We are live. Hello and welcome to Amplified 2026, the biggest event in the world for print ondemand sellers. I’m Adrien Vonarchs. I’m Michaela Paluso. And we are so excited to have you guys here. We have an action-packed event with unfiltered advice. There is no gatekeeping. Everyone has a seat at this table. Thank you for being here. and Michaela, why don’t you tell them what they have in store? Absolutely. There’s so much good stuff this year. I’m so happy to be back at Amplified this year. And to give you a taste of what’s going on, we have two different streams that you can check out. We have a beginner friendly workshop that’s perfect for people that are getting into print on demand. And we also have some discussion panels on a stage right behind us where Adrian and I will be interviewing some incredible sellers. That’s definitely something to look forward to. And if you want to participate today during the chat and to enter giveaways, make sure that you click the link. There will be one in the chat for you and in the description so that you can be a part of all the good things and goodies that we have to offer today. Awesome. And maybe we should do a giveaway right now. What do you think? I think that sounds like a great idea. Okay. So, if you’re not signed up yet, go ahead and grab that link in the chat or the description, wherever it is that you’re at, and start entering in that first giveaway. Awesome. I will announce those winners shortly, but I know you have a panel you need to prepare for. So, why don’t I let you go prepare? Cool. Yeah. All right. Well, have fun. I’ll see you soon. Okay. Thank you. And you guys can come with me. I’m going to take you on a behindthecenes tour. This is going to be so much fun. I want you guys to feel the energy in the room here behind the scenes with all these incredible speakers coming from all over the world. And I’m curious where you’re coming in from. Let me know. light up that chat and let me know where you’re coming in from. I’d love to know. I’m sure we have a very international crowd of viewers here. So, follow me, guys. And I’m going to give you a little sneak peek behind the scenes. So, here we are in the green room. And uh there’s some blindfolds here, which I was not aware of. Uh are these supposed to be here? Uh okay. Well, we’re just going to leave that. Come on with me, guys. We have some very comfortable couches here. All these speakers not saying anything and uh trying to act really natural right now. So, here we have this amazing setup right here. It’s so chill. You’ve got Jay, you probably recognize him. Riley, you probably recognize him. Michael, everyone is in the house today. I’m so excited for you to meet them. I’m going to talk to them shortly, but I just want to show you guys back here. This is the kind of like the end of the green room. We’ve got hair and makeup right here. People working hard over here, or at least looking like it. So, let’s go chat with some of the guests that uh we’re going to be hearing from today on the panels. So, Jay, come on over. This is Jay Duza. You probably recognize him from YouTube. He is a graphic design whiz, multiple sevenfigure seller. Jay, you’re here back for the second time. What are you most excited to discuss today? Uh, I’m just excited to be here and kind of hopefully help remove like the mental roadblocks with people wondering if they should get in POD because we are just regular people and anybody can do this stuff. So, I’m hoping that we can get, you know, more people interested. I love that. I love that. And what’s one tip that you would give someone who is ready to level up? Someone who’s like they’re starting, they want to get to their first sale, first thousand in sales. like something that you experienced that was like a real pivot point for you in your journey. Wow. It’s a bit of a slap in the face there, but it’s not always about you. So, it’s, you know, do some research and figure out what the market actually wants and don’t think just because you think it’s cool or your parents or your family or friends think it’s cool that it’ll actually sell. I 100% agree. Databacked is the way. Intuition is great, but data always wins. Thank you. I’m with you right there, Riley. Come on over. We have Riley here. She started POD in college and has built a brand to multiple six figures. Riley, what are you most excited to discuss today? I’m really excited to talk about Tik Tok. I’ve been selling on Etsy for four years, and as much as I love Etsy, Tik Tok’s currently like my ADHD hyperfocus. So, I just started in April, but I’ve already seen some success. So, I’m really excited to tell new merchants and even existing merchants the potential that Tik Tok has. I’m so excited for that. I’m actually going to lead you the panel with her and she knows herself already. Very, very impressive. So, uh, thank you so much. Let’s go talk to one more individual, John aka Tick tock Whiz. John did $2 million in sales in his first 24 months. He is literally a Tik Tok whiz. John, what are you most excited to discuss today? I’m overall just really excited to be here and I think obviously we’ll talk a lot about Tik Tok shop just mostly Q4 too just the holidays Christmas Thanksgiving Black Friday Cyber Monday a lot of opportunity for a lot of people to take advantage of it. Totally biggest sales season of the entire year. I mean there’s a massive demand spike in the fourth quarter. So hopefully you all get to take advantage of that and you have a lot of Q4 success. If not though, that’s okay too because winners win all year round. Don’t worry about it if you don’t have a winning design or you’re not making a lot of sales. You can win all year round. So, I want to know you made $2 million in 24 months, which is insane. Uh I want to know like what was like the level up point? Like at what point did you go from like I’m totally new to this. I’ve made zero sales or not many sales and all of a sudden it’s like boom just like it was really like when I started applying myself like going all in being like I want to make this my next life. I want to go all in on this, change me and my family’s life. And once I commit my everything every single day to my passion of just growing my business and just wanting to learn and educate myself, just like all the viewers out there, that’s one of the most biggest difference. I I love that advice. You know, it’s it’s humbling to hear advice from individuals like yourselves that had quite a bit success of success quite quickly. And you know, but you started where everyone else did. Like we all started at zero. And I think that that’s important for people to know. And you know, it’s funny too, like have no illusions that it’s easy and you know, now it’s like a smooth ride. It’s never like that, but that’s e-commerce. Like you’re here because you have the entrepreneur entrepreneurial spirit and you’re like down for the ride, right? So, thank you so much. Uh, I’m excited to talk to you in a panel. We have a couple panels. We do. I’m I’m pumped. Thank you very much. All right. I think we have time to talk to one more individual. Michael, I see you there on your phone. Get off your phone. trying to he’s he’s trying to act too busy for me to talk to. I see what you’re trying to do. Very clever. It’s not gonna work. I’m just keeping up with you. Oh, sure. Check checking me alive, right? All right. What are you most excited to discuss today? You are like a graphic design guru, kind of like Jay. So, what are you most excited to discuss today? I think we’re going to talk about uh AI stuff, which is good. That’s a controversial topic, so there’s lots to get into there. We’re going to talk about design skills in general and what a lot of people miss and maybe some of the stuff that experienced designers can uh can help newbies understand so that they don’t go in completely blind and get disappointed and some of the basics. So, we’ll cover that. Yeah, that’s awesome. And what I like about your experience with AI, like you’re I feel like you’re like a AI veteran. You know your stuff. You’ve even created software. We’re going to talk about that on a panel. Uh, but this is like I mean, you know, I feel like AI it’s like the wild wild west right now. There’s like a lot of AI slop. We we got to we we got to call that out. And uh but like there’s a lot of ways that AI can save us time and make us more sales, right? So I want to know for you for you or your students like what is a big level up point that you could share like a quick tip if someone’s brand new, if they haven’t made a sale yet, if maybe they haven’t started yet or maybe they’re trying to get their first sale and they’re working really hard. We all know what that’s like. Um, what would you say is like a level up tip where someone kind of goes to like another level? Yeah, I think you you’ve got to really just think about who you’re selling to. And if you’ve got an an idea that really resonates with you, that makes you laugh, that you really think should be out there in the world, then that was the thing for me that that broke through. And yeah, it I appreciate looking at trends and looking at what’s happening. But often times I think if you’ve got an idea that really matters to you, that makes you laugh that that really connects with a subject that you know about, then that’s a really great starting point. Yeah, it’s funny you say that because a lot of winning designs that I see, they are funny and relatable. They’re funny and relatable to a specific segment of people, a specific niche, right? And so like I think about Jay for example, he made a really good point. He’s like, “Oh, a level up point is like using data to uh predict, you know, demand essentially.” And I’ve always thought that too. Like I said earlier, intuition is great, but data always wins. Like I had my most success when I actually stopped creating designs for me uh just for me. I mean, I know you’re talking about, you know, for you, but also that has mass appeal and started creating mass appeal that was backed by data. It significantly increases likelihood that someone’s going to buy. It evokes emotion and relatability for a certain individual, a certain target audience. And usually passion plus products equals profit. So, uh, thank you so much for being on the panel, um, for being on the panels. And thank you for talking to me. I, uh, you can go back on your phone now. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Well, you heard it here, guys. So many amazing panelists. This is just like a like cherrypicked group of panelists. There’s only a couple of them that we got to talk to. Uh there’s some panelists coming up right now that you’re going to get to see some really impressive stuff. Levi made $700,000 in sales from his college dorm room and he’s just like one of all the other panelists. Sarah 1% Etsy seller. You’re about to hear from everyone. So I’m going to send it over to the first panel on winning the holidays. Mac, over to you.
