Let me tell you a secret that drives the "hustle culture" gurus absolutely crazy... I am lazy. I don't want to pack boxes in my living room. I don't want to deal with angry customers whose dropshipping packages are stuck on a cargo ship in China. And I definitely don't want to spend my weekends answering customer service emails about broken zippers. To me, traditional e-commerce feels like running a stressful restaurant. You’re constantly buying inventory, "cooking" it, serving it, and dealing with complaints. If you like doing that, God bless you. But it’s my personal Hell Island. I prefer the Digital Gumball Machine. Imagine owning a gumball machine. You load the gumball in once. A kid walks by, puts a quarter in, and gets the gumball. But here’s the magic: the gumball never actually leaves the machine. Another kid walks by, puts a quarter in, and gets the exact same gumball. You can sell that same piece of candy 10,000 times without ever restocking. That’s what selling digital printables on Etsy is. Wedding planners, daily journals, inspirational wall art, kids' coloring books... people buy them, download the PDF, and print them at home. Zero inventory. Zero shipping. 100% profit margins. But wait... if it's so easy, why do so many people fail? If you’ve been around the block, you might be thinking, "Hey, I tried Etsy before. I spent days uploading printables and heard absolute crickets. Nobody bought my stuff!" I know. That happened to me at first, too. It's frustrating. Here is why that happens: Most people treat Etsy like playing darts in a dark room. They guess what people want. They spend hours making a cute calendar, put it up, cross their fingers, and hope someone finds it. That is like casting a fishing line into a random mud puddle and hoping to catch a marlin. I hate guessing. Guessing feels like gambling, and I don't like losing money. So, I don't guess. I use a "Fish Finder." This is my actual secret sauce. Before I create anything, I use a piece of software that legally "spies" on Etsy.

My name is Mike. I am currently limiting my digital footprint for reasons that I will eventually get into. Suffice to say, I am here because since was 8 years old, and sat at my brand new C64, with the giant "LEARN BASIC" Text book, and somehow, I just knew this stuff. At 8 I re wrote a simple 10 bouncy ball (sprites) program (simple 10-20 liner) and decided that "If it can do 10, it can do 100...(I was 8 and had no idea about memory and such). But I did understand syntax enough to rewrite 10 lines into close to 100. The real reason I am here, is because I miss it. The world as it is, I need to do this again. I need that passion. I had taken some time off, while my body still could and went to splice fiber optic cable. Turned out to be a FANTASTIC learning experience. For both how the backbone is constructed and how to identify faults in bad fiber runs. I tend to ramble, so I will shut up now. I got my first internship at the end of 1998 so I would have been 21 or 22. I was managing my first help desk 6 months later. Looking forward to some good nerdy non world news stuff to obsess over. Cheers! The video is just me forgetting for 30 minutes that OBS was running. I cut it down to a minute. Figured maybe someone could have a laugh at my expense.