- Hey everyone, Davie here,
founder of The Oodie
and 10 other direct-to-consumer e-commerce brands.
My brands have done over $200 million in sales,
and today I'm gonna give you some top money hacks
that you can do in college.
No, you don't need any social media experience.
No, we're not day trading.
No, we're not crypto trading.
These are just simple things that you can do in college
to make over $5,000 a month.
I'm not only gonna show you
how to make these money hacks.
I'm also gonna show you how to automate it
so you can make money on autopilot.
I'll teach you some sure-fire ways to land clients
and put these skills to work.
The underlying principles that I'm gonna teach you today
is to provide as much value as possible
to as many people as possible.
These skills serve as a really good stepping stone
into getting into e-commerce.
I personally did these when I left school.
I started copywriting.
I started doing all digital marketing.
I would shoot anything
from Barre classes to weddings to food videos.
This was all just to upskill myself
and get lots of high-paying clients.
I worked for free and I built up my skills
and then that allowed me to launch my brands.
Alrighty, let's get into it.
(magical music)
The first money hack that we're gonna talk
about today is copywriting.
Copywriters can earn anything from $35 to $75 per hour.
It is super easy to learn and it's super diverse.
You can do anything from writing Instagram captions,
even YouTube descriptions.
It's especially a good path to go down
if you have actually niche-specific knowledge,
such as like cooking or finance or crypto.
If you understand the topic,
you can provide a lot of value
and write really specific, educating posts.
Alrighty, so copywriting probably isn't new to you,
so let's get into some cool hacks that you can do with it.
The main place that people actually advertise
these kinds of services is Upwork and Fiverr,
which is actually a great place to start.
You can list your profile and sell your services.
But the truth is it is very competitive.
You're competing with people around the globe
and your rates can get really pulled down
and they take huge fees from you.
The technique I'm gonna teach you today
doesn't require any middleman.
First step, you're gonna go to a local brand
that you know and love.
It'd be great if it's in your city.
You're going to follow them and click the little arrow.
This will drop down a lot of brands
and hopefully they'll be in your city as well.
You can follow 20 brands
and make sure you go to their website
and subscribe to their email list.
Now, what will start happening is you'll start getting
a lot of emails from these people.
Most of them will be welcome series emails.
So these emails are so critical
for direct-to-consumer e-commerce brands.
It's an automated flow which welcomes
and educates customers and produces
a lot of revenue for brands,
but people do not do it well.
The next step is you're gonna rewrite
these emails for people.
You're gonna write them better than they had previously.
You're gonna sell their product better
and highlight key things that they've done wrong.
Then you're gonna reply to their email
on their welcome series with your suggestions.
Make sure you sell the importance of what you're suggesting.
Some brands might not even know how much revenue
is actually coming through those flows.
If they don't have any welcome series,
that is absolutely crazy.
You can then go suggest that they have one
and probably add 20% of revenue to their brand
by building out an email program.
The other thing you could do,
if you really wanna work for a brand
is go to their Instagram.
Rewrite some of their Instagram posts.
That will show that you're really committed
and understand their brand.
One common mistake I see with a lot of people with this
is they'll actually do cold outreach,
which is just grabbing their email.
You don't wanna do that.
You wanna reply to their email
to make sure it goes to the help desk.
I'll put a template on how I would approach this
and make sure that the email then gets pushed to the founder
or the marketing team.
Use cold, hard data to sell yourself.
Use case studies on the web
and make sure they understand
how much money they are leaving on the table.
Then they can easily quantify
how much your services are worth and pay you accordingly.
Again, it's all about providing as much value
to as many people as possible.
Now, here's the fun part.
Once you've established with the brand
that you can add a lot of value
and highlighted all the inconsistencies
around their business,
you can actually use a tool called CopyAI.
It's artificial intelligence
that helps you write emails, posts, website descriptions.
You can essentially put your job into an AI
and it will spit out valuable content.
This will allow you to have a lot more clients.
Obviously, to make sure that this is ethical,
you need to make sure that you are still providing value.
Fine-tune that copy and make sure it is in
the perfect formatting for your client
to make them more money.
We've invested hundreds of thousands of dollars
in copywriting because it provides a ton of value
and it makes our ad spend more efficient.
The next hack that I wanna talk about is video editing.
If you go back five years, video editing was very niche.
It was astonishing how many brands
weren't actually using video ads.
This is because it was quite expensive.
Now with phones with amazing cameras,
the cost is coming right down.
Also, the new generation of content creators,
such as YouTubers, are extremely good at using a camera.
This is lowering the price of the services,
but it's making a lot more brands utilize the method.
This provides a ton of opportunities
and all brands are doing video marketing now,
so you can work with your favorite ones.
If you want an in-depth video on how to shoot Facebook ads,
just with an iPhone,
head to my previous video and check it out.
Video editors can be paid a lot of money,
up to $500 an hour.
