James D Ramsden

My Business Journey

If you know me, you’ll know that I’ve always got a side-hustle going, or a business idea brewing.

It could be a blog, it could be a YouTube channel, it could be online courses, SaaS, a mobile app, Print on Demand, or selling info products.

Whatever it is, if it’s something I’ve looked at or tried in the past, it’s probably included on this page. Here you’ll find a list of businesses I’ve attempted in the past, with relevant links if appropriate. Many of these have ‘failed’, but I have gained many valuable lessons and much experience from them.

I’ve broken this journey into years, both as a way to show the journey over time and as a way to speed up the pages (both from a page view and writing perspective; with 3 years of content, it was causing a lot of lag when typing).

This list is in reverse-chronological order, so the earliest businesses are at the bottom of each page.

No doubt I’ll be forming many more businesses as the years go on, so writing in this way means I can quickly add them.

And of course, this page is always a work in progress

Things I’m currently exploring

And ideas I’m thinking of pursuing:

  • Print on Demand
  • Selling AI generated art

My Business Journey – Breakdown

2022 – See below (WIP)

2021 – https://jamesdramsden.com/my-business-journey-2021/

2020 – https://jamesdramsden.com/my-business-journey-2020/

2019 – https://jamesdramsden.com/my-business-journey-2019/

September 2022 – Present: Daily Dolphin Art – The Daily Dolphin

Alongside the below realisation and decision, I wanted to be doing something more visually creative. I’ve always wanted to be able to draw well, I think it’s such a cool skill. Apart from the obvious benefit of being able to communicate and clarify ideas quickly and easily, drawing is a great way to create, a way to have a creative output.

That in particular is important for me; I feel that without a way to be creative, I don’t feel as good. With the low barrier to entry that is creating through drawing, it’s super easy to pick up a pencil and just make something, at any time.

So, combining those ideas, I looked back on the idea of Year of the Tiger, and wanted to use the idea for another animal. Dolphins were my favourite animal as a kid, and still are one of my favourites today. I had a dolphin cuddly toy that I slept with until my early/mid-teens. It’s relatively easy to draw a basic dolphin, which gave me no excuse to get started. Tigers seem complicated; dolphins are pretty straight-forward. And so I got started.

I discuss what happened to this project and the learnings I took in this video.

September 2022 – Present: This site

Not long ago I had an important realisation, something that was (ineffectively) guiding my business journey up to this point.

If I want a successful online business, financial independence, being able to work online, then I needed to build something. And to build something takes time.

That is, if I want to achieve my goals, I need to commit to a business over the long run. Several months is not the long run; several years is.

It was an uncomfortable realisation because chasing trends and new ideas is fun and optimistic, and is what I’ve done for the past 3+ years. Yet it rarely amounts to anything. I didn’t like it at first – it meant that it would take years to achieve the freedom I desire, and I had to accept that.

Previously I was constantly chasing new ideas in the search for the big hit, the one idea that blows up. For an idea to blow up, I believe you need significant resources at your disposal – that is, the ability to work on it full-time and put financial spending behind it. I have neither of those luxuries.

And so I decided that I’ll commit to a business and grow it consistently over time. This site made the most sense – it’s personal, it exists, it’s doing something I enjoy and allows me to share learnings. All while holding me accountable and ensuring I am learning regularly (or I’d have nothing to write about).

So I’m now writing regular posts and trying to build an audience through my work. It might amount to nothing in the next year, or even two years, but if I keep with it then soon enough it should become something. Besides, I enjoy it, and it has value to me outside of building an audience.

September 2022 – Present: Chess Cheat Sheets revival

Since its creation, Chess Cheat Sheets has been running in the background. I recently got a passive sale, followed by outreach from Google, and decided it could be worth semi-restarting the business.

So, using Google Ads, I’m driving traffic to the Etsy store via optimised ads. The plan here is to generate some income with minimal management.

The difference in money here, compared to PLR, is that I can set a fixed budget on the ads – which is currently just £1 per day. I’ve got support from Google to optimise this as much as funnel. Let’s see where it goes.

July – August 2022 – Year of the Tiger

This is the idea that would later go on to become The Daily Dolphin. The premise is the exact same; I’d draw the same thing every day for a year while learning to draw, sharing the journey online. Granted, the branding here is better (I was going to do a play on the Chinese Zodiac), but I didn’t feel the attachment to the animal.

