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[bitter-season]

YOU'VE BEEN HERE FOR TWO DECADES

SILENT HILL 2 (2001 & 2024)

[souprights]

DIY for Transmasc Minors/Those still living with unsupportive family

For context, I'm just turned 17, still living with my parents and live in the USA. This is just my experience! It may not be the best/easiest way to go about DIYing. I'm going to do my best to make this as comprehensive as possible, and please let me know if anything if incorrect or if I should add anything.

Firstly, if you're under the age of 16, I don't recommend this at all!! DIY should be a last-ditch effort, after you've tried all else. Please seek therapy, a supportive friend group, and a good community before turning to illegal means, because, yes, purchasing and being in possession of T without a script is illegal.

What's it Gonna Cost?

For cost, you're going to need about $60 - $115 of reliable income a month. Depending on the site you use, and how many millilitres of (injectable) T you purchase, that's going to vary, but $60 is the typical minimum I can find. Don't forget shipping is going to be around $15-30.

This only includes the T!! Don't forget you're going to need needles, bandaids, and alcohol swabs if you're injecting, as well as blood tests.

What Kind of T?

Whether you use gel or injections is entirely up to you and your comfort. However, please avoid orals! Those are just gonna wreck your liver, no matter how painlessly tempting they may be.

Gels run more expensive, but with injectable, there's extra purchases/packages to be had.

Hang On, Blood Tests?

To make sure your levels are in a safe/normal range, you're going to need a blood test. If possible, look for Quest or LabCorp-esque places to get proper bloods done. I was too nervous to do that, given how closely my parents track my every move while I'm not at home, so settle for finger prick at-home tests if necessary. Unless the site advertises Discreet Packaging, I highly recommend having these sent to a friend and picking them up at school/when hanging out.

Do one before starting T, one at Month One, Two and Three, respectively. Based on your levels, adjust or figure out your dose. If everything is typical at Month Three, you don't have to test again till Month Six. After that, check at your One Year mark, then yearly thereafter.

Where/How Do I Get All This?

eroids.com is the first place I turn to when looking for places to order T. You can read reviews for each site listed, and get an average rating from people who've used the sites. If you want to go for gels, I suggest poking around Reddit and finding other people who've DIYed with gel, and asking them for their opinions and recommendations. Make an informed decision no matter what you choose, and spend PLENTY of time researching.

For needles, bandaids, and alcohol swabs I honestly just use Amazon. MAKE SURE you mark your order as a gift, or else you're probably going to run into the issue of the packaging being marked with "medical supplies." Imagine your overbearing parents seeing that and ripping open your package, and immediately assuming you're spending your days in back alleys shooting up. Not fun. Take my word, and learn from my mistake.

As for bloods, just poke around till you find a test that takes your free T and total T both, or go somewhere and have it done proper.

Now, you might try using a PO box to not worry about your family seeing any packages arriving, or having it sent to a friend with more relaxed/accepting parents. Later in the year (when I'm doing this) using the approaching gift-giving holidays to keep people out of your parcels might be plausible. Or maybe your family doesn't care. Ultimately, imagine the worst case scenario and judge what to do knowing your own situation.

Okay, But....Bitcoin

Ah, yes. Daunting, tricky Bitcoin. Majority of sites only accept Bitcoin as payment. But I swear it's not as bad or hard as it sounds. Your first issue is honestly going to be finding somewhere that doesn't require you to be 18+ to purchase it. Now, don't worry too much. For me, I got my older sister to put in all her details, and I just used my money to make purchases. You can do the same with an 18+ friend, relative, or relative of a friend's. Or, send an 18+ friend's CashApp the money necessary to make a Bitcoin purchase and transfer for you.

Now, my first order of T was only about $60, with shipping and everything, since I only bought 4ml total to begin with. If you buy a bigger vial, it's going to cost more. $60 was as much as I could spend without making my parents suspicious (they keep an eye on my bank account), so if you have a similar problem or a smaller spending threshold of concern, don't worry. Just spend your max threshold on buying Bitcoin as often as you can. The Bitcoin will be stored for you to compile and use later. Keep in mind its value may go down, so buy a bit extra if you're saving up over time.

