sales when you recommend products to buy on your channel!
Many surfers want to buy a Channel Island surfboard because that’s what pros ride. By the same logic, many people watching you play will want to buy the same hardware you have, because they associate it with your stream’s quality.So you can go on Amazon Affiliate, choose your country, set up an account and put the links to buy your mouse, keyboard, screen, etc. on your Twitch channel.

Other ways to make money once you’ve grown

Twitch subscriptions

When you grow on Twitch, you can apply to either become an Affiliate or a Partner. This allows you to unlock new revenue streams such as subscriptions. You can invite your followers to subscribe to your channel for $4.99 per month and you get to keep half of it ($2.50). You can learn more about how to become an affiliate here and a partner here.

Bits

Similar to donations, Bits is a virtual currency on Twitch that is ultimately translated into real money. People watching you play can “cheer” to unlock custom emotes and support your stream. You need to either be an affiliate or a partner to be able to receive Bits. Each Bit represents $0.01 (people usually send 500 or 1000).

Ads

To be eligible to earn money from ads on Twitch, you need to become a Partner (see above for requirements).

Sponsorship

When you begin to grow and have a substantial audience, you might get contacted by companies that want to sponsor your videos in exchange for advertisement or a product review.
While it can be tempting to say yes to everything at the beginning, I would recommend only working with companies you truly like and believe in. That way you will be able to genuine and keep your content relevant and interesting.

Merch

You can develop your brand even further by selling some goodies to your followers. They can be t-shirts, hoodies, toys or anything with your name on it. If you don’t know where to start to make your own merch and sell it, you can learn it here.

Brand partnership

Last but not least, if you become super famous, some brand might even want to put your name on their new products.

The Toolbox

You will need a few tools in order to implement the core of your gaming income.

First, you need a platform where your viewers can watch you.

Twitch is the go-to choice when it comes to live streaming video games. In addition to your broadcast, the platform provides a live chat, payment systems, and a community system. However, this also means that Twitch is very saturated and you will be competing with tens of thousands of other streamers.

The good news is, there is a service that allows you to stream simultaneously to up to 30 different platforms for free! You can use Restream to reach more people in less competitive places like YouTube Gaming, Mixer or Smashcast. Here is a video that shows you how to use this service.

Second, you need a tool to edit what you want to stream and actually broadcast it live.

For this, you can either use OBS Studio or the newly released Streamlabs OBS (or SLOBS). They are both entirely free and SLOBS is based on OBS’s code so they are very similar. The main differences are that SLOBS has a better interface, includes more features than OBS, and uses less resources from your computer. I personally prefer SLOBS and I believe it has more potential in terms of future evolutions.

You can get OBS here and SLOBS here.

Then, you need to be able to receive payments from your viewers.

The most used tool for this is Streamlabs‘s donation tool. It is entirely free to use and it allows your viewers to send you a message that will appear on your stream.
You will need to login with your Twitch account. Then link Streamlabs to your Paypal account to receive payments.

Now that all three are set, you are ready to go live and make your personality shine!

I suggest you try and stream a few times without promoting your channel at all to make sure everything is working as expected. Then, when all is up and running, it will be time to grow your audience!

How to get more people to watch you

Can you tell I like lists? Well, here’s another one for you!

Here are some simple, yet critical things to do to grow and retain your audience:

• Keep talking. Unless you’re the Michael Jordan of your game, your viewers will get bored watching a random guy or girl play with 0 comments and a braindead face.
• Engage with your audience when prompted. When someone talks to you, reply to them. It’s as simple as that.
  If you ignore your viewers’ messages, they won’t feel connected to you and will then leave to watch someone else play.
• Have a webcam. Once again, it is all about engagement and connecting with your viewers. They will be more likely to follow you and keep watching you, if they can see your face.
• Have a clear schedule. You become like a TV series, if you don’t stream at the same time every week or day then people won’t know when to expect you and will stop watching.
• Use other social media to announce you’re going live. Try to build a following on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. and let people know when you are about to go live.

These are just some of the ways that will help you grow and hopefully make money playing video games. If you want to learn more and go deeper into the details, here is a bonus section with a few resources you can start to learn from!

Bonus!

