How did I create a million dollar company in 3 years. I'm 22.

Seems pretty impressive, well done.
Cheers

Now this is what I've been waiting to hear about.....Marketing & selling a physical product!!! Great story...It really shows how online marketing can quickly grow a brick & mortar biz...

I did a lot of what Eric Ries suggest (I recommend his book, even for retail, I wish I read it back then).

I needed to validate my idea, after I notice there could be a demand for medical books and medical equipment I sold my coffee machine (for like $800 books) and I spend that money on buying best selling medical stuff in mexican ebay (mercado libre), we sold it really fast.

The 7% they charge was a rip off (even now we only make 10%), so I decide to cut them. I spend the next 2 few years learning about internet marketing, internet retailing and programming while I was studding in Canada (I tried over 10 different methods to make money, from Flash games website, to becoming a youtube partner and everything in between). As well as getting everything set up, how we would ship, the processes whether we would hold products (I did not have money for this so no).

In 2009 I happened to miss my flight back to Mexico (airport close during the swine flu remember?) so that when we decide to lunch. If we get sells we will send an alert to our supplier who would ship the product with our shipping labels.

The first month we sold only 3 orders (they are text books so they are bit expensive), after few month we started shipping 20 then 50, 100, and then over 100 a day.

We focus a lot on Social media and costumer satisfaction, we have not increase or ad budget since 2010. We are willing to lose money in the fisrt order as long as our users are happy. The service is great (even for American standard) which make it awesome in a country that is not well know for it services. We really care for our users (we got inspired by Zappos).

I would like to talk more about my business, If you want to talk about internet marketing I would love to answer, I have strong competitors so I cannot answer really specific questions.

Also, I've been living in Canada for more than 7 years, but I don't have Canadian imigration (even though I've represented Canada internationally with my business) so I needed to get a job here, I help a company (Wishpond) create marketing tools for merchants and online companies I've run some of them and they go extremely viral. We are in Beta, If you want to try it is awesome, I can help you out setting it up.

Anyways, skipping the commercial break...

I recommend you a online retailer, don't focus on revenue, Ill come (as long as there is a market for it) focus on service, and price. Invest on optimizing your website and your processes, get smart people in Costumer Support this may be more expensive but they are the face of your company. be patient (it took me 2 years to sell my fist product on my own), and just keep trying.

Love your life, and your life will love you
Love your job, and your job will love you ...

Great story...

Congrats and welcome.

About this:

I wish my high school guidance counselor had mentioned this on career day!

What do you want to know?

Very inspiring story,thanks for sharing.

Also,you achieved great success and built a business very young.....good for you,keep going !

E-commerce with physical products can be very profitable,the main "problem" is to find good and reliable suppliers,you can be an affiliate though with small commissions though !

this is what i call a true entrepreneur.. Great work

I think this should be public for the benefit of the forum .
I plan for 2 years (no parting no drinking, during my first years of college this was hard). I needed to get everything really solid. For the first 6 months I only put prices on the website then and asked people to email us if they want to buy something from us, this help us learning about our users and what they needed. I would rather sell less than give a crappy service, in the long term service prevail over anything.
Patience was the key, there where times where I just wanted to give up (when we did not sell anything or when we got hack... the most miserable part of my life).
Advertising was another key, back then people did not do ads on google/facebook so was relatively easy (and cheap) to get users. This was scary since as for a 18 years old kid the 300 dollars a month I spend on ads really hurt.
2009 we did not make any money (we broke even), 2010 we started getting better.
You can make a couple hundred, or few thousand dollars the fast way, the get "rich fast" may work for few bucks, but for me thats not entrepreneurship, and is kind a boring. Entrepreneurship is about innovation, creating new products, creating new wealth, employment, solving problems and this don't happen overnight.
There is not a golden bullet for what I did, (there may be tips related to internet marketing, social media etc), but the reality was a combination of hard work, demand for the product, luck, good timing, being obsessed with service, and love for what I do.

Ok thanks, Ill start selling Ipads to midgets.

I like your story of humble beginnings. I suppose if you have an enterpreneur mind set you can make it anywhere online or offline. great inspiration!

Hilarious how I sell things to health people (medical equipment) and you sell things that kill people (guns),nothing wrong with that, but perhaps the 2 most contradictory products I could imagine, yet the same principles apply, good service, good products, good prices, good quantity, hard work, patience and you would do good regardless of your vertical.

They are not. This is the hardest part (Mercado libre train them good, our users are scared of Meli's tactics), I personally think mercado libre is good only because there is nothing better yet (we manage to defeat mercado libre in our niche).

They are not ready, however, the reason we need good and fast service, they are not ready for us telling the to buy from us, but they are for a friend telling them to buy from us (that's the reason we have 30,000 fans, we need to keep them really happy) as I mention, we don't expect to make any money from the first order as long as the customer is 100% satisfy, recommend us, and buy from us again.

Pay attention folks. Wishpond has just given the real "secret of success." No golden bullet. No secret marketer's trick. Just good, clear thinking, hard work, and endless enthusiasm.