17-year-old girl earns $34,000 a month working at Amazon – Telemundo Denver

At 12 years old, Bella Lynn had a problem. His guinea pigs were disappearing.

At the time, Lynn let her three pigs roam around her parents' fenced, grassy yard outside San Francisco. He thought this was better than the alternative: Lane, now 17, told CNBC Make It that the two-pound creatures “looked miserable” in their cramped cage with “prison bars.”

He assumed the first, Snoopy, had escaped and continued to let his guinea pigs loose, until his father saw one eagle fly away with another, he recalled. Determined to keep pets out of traditional cages, she began sketching prototypes.

Lin, a senior at Khan Lab School in Mountain View, California, experimented with several models and invested about $2,000 of his savings to launch his side company GuineaLoft in Amazon In November 2022.

She sold nearly 11,000 cages and brought in more than $410,000 last year — about $34,000 a month on average — according to documents reviewed by Make It.

In addition to academic courses, extracurricular activities and college applications, Len works about 20 hours a week at GuineaLoft. That's how he created a side business that's been so successful that he's considering postponing his college studies to focus on it.

An unprofitable side business led to an “epiphany.”

Lin told his father, a computer programmer, that he wanted to create a better cage. Lin says he was connected to a family factory in China through a previous client and made an introduction.

After a year of prototyping, Lin got busy with another idea: he wanted to sell girls' sportswear at a lower price than major fashion brands. She did her research, found another manufacturer in China, contacted them, and created a business plan to sell leggings starting at $23.

She says this side business, called TLeggings, launched in July 2019. It generated about $300,000 in revenue in 2020. It also earned Lin a spot on BizWorld, a project-based entrepreneurship program for people ages 16 to 22.

He completed a 12-week curriculum and worked with a business mentor, but at the end of the program he did not win the pitch competition or cash prize. That was one of the few signs that TLeggings was failing: Despite high revenue numbers, the company was never profitable, and Lin was having trouble keeping up with its competitors.

He closed it in early 2022 and returned to focus on GuineaLoft.

“I had a weird epiphany where I realized there were a lot of other companies trying to make leggings,” Lin says. “There wasn't any innovation, whereas with GuineaLoft, I was able to fill a really big gap in the market.”

Work between classes and late at night

Lin realized that his prototypes were promising, but incomplete.

Traditional guinea pig cages are made of fabric or plastic bars, roofs and bottoms. They're difficult to clean, and they often smell like feces, Lin says.

Early glass enclosures and open floors allowed greater visibility and mobility, and had two-level backs. The soiled bed can be placed in a removable plastic tray. But the glass was very expensive, and smaller guinea pigs' feet would get stuck in the ground.

Lynn rearranged her schedule so she could do homework between classes. He stays up late researching and actually testing products with his team of six in China: a manufacturing manager who works at the factory and five full-time GuineaLoft employees who previously worked for Lin's father or cloth management.

These six people are responsible for purchasing, manufacturing, packaging and photographing the products, Lin explains. Lin manages GuineaLoft's product design, pricing, marketing (he says Tleggings taught him a lot about social media) and overall business strategy.

Ultimately, the company chose acrylic instead of glass and made replaceable bottoms out of biodegradable paper coated with wax, similar to “airplane vomit bags,” Lin says.

It's easy to throw away money, which is good for business: When satisfied GuineaLoft customers run out of money, they have to return to Lin's Amazon store to replenish inventory.

Winning a $10,000 contest

The factory produced 100 cages in the first batch. Lin was very happy when three of them were sold out within the first few hours.

Within two weeks, GuineaLoft sold out of 100 “without doing any marketing,” he says. Last year, BizWorld entered again and won $10,000 in venture funds in the contest. He explains that this money will go towards adding new accessories and cages for different types of small pets, such as rabbits and hamsters.

Lin explains that 25% of each cage's profit margin is immediately reinvested into marketing, market research and new product development.

That means he hasn't made any money yet, but as he applies to college, he's thinking about taking a year off after high school to visit a factory in China, learn more about production, and grow his business.

“We are seeing the tangible effects of [las jaulas GuineaLoft] “From customer feedback and emails it is encouraging,” Lin says. “As someone who places great emphasis on academic validation, the success of… [mi side hustle] It boosted my confidence in life after high school.

this condition Originally published in English by Megan Sawyer For our sister network CNBC.com. For more from CNBC enter here.