Clean tech, Solar energy

This is what I have accomplished in few days of my online journey of Solar industry:

1. There is a lot of Solar learning resources (online or offline) available from USA than from Australia. But for online material, doesn't matter where you live off course.
2. Clean Energy Council (CEC) is Australia's peak body for clean energy. They are responsible for accreditation/certifications and things like that for solar professionals.
3. In US, there is NABCEP and few more I believe.
4. This interactive career mapping tool available here was really helpful for me to scope out opportunities and path to the top in the field of solar. 
5. Downloaded ebook "The Clean tech Revolution" from Brunswick library and read the portion on Solar Energy. Lots of information on renewable energy in general and the history of alternative energy. It's very assuring based on the writers prediction that Solar career is the way to go.
6. "Net metering" is a concept where you sell energy when not needed and then buy back when needed, in it's simplest term. Very popular among solar owners in California. More here  
7. Among the solar certification programs I have come across, I liked Penn State's Graduate Certificate in Solar Energy program. Cost is close to $10k and requires 12 credits worth of classes. If you are looking to jump directly into project manager type of job in solar, this is ideal. If you want to slowly climb up the ladder from sales all the way up, SEI designed certification courses are probably the right choice, mostly because of the flexibility of the classes and the cost of the certification. Courses are also offered more frequently that way you don't have to wait for months at a time if you missed any course.
8. I signed up for free online course with SEI called RE100. It seems to be a basic crash course on renewable energy. 

It's been two weeks since I have moved to Melbourne, Australia. As I mentioned in my previous post, we have a two bedroom unit signed up that we are moving in towards the end of February. Yahvie has started going to public school since yesterday. It wasn't really her first day to school because she was attending in Nepal already. I guess it was her first day at school in Australia. Apart from venturing solar industry, I managed some time to update my resume. I am hoping to get a job as Data Analyst because that's what I did most of my engineering career at Micron Tech. Next week, I plan on searching for a job aggressively with the help from job agency assigned to me by govt welfare program. I am a bit more outgoing than I would've really liked. I am already itching to go out for dinner, movies, join a fitness club, and have a bit more pocket money to spend my way. Soon, I will want to buy a car, purchase toys and gifts for my 5th birthday girl. The lists goes on and on. So, I better get my ass off the couch if I haven't already and set priority to find a decent paying job. First thing first.

Change of thoughts

This past week, I spend my valuable time reading and learning more about drop shipping business. I watched every videos Anton send me via email. Slowly I realized how the internet had leveled the playing field in e-commerce. Anyone without any related background could do their own learning and by watching and learning from others alike that were already successful could write their own successful story. Although needless to say, without dedication and handwork nothing is possible. 

I was determined to work hard and, after 2 years of unemployment and to the point of being complete broke, I had no other choice but to give 100%. I had made up my mind to sign up for Anton's $1297 worth of training and go all in. It was last night. I had decided to sign up for the training around midnight after everyone was asleep including my daughter. I wanted to spend few hours and start training in the quiet hours of the night. But when the time came, I thought about the whole thing one more time. I was confused whether this was one of the many emotional calls I've had in my life or is this for real? Do I really want to spend that kind of money when I am broke? That's when I asked myself, what is it that I am looking to get out of this course that I can't find without paying for it? I thought for a while and asked again to myself, what is it that's stopping me to already get started even after learning so much already online? The answer was my product niche. Anton is not going to give me my product niche, so why am I secretly hoping that he would? Was that the reason I was getting excited about the course? May be I was. There is a lot more than just Niche selection in Anton's course but in reality I could learn most of those things on my own, mostly free. Anton does have his modules broken out and sign ups people separately for those modules, I thought may be I could sign up for the module I feel most valuable at significantly reduced price. Yes, I would have access to the forum for lifetime but $1300 for that? Without a niche? While I am broke? I thought I was crazy.

