Getting that first order was a pretty great feeling. Then we got another one two days later and it started feeling like maybe we had actually built something here. We're at $1,347 in sales so far. Still very early days obviously, but seeing complete strangers actually buying from the site was a big milestone for me.

We just finished our best month at $27,460 in sales and a little over $4,100 in profit. When I started this, my goal was really to create another source of income before I retire, so this is starting to feel significant. I'm still working my regular job and probably put 8 hours a week into the store.

Last month we did $11,680 in sales, which is the first time we've broken $10k. What surprises me most is I'm probably spending 6 or 7 hours a week on the business. There have definitely been things to learn along the way, but I never wanted to buy myself another full-time job and so far this has been very manageable.

I honestly wouldn't have known where to start doing this myself. We settled on a niche I was comfortable with, they built the site, helped with suppliers and basically walked me through the whole process. We went live in a little under 7 weeks. I'm excited to see where it goes from here.

When I started, I told Ian that if I could eventually make an extra $5,000 or so a month without working another 40 hours a week, I'd be thrilled. Over the last six months the store has averaged $5,430 a month in profit and I'm usually spending 10 hours a week on it. That's enough that my wife and I are now seriously talking about moving my retirement date forward.

I started this because I was worried that retirement was going to be a little tighter financially than I wanted. I wasn't looking for some get-rich-quick thing. I just wanted another dependable source of income. The business made $71,840 in profit over the last 12 months and I have someone handling most of the day-to-day customer service now. I still cant quite believe an online store we started from scratch has become a meaningful part of our retirement income.

It's been 13 months since we launched and the store has done just over $218,000 in total sales. More important to me is that it's now consistently profitable. The last three months averaged around $4,760 a month in profit. I didn't expect it to happen overnight and it didnt, but it's turned into a legitimate second income stream for us.