I use an app called Edge to handle all my Bitcoin transactions. It's simple, easy, and you can use a card, a direct bank transfer, Apple Pay or Cash (if there's a Bitcoin ATM near you--no worries, there's a handy map in the app itself to lead you to the nearest one of those). I used Apple Pay, so unfortunately, I can't help with any other methods than that. You can also use CashApp, but Edge's verification went much much faster, and I was not in the mood to wait a few extra days.

There's going to be a fee, usually outlined before you select your payment type. I included that in the cost of the T above, which might be more or less.

And lastly, it's not instant. It usually takes a few hours, but if it's more than a few days, reach out to customer support.

Each site lists instructions with how to send payment once ordered. Just follow their instructions, and talk to them if you have any trouble. They're usually more than happy to help you send them money.

So I've ordered my T

Shipping times are going to vary!! Keep this in mind. If you used eroids, users typically include shipping time in their reviews. This may influence which site you pick. Domestic sites tend to have faster shipping and don't risk customs seizing your pack--if customs seizes a pack with an illegal substance, you're going to get a letter. That's pretty hard to find an excuse out of, way closer to impossible.

Typical processing times are 2-5 days, but may vary a little, depending on things that may include a lovely little pandemic. Shipping is typically 1-2 weeks for domestic sites, 3-5 weeks for international. Shipping prices tend not to vary much, however, no matter where the warehouse is.

Hiding Changes

This is going to be the tricky part. I've known some people to only go on T for three months or so, as to get some changes to reduce dysphoria, but not have family members notice. If you spend a lot of time around family, the changes are gradual and they might not notice. But keep your own safety in mind above all else. What's the worst that's going to happen if your family confronts you over your changes? How long will you be able to write off your voice as "a cold" before someone wises up? How much longer are you going to be staying with your family?

I'm out to my unsupportive family, so despite being discouraged from any transition of any sort, any and all voice changes I'm writing off as voice training. Facial hair? Minoxidil. More muscle? I've been working out. These may or may not be things you can use, so consider carefully.

Aside from your voice and facial hair, there won't be anything too difficult to hide or write off. Shave your facial hair away as soon as you get up if it develops/needs to be hidden. Consider and compile a list of excuses as to why your voice is changing in case of questions.

Hiding Supplies

This is going to depend a lot on your house and situation. Do you have animals, parents or siblings who invade your spaces and find your hidey holes? A piece of advice I read in an MtF guide to DIY is to hide something you won't get in trouble for where you plan on hiding your hormones, and see if anyone finds it over a few weeks. Repeat until somewhere safe is scouted.

I have small cardboard boxes I keep under my bed, in a cabinet I have in my room, and on my desk. Only bandaids are kept on the box on my desk. But the other places I hide things have an equal distribution of my supplies, so even if someone finds one box, I'll be able to continue HRT.

Try to keep your T much better hidden than other supplies. I'm in an arts-focused degree in college, and a very artistic person, so I've managed to write off needles and syringes as pieces to build a 3D art project for a portfolio. Try to find an excuse to use if your needles are found. Maybe the art thing works for you, maybe not.

Consider taking precautionary measures of removing/covering labels of your T if you're using an injectable kind. You might be able to get away with calling it a prop of some kind, for a TikTok video or something if it's found.

Disposing of Needles/Wrappers/Etc

Alright, so you've done your first shot of T, or applied your first gel packet. Congrats! Now, how to hide the evidence? Firstly, for gels, it won't be too difficult. Just use a plastic grocery bag and fill it with other miscellaneous rubbish and mix the wrappers in with that. Toss the tied bag in your own bin, or a neighbour's bin if that's safer. If that's not possible, do so at school.

Needles are a more tricky circumstance. If you're able to purchase and safely dispose a sharps bin, 100% do that. If you're in a place like me and that's not possible, go and buy some soda with twist-top lids, or get them from friends. Once the bottle is empty, you can toss needles into there. In my experience, 1ml syringes and the small needles used for T injections fit in these 500ml bottles no issue. I throw these sealed bottles in the bin once they're full. I know this isn't proper disposable, but I'm unable to get a sharps bin.

