u/Warm_Perspective583

Hi everyone,

I’m 20M from Pakistan and I’ve been freelancing for around 4 years. I’m currently earning a pretty good amount through freelancing and have managed to build some savings.

Recently, I got an opportunity to start my own e-commerce business with someone I know. He’s also Pakistani but lives in the UK. He’s willing to invest around £3,000 and is asking me to invest some of my money as well. The plan is to start a printed T-shirt business targeting the UK market.

I already have experience in this field because I’ve been doing almost the same type of business for my clients in the German market, and from what I’ve seen, it can be quite profitable if done properly.

I actually met this person through Fiverr. Initially, I hired him to build an automation bot for one of my clients for an e-commerce-related project. He did a good job, and since he also had e-commerce experience, we stayed in contact.

We previously tried a few dropshipping ideas together, but they didn’t really work out. Despite that, I trust him and he seems like a genuine and responsible person. However, this time I would be putting part of my actual savings into the business, so I’m thinking much more carefully about it.

My main question is: Would you invest your savings into an opportunity like this, or would you continue freelancing, save your money and wait for a better opportunity?

I understand that every business involves risk, and I’m not expecting guaranteed returns. I’m mainly trying to figure out whether the risk/reward makes sense considering my age, current income and experience.

Also, if anyone here has experience selling clothing or printed T-shirts in the UK market, I’d really appreciate your advice. How is the market currently? Is it still profitable for smaller sellers?

Apart from Amazon, eBay and Etsy, which UK marketplaces or platforms would you recommend for selling printed T-shirts?

I’m also looking for reliable UK-based T-shirt suppliers, wholesalers and printing companies. If anyone has worked with a good supplier and is comfortable sharing their name/contact details or website, I’d really appreciate the recommendation. Ideally, I’m looking for good-quality blank T-shirts at competitive wholesale prices and suppliers that can handle reasonable quantities for a new business.

Would really appreciate advice from people who have actually run e-commerce or clothing businesses in the UK.

I’m a 20-year-old guy working as a freelancer, and I’m fortunate enough to be earning a pretty good amount. The problem is that despite earning well, I’m barely saving anything.

I don’t really spend money on expensive clothes, gadgets, or other flashy things. I do waste some money on things like games, but nothing that should explain where all my income is going.

For the past year, I’ve also been financially supporting my entire family because my dad lost his job and has been unemployed since. Around 30–40% of my income goes toward household and family expenses. I’m completely okay with supporting them—that’s not what frustrates me.

The frustrating part is that I have no idea where the rest of my money goes.

There’s usually one big household payment at the beginning of the month, followed by lots of small payments almost every day. By the end of the month, I look at my balance and wonder where everything went.

I’ve realized my biggest problem isn’t necessarily how much I’m spending—it’s that I have no proper system for tracking or controlling it.

For people who’ve been in a similar situation, how did you fix this? What’s the simplest way to track income and expenses when you have lots of small transactions throughout the month? I’d especially appreciate advice from other freelancers or people supporting their families.

I’m a 20-year-old guy working as a freelancer, and I’m fortunate enough to be earning a pretty good amount. The problem is that despite earning well, I’m barely saving anything.

I don’t really spend money on expensive clothes, gadgets, or other flashy things. I do waste some money on things like games, but nothing that should explain where all my income is going.

For the past year, I’ve also been financially supporting my entire family because my dad lost his job and has been unemployed since. Around 30–40% of my income goes toward household and family expenses. I’m completely okay with supporting them—that’s not what frustrates me.

The frustrating part is that I have no idea where the rest of my money goes.

There’s usually one big household payment at the beginning of the month, followed by lots of small payments almost every day. By the end of the month, I look at my balance and wonder where everything went.

I’ve realized my biggest problem isn’t necessarily how much I’m spending—it’s that I have no proper system for tracking or controlling it.

For people who’ve been in a similar situation, how did you fix this? What’s the simplest way to track income and expenses when you have lots of small transactions throughout the month? I’d especially appreciate advice from other freelancers or people supporting their families.

I’m a 20-year-old guy working as a freelancer, and I’m fortunate enough to be earning a pretty good amount. The problem is that despite earning well, I’m barely saving anything.

I don’t really spend money on expensive clothes, gadgets, or other flashy things. I do waste some money on things like games, but nothing that should explain where all my income is going.

For the past year, I’ve also been financially supporting my entire family because my dad lost his job and has been unemployed since. Around 30–40% of my income goes toward household and family expenses. I’m completely okay with supporting them—that’s not what frustrates me.