Hi everyone and welcome to our first discussion on the discussion stage here. How to win the holiday season and I’m here with some incredible sellers. I’m here with Sarah Cops. Oh my gosh, Crystal Lee and Levi Younger and we’re going to be talking about all the things for the holiday season on how you can start and make more sales. We’re going to jump right into it and just get into all the good stuff for the holiday season. So, for someone heading into their first Q4, I’d love to talk about what do you think they should be doing now to prepare because I think you can never fully be prepared for all the sales and the traffic that you’re going to be getting and hopefully more traffic as well. So, Levi, is there something that you do to get more traffic? Yeah. Um, I sell predominantly on Tik Tok shop. So, preparing for Q4 is a little bit different because it’s not about just creating the products you’re getting ready to sell on Q4. also about strategi strategizing your content. And what that means is for every product you post on Tik Tok, the goal is to have a base of content that you and your affiliates are posting that you can then go and promote. So making sure that you’re already starting coordinating with those affiliates for those products that you’re going to want to be selling in Q4 is a huge deal. Absolutely. Crystal, what about you? Is there something you do to prepare? Man, first you got to figure out if you’re going to jump in cuz it’s going to be crazy. And then you have to make sure are you going to sell certain items? How long is it going to take for those people to get those items? Right? Do you know whether or not your people actually want them? I think a lot of times for Q4, we’re only focused on making money and we don’t think about like do my customers actually want these items. Is this going to be my heavy hitter or do I need to like focus in on just one product? Absolutely. Yeah. Sarah, what do you think? Is there something you do that that you do for preparing? Yeah, I think it’s important, especially if this is your first Q4, to spend the time preparing your kind of customer service and operations backend so that if you luckily do get an influx of orders, you’re prepared. Um, some may already, at least on Etsy, you know, have those canned, pre-prepared messages, but you can add the holidays to to that. you know, add the deadlines of when you’re going to um send when your customers need to order in order to receive their gifts by a certain holiday. And having that ready before Q4 starts can be helpful so you can continue to, you know, work within your business and list more products. Absolutely. Is that something that you would say you prepare a good amount ahead of time? Like would you say people should be doing that now, especially on something like Etsy? Yeah, I definitely do. I think if you can kind of feel organized with all of that before the influx of orders begins, then you’re in a better spot. Yeah. That way when they expect their items, it’s not like having them waiting. It’s all there. All of the delays too that you know can happen with just shipping and items and the influx of orders. For sure. Something too that you need to look out for on Tik Tok shops specifically is it’s not just about shipping um and creating those products. It’s also about making sure those products are within Tik Tok’s guidelines. One of the things I fell into is sometimes you can’t really control it and Tik Tok kind of has a mind of its own. But if your products are well within those guidelines and the way you’re promoting them, also making sure you’re keeping people on platform, you’re not trying to or falsely, you don’t want TikTok thinking you’re trying to bring people like to a personal website or your Etsy store or your Shopify. All those things matter because if you do get a product taken down or you have to fight some of those appeals, that is really valuable time, especially the closer and closer you get to those deadlines. Absolutely. That’s a great point too, especially for Tik Tok shop sellers, just knowing and keeping in mind, too. And for Shopify, would you say it’s similar or it’s a little bit different because you’re not dealing with like Tik Tok shops like rules, right? But for Shopify, obviously, you have to get the people there. So, it’s really like are you prepared for that? Do you have your mailing list ready? Do you have your text list ready? How are you going to reach these people outside of just social media? You have the Levis’s dominating on Tik Tok shop, right? So, how are you going to stand out to make sure people are seeing what you’re offering, what you have available, and how long it’s going to take to get to people? Because I think we can all agree that you’re going up against these heavy hititterter companies. How long is it going to take for people to get your products? Yeah, for sure. And when being prepared for Q4, I think that a big question that comes next for a lot of sellers is what products should we be focusing on? Yeah, I know my first year selling, I really just thought if I listed a bunch of random holiday products on my store that like that was going to be, oh my gosh, my store is going to take off, which it can, but it’s not necessarily a long-term strategy for your actual business, especially for me on Etsy. I know it’s different across platforms. I’m curious if you tend to focus on products and designs that are working and then maybe implementing the holidays or if you yourself do just add different products for the holidays. on themselves. Sarah, is that something you do with designs or Yeah, I I do like to add holiday designs when I can, but not 100%. So, as I’m preparing for Q4, I still want to make sure that I have some of those more evergreen designs. I think it’s helpful for beginner sellers to think about what you purchase for family and friends for the holidays yourself and how much of that is, you know, evergreen versus specifically a seasonal thing and kind of understanding what audience you’re you’re selling to. So, yes, I do um do both, you know, holiday and evergreen designs. When it comes to product, I always recommend to stick with, you know, kind of mastering one product before adding more. Just because it’s Q4, if you haven’t yet gain those consistent daily sales, I wouldn’t say just add a product to to add a product. Um, it’s better to kind of stay and in on track and continue to gain moment momentum with that one product before adding more. That’s a great point. Yeah. And how about for Shopify? I know you have a a pretty good like niche and brand that you work with. So, is that something that you do as well for designing or adding new products? Oh, I’m going crazy. Love to hear that. Okay. I know what my audience wants, right? And I’ve been listening all year, so I might have the red and green for, you know, for Christmas. I’m going to go all the way in. I’m going to do 12 days of Christmas, right? It’s print on demand. So, I want to have fun and if I don’t have to go buy those products, I’m going to experiment. So that means the product may be available like one day go buy it it’s a phone case next day it might be a bag next day it might be a mug next day it might be a hat right I didn’t have to go stock those things so I’m going to provide the women that I serve with everything you have asked me for if you want to see girl plus God on it here you go for the holidays right but that’s because I have an established like community so I think if you have been selling you can have fun for the holiday season I agree with Sarah though if you’re brand new maybe lock in on one good thing that you can sell because again it’s Shopify. You’re sending people there. So make sure that they want what you have to offer. Absolutely. I think when I great advice for somebody that already has like their store established for both of you because I think with a newer shop, it can be overwhelming really quickly. And I also think that that’s something that gets people totally off track and off focus and then they start doing like a hundred things and it’s like oh slow down just like really hone in and focus on one thing. I’m curious about Tik Tok shop too of what your perspective is. I think Tik Tok shop is a little bit different for a couple reasons. I think the first thing to keep in mind though, print on demand is special in that you can take as many shots on goal as you want without very much you don’t have to really pay for anything, right? They’re it’s a riskless investment um for the most part. But you actually on Tik Tok shop aren’t really rewarded for a ton of listings on your shop. You’re more rewarded for a larger bank of content promoting those. The other thing to look at is who you’re selling to. Kind of like what Crystal mentioned. For me, I’m not selling to the people that are buying a lot of Christmas decorations. The my target audience isn’t necessarily circling um like Christmas apparel in the catalog that they want for for Christmas under the tree. They want whatever they’ve been wanting for the last 6 months, right? So, for me, it’s focusing on what are things that apply to the time of year when people are asking for it. whether that be hoodies, long sleeves, t-shirts, crew necks that already fit the niche that that I’m providing for. Um, and I think that’s like what I’m sticking to. And then how can you market that specifically for the time of year? So, I think instead of like on Etsy where you focus on Christmas listings or holiday listings or Thanksgiving, uh, Halloween, whatever the Q4 occasion might be, with Tik Tok, it’s we already have these products that are doing well. How can we fit these into that Halloween content, right? Like, how can we make this like this is what you should wear to blank? And I think that’s the way of looking at it on Tik Tok shop is how are you going to apply your products to this time of year. So almost like if you’re because I’m assuming a lot of the ways for sales for you comes from video content or photo content. So it’s kind of like even if there’s something you sell maybe just making content that’s around or focused on the holiday that you’re trying to ramp up for. And the other thing to keep in mind with Tik Tok is you’re not the only one selling your product. Especially like that’s the goal for Tik Tok shop is to create an army of affiliates that are promoting your products for you. So they already know the tactics that Q4 happened. Their their job is to be a salesman for you. But your products need to be able to apply to hey like get this for your son for Christmas, get this for your brother for Christmas right there. Like that’s two scripts that can go out to every one of your affiliates. So I think it’s more of a creative brief than like a change in strategy I would say. Absolutely. Levi, you got me ready to jump over, you know. Right. Tik Tok. The most exciting place to be. There’s so much opportunity on Tik Tok shop especially I think with Q4 too and like how much time people spend on their phones. I think it’s like probably a lot. I think something I want to add on that. Um when I was little lur um there there we used to like wake up early on Black Friday and we like my mom wouldn’t even let us go Black Friday shopping cuz it was dangerous like all these moms and dads are trying to like break down the walls to to get the best deals. I went Black Friday shopping a year or two ago with my grandma and I was like there is nobody here. you know where they are on their couch looking at Tik Tok. And I think that retail side of things has fallen onto us as ecom sellers, which I think is like such an exciting time to be online. But positioning yourself to be able to take on that demand is a huge portion of the difference between winning and losing, especially in Q4. There’s a lot of demand to go around, but there’s a lot of people fighting for it. And so being in a position of strength in order to capture some of that demand and turn that into long-term customers is an opportunity that only comes around a couple times each year. Absolutely. I think it has a lot to do with how we also go in with offering different discounts, sales, pricing. I’d love to talk a little bit about that. I know in my community and the people that I help, that’s a huge question all the time is, do I raise my prices? do I run these crazy sales? You know, and I think you can look at it a few ways. So, I’m curious to hear how you all do this with your pricing strategy. So, going into Q4, do we generally keep our pricing consistent? Do we have a specific strategy that we use with sales or promotions? Sarah, what do you do with your pricing? I personally will run a little bit steeper of a discount than I might otherwise run during that kind of uh Black Friday, Cyber Monday week. Um, other than that, I keep it pretty simple because I know that people are shopping anyway. So, it’s not like we need to, you know, for beginner sellers like who are excited about it, it’s better to maintain, you know, profit for these sales than just go for pure volume because you also can, it’s easy to lose track of your numbers. And um if you decide to start to run ads and all of that, there’s just a lot that’s going on very fast. And so I just recommend um you know, if you’re going to run a discount, maybe just choose ahead of time like this is my strategy at least on Etsy. Etsy runs like shopwide sales that you can opt into and that um can boost your visibility during that time if you’re in that Etsy shopwide sale. But um kind of choose your discount for that, you know, period of time. understand what your profit is. Um, and then kind of stick with that. That’s kind of what I do. That’s great advice. And I have a question. Um, being like a fellow Etsy seller, something that I like to do is like include it sometimes in SEO like of like gift for said holiday or something like that cuz I feel it does help the searchability just when people are looking for that and it also tells Etsy to kind of push that in their own categories that they have on the homepage. Is that something that you experiment with? I think you had mentioned that you do something with your mockup photos maybe. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think the any of the giftable type SEO is great to use. Um, you you want to be sure to not um, you know, if it’s not a Christmas, you know, dog design to not put Christmas dog gift necessarily because that can harm your listing in the long run. But any kind of giftable SEO and then if it is a holiday specific design, I like to use holiday mock-ups for that. I think it just it gets the buyer excited too. you know, they see this even if they’re buying it for themsel, not everyone is buying gifts. Like a lot of people on Etsy, they like to buy, you know, shirts while they’re baking cookies or, you know, shirts on a Christmas holiday or whatever it might be. And it gets them excited when they see it, you know, in a Christmas, you know, backdrop and everything. So, or like the matching shirts. I feel like a lot of those are like a huge seller. The Christmas matching shirts are like the funny like Thanksgiving ones. I’m sure we all see like or the ornaments. I love your ornaments. Yeah, those are fun to list. And you know, to that point, if you are going to um you know, add a new product, certainly choose like something that’s easily giftable like that, like an ornament or a mug or something, if you already have a product and you’re doing well and you want to add another ornaments are fun and can sell year round, too. And with that personalization point too, I think you also can raise the price a little bit because people are expecting that with a personalized product as well, you know. Yeah, I think that’s a good point. And um I want to know too for having a standalone store, Crystal, what exactly do you do? Do you incorporate in your mockups? And I I know you say you run like the cool the 12 days of Christmas promotion, which is so fun, but is there other stuff that you do to kind of get buyers excited, whether it’s email or in your website design or anything like that? I think that Levi spoke to it a bit, which is very important. Whether you’re a new seller or old, you got to know like in 2026, it’s a lot going on, right? So, you have to find a way to stand out, especially if you’re a standalone store. So, I think that we can all look at like these big box stores and see the way that they do. They run their own sales, right? So, it might be not Black Friday. They may have had an anniversary sale or something else. So, I’m running my own thing, right? I’m letting the people know you can get this at this time. I’m also going to run a discount, but we know everybody’s running a discount at the same time. So, I will do something for Black Friday, like get a free t-shirt. I do things like that to stand out because I may have a different goal of I want to power pack my email list, right? I want to get a certain amount of people on it. So, I’m thinking very strategically for the long-term game. And I think that we can all do that. Think about how much money you may want to make or think about how many people you want to touch for the holiday season, but just to know that because everybody’s running a sale, how will you stand out? Will that be a product? Will that be a sale? Will that be how fast you’re going to get your product to people? Or is that just going to be a shopping experience? But you have to figure out how you’re going to impact your people. So for me, it I just choose one for the year, right? So, it’s kind of like your goal of what you’re looking for, whether that’s to make more revenue or to even just grow a list of like people that are going to come to your store and be interested in a product. And that’s okay sometimes, too, right? Like, it’s okay to say, “This year, I may just want to grow my email list, so I might discount a little bit further. Please know your number so that you don’t lose money, right? know how much money you’re actually going to make, but set a goal like I want to make this amount of money or I want to get 20,000 people on my email list, so I may do something crazy like buy one get one free or um buy three, get a free gift or Right. So, very cool. And knowing your audience, I’m sure you got to know, you got to know your audience. I know I can do this because they’re locked in. If I don’t know them, I can’t be offering you a free shirt because they don’t know you yet, you know? So know your people. That’s great advice. And Levi, is there something that on TikTok because I know it’s a bit different maybe for running promotions. Is there stuff that like you participate in on the platform or do you run your own advertisements? Yeah, so one of one thing I always get questions about are these Tik Tok campaigns and these are native to the Tik Tok platform that they offer that you can join. Something you have to be mindful of is a lot of these campaigns overlap and if you’re running percentage discounts on multiple campaigns, you’re taking a percentage from a already discounted item from a percentage from another discounted item. So, one item might not meet your criteria in terms of what you’re trying to make per sale. So, you got to be mindful of that. But, as a new seller, I recommend joining in on these campaigns because when you’re fighting for that initial momentum on Tik Tok shop, exposure is your number one lever. And Tik Tok promises, hey, if you join these campaigns, we take this much of a fee for giving you extra exposure, but it will raise your exposure in the long run. I do think it matters, and I do think if I was starting out, you won’t get invited to as many campaigns, but I would join every single one possible. But in terms of running sales, Tik Tok shop is very competitive price-wise. And that’s because it’s like the land of the sale. I think right now, not only does Tik Tok themselves subsidizing sales. So like every time my store hits certain amount of sales, Tik Tok gives free coupons to people to buy more from my store. On top of that, a lot of these new large brands that are not ecom focused or Tik Tok shop focused yet are being encouraged to come onto the platform. And because of that, they are running cheaper or sales that are larger, cheaper products than what they have like in their other marketplace offerings. So people just know Tik Tok shop is where you go for a good deal. So, if you want to compete in Tik Tok, you need to be running sales all the time. Sales need to be something that you almost have automated and you’re willing to price things higher so that you can always kind of be ready for a sale and you’re not caught in that bind of margins collapsing. Yeah. And I would love to ask too if for someone that’s new having maybe a limited budget, if you’re going to go into paid ads, is there a way that we can recommend for maybe something that’s a a strategy that is more approachable for someone new that wants to get more people to their store and don’t want to spend a ton of money or maybe they do. Like we said, it can be goal oriented on what you’re looking for. But is there a way that maybe we can all give someone a tip that is is new or starting out? Yeah. Um, so in Tik Tok shop, it’s a lot like Meta Ads, new in 2026 called Andromeda. They have something called GMV Max on Tik Tok. And there’s only a couple things that you control. One of those things is ROI, which is actually return on ad spend. It’s called ROI in the platform, which means return on investment, but it’s your return on ad spend. what you’re trying to get for every dollar you spend on ads. And because you can control that, the higher you set it, the less your campaign is likely to spend because it’s harder to hit those higher ROI targets. But if you’re more focused on margins and maybe have a lower budget, you don’t want to spend your only $50 on a low ROI and maybe not even make those sales. You’d rather only be targeting the most warm leads, the most invested customers. And so what I would recommend is setting your budget to where you’re comfortable and then raising that ROI. Okay. Yeah. Crystal, what about you? Is there something you recommend? I don’t know about the ads because that can be very tricky for trying to get people off the platforms, but I think what Levi was saying is even important if you’re creating content that you can like boost it over there on Tik Tok. You can I know that there are some things you could do on Etsy, but for somebody brand new, I really think that organic is your best way to either build your email list, your text list, or just get people to engage with your content. I think Levi said something uh that I heard I’m stealing it from you. It was like every post is like a lottery ticket, right? And so I think if you’re brand new, your focus should just be content, like pushing that content out, showing people the behind the scenes, guys. People want to see what you’re doing. I know a lot of us are like, “Oh, I’m new. I don’t want to show people.” People want to see like, “Look, it’s hard. I don’t know what I’m doing, guys.” Right? Come buy my shirt. Something they want to see that. And that could get a 100,000 views and change your life for the holiday season, right? As opposed to you trying to go get on Meta, put some money in, and then you don’t know it’s a gamble. I would say really focus on your organic content. Absolutely. Something to add on that as well. Founder content is one of the best converting ad types there is. And the reason is is because someone who’s just starting out is so much easier to connect with as a consumer who’s never done ecom in their life than someone who’s been doing it for 5 years. So that’s an advantage you have over these big businesses is saying, “I’m so new to this, but I got this all set up and I’m so passionate about this because blank, right? That is so that is so good at finding your target audience. So, not only are you training the algorithm on your niche, you’re also building an actual audience that will follow you along forever. Yeah. Exactly. And those people take pride in being early on things. And so that’s how you that’s how I would market it is just be like, I’m just starting and like this is what I believe in and if you want to be one of my first customers, like how cool would that be, right? So I think almost take advantage of your