Gaming Careers — A YouTube channel to learn everything from how to set up OBS/SLOBS, to making your mic sound better and how to grow your audience.

Emergence — More or less like Gaming Careers but more focused on Twitch and in a written format.

You can also learn by watching pro streamers and see how they set up their profile and live stream!

To name a few: Ninja, summit1g, shroud, imaqtpie and Nightblue3.

I hope you found this helpful! If you have any question feel free to let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to find a good answer.

Originally published at creazymakers.com on April 12, 2018.

How To Make Money Playing Video Games was originally published in Creazy Makers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In March 2017 I was spending £330 on public transport per month. Today (April 2018 for the readers from the future!), I spend about £180. The secret to this £150 savings per month (or £1800 per year!), is simple: Experiment!

Although I am going to stick with this example to illustrate my point, bare in mind that the main message is about your mindset, and it can be applied to practically anything.

Experiment One: Take the straight forward option (£20 /day)

When I just moved to London, I didn’t know anything about the public transport. There were too many ways to pay your way from point A to point B.

The main route I was taking (and I still take to date) was from central London to Watford.

So I did what seemed like an obvious option: I bought train tickets from the machines as I needed them. This cost me about £9 each way so a bit less than £20 for a round trip.

Needless to say, this was not a sustainable routine!

Experiment two: Take the easy option (£330 /month)

Not long after, I discovered that you could buy an Oyster card and attach a Travel card to it.

The right Travel card for my commute cost me £330 per month (Zone 1 to 9 + Watford Junction). I know, it’s still ridiculously expensive, but it was clearly a cheaper option than what I had done previously.

This went on for 6 months until one of my colleagues, Alicia, showed me an even cheaper way for the same commute.

Experiment three: Mix things up! (£295 /month)

Alicia showed me that by buying a Zone 1 to 2 Travel card and topping up my Oyster card, it was going to cost me even less.

The Travel card cost me £131 and the commute would cost me an additional £4.10 each way.

This meant that it would cost me £131 + (£4.10 x 2 ways x 5 days per week x 4 weeks per month) = £295.

A £35 saving per month!

This went on for another 6 months until another colleague, Jessie, showed me an even better way!

Experiment four: Understand the system (£203 /month)

When I broke down my commute step by step and associated each step with its cost, this is what I thought I would end up with:

1. Leave my house and go to the underground station — Either walk (free) or by bus (included in the £131 travel card).
2. Take the underground (subway if you like) to the train station — Included in the £131 travel card.
3. Get the train to Watford Junction — £4.10 one way

And the same applied on the way back.

What Jessie showed me is that the £4.10 I was paying was including the whole trip from the underground station to Watford! The journey’s cost was not actually broken down like listed above.

She showed me that by tapping my Oyster card in, out, then in again at the train station, it would break the payment down to two separate journeys!

By doing this, £4.10 each way became £1.80!

So my new monthly cost became £131 + (£1.80 x 2 x 5 x 4) = £203.

Pretty good, no? A £127 saving per month compared to the first option!

But what if I told you I took it further?

Experiment five: Take advantage of your situation! (£179 /month)

As I was sharing my excitement with my colleagues, I got an extra golden insight!

My girlfriend told me that I could buy a Railcard (it gives people under 25 a 1/3 discount on train fares) and attach it to my Oyster card. I was about to turn 25 a few weeks after and this would cost me £30 for a year, so I took it.

I had heard of this Railcard before, but I wasn’t that interested beacause I didn’t take the train much. However, now that I could apply it to my daily commute, it changed everything!

What originally cost me £4.10 each way, then £1.80 thanks to Jessie, now costs me £1.20!

Now my month costs is £131 + (£1.20 x 2 x 5 x 4) = £179.

Closing thoughts

There are many ways to get from point A to point B. Whether we are talking about a commute, the UI of an app, growing your business to the next level, etc.

The more ways you experiment, the faster you will get to this point B, point C, and so on.

I have an experimental approach to almost everything. I wanted to learn how to create an e-business on a budget, how to make websites or how to make passive income through network marketing.

Learning and experimenting are a way of life that will take you far beyond what you could have done without them.

Did you achieve great things thanks to chain experiments? Let me and others know in the comments!

