Sotiris built an ecommerce business and a team with The Real World: a case study

At a glance

• Who

  Sotiris. The Real World’s caption gives the age as 21 and shows a Greek flag; Sotiris doesn’t state an age or a country in the video, and gives every figure in euros.

• Campuses

  Ecommerce and Business Mastery. Sotiris: “I’ve gone through the e-commerce campus and the Business Master campus. So I’ve watched most of the material in these two campuses.” (Heard as “Master”; the campus is called Business Mastery.)

• Starting point

  Sotiris says “I didn’t make a lot of money before my business”: “maybe one to one and a half thousand euros per month”.

• Timeline

  Sotiris joined “one year ago” for the first time, was “in and out” at first because of work, and “four months later” reviewed all the material and started a business. The video doesn’t name the year.

• Result (video)

  Since starting the business, “over three, four thousand euros each month”, Sotiris says, and “last month I made almost 7,000 euros”. Sotiris doesn’t say whether that is sales or profit.

• Team

  Sotiris: “now I have several employees working for me and helping me with my stores”. Sotiris also mentions a digital marketing agency.

• Result (caption)

  The Real World’s caption: “New revenue: $7k/month”, and that last month Sotiris “profited €7000, outpacing” the annual earnings of a year before “in just one month”.

Sotiris gives the figures in euros. The caption puts the headline in dollars and calls the €7,000 profit, which Sotiris doesn’t say. Its comparison doesn’t match Sotiris’s own figures either: one to one and a half thousand euros a month is 12,000 to 18,000 euros a year, more than 7,000. Neither the video nor the caption says which month. The video was on The Real World’s home page by 8 June 2023. The figures are Sotiris’s and The Real World’s own; this site hasn’t seen the business’s accounts.

What Sotiris said

7 lines from the interview, copied exactly, each with what it means in plain English. The times are where they fall in the video.

What Sotiris did, step by step

1. Sotiris joined, then was in and out

   Sotiris joined “one year ago” for the first time and “viewed some of the course material”, but at first “I didn’t interact a lot”: “I work a lot and I didn’t have much time to interact.” In the past few months Sotiris “started interacting more”.

   In the video at 0:00

2. Sotiris went through two campuses

   Ecommerce and Business Mastery: “I’ve watched most of the material in these two campuses.” Sotiris uses the material as a check: “if I want to check if anything is right or wrong, I check The Real World material.”

   In the video at 0:50

3. Sotiris started a business four months in

   “four months later, I reviewed all the material in The Real World and started my own business.” Before that, Sotiris says, it was “maybe one to one and a half thousand euros per month”.

   In the video at 1:48

4. Sotiris reports almost 7,000 euros in a month

   Since the business started, “over three, four thousand euros each month”, and “last month I made almost 7,000 euros”.

   In the video at 2:05

5. Sotiris built a team

   The Business Mastery course “helped me a lot with understanding how to structure a business, how to work with employees”. Sotiris now has “several employees” helping with the stores.

   In the video at 2:22

6. Sotiris moved from Google ads to Facebook ads

   Sotiris had “spent a lot of money on Google ads which didn’t work very well”; with the e-commerce course’s Facebook ads teaching, “I grew my business.”

   In the video at 2:42

Full transcript

E-commerce in context

Sotiris’s stores are one business in a market that governments measure every quarter. The figures below are the latest official ones on 25 October 2026, with the date each was checked, because they move.

What it is

• E-commerce is selling goods or services where the order is placed online. The US Census Bureau counts sales “where the buyer places an order, or the price and terms of the sale are negotiated over an Internet, mobile device … or other comparable online system. Payment may or may not be made online.”
• Dropshipping is a way of running a store without holding stock: the supplier ships each order after the customer pays. Shopify’s definition: “Dropshipping is a retail fulfillment method where online stores sell products without keeping them in stock.” The campus’s first course is named for it: “Start Here: Learn how to start dropshipping”.
• Where Sotiris fits. Sotiris runs online stores (“my stores”, 2:35) alongside a digital marketing agency (0:34), and grew the business with Facebook ads after Google ads “didn’t work very well” (2:42 to 3:00). The campus teaches the store and the ads: its Store Setup course is “Learn how to build a high-converting Shopify store” and its Paid Traffic course “Learn how to get sales with Meta Ads”.

A short history

• 1999: the first official count. The US Census Bureau’s first estimate of retail e-commerce was $5.3 billion for the fourth quarter of 1999, 0.64% of US retail sales (released 2 March 2000).
• 2007 to 2025 in the UK: internet sales went from 3.4% of all retail sales to 27.5% (Office for National Statistics, series J4MC, released 23 October 2026).
• 2026: US e-commerce was 17.1% of retail sales in the second quarter (Census Bureau, 18 August 2026), and 28.3% of UK retail sales were online in September 2026 (ONS).