status as a a newcomer to the space. Yeah. And and two people are craving relatability and just like being a normal person like all over online. I think that we’re seeing that more and more of like the less produced stuff, the more just like turning your phone camera around and just talking about, oh yep, I messed this up. This product I made didn’t sell. You know, whatever it is. I think that that’s more relatable and can like you said can get you more sales in the long run. It’s not just about the wins. Yeah. Like I think every day I see dashboards of how many how much sales people have but once you see that enough like it’s kind of hard to be impressed unless these people are doing like astounding things. I would focus on the people that don’t care about that at all and would way rather see your dayto-day on like I got these these returns but I sold them to my friends. I’m going to go ship them out to at the post office. Like that is like something that everyone goes to the post office and they’re like like that is is inspiring to they like to see real stuff. That’s what I like to see as a a consumer on Tik Tok. I see someone like that immediately. Yeah. And I’m buying and you can give those people a discount, right? Like my founding my founding tribe like you get 20% off. They will feel like hey I’m a part of this business and they will follow you forever. or my first 100 is like numbered or has this logo on it and like making that sense of urgency for for those OG crew of of customers is a great way to get off the ground. Yeah. And it’s it’s so okay to be new and like not know what you’re doing. Like I think that’s a huge thing. We all at one point did not know what we were doing. Like you have to just go through it to get good at it, you know? And I think that’s really important to to just tell people that even if you are new and you’ve never done this before, like if all of us can do it, there’s there’s no reason why you can’t and absolutely, you know, do great. And Sarah, I’m curious about what you do on Etsy for um maybe if you try and do organic traffic to your Etsy shop. I do a lot on Pinterest to get clicks to my Etsy shop cuz it’s free and it’s a straight link directly to the product and I find that works really well for me. Stealing that, too. It’s so good. It’s I I really think so many people sleep on Pinterest marketing. I talk about it all the time because like I said, it’s free and it’s a direct link. It’s not like social media where you have to have someone comment for a link or go to your bio. Like it’s just they like it, they click it, and they’re automatically like add to cart. Is there a strategy that you use for any outsourcing marketing? Because I know on Etsy it’s a marketplace, but Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. First, I I will also be going back home and doing more Pinteresting for my own shop. um because I did it for a while there and I did see how like how easy it is for the traffic, you know, you see where your traffic’s coming from on your Etsy dashboard and so that is a really great free way. Um and I definitely saw the vis visibility um and traffic increase from that. Um need to do more of it. And I would say in terms of, you know, kind of traffic and visibility for Q4 on Etsy, in in the Etsy mentorship community, we’re always talking about like having a listing goal for your for the week usually or the month. If you can stretch that goal, just more listings in general will, you know, potentially increase your traffic and visibility. Um, if you’re not yet to getting those consistent sales, then adding more listings, of course, is a big part of it on Etsy. If you’re ready for ads, you know, you can always start with on the Etsy ads platform small, like a dollar to $5 a day, only with a couple listings, whatever listings are doing well, and see how that goes. But, um, just paying attention to it and starting small, I think, is is good when it comes to Etsy ads at least. Yeah, and Etsy ads is very approachable for a beginner, too, cuz you you can set the lower budgets and it will give you, you know, that traffic. And always keep in mind, though, not to put, this was a mistake I made when I was first new to Etsy, and I didn’t realize my entire shop was running on like a $2 a day ad spend, and that ran out very quickly on products that no one’s looking for. So, if you’re new to Etsy ads, make sure you do a little research and select the listings that you’ve done like the most research on or that already have favorites and sales. put the money behind those versus just trying at least on Etsy it works differently with Meta and Google and all the things. I would say one thing that’s the same though about all of them is as you start running ads. It’s not a set it and forget it. Even how easy Etsy is, you need to be looking at the data that it’s giving you. What products are is it working on and which ones aren’t because that’s is saving you money and allowing you to pour more into those winners. So whether you’re on Tik Tok, Meta or Etsy, I think that’s not only purchasing the data through buying ads, but looking at it and iterating off of it is so important in order to like scale your business. Absolutely. And listening to that, too, cuz we’re not our customer. So if your favorite is not doing well, be okay with that. Let it go. We all go through that, too. Like putting something out that’s like this is going to do so well and nobody wants it and you’re like Everyone I talked to thought this was the coolest ide. And then the customers are like I don’t want there. Isn’t that so funny how that happens to all of us? Like it’s like you spend all this time on this design or product and then you put it out there and it’s like the one that you almost didn’t post is the one that you’re like what is this? Or the one that you’re kind of like I don’t know about that and it just takes off completely. So, we’re almost out of time, but if we can quickly just run through maybe one thing that you could tell someone watching at home that is maybe a mistake you made that they can avoid or just one little piece of advice for for Q4 and for the holiday season. Levi, do you have one? Yeah. Okay. Number one, just like I talked about in terms of knowing what the violations on Tik Tok Shop are and trying your best to avoid those. Another thing though I would say is know based on what platform you’re selling on, what type of buyer you’re selling to. On Etsy, you’re selling to a very motivated buyer, someone coming to the platform to purchase something, much like an Amazon or a website. Whereas, if you’re marketing on social media, you need to focus on call to action that brings people to a purchase rather than just entertains them like the rest of the app does. That’s great. Cool. Yeah, I think honestly everyone’s going to take away so much helpful tips. Thank you so much for this discussion. I think now I I have some ideas. I think we all inspire each other, too. and everybody watching. And up next, we have a great panel and it’s going to be about playing multiple boards and when to expand onto maybe different marketplaces regardless of where you’re selling. So, make sure you stay around for that and thank you guys so much. Thank you.
Hi guys, Michael here. I am joined by two very handsome young men and we’re going to play a guessing game here. But first, let me find out who these guys are and what they’re up to. So, first let me go over here. Excuse me, young man. What’s your name? Uh, Dominic from Docor. Dominic from Docore. And where are you hailing from, Dom? Uh, the internet mostly. The internet mostly. Um, Dom’s not letting on, but he’s actually from Manchester, just like me. So, we’ve got two MS on the same panel, but I’m not going to let that taint how we play this game. I’m going to be fair and, you know, we’re going to give Eric a chance here. Sorry. Let me introduce our second guest. What’s your name? Hi, I’m Eric and my print on demand store is Sobervation. Sobervation. Great. And where are you from, Eric? I am from the United States, Ohio specifically. There you go. Wonderful. So, we’re going to play a guessing game here. We’ve got a bag full of goodies. These guys are going to put their blindfolds on. If you would put your blindfolds on, please, gentlemen. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to give them a uh an item. They’re going to have to tell me what the item is. And they’re not allowed to peek. You can’t see anything under there, can you, Dom? Nope. No, Eric. No. All right. I’m going to trust them. Uh, let’s get one of these products out here. You can see this. And then I’m going to give it to Eric first. Have a feel of that. Don’t tell me what you think it is. We’re going to get you guys to shout it out in a couple of minutes after you’ve had a feel. And I’ll pass that over to Dom. Sorry, Dom. There you go. All right. These guys are going to have a good feel of that. Now, I can tell you, in fact, I’m not going to tell you anything. This is an easy one. Yeah. Let me get you guys to shout it out in three, two, one. It’s an iPhone. It’s a Mag Safe iPhone tough case. A MagSafe iPhone tough case. Take your take your blindfolds off, guys. You’ve got that absolutely right. Look at that. MagSafe iPhone. What did you say? Uh tough case. Tough case. And it looks like it’s for the newest iPhone. See, Eric knows his stuff here. Would you have got uh It’s the newer iPhone model. Threw me off. That’s where I kind of you couldn’t get it. Okay. So, this is a lovely product and obviously you can print on that. You can get what? Sublimation print all the way around the sides there. So, that looks nice. I’ll tell you what we’ll do with this next one. Put your blindfolds back on, guys. Let’s see if you can tell me something about this one. Okay, this is a hard one. We’re going to get you guys to do a bit more work here. Okay, have a feel of this. There’s not much to feel there. This is going to be a tricky one. Um, and Eric, while you’re doing that, why don’t you just tell me a bit about your store and uh what you sell? Um, so my store is called Sobervation and it started um when I quit drinking alcohol in 2021 and I kind of needed um a creative outlet for uh some of the free time I had now that I quit drinking. And uh I saw all kinds of um motivational type of designs um that are uh they represent like my own sobriety journey. So that’s awesome. Right. You’ve had a good feel of that. Yeah. Got any ideas? But don’t tell me. But just tell me, have you got an idea? I’ve got an idea. All right. Let’s throw this one over to Dom. And I’ll ask Dom while he’s giving that a feel. Dom, what about yourself? How did you get started in your business? Uh just really enjoyed posting memes all the time and spending way too much time on the internet looking at stupid pictures of dogs. And then after a while of reposting these images and taking them myself of my own dog, uh started making art for t-shirts with my business partner, Alexandra. And um yeah, we’ve been on Instagram now for uh several years and in business for eight years. Great. What was your what was your dog? My dog’s called Ruben. He’s the little Boston Terry. He’s like this big. And he’s uh not very smart. Not very smart. Okay. Right. You guys have had a few minutes with that one. Shall we? Um, I tell you what, this one’s it’s a bit easy, but I’m going to ask you something a bit more difficult about it. What do you think is actually inside this? Or who do you think it’s for? Can you guess anything like that? I’ll take I’ll give this one to Eric. What do you think? I don’t know. It feels like a coloring book. Okay. All right. Oh, what do you think? I’m also going with coloring book. Coloring book. Well, you guys can take your blindfolds off because you are right. It is a