Originally published at creazymakers.com on April 5, 2018.

Experimenting Is The Mindset That Will Lead You To Success! was originally published in Creazy Makers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

So you tried to learn JavaScript and you found yourself drowning in all those concepts, code snippets that “will make sense later”, and other sorceries.

Well, I have some good news for you! This great guy, Kevin Kononenko mastered the art of simplifying coding tutorials to the extreme!

He is a self taught web developer (one thing we have in common!) whose idea to use analogies to learn coding came from studying cognitive psychology.

Even as an intermediate programmer, I suggest you take a look at his work. You might learn a thing or two!

Without further ado, here is a list of things you can learn from him, thanks to his great metaphors and illustrations.

Ready to learn JavaScript?

• JavaScript Syntax Explained by Directing a Constuction Site
• Arrays and Objects are Just Like Books and Newspapers
• Callbacks Explained Using Minions
• AJAX Explained By Working In A Fast Food Restaurant
• Express Basics Explained by Running a Restaurant
• And much more here and here too!

Once again, thanks Kevin for putting this out there for free!

And if you want to learn how to code from scratch…

Then head here!

Originally published at creazymakers.com on March 16, 2018.

How To Learn Javascript With Simple Drawings was originally published in Creazy Makers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Have you ever browsed for clothes online or in a shop and couldn’t quite find your fit? You probably thought, “What the heck was going through the designer’s head when they made this jumper?!” Never fear- you can build your own unique clothing brand with a perfect fit, for less than £30!

Impressive right? You’re welcome, see you in the next post!

Seriously though, less than £30 for a clothing brand? What about sourcing clothes, printing, embellishment, inventory, storage and all that boring expensive stuff?

Well, you won’t need to worry about any of those aspects if you follow the method I am about to show you!

Getting started checklist

Before diving in head first, there are a few things you should consider if you want to optimise your chances of success.

“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win” — Sun Tzu

Here is a list of elements to prepare before your store opens:

1. Take some time to think about what your niche will be. The more specific it is, the less competition you will have. I suggest you pick a topic you are passionate about so you don’t get bored of it after two weeks! (Let’s imagine you chose Sloths!)
2. Pick a great name for your brand. Pro tip: Go to namecheckr.com and try a few names you made up. Their amazing web app will check if your name is available “.com”, on Facebook, Instagram (very important, I’ll explain later), and more! (Woo! The name Slothings will do for now…)
3. Go and secure your “.com” domain name on a website like Godaddy, Namecheap or any other provider (you can google to compare them). I personally recommend Godaddy for two reasons, their prices are quite cheap and they can be easily integrated on Shopify, the platform we will be using as an online store. (Great! www.slothings.com is available and “WeareSlothings” is available on Instagram!)

You’re doing great so far! Your clothing brand name is ready and you have a professional domain name!

Money spent so far: £8.52 (Godaddy’s domain name price for one year at the time of writing).

Making your first designs

Ok, now we have to actually create the designs we want to put on our clothes.

If you are already able to make your own designs, skip ahead to the next section.

Otherwise, here are some tips to create some cool designs with little skill and zero cost!

Some websites offer high-quality images that are completely free to use, even for commercial purposes. You can use those images, modify them, and then make them your own! You are not required to credit the artist behind the photo or design, however, I believe you should do it anyway as a thank you gesture. To name a couple, Unsplash for HD photos and Pixabay for both HD photos and illustrations.

Money spent until now: still £8.52.

Come in, we’re OPEN!

All your initial designs are ready? Let’s create your store on Shopify!

You will get a 14-day free trial before having to pay around £21 /month to keep your store.

Remember when I said you wouldn’t have to worry about inventory, printing, sourcing, shipping, etc. earlier? It’s because you can outsource all those things with no upfront cost!

The company I am familiar with is Inkthreadable (based in the UK). They offer a wide range of products to print on and they take care of inventory, production and shipping! So go ahead, have a look at their products and download their PSD template to put your design in the right format for a shirt, hoodie, etc. (PSD is a Photoshop format. If you don’t have Photoshop you can still use a free software, such as Gimp).

No worries if you don’t know how to work with PSD files. You can directly upload your design onto the website and adjust it on the go.