So I ended up not signing up his course for now. I decided when I come up with a niche product, I will try this again. I guess the question is which way is more effective "Do I sign up and get help from Anton to find a nice Or do I find a niche before I sign up?" What if you couldn't still zero in on a niche even after signing up? Trust me, your niche is all that matters. Rest can be learned, for free. I just need to spend more time finding my niche, spending money at this point won't help me achieve my goal. 

Today I am back in full force on my Solar Energy. I downloaded an ebook named "The Clean Tech Revolution" by Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder from the library. This book was written a while back but I thought it would still be relevant because we are still in the revolutionary period. I have also been doing quite a bit of looking around to get some sort of certification course online or in the city so that I could start looking for a job in the industry. Few programs I came across during my investigation were Penn State, Chisholm Australia, Stanford University and Solar Energy International (SEI). Price ranges from $2000-$12000 but instead of taking couple of classes here and couple of classes there, I think it would be wise to get a proper certification  from job prospects. If I eventually go this route, I will have to max out my credit cards. Nothing decided yet.

I also went to the CentreLink today (Govt welfare) and have been scheduled to meet up with a job placement company on Monday. Hopefully I can find some part time job while I venture in a new career path as well as support my family as much as I can.

And today, the most anticipated match up of Australian open between the two greats, Federer lost to Djoko in 4 sets, moving him to the Finals. Next set set of semi is tomorrow and Murray is likely going to win that. Djoko vs. Murray for the slam and Djoko winning his 5th Aus open. Good for him.

Manakamana temple, destroyed in the quake of April 2015

My first Australia Day in Australia - a dull one

Hot summer day, beautiful sunshine with temperatures just high enough to be hot but not as bad. There was plenty of good tennis on TV. I wish I could go and watch the Australian Open in the court, live but I can't spend my little saved money that way. Gotta be smarter than that, now that I am a grown man with a family to raise.

As usual I stayed up late last night doing homework on drop shipping business. It was 3am when I hit the bed, so waking up was a bit tough. By 10am I was up, showered and ready to start my day. After my first cup of coffee, Yahvie wanted to go out and play handball. So we did, for about 30 minutes. Almost 5 years old now, she keeps surprising me with her memories and tells me how we used to play the ball in her play room back in Boise. She is as amazing as they come. In total, we had 3 sessions of ball game today, the last one at 7 in the evening and lasted for almost 30 minutes. 

All day, I have been restless today. Yahvie is handful and seeks all the attention while she is not watching her iPad. Great tennis on TV that I didn't want to miss. I still managed to research solar manufacturers in the USA, mainly Renogy and Grape Solar. Renogy is probably the most popular among DIY (Do It Yourself) solar buyers because of their price and quality. Looking at Amazon sales data, they sell a lot more products than Grape does. My idea of taking solar products to drop shipping is not bad after all as long as there are reliable whole sellers with quality products in Aliexpress or unless US company like Renogy is willing to let me sell their product. Target buyers would be DIY solar installers, and there are plenty of those and still growing especially in USA. At this point, I need to do two things to make this happen. Educate myself on drop shipping. Educate myself in solar panel installation. I also see potential in drop shipping many smaller PV products such as solar charger and solar flashlights. Best thing is this industry is about to explode in the near future. Here is some proof I collected.

Google trends and keyword search for solar panels search over years..

Cheaper the price, higher the growth

  2017 forecast is low due to solar tax set to expire in 2016, but the new expiration now is 2022. This graph wasn't updated at the time when I copied

My head is a mixed bag

Before I had come across Johnny FD's blog via Facebook post, I had done a bit of homework on solar industry. I was exchanging emails with one of the trainers from Solar council of Australia about his Off grid solar and Storage training workshop. Cost of his 4 days long course was $2200. I absolutely wanted to make sure what I was getting for such a significant amount of money. Training didn't start till mid February so I had some time to do my own research. Even today, I am still undecided about the training program. Although it seems I could learn a lot from the hands on training, again my problem is my financial status. Can I afford $2200 investment in my studies that won't give me return for quite some time?