So you're probably asking, how do I land
my first paying client for video?
The truth is you'll need a portfolio.
A portfolio is basically just a list of links
with all your top videos.
These can be marketing or even personal.
This is actually one of the first videos
that I ever filmed for a market.
I also used to film for weddings and other businesses
just to learn my skills.
- Yeah.
- A lot of people ask me, should you work for free?
And the truth is, when you first start out,
I do recommend it.
It will accelerate your learning
until your time is worth a lot of money
and then you can start charging then.
My top tip with learning video is, again,
trying to provide as much value
for as many people as possible.
One of the best videos to learn is Facebook ads,
and this is because there's a high frequency of work.
Brands are refreshing their content monthly,
meaning you're gonna just have a monthly retainer
and constantly be creating ads for them.
It's also very trackable about how effective the ad is.
They can see in their ads manager,
hey, you have created this video,
which has created this much revenue.
Then you can be paid accordingly.
Facebook ads aren't the only format of video,
and it really is becoming the creator's economy.
Things like TikTok and YouTube
are extremely valuable to brands
and, if you can learn that format, you can sell yourself.
We've probably invested over half a million dollars
in content since we started The Oodie
and we're investing more and more every single day.
The next hack that I wanna talk to you about is photography.
Photography is a little bit simpler than videography,
which isn't necessarily a good thing
because there can be a lot more competition in the space.
You can find heaps of tutorials online with photography
and you can essentially set up a studio in your own house.
I suggest going to Amazon
and just buying a little light box.
Then, what you can do is set up
a Shopify store to sell your services.
Again, you're probably gonna need
a bit of a portfolio for this.
So take some photos of your favorite products
and get them up there.
You can build a simple system where you get clients
through either Facebook ads or just posting on TikTok.
Brands can send you their product,
and then you can take photos of them.
Then you can send the product and the photos with them
and charge a small fee.
You can slowly build up,
investing more in gear and learning more about the industry.
The good thing about photography,
like everything, is you can niche down
in certain industries.
It can be travel, wedding, sports.
Build a portfolio around this niche,
and then whenever someone in your local city
needs photography for that,
they'll be coming to you.
Like videography, we've invested hundreds
of thousands in photography and will continue to do so.
Another hack that I really love is media buying.
There is a massive shortage of good media buyers,
just like there was videographers five years ago.
This is because it is slightly technical
and hard to understand.
It is such an important strategy
for every brand to utilize though,
which is a huge opportunity for you to learn.
You might have no experience in this,
but all you need to do is start watching some YouTube videos
and getting your hands dirty.
You can learn through dropshipping
or approach some local brands.
Once you have some successful case studies,
like everything, you can build a little bit of a portfolio
and brands will be chasing you,
willing to pay you a lot of money to run their ads.
The good news is Facebook's getting a lot smarter.
Their artificial intelligence is getting great at targeting
and the ad account structures
are becoming simpler every single day.
If you wanna learn the absolute basics to Facebook ads,
I have another video here for you to go check out.
The final hack that I really think is powerful
is Facebook Marketplace flipping.
This is a great one to start with a friend.
You don't need any money or equipment to get started.
Facebook Marketplace is huge.
In 2018, Zuckerberg said that they had
over 800 million monthly users on Facebook Marketplace
and that will just continue to grow.
Our strategy is pretty simple.
Pick a niche like furniture.
It might be free or really cheap.
Go pick it up and clean it up a little bit.
Take better photos of the product
and then relist it on Facebook Marketplace.
Make sure you relist it on other platforms.
You could go on Gumtree or Craigslist.
Some products might be selling more
on those sites than other sites,
and you can take advantage of that.
My main advice is just making sure
your listings are really professional.
Good photos and good communication about the product.
Same as everything.
(rattling)
One of the best things about all the hacks
that I've talked about today
is they're teaching you marketing 101.
They're teaching you how to build a brand
and sell your product.
For example, if you're a baker and you're selling cupcakes,
learning all these skills is gonna help you sell
those cupcakes in the future.
They'll teach you how to write about your product,
take photos and video ads of your products,
possibly even help you build and optimize a website.
One of the most important things
when you're trying to make money
is to just stick with the process.
It's called iterative learning.
You can't just try once and then quit.
You need to latch onto small positive feedback loops,
little bits of information that say, if I expand on this,
I can make more money on it.
You need to learn how to communicate
and sell yourself to people.
Tell people what's in it for them
and then get paid accordingly.
The beautiful thing is we live
in an age of infinite leverage.
Your YouTube video, your Facebook ad,
can go to millions of people if you do it right.
We live in the best time to make money.
There are young kids making millions
of dollars selling slime on Instagram.
This has just never existed before,
and we're extremely fortunate.
Don't sit on the sideline and let it pass you by.
As always, if you have any questions or need any help,
please leave a comment.
Make sure you subscribe.
Thanks for watching.
(whooshing)