garden diaries coloring book and it has got some really handsome illustrations here. Look at this amazing coloring. Never seen these since they added them to the store. To the store. Did you know you could do coloring books on print? I did, but I know that they’re quite recent. Quite recent. So there you go. And if you were going to design a coloring book, what would you have inside it? Oh, that’s a hard question. Yeah. So a sober coloring book is a difficult ask, isn’t it? Dom, is it something you could do for for your brand? Yeah. Uh, different types of worms and bugs. A bugs and worms coloring book. That would be fantastic. Yeah. Okay. Should we do a couple more here? Yeah, we definitely got time for a couple more. Um, blindfold. Let me see. Let me get a good one here. Yeah, put those blindfolds on. No cheating, guys. And, uh, let’s see if we can get one that’s a bit trickier here. No, I can’t get you to plug your ears cuz that wouldn’t work. Um, is that a cowbell? More cowbell. Okay. Uh, let’s give this one to Dom first. Okay, so Dom’s having a good feel of that one. Now, this one, um, I don’t want to give too much away, but I think this is kind of an easy one as well. Let’s throw it over to Eric. That one over to Eric. And is this is this a product that you sell on your store, John, do you think? I sell a very similar product, but not that particular one. Not that particular one. Okay. I know. I know what it is. I do. Do you I’m going to make this a bit more difficult. Do you think you can feel the design on there and tell me what you think is actually what it actually says? That’s hard. Um Um I don’t know. Going to have a go at that one. I can’t tell what it says. No. Okay, let’s throw that to Dom. See if he can Oh, it just says amplified, right? And there’s like a chest piece or something. Am I right? Oh, that’s a really good guess, but you’re completely wrong. No, take your blindfolds off. Aren’t you going to ask us what it is? Oh, sorry. Yeah. No, don’t take Don’t take your blindfolds off. I think we know what it is, don’t we? Yeah, that one that one was a bit easy. Yes, it’s a cap. It says first move on it. And um I don’t I don’t It’s a distressed dad cap. It’s a distressed dad cap. Sorry. Yeah, it is distressed. It’s been beaten up and battered around. Very popular. Very popular. I knew that it was a distressed dad cap. How’s that? Because it’s the only hat that has a Velcro back. Uh the rest of the hats have like a uh um copper type of uh back back here or it’s plastic. There you go. All right, guys. Should we do one more of these before our time is up? Let’s see what we got here. I’m having a good rustle around in the bag here. And okay, Eric, take this. I tell you what, we’ll do two at the same time. How about that? We’ll speed things up a bit. Do you can have this one? It’s the cowbell. It’s a cowbell. It says Eric. Dom, what do you think you’ve got there? It’s a little drinking bottle or a Bad Dragon product. Okay. Okay, guys. Take off your blindfolds.
How was that? Oh, I guess we can’t both be correct in you guys are both correct on that one. Right, we got one more, have we? Okay, one more to try. You both got one of these to have a go at the same time. Okay. All right, guys. You don’t need long with this one. Give me a shout out with the answer in three, two, one. It’s a tote bag. Tote bag. That was easy. Now, is that something you sell on your store, Dom? We do. Yeah, they’re uh they’re very popular as well. The the good things about the tote bags is it’s very simple to get a good square design on there. And because they’re quite cheap, they make a really good addition to any kind of sale. So, they’re good for kind of increasing overall sales value. That’s great. Great tip, Eric. You sell them? I do sell them, but I like to do the embroidered um the embroidered design on my tote bags. I think it makes them look super classy and you can charge a little bit more money for them. I didn’t even know you could do embroidery on the tote bag. Only some of them. Only on some of them, but it’s an option. That’s awesome. That’s great, guys. So, we’ll pay more money for embroidered product. Yes, definitely pay more for the embroidered. So, look at that. We’ve got tote bag. What What do you call this one? That is the enamel coffee mug. Enamel coffee mug. We got this one which is what is what would you call that? It’s a stainless steel uh stainless steel stainless steel. 20 oz stainless steel tumbler. 20 oz. I tell you what this guy. What about that? I literally had all of these except that in my Okay, you got all of them. Well, you’ve done a great job guessing there, guys. I don’t I don’t really know if we can pick a winner cuz you both did so well. Um yeah, everyone’s a winner. You can you can take one of these home with you. I’ll let you guys pick whatever you want. You can take it home. That will be your gift for the day. But thank you for playing with me here today. Now, let’s just find out from you guys. Uh what are you excited about? We’ve got um loads more to come today. What you looking forward to, Eric? Um I’m looking forward to um uh there’s a there’s another game coming up with t-shirts. I’m looking forward to that. So, stay tuned for the game that’s coming up. Dom, have you got anything you’re looking forward to? Uh drinking after this event and eating from the buffet until I feel like I’m going to be sick. Yes, there is a great big buffet behind us. You can see it right now. And we’re going to head there right now. Um, and I will hand you over back to the main event. Thank you for joining me for this game of Guest the Product. And we’ll see you in our next game coming up soon. But right now, we’ll hand it back to the main stage.
Welcome to playing multiple boards. In this session, we’re discussing selling platforms and marketing. So, I’m here with Riley, Jay, and John. And I just want to go from zero to 100 real quick and just kind of get right into it because one of the most common questions that I got on YouTube and you guys probably hear this a lot as well is which platform do I start on? And this is a very challenging question to answer when we don’t know anything about your business and your goals because it very much makes a difference knowing that information. So for me personally, I can speak from my experience. I’ve always been a Shopify first seller. That’s always been where I started. I’m a big believer in, you know, committing to choosing one primary platform and committing to mastery of that platform. I did eventually expand out to Etsy, but that was only after doing well over a million dollars in sales. So, I’m curious from you guys, what is your primary platform? I’ll start with you, Riley. What is your primary platform and where are you selling now? Yeah, so I started four years ago on on Etsy and I’m still on Etsy. Etsy is my main platform that I sell on. I actually started a second shop earlier this year for a challenge in the sellers club. So, I have two Etsy shops at the moment, but in April, about the same time I started that Etsy shop, I started a Tik Tok shop. Now, I also run a Printify pop-up shop, just a small thing for a family business. But, so that’s three platforms, four shops that I’m running now, four years in. Wow. That that is a lot in in a short amount of time. Jay, how about you? What is your primary platform and where are you selling now? uh started on Etsy at the end of uh 2012. So, it’s been a been a minute there now. Uh got accepted into Amazon Merch, which is um basically what I would consider print on demand on a tricycle, for example. It’s kind of idiot proof. You just upload your designs and there’s no customer service, so nothing to deal with that. Uh but the Etsy has always been the bread and butter. And I feel like that is almost like e-commerce with like training wheels, so to speak. You can blow up significant on Etsy. uh between my wife and I, we have about five shops. Uh loving every minute of it and slowly making a transition to a Shopify now, which is what I would consider like the big boy bike where you don’t have the training wheels anymore cuz you’re wearing multiple hats now, right? Yeah. No, absolutely. John, I know I believe you’re just on one platform still. Uh is is there anything that I’m missing here? Well, I’m on actually all platforms, but Tik Tok Shop is the main one that I’m I guess known for. Yeah. Yeah, Tik Tok shop’s kind of my main channel that I focus on. Started 3 years ago. I was still in college when I started. And uh one thing that’s really unique about Tik Tok shop compared to other platforms is that the shopping experience is inside of social media, right? People are scrolling through on Tik Tok looking to be entertained and then they land on videos of my product. They don’t even know that’s an ad to them and that’s why they’re making that impulsive decision and purchasing. So Tik Tok shops me and I focus on and all that content can be reproduced on Facebook on Instagram. And so that is kind of the driver of everything. That’s that’s really interesting. And and something very unique about Tik Tok is it’s kind of like the anti- ad platform. It’s like you like the people that who seem to have the most success and um we’ll talk about that more in a bit are the people that have ads that don’t look like ads. Exactly. And it’s like how how real can we make this look? Exactly. And and one I always tell like my friends and my family like if you ever see an ad pop up on YouTube, you ever see a ad pop up when you’re watching TV, the last thing you want to see is an ad pop up and you’re going to use the bathroom, you’re going to go on your phone in school. And so one thing that’s unique about Tik Tok, it just feels so organic. Yeah. You kind of you kind of tune out when you’re when you’re getting ads. And and I totally agree like Tik Tok is very much a dopaminefueled platform and I feel like the ads are also dopamine fueled. So, you’re just like scrolling and everything is very intense. Like, yeah, like nothing looks like an add-on there. So, I want to dive into that more when we talk about marketing strategies. But what I want to know is at what point did you guys expand off of your first platform? Cuz the first question we get from a lot of people that I get is which platform should I start on? And then a natural next question once someone has chosen one that they started on is what next? Like what platform should I expand to? Right? So, I mentioned for me, I got to well over a million dollars in sales in Shopify before I expanded onto Etsy. And I I don’t even think I needed to expand onto Etsy. There was more than enough business just on Shopify alone, but I did anyways because I was looking for an additional sales channel. Um, and so for you guys, like Riley, you have multiple shops in a pretty short amount of time. At what point did you go to your did you open up your second one? Yeah. So, I would like to clarify my second Etsy shop mostly for teaching, mostly for challenges, almost like a test shop of sorts. My main Etsy shop is where I put the most work in right now, probably headto-head with Tik Tok. And then popup is just when my aunt calls me and says, “Hey, I need a new shirt to send to my team.” And I list it for her. So, the second Etsy shop and the pop-up are both a lot more low-key. Um, I chose Etsy initially cuz it matched my vibe more. I was a 21-year-old college kid. I was studying abroad and I liked design. I liked Etsy. I’d been an Etsy customer, so Etsy was a natural first step for me. I actually had no intention of starting a second shop, let alone a fourth shop and let alone selling on Tik Tok. I didn’t have the Tik Tok app. When I did have the app, I had blocked all the Tik Tok shop hashtags because I was not interested in being sold to. So, the reason