Today, I decided to spend my time to create a list of niche products for my drop shipping business idea. Few weeks ago while I was still in Nepal, I had come across this article that talked about how to fast track $1 million business in under 48 hours by serial entrepreneur Noah Kagan, founder of famous AppSumo. I revisited the article again today to realize if the things Noah had mentioned in the article had deeper meaning now than it did during my first read. It surely did. After listening and reading Johnny and Anton's material, I understood more when someone talked about finding a profitable idea and validating it. As I was going through Amazon's best selling products to find what was popular on the website, I found that solar panels by Renogy were selling like a hot cake. After further research, solar panels and the accessories around it seemed to be a perfect kind of product for drop shipping. Here's why:

1. Cost was in the range of $100-$200 for 100W panel. (medium range price, could go higher for more increased watts)
2. There were accessories to go with the main product. (higher margin in accessories)
3. Product itself is a bit confusing to non-technical audience and needs guide for home installation (opportunity for value add with installation guides)
4. Google trend for the past 10 years was upward and keyword search for "solar panel" was quite high. All the data regarding Solar industry growth showed there were no signs of the growth slowing anytime soon. Pretty encouraging.

What I still need to understand?

1. Who are the competitors and how are they sourcing the products?
2. Renogy is California based manufacturer. Is it possible for me to sell their products as they seem to be great brand name? at least based on Amazon's sales data.
3. How good are the generic Chinese solar panels, quality and reliability issues?
4. Are there Drop Shippers available in Aliexpress selling this product?

In the next few days, I plan on finding more information on this before making any decisions.

What excites me is the fusion of the two ideas (solar and drop shipping) I had in my mind. But at this point, it is very confusing and a mixed bag. The only way to clear the air is by doing more homework. 

Regarding our move to Melbourne, today we closed in on a 2 bedroom unit nearby to where we are living right now, although the move-in date is 1st of March. Good thing about that location is it's only 5 minutes walk from Yahvie's primary school. We spent 30 minutes with the principal of the school this morning. Yahvie really liked the school and can't wait to start. Things are starting to work out, slowly but steadily.

Good night!!

Bhaktapur Durbar Square - Before April 2015 Earthquake

It's all about your niche, value-add and marketing

Another productive day for e-commerce learning. End of the day, I wanted to make progress that was measurable. Spent quite a bit of time reading threads in warriorforum.com. Username "Yaros" had an awesome thread of his own drop shipping store experience. It was so addictive I ended up reading all 5 pages on that thread. There is so much information for a newbie that it was all worth my time. Today, I woke up at 10 am as I had slept late night after binging 4 episodes of House of Cards Season 3 until 3:30am. As before, I jumped right into drop shipping learning mood after the morning rituals. There were no house inspection appointments today and the weather was rainy, so I ended up spending most of my time in the house, with my wife and daughter.

I am still undecided whether to take Anton's DSL course. He recently raised the price from a grand to about $1300. Although it may all be worth, it makes it even harder for me to jump on it because of my financial situation. In the meantime, I have been trying to learn as much as I can about drop shipping and e-commerce in general on my own. It appears to me that the more I dig deep, I find out that yes, achieving success has lot to do with product selection, good marketing is also equally essential. I would be okay with average product and great marketing rather than vice versa. I learned that no matter what product niche I was going to select, I wouldn't be the first one. There is going to be competition. The only way I have a realistic chance at selling the same product at my brand new store and be successful that many others have been selling before is with unmatched value add and great marketing. Having a great product will help the matter significantly. So, as a newbie I realized that the following three things would be a good place to start:

