Testing Out Multiple Income Streams

So after being recommended a huge amount of videos covering side gigs and entrepreneurs who've managed to make income through multiple income streams (damn you Youtube algo), I've decided to give a shot.

Considering that even my current freelance gig has upfront and recurring costs (minimal to keep a phone number and registered address but still), I decided to try one of the schemes that have literally zero start up costs, only a time and effort investment. It's pretty much dropshipping but just in a specific niche: graphic tees. The idea is to use something called Print On Demand services to only produce the apparel when it is ordered, and then ship them out to the customer.

So the only effort that I'd have to make would be to set up a storefront and design the merchandise. To make things easier and instead of fulfilling the orders manually and building mu own storefront, I've decided to use Amazon's Merch on Demand feature, as well as an Etsy and Printful integration (Etsy being the storefront and Printful being the Print On Demand provider), to reduce any manual work this would require and create a truly passive income stream. If needed in future, I could set up my own storefront with Prestashop or WooCommerce and reduce middleman fees. However, to make any profit there I'd have to drive traffic towards them and that would mean a lot of ad spend (from which I've seen from previous experience doesn't always translate to conversions or revenue). Therefore, I've decided to start with whatever offers the least cost to me and see where it goes.

Honestly, after having run my own freelance gig for close to 3 years, I know what the reality of a fully online business is like and I have zero expectations towards this. I just thought that since I have quite a few of the necessary skills to make an e-commerce business work (except the design part but there's always Gen AI and Fiverr for that), I should try it out myself instead of purely offering services to those already in the industry or looking to enter the industry.

Also, while I don't think my ideas or designs will be revolutionary, I'm targeting a specific niche that I think have relatively high spending power and may be attracted to my ideas. Let's see where this goes.