I started the second shop was I was so, and this is going to sound kind of cheesy, but I was so inspired. I had gone to um a Tik Tok event that I was invited to by Printify and I saw the email and I was like, “Yeah, I’m not selling on Tik Tok. I’ll go meet some people and it’ll be really cool to see other print on demand sellers, other people doing what I do.” And then I got to hear from a few different speakers like you guys will today and I hope some of us can inspire you guys as well. But it was just so inspiring to see the potential that Tik Tok has and the sales volume that’s possible on it. At that point, I felt I had I hate to say mastered because we all have something more to learn. But I’m getting to a point where I know what I know and there’s not so much more that I can learn about it that I felt ready to start learning about another platform. And I chose TikTok and I’ve really loved it so far. Yeah, I think you made a good point there. Like when I say commit to master, I don’t mean like you’ve got it all figured out cuz like anyone running a business at any level knows that there’s always going to be headaches. There’s always going to be ups and downs. Like it’s it’s not easy. You know, in theory it’s simple, but like make have no illusions. It’s not like it gets easier. The challenges just get different. So Jay, over to you. You started on Amazon and then you when did you go to your second platform? Uh, so I actually started with Etsy and then Amazon came around, but it’s not one of those things where like it’s it’s a self-fulfillment type thing where you need to be accepted. So I can’t even suggest that as a platform to go to. Uh, what I would say is like for if we were moving from Etsy, for example, now where I’m about to make a transition to Shopify, what I would suggest is like if you’re not getting sales on Etsy, you’re probably not going to get sales on Shopify, but you’re just going to have a harder time doing this because now you’re wearing more hats. You now have to get really good at marketing your stuff. Where on Etsy, for example, on a marketplace, it’s like walking into a mall with a bunch of different boutiques. People are there to buy. You just have to get their attention, right? Um, that said, you know, if you get to a point where I feel like sales might be stagnating or you’ve kind of plateaued, then things are running well, use that money, that revenue, and that success to fund your next venture, right? So, you’re not out of pocket out a hole uh to get going that way. And Tik Tok, if you’re listening, as a Canadian seller, I would very much love to be able to have a Tik Tok shop. Well, I’m hearing uh, you know, from uh, John here and Levi upstairs and like I would love to be on TikTok and part of one of your communities as well. Yeah, that’s that was that was you said something really important there about mastery. Like let me be very clear with this mastery. Listen, it’s hard enough to master one platform, let alone two or three or four. And I totally agree with you. If you’re not having success on one, you most likely will not have success on the other. So commit to mastery. there are different, you know, each one has its own kind of like structure and processes and and stuff like that. So once you’re clear on your goals, I feel like it’d be a lot easier to understand which one is the best fit for you because in my opinion, there’s no one sizefits-all. Would you guys agree with that? Absolutely. Yeah. It’s it’s also a thing when we talk about mastery like I don’t want to make this seal seem like some convoluted thing that you will never get, you know, able to master. uh when we talk when I talk personally about master it’s like the ability to make sales on that particular platform you don’t have to know all the nuances algorithms change all the time you’re never going to be on top of it and if you wait till you’re absolutely ready you’re never going to be ready kind of like talking to a brand new dad if you had waited till you were absolutely ready it never would have happened it’s one of those things I’ve also heard choose your hard starting a business is a big deal and it’s going to be something that comes with its own set of learning curves the platform that you choose is going to depend on your strengths and your ability to learn all of these different things. Etsy, you’re going to be listing a bunch. Tik Tok, you’re going to be posting a bunch of videos. Shopify, you’re going to be doing a bunch of ads. So, it it’s going to be hard, but it’s doable as long as you put that work in. So, which is it that you want to do by your Absolutely. I I really like that summary. I like the way that you sum those up. I mean, that’s that’s like the minimal bullet point summary, but that like that is all very accurate in my experience, and I I agree. It’s a choose your own adventure based on what you want. So, let’s talk about at what point should do you guys recommend someone move on to another platform? So, Riley, if you had a student and they were like, I’m on Etsy. Now, what I want to I want to go to Shopify because I want to diversify my platforms and I want to get in front of that audience as well. At what point would you be like, “Okay, I think you’re ready.” I think it’s really hard because everyone’s journey is different. What I really would not suggest is doing all of the platforms or even multiple platforms from the beginning because if you’re trying to spread your energy, honestly, so many people start while they’re still in a full-time job. And so it’s managing a business in the pockets of time in between. So in those pockets of time, if you’re trying to do 100 Tik Tok videos and run a Shopify campaign and have five Etsy listings, it’s going to be really hard to manage and and you’re not going to do great at any of them. So start with one, learn the one. For me, it was when my sales were consistent and starting to plateau a little bit like Jay said, like where I’ve not necessarily the ceiling because we have new customers coming all the time. People are still buying items, but where I felt confident enough number one with my income to know that I can take a risk on starting another business, but in my skills to know I’ve learned this. I understand how to create a good design, how to create a good product. Can I list it on another platform and see more success, see another source of income coming in? Yeah. Like reach that audience. Yeah. No, I think I think that’s really good and I really like what you said. I I totally agree that like consistent sales at a minimum consistent sales cuz what we said before like if you’re not succeeding on one platform, you probably won’t succeed on the other. And I know a lot of entrepreneurs, we have bright shiny object syndrome. I have bright shiny object syndrome. Do you guys have bright shiny object syndrome? I have four stores. Yeah, it comes in the DNA of an entrepreneur. Everyone listening is probably like, “Yes, I do. That’s me.” We totally get it. We’re with you guys. But like I do think it’s important to focus really really focus and this is hard for all of us ADHD entrepreneurs but man it will it will be a totally total game changer for you and your business. So guys when like Jay let’s talk about when you would recommend if someone one of your students came to you and said I I’m on I’m on Etsy. I want to like go to a Tik Tok shop now. At what point would you say you are ready my friend? Well if first I’ll ask them if they’re Canadian based business ready. Uh secondly, kind of going back to what I said, right? If you can make consistent sales, if you’re making sales and you’re plateauing, then sure. If it’s a combination of not reaching the right audience maybe, then I would suggest if you’re on Etsy and you want to make that transition, not only do you need the the money, the revenue there to fund cuz now you’re going to get into ad spend in a heavy completely different way, but like maybe start an email list, start some social media marketing where you can capture that and then you can kind of segue your audience over to the Shopify and get them, you know, used or warm, I guess you would call it, uh, to get, you know, used to getting inundated with email marketing, right? Right. It I mean that does give you a huge leg up if you’ve got like an immediate base of loyal fans of super fans of people that raised their hand and said, “I want to hear from you.” Those are your people. And you know, for starting another brand, those are like the first people you’ll want to your warmest audience. Those are people you want to reach out to. Go ahead. Another major point is if you’re a general store on Etsy, for example, I probably would recommend that you get a little bit more niched and build a brand. Leverage the.com. Like go buy that.com, go get the social media handles. Even if you never use them, at least you’ll have them and somebody else won’t take them out from under you. Yeah. Then you will be ready to move to a niche Shopify kind of environment. Yeah, I I I love that advice. I totally agree. John, at what point would you tell one of your students, they say, “I’m on I’m on Tik Tok shop and now I want to diversify to Shopy or Etsy.” Yeah, you tell me when I go. Common theme. I think a lot of reviewers be like, “Oh, broken record, but it’s obviously you want have a stabilized store. you and specifically for Tik Tok shop, it’s the content volume. A lot of Tik Tok shop sellers come to me and they’re already making content or they have a brand already or they are just completely starting and what is the next transition to the next move. It’s ultimately having volume on Tik Tok first. So through your own content, through affiliates is a big thing. We’re going to talk a lot about that here today. But once you have a big catalog and a list of creators making content, all those videos can be transferred over to a platform like Facebook, like Instagram. You can run meta ads to it. use tribe to be able to get attribution to creators to get them commissions. So on Tik Tok to going over to Shopify going over to Amazon, it can be it can be really quickly to be done, but at the same time it’s content first on Tik Tok before the switch. Yeah. I also think it’s important to add this is a lot about another platform. It’s very applicable to a second store as well because so often I people say I see people say, “Well, I can’t decide between this niche, this niche, and this niche.” So then they open two Etsy stores. That still splits your energy in half. You’re learning one platform, but start with one store. One store, one platform, and pour all of your energy into it. And then when you feel like you have a good grasp on it, then that’s when you add a second store or a second platform, but only after. You’re not starting. Pick a niche if you want to have a couple niches in one store until you figure it out. Don’t do that forever. Obviously, figure it out a little bit. But it’s okay to test a couple different themes in the beginning rather than starting two stores cuz it’s twice as hard, right? No, I I completely agree agree. And one thing that uh when we were talking earlier you said is like one niche, one core product, one platform. And that I 100% agree because like where you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. And I’ve seen this before with Shopify sellers too where they they come to me with three stores. They have they have three stores. And I’m like, okay, you have three stores. How are sales? Zero sales. I’m like, and you’re dividing all your energy across three stores. Like it, like I said earlier, it’s hard enough to master one, let alone three. So I I think like as entrepreneurs by nature we are drawn to that bright shiny object syndrome. So it’s hard to like rein it in but y’all