So, wait a minute! Do I have to buy this hoodie with my design on it to resell it after?

Not at all! Your design only exists virtually for now. It will only be printed on a hoodie whenever you or one of your customers place an order.

As an illustration, here is a concrete example with cash flows included, and your balance at each stage (let’s assume your initial balance is £0):

1. Create your design and put it on a t-shirt [Balance = £0 (this part is free)]
2. Import your design to your Shopify store [Balance = £0 (this part is also free)]
3. Someone buys your t-shirt for £19.99 [Balance = £19.99 (Woohoo you made your first sale!)]
4. You place an order on Inkthreadable to ship the t-shirt directly to your customer (t-shirt price £9.45 + shipping £1.35) [Balance = £9.19 (That’s what you are keeping!)]

Now imagine selling 10 (£91.90 profit), or 100 (£919 profit). Your only job is to find customers and place orders (you can even automate the latter).

Do you understand the power of this method? It’s called Print On Demand (POD) Drop Shipping! You don’t have to pay for any product before you get paid first!

I remember how excited I was when I made my first sale, it didn’t happen overnight but relatively fast (after 2 months working on my store part-time).

Money spent until now: £8.52 and then £29.52 after the free 14-day trial.

BONUS: How to find your first customer and increase your sales

Two words: QUALITY and TRUST!

While it is entirely possible to sell products you haven’t seen or touched, I’d suggest you buy samples of your products first to try them, if you have a few extra bucks to spare (you get a discount on samples at Inkthreadable).

If you’re getting serious about your clothing brand, you can use this opportunity to:

• Try the product yourself and judge whether its quality is what you expected (you don’t want to send cheap products to your customers)
• Know how long it takes from order to delivery (you can then add it to your shipping time policy)
• Wear your products or have a friend wear them to take additional photos along with the generic ones Inkthreadable provides
• Promote your brand by wearing your products in your everyday life and get face to face feedback on your designs!

Also, here are some pro tips to build and give life to your brand, and to create trust:

• Write an About Us page. You might have great products, but people get emotionally attached to your story!
• Have a clear Terms and Conditions page explaining EXACTLY what you do with your customers’ information (credit card number, email address, name, …)
• Create a Facebook page for your brand and create an Instagram account from there to have them linked. Facebook has an incredibly powerful and affordable targeted ad system. Use it to your advantage! (Search for $5 /day ad strategy on Google, there are plenty of great resources to help you create your first ad campaigns.) In addition, Instagram is an incredible free way to showcase your products in a natural way and share your brand’s story with others by building a following!
• Create a professional email address to communicate with your customers. Imagine receiving an order confirmation email from a website you just bought something from. How would you feel if the email came from slothings@gmail.com versus order-management@slothings.com?
• Have a transparent refund policy and returns guarantee. If you haven’t already, I invite you to read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. In this book, you will learn about building a fully automated business that doesn’t need you to run it, and it has a great section about why offering insane guarantees is actually profitable.

There is an infinite amount of things I could add to this list, but I will stick to the basics for now!

Let me know if you enjoyed this article and I will write more like it!

Did you create your Shopify store and need help setting things up?

Hit me up at karim [at] creazymakers.com and I’ll help you out!

Originally published at creazymakers.com on March 16, 2018.

Build Your Unique Clothing Brand For Less Than £30 was originally published in Creazy Makers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As soon as I came across the words “Network Marketing” (or MLM), they immediately sparked my curiosity!

My aunt introduced the concept to me, and she is part of a “Network” herself. To be honest, at first I was afraid… I was petrified! Well not to that extent however, I had my suspicions. So I did what I always do when something seems too good to be true: geek the s#@t out of it!

I did extensive research about the subject. I listened to specialised podcasts, read articles and watched videos debating the pros and cons of MLM.

Long story short, I joined my aunts network. This article will explain why I did and what the potential of Network Marketing is, along with its flaws.

What is Network Marketing?

Remember that amazing restaurant you recommended to a friend? They wanted to go to this other restaurant but you did everything to convince them not to go there and go to your place instead.

This is the perfect example of Network Marketing, except you did it for free!

So, let’s analyse this situation for a minute. Why did you represent this establishment with so much passion?