How much is spent

• US online sales, Q2 2026

  $340.2 billion (seasonally adjusted), 17.1% of all US retail sales. US Census Bureau, 18 August 2026; checked 25 October 2026.

• UK retail sales made online

  28.3% in September 2026; 27.5% for 2025 as a whole. ONS series J4MC, 23 October 2026; checked 25 October 2026.

• Sales through Shopify

  “$1 trillion+” of sales made by businesses on Shopify (Shopify’s own about page, checked 25 October 2026). Its Q2 2026 results reported “more than 30% growth in GMV” (5 August 2026).

• What a new store earns

  Nobody publishes it. The figures above are market totals, not what one store makes. The only member figures on this page are Sotiris’s and the posts below, each one person’s own account.

The Census Bureau’s third-quarter figure is due on 19 November 2026 and the next ONS release on 20 November 2026.

What The Real World offers for e-commerce

What the Ecommerce campus looks like from a member’s account, how a new member starts, and what the support is like. The Ecommerce campus page covers what it teaches, and the Ecommerce campus review covers the costs and what can go wrong.

How you get started

1. Join and pick the Ecommerce campus

   One membership covers every campus: $99 a month or $996 a year on the official checkout. Inside the app you choose a campus; the Ecommerce card reads “Learn how to start and scale an ecommerce business”.

2. Read #start-here

   The first channel you see. Prof. Shuayb’s pinned post: “Start going through the courses by clicking below. More channels will open once you complete the COURSES.”

3. Work through the Learning Center in order

   Six courses: Start Here (“Learn how to start dropshipping”), Branding (“Learn how to find winning products to sell”), Store Setup (“Learn how to build a high-converting Shopify store”), Paid Traffic (“Learn how to get sales with Meta Ads”), Artificial Intelligence Masterclass and Knowledge Hub. The later courses stay locked until the earlier ones are done.

4. Unlock more chats as you go

   The roadmap in #start-here shows three stages, Introduction complete, Branding complete and Paid traffic complete, each opening more channels: “Complete courses to unlock more chats”.

5. Build, launch and test

   Sotiris started the business “four months later”, after reviewing all the material (1:48), and found Google ads “didn’t work very well” before Facebook ads did (2:42). The member behind this site found the first product rarely works, so budget for more than one test.

What support is like

• Chats. From day one you see #start-here, #new-student-chat, #wins and #GM-daily; more open as you complete courses. Sotiris says “I didn’t interact a lot” at first and “started interacting more” in the past few months (0:00 to 0:31), but doesn’t describe the chats or how fast questions get answered; The Real World publishes no response-time promise.
• Professor. Inside the app the Ecommerce campus is run by “Prof. Shuayb”, whose pinned post opens #start-here; the public campus page names no professor. Sotiris doesn’t mention the professors, but calls the material “the gold standard” and “very concise” (1:06 to 1:30).
• Other campuses. One membership covers every campus. Sotiris also went through Business Mastery and credits its course with “how to structure a business, how to work with employees” (2:24). See the Business Mastery campus.
• #wins channel. Members post their results there, and every post has to include a screenshot. The five posts below come from it.
• No guarantee. The Real World’s Terms of Use say it doesn’t guarantee any financial outcome. Every campus starts from the fundamentals and assumes no prior knowledge.

Real wins and reviews

Posts from the Ecommerce campus’s #wins channel, captured on 25 October 2026 from the owner’s own member account. Each is that member’s own post with its date; names and avatars are blurred. Tap any screenshot to see it full size. They are individual results, not typical ones, and not a promise: The Real World doesn’t publish average member earnings.

What members said on Trustpilot

Trustpilot has since removed The Real World’s profiles. These excerpts come from archived copies of those pages, read on 25 October 2026, with the reviewer’s first name, country and date as shown; “Invited” is Trustpilot’s label for reviews that came through a business link. The jointherealworld.com.de profile was not run by The Real World; reviewers used it anyway. They are other people’s words, not this site’s findings.

For the record, the scores on 27 February 2025: the profile at trwstudent.com showed 2.9 from 23 reviews, and therealworldeducation.com showed 4.4 from 82, most of them invited through a business link over two days. Both profiles have since been removed.

Is this path for you?

Sotiris’s numbers are one student’s account, given in an interview The Real World chose to publish. For the campus itself, read the Ecommerce campus review, written by a member who built a Shopify store with it.