Last week I had a cannon week. Something I’ve never had before. I sold over 50 products in 5 days resulting in my highest profit week on TikTok shop and the pure exhilaration of success as an entrepreneur. And you know what…

It only boiled down to two actions. Find a unique product. Market said product.

My raw numbers were over $3,400 in revenue, $1,400 in profit, and an over 40% profit margin. You can see my very rudimentary excel sheet screenshot below. But this is the truth. You don’t need fancy products, you don’t need fancy tools, and you don’t need to make crazy videos with lots of edits. You just need to do the basic work over a good period of time.

You might have a couple questions at this point:

1. What product am I selling?

2. How am I marketing and making sales on TikTok shop?

3. How can you do the same?

Changing Only One Thing To Find A Killer Product

Don’t worry about the exact product I sold. Focus on the differentiation you can find and how that can build your unique selling point. I sell facial recognition blocking glasses (I know it sounds weird but it’s cool). They aren’t the most stylish (yet) and they aren’t the most expensive (also yet), but what they do win on is having a different use case than anyone else has heard of.

TikTok shop is loaded with sunglasses. Some are best for fishing. Some are best for cycling. You just have to find a unique aspect to your product that is your core unique identity. Can the fishing sunglasses be used for cycling? Probably. Should you say that your sunglasses work for cycling and fishing? Probably not because those are two different audiences.

I don’t even really think you should sell sunglasses. You should sell something that you think is cool and that you believe in. It could be phone cases, sweatshirts, or home decor items. The core thing you must find is a unique angle, pitch, or benefit that your customers will receive with your product and your product only. Something you do better than everyone else.

This does two things:

1. You are more easily remembered - which is pretty hard in the fast paced TikTok world

2. You don’t compete on price - which allows your margins to be higher

If you just go on TikTok shop and sell the same stuff that people can buy at Walmart, why would they buy from you? If you sell the same hoodie as other brands on TikTok, all they have to do is lower the price 5% and now they steal all your customers. You want to fortify your business by differentiating it in the simplest way possible. If you sell phone cases, maybe you sell a color nobody else sells. If you sell rechargeable battery packs, maybe you have a unique plug that nobody else does.

Fast Tracking Your Content To Optimize For Day One Sales

Now just make content. Simple, but not easy. You will overthink this part. It’s natural and you should just go with it.

When we think of content, we typically think of the biggest brands with large marketing budgets and key marketing slots. None of this is true with small, emerging brands. You have no money. You have little skills. And that is exactly where your power comes from.

Underproduction.

To make sales on TikTok, you are optimizing for a few things:

1. Unique hooks to stop the scroll

2. Social proof people can trust

3. Lots of experimentation to find what works

Short form content can hook viewers in a lot of ways. It could be the background, your outfit, that first sentence you say, or something you’re holding. The first 2-3 seconds are going to determine the broad impact of whether someone watches, engages, or even enjoys your video which all has a trickle down effect to whether they make a purchase with you.

Test a lot of hooks. Reuse the ones that drive views a lot. Even ask ChatGPT for hook examples.

As you work on just throwing content out there, you are also simultaneously pushing against the greatest force in social media….proof. If a video has 100k views, you would be much more likely to view. If a product on TikTok shop says it’s sold 10,000 items, you’d be more likely to browse the selection. It’s just our human nature.

As you start, you have none of this and are facing a major uphill battle. I think it took me like 3 months to make 10 total sales. And then after that I made another 40 sales in two days. This was a combination of having some smaller viral videos take off, building a catalog of content people could know my brand for (think 100+ videos over 6 months), and a product page that had been reiterated on 10 different times. I hit the inflection point of proof, views, and uniqueness where sales exploded over a weekend. And I promise I have barely even touched the surface.

You’re going to have to experiment. You’re going to have to get obsessively curious. You’re going to have to make content, and remake more, and write your product description, and ask ChatGPT to refine it, and take product pictures, and then take better ones. It’s a process but a process that is worth it.

Why Do I Think That Everyone Should Pursue A Side Business That Generates $3,000+ Per Month?

So why am I telling you this and why does it even matter? Why do I think you should build a business in parallel with your crypto investments and not just only focus on crypto?

1. It’s pretty awesome, duh

2. Everyone needs more cash and businesses cash flow

3. It changes who you are (mostly for the better in my experience)

4. Crypto won’t always be the place to make money (ahem, last 4 years)

Imagine you walk away from crypto in 2026 at the top selling your entire portfolio and you cash out $1M. That is insanely awesome. But if you’re like under 35 it isn’t enough money to retire if you want the “lifestyle” a lot of us do.

$1M in the SP500 would realistically, on average, make you about $100k per year. The problem is that if you are in your 20s-30s (maybe even 40s), you still most likely need that money to grow. If you need that money to grow, you can’t pull out the whole $100k you earn yearly from this investment.

At most you can probably pull out $40k per year or 4% of the total profit. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be a millionaire that lives on $40k.

This leaves us with a few options:

1. Make money in crypto, work regular job, repeat until you have like $5M+ to stop working

2. Make money in crypto, start business, growth both at the same time to solve different aspects of life

3. Make money in crypto, live a really frugal life, retire after this cycle in a less “lifestyle” focused manner such as van life or something

I really wouldn’t want to have to clock into my 9-5 after making 7 figures in crypto, so number 1 is out for me. I love van life, and have participated in it overlanding around America, but I also would like a house and a Rolex and to raise a family, so number 3 is sort of out for me as well.

That leaves us with the world’s best option. While working your 9-5 and investing in crypto, starting a business remains an amazing way to build a good income stream without tooooo much extra work (disclaimer: extra work varies and is sometimes very hard).

What I am optimizing for in this plan is freedom. No I am not optimizing for being overworked and tired although sometimes it feels like that.

I know that I want freedom. That’s why I invest in crypto and stocks…to build wealth. But I also know that recurring revenue with a business provides a different lever than crypto investments do. A business allows me to make money in bull and bear markets. A business has more levers to pull at my immediate disposal. A business gives me something to do in my retirement from the 9-5 and can make money a lot quicker than crypto at certain intervals.

So last week I made over $3,000 just selling 1 product on TikTok shop and my Shopify store combined. The process wasn’t super hard when I look back, but there were a lot of times I could have very easily given up.

As Alex and Leila Hormozi say: 1 Product, 1 Channel, 1 Avatar = $1M per year

I’m currently reaching out to some manufacturers in Taiwan to help me streamline the process of production and packaging so I can let you know how that goes if you’re interested.

Thanks for reading and hope this inspired you to think of other ways to make money outside of just investing (because active income is still cool).

Dawson