And, dolphins are a little easier to draw. I found myself struggling to start on this project because drawing a tiger seemed too difficult. Lowering the personal barrier to entry made it easier for me to just start.

July 2022 – Selling PLR products and creating marketing funnels

Here I was playing around with the idea of selling Private Label Rights (PLR) products, which are essentially pre-created products (usually info products) that you can co-brand and sell as your own. The premise of this is simple; you buy the product, customise it, set up a sales funnel (usually using paid ads), and watch the moolah roll in. Or, at least, that’s the hope.

The reason I didn’t pursue this was monetary. You need a decent-sized budget to get started, so that you can pay for the products, the ads, a relevant domain, etc. With the cost of living being what it was, it’s very difficult to find money to put towards this idea. Especially when it’s not something that I’ve created.

I would possibly like to revisit it eventually, though.

If you’re interested in trying this out yourself, here’s a good website to get started.

June 2022 – Campground course

In June I was contacted randomly by someone that worked for Campground, a Web3 learning platform where users enrol in ‘Trails’, which are a curated series of content on specific topics. You buy a ticket to the Trail in the form of an NFT, which you can then resell or give away later to share access to the course, with the creator and Campground taking a commission of that resale.

It seemed interesting, and with my experience working in the Web3 space with the NFT project, I figured this could be a great opportunity. So I pulled together a short course on getting started with self-improvement.

You can check the course out here.

April 2022 – Present: Dungeons and Dragons Redbubble

Since mid-2021, I’d been playing DnD weekly as a way to take a break from my own projects and to be actively socialising. After the closure of the previous Redbubble store, I wanted to create something new, but this time doing it entirely legit.

Playing DnD, and specifically seeing one of our players wearing a DnD shirt, was inspiration to create this store. I pulled together a bunch of ideas and created many designs, all of which you can find using the link below.

You can find this Redbubble shop here.

November 2021 – July 2022: Solana Showdown NFTs

This is a long one, the most in-depth project and business I’ve attempted to date (2022). What I’m sharing here is more of a reflective piece on the project and business, rather than going into detail of the specifics of how everything would work. If you’re interested in learning about the project in detail, I wrote a whitepaper (that’s slightly outdated) which you can read here.

There’s a whole story to read here, so grab a cuppa and buckle up.

So, after a short period of uncertainty with the next project to pursue, I stumbled into the world of Web3 and NFTs. It seemed people were making a lot of money from flipping NFTs, but that required some upfront capital, which I didn’t have. Instead, I had the thought the NFT creators of those getting flipped were getting a commission every time the NFT was sold – so what if I created my own NFTS?

Generative Art

One of the core features of an NFT project at the time was generative art. Cryptopunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club are good and well-known examples. Essentially, you create a series of individual layers and combine them through code to great unique images.

For example, you might make 4 different hats, 4 skulls, 4 pairs of glasses, and 4 necklaces. You’d then input those layers into a code engine such as the HashLips Art Engine, which spits out a number of unique image with a randomly assigned ‘trait’ from each of the layer groups. So that could be hat 2, skull 4, glasses 3, and necklace 4.

Initial ideas and experiments

So, the first idea I had for a project using generative art was creating a series of randomly generated totem poles. I’d design the bottom, middle, and base of each totem pole with different animals and colours.

It’s a good idea, but there were two barriers.

  • First, it was a good idea in principle, yet the execution was hard. I didn’t have an iPad at the time, so the initial sketches were great but I struggled to convert those into digital designs using Adobe Illustrator. The execution didn’t live up to the idea.
  • Second, as a housemate pointed out, this could very easily be taken as cultural appropriation, and that wasn’t something I wanted to risk.

I then had the idea for Crypto D20s, again inspired by DnD. This was where I learned a lot about how NFT projects actually work.

Crypto D20s were a set of around 2000 randomly generated D20s (dice). The layers were as follows:

  • Background
  • Stand (what the D20 was resting on)
  • Fill
  • Outline (Black/White)
  • Number (1-20; what you ‘rolled’)

It’s a simple idea, and I thought it had potential. So, after generating them all, I started uploading them to OpenSea, the most popular NFT marketplace at the time, with the optimistic hope that these would blow up and loads of people would be buying them.

