How does one follow a title like that with a hopelessly boring blog post? Just like this she guesses... This first sentence has now been written and re-written at least 4-5 times. Comedy is hard people! And pairing funny with an attempt at helpful-online-money-making information???
Mr. Make-do, it's high time you start coming up with some material for me to use in this thing!
Ok, so she's on her own on this one...
She's decided she's just gonna have to throw it out there plain an simple and hope maybe a smidge of comedy finds its way in somehow... So here goes... She is always trying to find weird random ways to save money, make money, be more money efficient, make budgeting easier, etc. She blames pinterest and her "pit-Bull" hyper-focus disorder that makes her obsess over things until she either conquers it, or admits defeat and moves on. One such endeavor was before she went back to work and when the whole extreme couponing thing hit (in her defense, she actually started trying to learn to coupon like, right before the Extreme Couponing shows popped up). In her search to better understand couponing, she somehow came across the blog of this amazing woman named Josie. She looks young, she's super cute, her blog is super informative and helpful, and she's in So-Cal?! She signed up for her blog 'cause if she was going to learn from anyone, it'd be her! This woman knows the struggle of living in Southern California and knows how to save! And not just save, but also how to save money on healthier food, not just the processed Cheese-Whiz crap that you usually get coupons for. She faithfully clipped coupons and organized them in her binder full of plastic baseball card organizer sheets and tried making lists of dinners to make off of sale stuff, tried to match sales with random coupons and different stores.... She's tired again just writing about it.
It was work. A LOT of work. It was her job when she wasn't working, And she didn't enjoy it. And she didn't even really understand it. She admitted defeat and moved on. but she never stopped following Josie's blog.
SIDE NOTE: Both her couponing and Smart Money pages are packed full of super useful information and guides and she definitely encourages her so-cal friends to check out both of Josie's pages. She's really hoping Josie starts a blog about blogging so she can learn some more and maybe reach more people like us. Fast forward 3 years later and she gets an email from Josie's blog saying she's starting a new blog about budgeting. Of course her interest is piqued. Especially when in this blog she talks about how she "accidentally" started an amazon business and made $4,000 in one month.
Right?! That's what she said too, and that's how the pit-bull intensity obsession began. Josie took the Amazon Boot Camp course (about $300 and offers a 3-month payment plan for slightly more) from The Selling Family (Referenced in the previous post when he said: "what happened to the $300 one?"). They offer a couple different options, each option has different information inside. An A-La-Carte type of thing which is cool for those who #1 may not have the money to invest in the boot camp, or #2 are really only looking for information on one aspect of AMazon business.
But like we said before, we want to try to do this as free or cheap as possible. And we need the whole enchilada plate, beans and all and maybe a fountain drink of horchata if you're in to that (blegh). So she dug deeper... Next she came across Scott Voelker aka The Amazing Seller. And he-is-amazing. He admittedly talks fast especially when he gets pumped telling people about Private Labeling products and selling them on Amazon. We've watched a few of his webinars and he gets you pumped and jazzed and ready to go! (again, hence the previous post about "What happened to the $300 one?"). He touts himself a "normal guy" and starts to give you a little background on himself.
Well we don't know about everyone else, but to us, that is not what we consider a "normal guy. Clearly he has some business knowledge, how to start a business, etc. Scott does say he learns a lot from watching, listening and talking to others and teaches himself through research etc. And we get that. We respect it! It takes drive, or as he says "Action"! He also says he loves to help and teach others which we think is awesome. And we do believe his knowledge and the things his program includes is more than likely worth the value he charges for the course. But listen, if that kind of money was in our budget just chillin', lookin' for a reason to be spent, we wouldn't even be writing this blog. Side Hustlin' with his lady
So again, we press on in the search for free information. Then Sunday (Father's Day), through some miracle of technology, she came across quite possibly the best blog about this amazon-blogging-learning-curve thing ever written by this dude named Matthew Allen!
Matt says he calls it "Side Hustlin' with my lady". She laughed out loud and called him over to tell him what Matthew called it, explained how he's a truck driver and she thinks this just might be the guy who we're gonna learn everything we need to know from because he sounds just like us and he's been doing it for a while and how he thought it was so cool that this was something he and his wife could do together! A normal human with a family and a real job and just wants to generate some extra cash for his family. Just like us! He laughs and continues playing water balloons with the little guy, fully enjoying his 110 degree father's day with a belly full of shrimp boil and beer. She goes back to her iPhone reading as much as she could while trying not to melt. She wonders where his blog was back in May when we were searching google for "real normal people trying to start an amazon business with practically zero dollars to invest and equally if not less knowledge about starting a business"? Maybe we were using the wrong keywords... Curse you SEO!!!!
So disclaimer: we clearly just found his blog, and he has a ton, and we mean a TON of content. And because it does look like he has clearly been where we are now, we want to take our time reading it, understanding it, you know the drill... so we haven't read through all of his posts yet (because again, we're normal average adults who both work full time and have a family and sometimes we try to sleep too...) but what we've read so far, we feel we can say we think this guy is pretty awesome. And he's real, like real real. he just tells it like it is, and is honest about things. Which is exactly how we would be if we were as far into this journey as he is.
Another thing we respect is that all the Amazon and blogging stuff he knows is 100% self-taught. He says in his blog he listens to several podcasts (which was actually one of the first things she downloaded when she first started researching, but has yet to listed to any of them), research and undoubtedly some trial-and-error too. Shortly after she found his blog she commented and asked a couple questions and he responded pretty quick! Not just a response though, like "took the time to include a link to one of his posts that would answer her question" kind of response. So We're pretty excited to dig deeper into his blog and learn as much as we can from his experiences so we can at least try and get a basic understanding of this Amazon thing. So shout out to Matthew Allen! A big thank you to you and your wife for beating us to the punch and sharing your amazon journey with us!
-Me and Him
p.s. She almost forgot to add the smidge of comedy! She couldn't think of anything clever or remotely funny to say, but in her search for something funny she came across this photo.... and the story behind it. And that, dear friends... that's funny right there!
2 Comments
6/25/2016 07:18:08 am
I don't even know what to say about this post! It's always humbling to get a mention like this. Love it!!
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Her
6/26/2016 07:04:57 pm
We're just stoked someone who actually knows what they're doing took the time to read our humble little 3 whole posts Matt! ?We're over here like ??
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