The frustrating part is that I have no idea where the rest of my money goes.

There’s usually one big household payment at the beginning of the month, followed by lots of small payments almost every day. By the end of the month, I look at my balance and wonder where everything went.

I’ve realized my biggest problem isn’t necessarily how much I’m spending—it’s that I have no proper system for tracking or controlling it.

For people who’ve been in a similar situation, how did you fix this? What’s the simplest way to track income and expenses when you have lots of small transactions throughout the month? I’d especially appreciate advice from other freelancers or people supporting their families.

​

I'm a freelancer working on a custom project for a client, and I've gotten myself into a huge mess.

The goal was to transfer an entire inventory from OTTO Marketplace to other marketplaces like eBay and Kaufland. There are around 60,000 SKUs.

The problem is that OTTO doesn't provide product images through its API, so I had to manually download every single product image before I could migrate the listings.

I should also mention that I have almost no coding experience. I built this project almost entirely with OpenAI Codex.

At first, everything seemed to be going well. I managed to complete the OTTO → eBay integration, but then the project kept growing. Instead of creating separate modules and files, Codex kept putting almost everything into one massive app.py file. I didn't know any better, so I just kept going.

Now the project has become so large that:

A single prompt can consume around 50% of my Codex usage.

I've had to buy multiple ChatGPT accounts just to keep working.

Every change feels risky because everything is tangled together.

Debugging has become a nightmare.

On top of that, Kaufland has been incredibly frustrating. Their workflow is much more complicated than eBay's. To create a product, I have to upload multiple files. If I need to delete a product, I can't just delete it—I have to submit it for review first, and that review can take anywhere from 20 minutes to 5 hours before I can continue testing.

Another huge issue is that my client originally used cheap EANs when listing products on OTTO. When I reuse those EANs on Kaufland, one of two things happens:

The listing gets rejected because the EAN is invalid.

Or even worse, the EAN already belongs to another product, so Kaufland matches it with someone else's listing.

At this point I honestly don't know what the best path forward is.

Should I:

Keep trying to refactor this giant project into smaller modules?

Start a completely new project with a proper structure and reuse the working logic?

Learn enough Python to clean this up manually?

Or is there a better approach that experienced developers would recommend?

I know one mistake I made was not telling Codex from the beginning to keep everything modular. Looking back, I should have had separate files for APIs, configuration, image handling, marketplace integrations, utilities, etc.

If you've ever inherited or accidentally created a massive AI-generated codebase, how did you recover from it? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

​

I'm a freelancer working on a custom project for a client, and I've gotten myself into a huge mess.

The goal was to transfer an entire inventory from OTTO Marketplace to other marketplaces like eBay and Kaufland. There are around 60,000 SKUs.

The problem is that OTTO doesn't provide product images through its API, so I had to manually download every single product image before I could migrate the listings.

I should also mention that I have almost no coding experience. I built this project almost entirely with OpenAI Codex.

At first, everything seemed to be going well. I managed to complete the OTTO → eBay integration, but then the project kept growing. Instead of creating separate modules and files, Codex kept putting almost everything into one massive app.py file. I didn't know any better, so I just kept going.

Now the project has become so large that:

A single prompt can consume around 50% of my Codex usage.

I've had to buy multiple ChatGPT accounts just to keep working.

Every change feels risky because everything is tangled together.

Debugging has become a nightmare.

On top of that, Kaufland has been incredibly frustrating. Their workflow is much more complicated than eBay's. To create a product, I have to upload multiple files. If I need to delete a product, I can't just delete it—I have to submit it for review first, and that review can take anywhere from 20 minutes to 5 hours before I can continue testing.

Another huge issue is that my client originally used cheap EANs when listing products on OTTO. When I reuse those EANs on Kaufland, one of two things happens:

The listing gets rejected because the EAN is invalid.

Or even worse, the EAN already belongs to another product, so Kaufland matches it with someone else's listing.

At this point I honestly don't know what the best path forward is.

Should I:

Keep trying to refactor this giant project into smaller modules?

Start a completely new project with a proper structure and reuse the working logic?

Learn enough Python to clean this up manually?

Or is there a better approach that experienced developers would recommend?

I know one mistake I made was not telling Codex from the beginning to keep everything modular. Looking back, I should have had separate files for APIs, configuration, image handling, marketplace integrations, utilities, etc.