It didn’t quite work out like that…

The space was developing very quickly and there was nothing that helped the project stand out. Art was not enough; you needed a reason for people to buy your NFTs. More on that later. Here, the project’s success came down to one major barrier – marketing through building a community. If nobody knows about your product, nobody will buy it. For some reason, I completely forgot about this essential part of running a business. Which is amusing, because my job was in marketing. It wasn’t really mentioned in the research I was doing, so I just kinda thought everything would work out.

So, the project never took off, because it was never given a runway. Building a community is expensive and requires a lot of time, and for a small project in a quickly growing space, it’s extremely difficult.

That being said, at the time I didn’t realise much of the above. I still saw a massive opportunity in the NFT world so wanted to try again. I just thought the project wasn’t good enough, wasn’t unique enough, for people to want to buy. And thus, the idea for Blockchain Blades was born.

Blockchain Blades

The very early idea for Solana Showdown was Blockchain Blades, a collection of 10,000 (the classic NFT collection size number) randomly generated swords in stones. Each Sword would fit into an elemental typing or category – fire, water, earth, etc. Getting part combinations of the same type would increase the value of the sword.

To give you an idea of what they turned out to look like, check out my portfolio.

Taking that one step further, each Sword would be more than just a collectible. The value of each Blockchain Blade directly correlated with its ability to perform in minigames. So, getting a combination of same-type parts would mean your sword would do more damage when fighting other swords, for example. This idea was fleshed out later.

After the initial process of sketching and making the first-draft designs, I started trying to gather team members to help bring the practicalities of the project to live. Deployment to the blockchain, creation of a game, etc.

Early conversations with these team members helped me realise that the project idea needed a lot of bulking out, and that we needed to decide on a blockchain to build the project on.

And that’s when we first thought about Solana Swords.

Solana Swords

With the idea of having a combat-style game and needing a blockchain, the choice of Solana – the ‘gaming blockchain’ – made the most sense. That worked out nicely with a rename to Solana Swords, allowing us to stay on topic and keep alliteration.

The Swords were nearing completion at this point, the designs looking very good. Each Sword had 7 unique parts:

  • Elemental background
  • Elemental blade
  • Elemental stone (in which the Sword stands)
  • Elemental crossguard
  • Elemental grip
  • Sword pommel
  • Elemental gemstone

This was when we first began building out the idea of the game. We started planning specifics while I was looking for more people to join the team. The project was more of a semi-built idea at this point, rather than an actual business. On top of that, we didn’t have money to work or hire with, meaning anyone that joined the team would need to believe in the project and essentially work for free in exchange for a possible future commission on project mint (‘minting’ is the process of releasing the NFTS and having them bought for the first time, writing the data of ownership to the blockchain).

As such, you can imagine this was quite a tough process. A month or so into this, the other core team member made me aware of a project with a similar name, Sol Swords, which was a bit of a shock to the system. It was a “oh shit, someone’s taken the idea, we were too slow” moment. But, after a good bit of walking and thinking, we came to the realisation that the project wasn’t over – we just had to improve and distinguish ourselves. This was when I first really understood how to pivot in business.

So we thought then came back together with a new plan. He’d bring a colleague/friend into the team to help with the game development, and I’d create a new complimentary batch of NFTs – shields – that would help expand the project. And that’s how Solana Showdown started.

Solana Showdown

The idea for Solana Showdown was similar to before, with one core change – it wouldn’t just be a minigame for a single set of NFTs. Rather, your NFTs could be used in a variety of minigames played through a hub. Performance in said games would depend on the value of your sword and the parts it had.

The introduction of Shields allowed us to build on the idea. One idea is that Shields could be used to block or counter Swords. This also helped us more effectively understand how Swords would function in the game.

Another way we planned to stand out was by making the game Play to Earn (P2E), where you’d earn points/tokens by playing and winning games, which could be redeemed for real cryptocurrency later. P2E games were becoming quite popular in the space and we were a really nice fit for that trend. We’d fund this through commissions from resales and small entrance fees to games/tournaments.

The combination of these helped us fully form the idea for our first and primary game, King of the Hill (KOTH). KOTH would be a tournament-style game, where players face off against other Swords in brackets, with the winner advancing. Prizes were distributed among the top players.