1. Niche selection
2. Value Add
3. Internet Marketting

Niche selection:
Andrew Youderian has a nice blog ecommercefuel.com. Whenever I come across new websites, first thing I like doing to estimate their credibility is to check their traffic via similarweb.com. Because Andrew's ecommercefuel.com website had significantly more traffic than anthonmethod.com, I was inclined to listen to what he had to say. Even more, it seemed his material were mostly available at no cost. So, I signed up for his "Profitable-ecommerce" ebook which was delivered via email. The reason I chose to read this ebook was because it talked about niche selection. There is more to the book but at this point all I am looking to know about is niche selection. Here is what it talks about on this particular topic that struck me:

• Pick a niche where you can add value to the product. 
• Try to sell "Passion" or "Problem" product. 
• Matured women buy more stuffs online than men but men spend more per transaction than women. Medium priced product catering to matured women would be ideal.
• Range your product between $100-$200.
• Accessories sell with much higher margin than the actual product, sell both.
• Find something that's hard to find locally but has enough demands overall.
• Repeat customers are high margin client, so sell something that's disposable or consumable. 

I found that it was also very very very important to learn about tools that are available to narrow down with niche selection. One of the tools I learned about today was Google Keyword planner. You can type in any phrase and get historical statistics on search volume that can also be broken out by countries and regions. 

I will talk about marketing in the near future when I do enough study on that but I wanted to share another valuable finding today. Aliexpress platform is used by quite a bit of people to find wholesale suppliers. Once you find the right supplier for your product in aliexpress, all you have to do is list their products AND copy their contents to your site (technical contents I mean). I checked out two such US based businesses that sold using aliexpress, a common thing between them was shipping information. Even though most of the suppliers in aliexpress give 14-35 days shipping estimate, their US based drop shipping sites promise 7-30 days free shipping anywhere in the world. This shipping info was found in both those websites, run by separate people. This could be a hint that the business is using drop shipping service to sell the product.

WarriorForum, travel like a boss podcasts and more

Today was my second day ever getting to learn more about Drop Shipping Life Style. After making a trip to Welfare centre in the morning (moved to Melbourne last week and currently don't have a job), I headed to Brunswick Library which was about 30 minutes of walk along the Sydney Road. Following Jonny FD's inspirational story, I wanted to borrow "4-Hour Workweek" by Tim Ferriss and get even more motivated. That particular book was checked out but I put a hold on it and then decided to listen to Anton's first video on Drop Shipping Mini Course which I had received via email few hours ago. Returned home and went out with the family to inspect couple of units to rent. We checked out two but none were appealing. As we don't have our own ride, it's a lot of walk in the middle of hot summer days with a 5 year old. Nice change of pace from the American lifestyle.

Rest of the day, I stayed busy between Johnny FD's blog, Anton's blog, Warriorforum.com and finding good neighborhood primary school for my 5 year old. While listening to one of FD's podcast, I learned about Warriorforum and I am glad I did. You never know where you're gonna find what you're gonna find. Some guy in one of the threads on that forum was unsure how realistic FD and his blogs were for whatever reason, then down below I saw Anton's reply where he convincingly deflected the charges and gave him links to three different testimonials site to remove all the doubts once and for all. The whole read was even more assuring for me. At this point, I have less doubts about what Anton and Johnny have accomplished and more doubts about myself and my confidence to jump start the business. Because I am a newbie, first thing would be to sign up for $1297 worth of training material from Anton. It's a significant amount of investment for me because I am cash strapped and have wife+kid to support in a country I have never lived before. I will give myself few more days and hopefully by then I will know for sure what to do.

I also came across dropshipaustralia.com.au website today. It seems the site is semi active and there are more questions then answers at this point. Regardless, at this point if I decided to go into this business I am definitely re-activating my LLC in Idaho and using that to get the business rolling. I will need a new EIN and a new business bank account as well. But I have help in USA to get me started. That's something I can count on. 

Until yesterday I wasn't sure what I was going to do in Australia to make a living. Now, I can't put myself to sleep without reading another thread on warrior forum.