If you've ever inherited or accidentally created a massive AI-generated codebase, how did you recover from it? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hi everyone,
I’m currently migrating my inventory from OTTO (the German marketplace) to eBay.
The challenge is that OTTO’s Seller API does not provide product images. At the moment, I only have two options:
● Scrape the images directly from the product pages.
● Download them manually using a browser extension (which is very time-consuming).
I’m looking for a free way to scrape or download the product images in their highest available quality.
Has anyone dealt with this before? If so:
● What’s the best approach?
● Are there any reliable free tools or techniques?
● How can I avoid low-resolution or thumbnail images?
Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi everyone,
I’m currently migrating my inventory from OTTO (the German marketplace) to eBay.
The challenge is that OTTO’s Seller API does not provide product images. At the moment, I only have two options:
● Scrape the images directly from the product pages.
● Download them manually using a browser extension (which is very time-consuming).
I’m looking for a free way to scrape or download the product images in their highest available quality.
Has anyone dealt with this before? If so:
● What’s the best approach?
● Are there any reliable free tools or techniques?
● How can I avoid low-resolution or thumbnail images?
Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi everyone,
I’m currently migrating my inventory from OTTO (the German marketplace) to eBay.
The challenge is that OTTO’s Seller API does not provide product images. At the moment, I only have two options:
● Scrape the images directly from the product pages.
● Download them manually using a browser extension (which is very time-consuming).
I’m looking for a free way to scrape or download the product images in their highest available quality.
Has anyone dealt with this before? If so:
● What’s the best approach?
● Are there any reliable free tools or techniques?
● How can I avoid low-resolution or thumbnail images?
Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi everyone,
I’m currently migrating my inventory from OTTO (the German marketplace) to eBay.
The challenge is that OTTO’s Seller API does not provide product images. At the moment, I only have two options:
● Scrape the images directly from the product pages.
● Download them manually using a browser extension (which is very time-consuming).
I’m looking for a free way to scrape or download the product images in their highest available quality.
Has anyone dealt with this before? If so:
● What’s the best approach?
● Are there any reliable free tools or techniques?
● How can I avoid low-resolution or thumbnail images?
Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi everyone,
I’m currently migrating my inventory from OTTO (the German marketplace) to eBay.
The challenge is that OTTO’s Seller API does not provide product images. At the moment, I only have two options:
● Scrape the images directly from the product pages.
● Download them manually using a browser extension (which is very time-consuming).
I’m looking for a free way to scrape or download the product images in their highest available quality.
Has anyone dealt with this before? If so:
● What’s the best approach?
● Are there any reliable free tools or techniques?
● How can I avoid low-resolution or thumbnail images?
Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I’m from Pakistan and I’ve been freelancing for the last 4 years. Alhamdulillah, I’m earning a handsome amount at a young age, and right now I’m the one managing my family’s expenses because my father lost his job last year.

I did Pre-Medical in college, but over time I realized my real interest is in programming, automation, and tech. My academic scores were average — 60% in FSC and 85% in Matric — so because of merit, the best university option I currently have for CS is CUST.

The thing is, I’m very confused about my future.

On one side, freelancing is already working well for me financially, and my family depends on my income. On the other side, my family strongly wants me to get a degree, and honestly, I also feel like I’ve missed out on life socially. I took a gap year after 2nd year, and for the past 4 years I’ve mostly been sitting alone in a room working. I hardly have 2 friends, and I feel disconnected from normal social life.

I’ll turn 20 this August, and I also dream of moving abroad someday, probably to a European country, but I don’t know whether skipping university would hurt my future opportunities.

So now I’m stuck between:
- Continuing freelancing full-time and scaling my career
- Going to CUST for a CS degree while balancing family responsibilities
- Figuring out how to build a social life and secure a future abroad

I’d genuinely appreciate advice from people who have gone through something similar or understand both freelancing and university life.

Thank you.

Hi everyone, I’m trying to scrape emails from online marketplaces, but most platforms instantly detect and block bots. I’ve already tried tools like Selenium and Playwright, but I’m still running into anti-bot protection issues. Unfortunately, I don’t have API access either.

Does anyone have experience handling bot detection or suggestions for more reliable approaches? Any advice, tools, or best practices would be appreciated.

Hi everyone, I’m trying to scrape emails from online marketplaces, but most platforms instantly detect and block bots. I’ve already tried tools like Selenium and Playwright, but I’m still running into anti-bot protection issues. Unfortunately, I don’t have API access either.

Does anyone have experience handling bot detection or suggestions for more reliable approaches? Any advice, tools, or best practices would be appreciated.