let’s rein it in like we’re this is coming from our own experience like from from our I was one of those people. Um I had to rein it in. So anyhow let’s talk about marketing. I love talking everyone likes talking about marketing because everyone wants to know how do I get more eyeballs on my products? That’s like the million-dollar question. You guys are all high volume sellers. You’ve successfully done this. And so I want to get into the strategies. Now, I can speak to myself as a Shopify first seller. I use Meta Ads to reliably drive traffic to my products. And the reason I love Meta Ads, also known as the the the traffic store, is because I could literally run ads today and I could have my product in front of 10,000 people today. And I love that because it solves the problem that so many people have of how do I get eyeballs on my product? Problem solved. Now, I I I I want to say a word of caution here. Like that doesn’t guarantee like I’m guaranteed 10,000 people to see my products. That doesn’t guarantee any sales. And this is where you have to really be calculated with your risk, right? Because you can either make a ton of sales or you can burn through a whole bunch of cash. And nobody wants that. Like, nobody wants that. and you don’t want that, we don’t want that. And so that’s like my strategy to get reliable traffic and, you know, I do definitely do like a calculated risk approach. So it’s like testing at small budgets and then only scaling up the winning designs, the ones where you know, for every dollar you invest in ads, you’re getting like $5 in return, for example. And so you’re scaling up profitably and and very quickly. But I want to hear from you guys. So you’ve had a lot of success on Etsy and and now Tik Tok, but tell me about your experience. How are you driving traffic to your platforms? So for Etsy, this is something I see a lot of beginners struggle with is they think that when they start an Etsy store, they also need to do all of this social media. I initially sold on Etsy, so I didn’t have to do social media. Etsy is a marketplace. So your customers are coming to the Etsy platform and searching whatever your niche is, searching gift for your target customer and looking for your items. Yes, they can find it on Pinterest and then go to your store or from a Facebook ad, but truly on Etsy, you just need more listings, more good listings that are good designs that are based on research. And there’s so much content about there out about how to make good designs. But the more listings you have, the more chance that you have to get found as long as they are well researched and support your target customer. For Tik Tok, traffic is more videos. It’s working with affiliates, which I’d love to hear John talk about cuz he’s affiliate expert here. I learn so much every time he talks. But more videos, like even as a Tik Tok creator, I’m creating 3 to 5 to 10 videos a day. And that’s 3 to 5 to 10 more chances for my product to get seen by my customers. So more but more intentional content, more intentional listings that are based on research both for the videos and for the listings. Yeah. No, I love that. And that is one of the big draws to Etsy is there are people selling successfully that are not running ads and do not have social media presences. Now, I will say with meta ads, you don’t need to have a social media following to make sales like within 10 minutes of running your ad. Uh, obviously it helps if you’re building a Shopify brand. There’s a lot of value in your in your presence as an asset. Um, but I want to hear from you, Jay. How are you getting eyeballs on your products in Etsy or any other platforms you want to talk about? Yeah, so obviously advertising, I mean, that’s that’s probably one of the biggest ones for, you know, a Shopify and or marketplace seller. And you hit the nail on the head when you when you said you’ll burn through money. And that verb is the best way I can give you analogy an analogy for what running ads is. It’s like it’s literally pouring gas on a fire and watching it explode into a massive bonfire. Now that said, you will burn through budget if your, you know, initial fire your your product isn’t the design isn’t solid, the mockup or presentation isn’t solid, and the SEO is whack enough that you’re not going to get found. Mhm. If that happens and there’s no spark, pouring gas on the fire just becomes an expensive, wet, smelly mess. Yes. I I love that you said that. And and there’s like I have like a vision in my head of like sitting in a car and it being in park and putting the gas on and revving the engine, but you’re not moving and the moving is the sales. Like I I need to make sales, right? And you’re just like burning through gas, but like not making any sales, not moving forward. So that’s I I love the way you explain that. Okay, John the Tik Tok whiz. Let’s hear it. Talk about the affiliates. Talk about everything Tik Tok. Well, one thing that’s just unique about social media. My mom runs a brick and mortar store, like a physical location. For her to get people into the door, she’s got to wait for people to walk in. Tik Tok is one of those things that’s crazy. If you think about it, you can post a video that takes you five minutes to make get a million views. Like 10 years ago, marketing was running ads on a newspaper. 20 years ago it was even just say on a radio. Now with social media we post a video and it gets shown to what millions of people that fast. And so that’s just the power of just online marketing. Just the first just to point out we’ll talk a lot about that in the Tik Tok session here in a second. But when it comes to affiliates me myself I can post three videos a day. Uh at my peak I was posting five. I was like man that’s a lot of videos. But my creators I can get a team of a hundred of them to post three videos a day. Now I have 300 videos a day. And so Tik Tok has been notoriously in marketing is a difficult platform to crack consistency because ad fatigue creative fatigue is quite high on the platforms unlike meta that’s just been proven over the past 10 years. So my focus on Tik Tok is how do I get as much volume out there as humanly possible? How do I get so many videos out there that just makes it impossible to see failure? Right. Right. I love that. It’s kind of like the volume play and that’s that’s a that can be a good strategy. Clearly, it’s a proven strategy for you and I’m sure many of your students. So guys, I feel like we could be here all day talking about this. We all love talking about marketing. I hope you all like hearing about marketing. I know most people do, but we are out of time. So, thank you so much for your time guys and for your insights and we’re going to hand it now over to the green room. So, over to you.
Hello guys, Michael Essic here and we are going to do some POD seller questions. So, I am joined here by uh Dominic from Dogcore. You may recognize him from earlier. We actually I think we’ve actually swapped beards since you last saw us. You might not be able to tell cuz they’re so my hair to make sure I don’t look too much like Exactly. Otherwise, people keep mixing us up. Um so, Dom, couple of questions for you. You ready to go on these? Yeah, absolutely. Let’s go. Okay. We’re going to ask you biggest prints on demand win. I think um probably the biggest win was quite a couple of years ago. Um, we had access to uh quite simple embroidered hats, uh, flatbacks, caps, dad hats, baseball caps, things like that. Very simple embroidery on the front. And when that first came out, uh, there wasn’t too much market saturation of people taking advantage of that in the POD space. So, we were able to quickly capitalize on that with some funny designs. We’ve got ones that say, “I love shoplifting.” uh one that is about myself which is oh no it’s me again. Um just really silly things but the fact that we were able to get those out there before anyone anyone else um before the market got too saturated with those designs made us quite a lot of money back when that when when that first product came out. So advice always be looking at what’s coming up new for sale and see if you can get that out onto your stores before anyone else does. Absolutely. Yeah. If you can get that new product and like you say it’s there before the saturation comes in, you’ve got the advantage. That’s great. What about We’re going to ask you some more things here. Have you got a most overrated or underrated print on demand product at the moment? Uh most overrated mugs. I don’t personally understand those. Uh there’s too many mugs on the planet. And uh what have you got against mugs, Dom? What is it? I think it’s just I don’t know if anyone’s been to Britain that every office has a Sports Direct mug and it’s like a it’s like a joke. Um it’s like the size of a bowl. It’s like made for British people’s drinking tea habits. So yeah. And if you spill it, you like flood the you’re I was going to swear there, but you’re you’re not you’re not lucky. Let’s put it that way. You’re not lucky. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What about um what’s one thing that you wish you knew when you started your print on demand journey? very basic tax regulations uh in England because if you don’t be compliant as quick as you can uh and understand what your liabilities are, it will come to bite you on your butt later on. Uh and that can make or break a business. Uh if you’ve kind of got yourself a bit too deep into, you know, owing taxes that maybe you when it finally comes up that you can’t afford to pay it. So, as long as you’re compliant, you’re compensating for it, and you understand it, even at a very basic level, you’ll be saving yourself a lot of hassle in the future. That’s so true. The Beatles sung about that one, didn’t they? The tax man in the UK is going to come and get you if you’re not careful. Are we the same age? Where are you? We’re a lot older. All right. Thank you very much, Dom. Dom, go and have a break. Get yourself a sandwich. Look after yourself. Who have we got next? We got Sarah Caps. Sarah Caps coming from Tampa, Florida. Tampa, Florida out there. Okay, Sarah, let’s see what we can ask you here. What’s your favorite prints on demand product to sell? Shirt? Yeah. I mean, I have a lot of favorites, but I have to say shirt. It’s a good go-to. Okay. What’s your favorite shirt that you sell? Comfort colors 1717. 1717. You even know the code. You know everything about it. I remember. That’s awesome. So, the that’s your favorite product to sell. What’s a trend that you’re excited about in print on demand? I have so I haven’t dove into it yet, but I’m really excited about the puff print that um we just got with Prinify. It’s also going to be easy to design. This is very text forward and on trend right now. So, and that just came out like this week or really recently with Yeah, within the last month, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s going to be great, isn’t it, for like university for sweaters and all that kind of for sure. Yeah, I think so. It’ll be really popular on Etsy specifically, too. That’ll be great. Awesome. Okay. Hey, I think are we going to talk to Jay as well? Is Jay coming over here? Jay is coming. Young man, what’s your name? Where do you come from? Uh, young man. Thank you. The makeup did wonders here. I was worried about weight, but we got 10 years off, I think. Uh, I’m Jay. Uh, I’m coming from BISE by way of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Uh, one of the benefits of, you know, print on demand is being able to kind of do what you want, where you want, and where you intentionally want to live. