Donggui Xishi

Category

Side Hustle Insights

Practical notes on small side businesses, useful tools, service ideas, and realistic ways for individuals to turn skills into income.

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From Bertelsmann to Joyo and Amazon China: Product Lessons I Still Think About

Looking back on my early experience buying books, I trace the rise and fall of Bertelsmann, Joyo, and Amazon China, and share what they taught me about products, timing, channels, and market opportunities.

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Beginner-Friendly IT: How Non-Technical People Can Understand and Build a Software Product in the AI Era

This series is not about turning everyone into a programmer. It is about helping non-technical people understand software products, website deployment, frontend, backend, databases, mature systems, and AI Agents so they can work with AI more safely and actually ship something.

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Beginner-Friendly IT 5: How Should Beginners Use AI Agents and AI Coding Tools?

AI Agents, Codex, Cursor, Claude Code, Dify, and n8n are changing software development. For beginners, the key is not chasing concepts, but learning to describe requirements clearly, let AI execute, and review the result.

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Beginner-Friendly IT 4: Do Not Start from Scratch. Learn to Use Mature Systems

Many people want to build user systems, admin panels, content management, and ecommerce features from scratch. For beginners and small teams, it is often better to learn mature systems such as WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce, Payload, Strapi, Directus, Supabase, and Appwrite.

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Beginner-Friendly IT 3: What Are Frontend, Backend, and Database? A Restaurant Analogy Makes It Clear

Frontend, backend, and database sound intimidating to beginners. Think of a software product as a restaurant: the frontend receives users, the backend handles rules, and the database keeps records.

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Beginner-Friendly IT 2: How Does a Website Go Online? Understand This Chain First

Launching a website is not just uploading files. Beginners should first understand the chain of domain, DNS, server, web service, SSL, and logs. That is enough to understand most deployment and maintenance issues.

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Beginner-Friendly IT 1: If You Want to Build a Product, First Understand These Five Things

AI can already help people write code, but people who do not understand software can still be misled by jargon and wrong solutions. The first step is not to learn every technology, but to understand what a software product is made of.

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What Japan's Street Ads Made Me Think About: Flyers, Trust, and How Society Works

Starting from a small observation that Japan has plenty of flyers but very few messy street ads, this article recalls my first flyer-distribution part-time job and an unexpected outsourcing opportunity, then reflects on advertising budgets, work habits, trust, and how society actually runs.

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Set Up an Overseas Company, Stripe, and a Bank Account in About Three Weeks: A Current Global Payments Guide for Solo Developers

This year I reorganized a more practical setup: registering an overseas company, applying for an EIN, opening a U.S. business bank account, and connecting Stripe, Wise, and USDT flows. Most of it can be done from China, and the result is more compliant and sustainable.

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Learning Paid Traffic Is How You Spend Money Where It Actually Matters

Many people who start a side hustle or small business are reluctant to spend money on ads. But real small-business examples often show that smart paid traffic is what connects your product, service, and target customers.