Never throw exposed needles into the bin, or leave them somewhere anyone or anything could possibly be exposed to them.

For T bottles, I've only ever found one site that sells it in containers smaller than 10ml. I'm not sure if the 10ml bottles would fit into the soda bottles or not, so follow the same procedure as disposing of gel wrappers. If that's not possible, use a sharp knife to cut open your soda bottle at the widest part and put the bottle in there, before using a strong adhesive tape (not scotch tape--duct tape or something similar) to seal the incision before disposing of it.

In Conclusion

I've left out a list of the changes T causes, and starting doses, because those are all easy things to find, which you probably know already. Regardless of what this small guide says, please keep your own safety in mind and do as much research as possible before moving forward with DIY, and know that I'm no kind of professional, and all this is based off my tiny bit of experience.

As of the original posting of this, I haven't yet started T. I'm going to start in about two weeks, however, and have gathered everything necessary. I may update this guide further as I take T.

[topicprinter]

Original Post Here - First Part Here - First and foremost: thank you all for your kind support in the past two posts... not only the responses, but the dozen+ messages. Some of you just wrote to say you're interested, some even offered to help out. I'm grateful and hope you all keep along with me on the journey - rain or shine.TL;DR from the past: I'm hoping to make the step-up to stop thinking and start doing. I'm going to start a dropshipping e-commerce website with a large number of items & a (hopefully) unique value proposition.Most importantly: I'm not now, nor plan to, sell anything or benefit from this directly by any means. I won't be posting my website, linking to my blog, or offering a course at end (if I start making money). The reason for these posts will be: to gather my thoughts into words, to regurgitate what I'm learning (teaching is the best way to learn new concepts, etc etc) and most importantly to get input from you guys. I'm hoping people may learn from what I do, mistakes I make, things I read/summarize, etc. and that I can learn from your guys' experience.1 - Where We Are NowThe Website: is more or less finished. I have about 20 products left to finalize (choosing pictures, editing description, etc.) & finalizing some of the categories.The logo: I took a lot of your guys' thoughts from the last post and I decided on not spending much money or time on a freelancer. Instead, I DIYed my first logo. It's not great, and it's not going to be my everlasting logo but I think it's good enough for now. A simple picture with text - nothing fancy. When I start turning a profit, I will spend a good amount of money on a nice sleek logo.. but for now, I just want to get going. A special shoutout to all of you guys who took the time to offer your services and time, as well as your advice. Some of you guys that offered your help in design may hear from me in the future :)The website/homepage: Here are some examples to show you what the pages will look like: Homepage 1 Homepage 2 Homepage 3 Homepage 4 As mentioned, there will be lots of adjusting of the categories & information as we go. The categories in particiular will be slimmed down a little as I feel there are maybe too many options at the moment.The products: we have 245 products on the website. As mentioned in previous posts, these have all been vetted for high selling & high rated items/vendors so as to avoid problems as much as possible. Some items only have "details" from the vendor, and some have a few sentences of SEO information from me. At the moment it's about 50 of those done with verbage and the rest with just details. I started with planning on putting verbage on them all, but it was taking too long so I will be launching with just vendor details and adding those individual SEO keywords & descriptions as we go. For example, here are two items: Item 1 Item 2. For your reference, here is the aliexpress link for the first item: Elephant Tapestry take a look at the seller rating, the description, the feedback, etc.The Legal Stuff: This is the major sticking point before I'm ready to launch. A lot of you guys mentioned that my idea of using an LLC & a DBA was overkill and I looked into it further. I decided on bypassing the LLC for now, and just starting as a sole prop w/ a business bank account & credit card and using a DBA. When/if we start making some money, we can move to an LLC (not a single-member one though because it's pretty useless, as far as I've read). I decided against an LLC due to the tax, record keeping, etc. & the fact that in my state the fees for an LLC are about $500 minimum.If anyone has input on this, i'd GREATLY appreciate it.My remainder for this:Decide on a name for DBA & register DBARegister for