Combat would work like this:

  • Each Sword is assigned a value based on the number of repeat-type parts it has.
    • Each Sword has a base score of 7, one for each part
    • Getting multiple parts of the same type would multiply the value of those parts (e.g. 2 Fire parts would count as 4 points rather than 2; 3 parts would count as 9)
    • That score was then added up to get the overall score of the Sword
    • Each Sword is also given an elemental type at this point, determined by the quantity of parts. Each part (apart from the pommel) is worth one point, with the gemstone (where the Sword draws its power from) being worth two points. So, a Sword with four points in Fire would be classed as a Fire Sword
    • Note: We pulled together a spreadsheet with all possible combinations and scores which helped us balance this
  • Swords would then enter an ‘Arena’ to battle. This Arena was themed in one of the 11 elemental typings. Battling in an Arena that was the same typing as your Sword gave you an advantage; likewise, if it was an Arena in which your Sword is weak, you’d get a disadvantage.
    • The specifics of how your Sword would perform in a given Arena are found in the above spreadsheet.
  • After entering the Arena, the Swords would then battle. Their base score would be affected by the Arena. The winner would progress up to the next bracket, facing off against another winner, while the loser would be out of the tournament.
  • Repeat until the final battles, where there would be 3 fights to determine the winner.

Somewhere into the process of the game’s development, we decided it would be a good idea to have a set of ‘legendary’ or ‘god’ Swords, which were the best in the game. There would only be one of each, making them extremely rare – and valuable. They’d have unique designs and would be animated. These are definitely the coolest designs I made, and the animations really bring them to life.

You can check out the animations for those god Swords here.

Ideas for other games

As I mentioned before, one of the ways we’d stand out as a project would be to offer multiple minigames. KOTH would be available on project launch, while some of our other games would be developed once we knew the project was a success.

Some of those other ideas were:

  • Rock Paper Scissors
  • Trumps
  • Inception Tic Tac Toe (Multiple games at once which make up a larger board)

The website

Midway through game development we wanted to create a website to begin our marketing. I’d made an initial design for that website earlier, but it needed refinement before release. So we (I) started looking for a website designer.

Eventually we found someone. Not amazing, but more of a specialist than me. We worked together to pull something cool together. You can find one of the later versions of that design here.

Another problem was finding a developer who would join the project for free. In the end, we couldn’t find anyone, and couldn’t afford to pay to get it built.

Why we stopped

We were nearing project completion in late June. By this point, the gold rush of flipping NFTs had passed, and we were too late to sell our shovels. We had everything ready to begin marketing the project, to start building an audience to eventually sell those NFTs to – because that’s how it works in the NFT world. I learned that the hard way. You can’t just release a project and expect people to buy; if nobody knows, nobody will buy. So you have to build an audience. I guess that is true of all online business – another learning.

Anyway, when we got to that point, we (I) realised that the value of building an audience for the project was nowhere near what it was 6 months prior. Fewer people were investing in projects. On top of that, it requires a pretty sizable budget to grow an audience in that space. Marketing is expensive, and requires a lot of time. Something none of us had, considering we were all working full time. I was meant to do the marketing, which was my job at the time so it made sense, but adding that on top of my responsibilities of project lead, website management, and artist, as well as probably community management – it just seemed too much.

And, I just lost faith a bit. The initial excitement and passion faded. It felt like I was doing 90% of the heavy lifting. That might be because it was my baby, because I don’t like giving up control, or maybe because I had no way of motivating others to do work without financial incentive.

So, it came down to a lack of money and running out of fuel.

I decided to end the project (or, put it on permanent pause), and here we are today.

In the early days of the project I wanted to launch ASAP. I recognised the speed of the NFT space. It’s difficult when you’re working with a team, when you don’t have all the tools to finish something yourself. This is kind of cynical, but having to rely on others will slow you down. It slowed me down. And so having to wait for others, having to pivot, and not being able to put more time (and money) into the project early on was, I think, the eventual reason why it amounted to nothing.

Summary

Overall, though, it was an exciting and enjoyable project that taught me a lot. I learned about project management, how to lead a team, how to delegate, how to trust other people to do work, how to pivot. I learned what it takes to succeed in business. I developed a stronger work ethic. And so much more.

In the end, it’s a shame it didn’t work out. But I’m taking the learnings and am better because of it.

For more information about the specifics of Solana Showdown, check out the detailed whitepaper I wrote here.

If you wanted to see what the final designs turned out to be, I’ve got a few examples in my portfolio.