Why Nobody Talks About the Timeline
Everyone loves posting screenshots.
Revenue days. Big wins. Stripe dashboards.
Almost nobody talks about the timeline it took to get there — so here’s mine. Exactly how long it actually took.
No hype. No shortcuts.
The First Two Years: Complete Chaos (2015–2017)
I started in late 2015 / early 2016.
The first two years?
An absolute mess.
I listened to the wrong people. Watched every guru YouTuber claiming they had the “winning product.” I tested random ideas with zero structure, ran ads I didn’t understand, and bought shoutouts from meme pages hoping something would magically work.
I’d quit.
Start over.
Run out of money.
Save up.
Repeat.
During those two years:
- Zero sales
- 10–15 stores opened and closed
- A lot of false hope
December 2018: My First Taste of Momentum
I still remember it clearly — December 2018, right before Christmas.
I found dog Christmas clothes on AliExpress and built a store around it. The store was terrible. But I bought a $50 meme page shoutout, and weirdly enough… it worked.
I got around 7–10 sales in a few hours and even made a small profit.
I was convinced I’d cracked the code.
Losing It All Again (And Closing Another Store)
I immediately reinvested everything into the next shoutout.
Nothing happened.
No sales. No traffic.
I shut the store down again.
Back to the Warehouse (Again)
At that point, I went back to working a warehouse job.
I worked 8 straight months, saved up money, and decided to try again — this time with more intention.
The Women’s Gym Clothing Store (Learning the Hard Way)
Next attempt: women’s gym clothing.
This time:
- Much better store design
- Followed a Facebook ads strategy from YouTube
I made some sales — but no profit.
Looking back, the product wasn’t the issue. I simply didn’t know how to run ads properly yet.
So I closed the store.
Again.
The IPL Hair Removal Store (Almost There)
Next idea: IPL hair removal device.
I shipped one to a Fiverr creator, got a UGC video made, and launched it on TikTok.
This time, it actually worked:
- Around 10 sales per day
- Real momentum
- I was hyped
Then a month later, I got hit with a DMCA takedown from a big brand selling the same product.
I panicked — and shut everything down.
What Changed After All Those Failures
Back to the warehouse.
Saved up again.
Launched another store.
But this time was different.
By now, I had:
- Learned how to build a good-looking store
- Real experience with Facebook and TikTok ads
- Stopped chasing shortcuts completely
That was the real turning point.
2021: The Store That Finally Worked
In 2021, I launched a store in the gifting niche.
No gurus.
No copying.
Just trusting everything I’d learned through years of failure.
I made my own TikTok creatives and ran a simple ad strategy.
And it worked.
I started making consistent daily profit.
Scaling, Inventory, and Real Growth
About six months later, I moved to a 3PL and started holding inventory.
That store is still running today.
It’s grown significantly and now sells across Europe and the US. Eventually, I moved away from TikTok and focused fully on Facebook ads, where profitability increased even more.
The Real Lesson Most People Miss
Here’s what I want you to take from this:
Most people quit way too early.
They think failure means they’re not cut out for ecommerce.
But failure is part of the process.
If you refuse to quit — and keep adapting — you eventually win.
Not overnight.
Not easily.
But for real.