EINRegister for sales tax in my stateUse DBA to get a PO boxGet bank account & credit creditThings I need to look into:Charging for sales tax -> as far as I've seen I only have to charge sales tax for people who order in my state. I need to make sure it's an origin sales tax state (aka I charge MY rate, no matter where the customer is).Charging for duties/tax? I am planning on starting with the US only as to avoid these problems, but eventually when I go worldwide I will need to figure all this out. Shit is confusing, guys. How the hell do people do al lthis2 - Marketing PlanFirst off: I made the social media accounts. I don't have much going on, but I did focus on using Instagress at the beginning just to get some stream going. All my 10 followers on Instagram say hello ;) As we ramp up with more pictures, I plan to use Instagram the most so that's what I'm worrying about. Later, we can get into Facebook & Twitter. Lastly will be Pinterest, simply for the reason that I've NEVER used it before and it will have the largest learning curve.Instead of explaining all of it (Adwords, facebook ads, bing, whatever.) I'll go into a few avenues that I'm in particular looking forward to:Instagram Influencers: This is the one I'm looking most forward to. I had a fellow redditer reach out (/u/saintsintosea) offering to help me with this with his company Mightyscout. I hope that sounded like a paid advertisement because it felt like it, but I really appreciate the help & offer to work with me on the cheap to help us launch & get started. Give a little get a little, ya know. With sites like this (I know there are a few out there that I plan to look into), as well as my own personal reach-out to 'social media influencers' (that sounds so weird to write) I can get some cheap traffic. My ideas:1) Offer a set amount of $$ for a link/shout-out. This is the most common AFAIK, and if doing this a few times provides a high return, I'll keep going.2) Offer the social media account a % of items bought with a discount code. I know this is super popular in the fitness industry, and I can see why. Offer a user the chance to give something to their followers, and only pay them from the profits. Win-win.3) Make a customized collection for the social media user. For some of the trendy accounts that would LOVE to say "I'm so important that this website featured me" is enough, and I hope to use that as a way of getting free advertising. Maybe throw in a lower amount of % of the profits if I find it difficult to get people to agree for free.4) Offer people coupons for tagging their friends. "If you tag your friend, we'll send you BOTH a 20% off discount" or something.5) Allow users to make wishlists and share. This would encourage people to make wishlists and send it off to their followers (maybe requiring a little $$ like number one) and make it seem less of a paid advertisement. A user I follow sometimes does this in a really humorous way (she posts a link to her wishlist and says something like "boy wouldn't you HATE IT if I used my followers to link to a wishlist like www.xxxxxxxx.com and asked them to buy me stuff. Wouldn't that just be such a sell-out move" but, ya know, with her humor. Followers like it because it's part of her shtick.Facebook Video Ads: I've heard/read that this is probably the most undervalued marketing tool right now. I can definitely see the value of it, and so I plan to make a video of some of the products and throw together an ad campaign. This is probably something I'll have to hire a freelancer to do. Any advice would be appreciated.3 - What's NextSo, we have the website almost ready to launch. I'm thinking all the legal paperwork (DBA, EIN, PO Box, etc.) will take about a week - so I hope to launch in around a week or so. I'm looking forward to it. However.... as some of you mentioned, and as I was looking into, Chinese New Year starts soon. For those who don't know, it's a holiday where Chinese factories are off for about a week, and lots of people are off for anywhere from 1 to 3 weeks. I've looked into and while lots of manufacturers still take orders, their processing time & shipping time is greatly slowed. For this reason, I will launch as normal, explain my shipping time in bold, and see what happens. If we get sales, I'll feel comfortable that they're OK with the shipping times and I'm not fooling anyone. I expect there to be a large amount of errors, returns, refunds, etc. in the first few ~100 orders anyways so this will be par for the course. We'll know that things will only get easier from here on!My next update will read: "website launched, lets look at the traffic"4 - FinancialsRevenue - $0Next post will have expenses to date since not much has changed from last time. Including paperwork fees, ad fees, etc.P.S. I will respond to posts & messages as fast as I can, but please be patient. Thanks. Thanks for your kind words, thanks for your help, and thanks for your love.