Out of the many possible reasons, these two are the most likely:

1. This is your favourite restaurant and you would gladly go back there for a meal
2. You want to guarantee great food for your friend

See, Network Marketing’s success is extremely dependent on the product(s) involved. If the product isn’t good, people would just stop buying it and network distributors would have to turn into sneaky salespeople to scrape a few more sales.

For this system to work, you need at least the same two components stated above, which more generally speaking are:

1. A product so great you would pay for it yourself
2. A product that is truly helpful for others

How does it work?

You usually have three main ways to earn money with Network Marketing.

1. Commissions from direct sales
2. A portion of your network’s earnings
3. Network performance bonuses

Some companies add other perks and bonuses however, I will stick to those three for now.

Well, how do you get involved and what does it imply? First, you have to find someone who is already in a Network Marketing program. Then, they’ll invite you to join their network and will earn a commission on your direct sales and personal purchases of the product.

So far your only earnings come from your direct sales commissions.

Fast forward a few weeks or months later, you still use the product and you keep selling it. However, you begin to think longer term and want to build a passive income. So you go out and talk about the opportunity to become part of the network. Most people will reject the offer for many reasons, but some will be interested and one or two might actually join you. You spend the next week or two training those who joined and they generate a few sales in their first few months.

Now you’ve built the foundation for your passive income. As they purchase the product for themselves and sell it to other people, they will generate some “points” for you and your network including the person who got you in, the person who got them in, and so on. Are you beginning to see the power of Network Marketing? But hold your horses, this is not a perfect system and I’ll explain why later.

In a nutshell

Good and sustainable Network Marketing must have:

1. External customers. If the people who buy the product or service are all within the network, it probably means that it doesn’t add that much value to people’s lives after all.
2. A commission system based on actual sales and not the amount of people you bring in the network. Some similar systems give commissions to their network solely based on the amount of people they bring to it. Thus, people pay a juicy fee to join the network and try to earn it back by making more people sign up whether they sell the product or not. And this my friend is called a Pyramid Scheme! It is not only very dangerous and can crash at any moment, but it is also illegal in many countries.

Great Network Marketing should also have:

1. A system that forces you to help the underdogs in your network. When I invite people in my network, I can either put them in my “left” or “right” branch and I only earn commission on the branch that has the least sales. This means I have to help the people in the latter branch to develop their activity or invite others in to that branch.
2. Training materials and resources to help you kickstart your journey.

Things to watch out for when you are invited to join a network

• The person who wants to invite you doesn’t use the product or service they are selling.
• You get more information about how you can make lots of cash than how you can actually help people and add value to their lives.
• You have to pay an expensive fee to get in and the person who referred you will get a portion of it.
• Ask how the network works and run a hypothetical scenario where you have invited a few people who invited others themselves. Then calculate how much you would earn if every single person in your network stopped selling the product and buying it for themselves, but continued inviting others. If this number is 0 you should be fine, people in the network shouldn’t be able to earn money out of thin air!

Some Misconceptions

When people advertise Network Marketing, they often throw around some catchy phrases such as “you will be your own boss!”, “you won’t have to work anymore!” or even “you can earn a 6-figure income within 1 or 2 years!”.

Let me get things straight. You are still selling someone else’s products! Meaning it doesn’t matter who sells for them, as long as sales are happening. The company making those products will always be the one winning in the end.

This world-of-mouth marketing is a proven tool to help you earn financial freedom, location independence and passive income. However your return on investment will be proportional to the effort you put into it and it’s not a get rich quick scheme. Some people have made multiple 6-figure income through Network Marketing however, they treated it like a real business and probably spent at least a few months in hell to get there. Whether you want to make extra cash on the side or invest your time in creating a network to create long term passive income, it is totally up to you!

Do you want to create an extra source of income?

As I said earlier, I am part of a Network myself, so here’s a shameless plug!

If you are based in Europe (including the UK) I can invite you to start your extra source of income by making others and yourself healthier.

You can have a look at the products by clicking here.

If you prefer selling online with more traditional methods, you could also build your own online business!

Originally published at creazymakers.com on March 3, 2018.

Network Marketing, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. was originally published in Creazy Makers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.