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You you’ve moved, you’ve done your own thing. You’ve lived the dream, right? Uh, my version of the dream, right? not handcuffed to a desk nine to five and kind of doing what we want when we want. Now I choose to work a 100 hours a week because I actually enjoy what I do because you love it. Yeah, that’s great. So what’s one thing you wish you knew when you started? Oh man, I I wish I knew that just because I’m artistically educated as a graphic designer. U and like this is something I said on the panel downstairs was that I wish I knew that just because something is artistically sound doesn’t mean it’s going to sell. You know, it was the biggest ego check on the planet, but I’m glad we tore that band-aid off early because now I can do more of what people actually want and not just what I think. So, getting out of our own way, if I had to say Yeah. Yeah. That’s so important, isn’t it? To learn those lessons. What about a POD trend that you’re excited about? Is there anything? Uh trends. I’m not a big trend chaser or anything. I feel like, you know, the niches do evolve. So like for example, if we were talking uh a light earth tone or off-white, maybe it’s a crew one day, maybe it’s taupe in another season. Uh so staying a breath a breast of the seasonal or you know, yeah, really seasonal or product changes, that kind of thing within your niche. But in terms of like following a trend, if you’re going to go into like, you know, what’s hot for Christmas or different products, only do it if it makes sense for your niche, I think is where I would stand on that. That’s great. Thank you so much, Jay. Why don’t you go and get yourself a drink, kick back, relax? I believe we’re going to go over here and we have got we’re going to dive into the live chat right now and uh we’ve got some winners to announce of some prizes. So, here we’re going to sit down and talk to Laura. Laura, how are you doing, Laura? I’m doing so good. How are you? I’m okay. I’m sweating a bit cuz I’m moving around so much and it’s so warm up here, but I’m okay. That’s good. We need to keep you hydrated. I know. So, what are we going to do? We’re going to talk to the chat or you have some winners to announce. First of all, we want to announce the winners of the opening giveaway. Awesome. Would you like me to do the honors? Okay, drum roll, please. We have Are you ready, guys, for the uh the winners of our prizes? We have Cheryl Derkott, winner number one. Hooray. Can we get a round of applause, please, for Cheryl? Uh Annie Fontinez. Annie Fontinez, you’re a winner. Benjamin her, you’re up. You’ve won. Shelby Renee, come on down. Linda K. Uh, Jovida Benson. You think I’m saying that one right? Could be right. Could be right. Okay. Uh, Ismael Omar, Alex Everett, Irish Roberts, and Mini Bloom. That can’t be a legal name. Mini Bloom. You know, you never know. Now, you never know these days. Mini Bloom, you have also won. And uh, are we going to go over to the live chat? We got some questions and some comments and some things like that. What are people saying in the live chat? What are they talking about? People are asking a lot of questions about marketing actually. But I want to know guys, what are your favorite products to sell? We heard on our mer from our merchants, from our speakers. What about you? What is your favorite thing to sell with print on demand? Yeah, tell us in the live chat what you guys are selling. What’s working for you? We really want to hear those answers in the live chat. If you’re watching right now, that would be great. I’m seeing a lot of t-shirt lovers here. Oh my god, some some people talking about marine animal prints. I love those as well. What’s your favorite marine animal? Uh the killer whale. The killer whale. What about you? The killer whale is a great one. Yeah, I like octopuses. I just bought some little octopus earrings for my daughter to take home with me cuz she likes octopuses as well. So, yeah, that’s a really good answer. You should put it on a t-shirt. Should put that on a t-shirt. Yeah. Anything else people are saying? Yeah. Phone cases, hoodies. Hoodies is are a classic. Hoodies are really popular in the live chat right now, right? Um, phone cases, loads of t-shirts. Loads of t-shirt. I I think you can’t go wrong with a t-shirt. That’s it. Thank you so much, guys. Keep those comments coming in the live chat. Keep watching. I’m going to head back to the uh main stage right now. Thanks for joining us.
Welcome back to our next session, Let’s Talk Tik Tok Shop. I’m here with awesome people that know a lot about Tik Tok and I’m sure a lot of you are curious about getting started. Maybe you want to make more content. So, we’re going to get right into it. I’m here with Riley, John, and Levi. And we’re going to share some thoughts that we have about it. Right. First thing I want to say is why Tik Tok shop? Why Tik Tok? There’s so many platforms to sell on. I’m really curious about this. Leave. Do you have something that is a real reason why Tik Tok shop? I mean, if you want to be part of the fastest growing marketplace on the planet, then you should join Tik Tok. If not, that’s totally okay. No, but I think what I like to say is like we’re all selling something, right? Um, and if you relate it to a lemonade stand, you can put your lemonade stand on a back road or a a county road and there might be like a hundred people that pass by every hour and you have a 100 chances to sell something. Or you could stick your lemonade stand in in the middle of I5 and millions of people will pass by you every day and you have so much more access to customers. That’s what Tik Tok shop is. There’s millions of people looking to buy products and it’s just up to you to make them buy yours. And I think that’s the exciting part about Tik Tok shop besides the fact that they invented the best, shortest, fastest, highest converting funnel ever invented. I can hear the passion. Me too. Honestly, I love that. I love it. How about you? Yeah. Well, Tik Tok is just unique cuz and I was explaining to Levi a little earlier like the difference between social media and interest media. There’s a big difference between the two. So, social media is Instagram and Facebook. We post a video, our followers see it. We’ve all done it. We post a we post a photo. Oh, my my mom’s commenting on my video my photo or whatever. Our followers see it. Now, in Tik Tok, a beginner with zero followers posts a video, it’s already going out to the public. And based on how those small group of people, those strangers engage with that video, it can go out to the masses. So it kind of levels the playing field for everybody out there because videos get pushed and marketing works on Tik Tok based on interest of the content. And what’s just specific and unique about Tik Tok is it’s the native shopping experience. People see your video inside their feed, like you mentioned, lemonade analogy. I love it. and they can click on the little orange rectangle at the bottom lefth hand screen of the video and buy that exact same product within just a couple clicks. We’ve all seen things on Tik Tok. I mean, we’ve bought stuff before. We get so as well. And it’s so easy to do so. And it’s just unique because the average purchase time between someone seeing a product and a video uh and actually clicking on purchase is 42 seconds long on Tik Tok. Impulse purchase is everything. We are all about instant gratification nowadays. and running when we’re running off the dopamine and we see a product we like, we’re like, “Oh, I have to have it.” So, it’s just a unique experience uh for any customer out there who’s buying on TikTok. And that’s why we’ve been able to take advantage of it. Yeah. I think for me, I come from the Etsy platform primarily. And so, I’m looking at it through that lens of there’s only so many customers, number one, that are coming to Etsy right away. Tik Tok has a lot more traffic than Etsy has. But then on top of that, there’s only so many customers that are coming to Etsy to search for the specific item that you’re selling or that specific target customer. Even if you’re selling in a really big niche, there’s only so much market share that you have versus Tik Tok has done a really really good job of number one having like billions of people on the platform. It’s a huge huge social media platform. But making that conversion of one of the big reasons I was not convinced to sell on Tik Tok shop until I was was I don’t feel like converting someone who’s scrolling to buying. But like John said that conversion has become a native part of Tik Tok where people are coming to Tik Tok to buy because of that social proof. All day long I can look at reviews of restaurants. But if John says, “Hey, I tried this place and the burger was really good the other day,” then I’m going to go because of that social proof. And that’s what Tik Tok provides over any other platform. That’s such a good point, too, because when people are also with comment sections and then reposting and then we’ll get into like the affiliate stuff, too. But just seeing so many different videos of products, it makes people excited and want to purchase and making the jump. You mentioned you’re an Etsy seller. I am too. And that jump from one platform to another, it can feel really intimidating. I know for me, like I’m pretty good with the stuff online, but every once in a while, a new platform is a lot to deal with. I’m curious if there’s advice that maybe you could give to somebody that would be switching over of something that you learned when doing that. So, we have a lot of people here who are listening to this session and well, they’re entertaining, but I have no desire to sell on Tik Tok. I was exactly where you’re sitting literally in April. I got I said this last session, but I got an email inviting me to a conference on Tik Tok and I said, “Yeah, cool. I’m not selling on TikTok, but it’ll be really cool to meet some other sellers.” And then by the end of the session, I was just convinced the sales volume is just so much potential. I don’t know. You’ll hear us talk all about it and I’m so excited to share so much more. But I think going if you’ve already have experience with Etsy or maybe not even Etsy, maybe Shopify, but if you already have the ability number one to create good designs and number two to create good listings, Tik Tok is just getting them in front of more eyes. And if you’re already in the business mindset where you’ve learned how to learn things, and that sounds kind of silly, but just like anything else, each new platform is going to come with its own set of learning curves. So if you’re in that mindset where you’re willing to put in the work and you’re willing to learn it, the results truly can be just exponential. Yeah. And it’s like and at that point too, the way I look at it is if you already have the products kind of designed or created, why not try? You know, you can you can move them over to another platform and just to see what happens. And do you sell on Shopify at all? Yes. Yeah. Did you make that transition as well? Yes. So one thing that’s unique about Tik Tok and a lot of brands want to be on Tik Tok. I know there’s a lot of a lot of us that just want to get on Tik Tok shot for the first time. Brands understand what’s happening on it. And so then the reason why they look at it in such a strong way is because on Tik Tok you get so much content. Of course maybe you’re making the videos yourself but also other creators out there making those videos. And so basically what I do is I take all that content either posting it organically on Instagram and Facebook or taking those exact same videos and running as ads. And so yeah, we obviously made that transition. And then of course too there’s something called the halo effect. So people don’t always buy on Tik Tok. Obviously massive conversions, but people will oftent times look on Amazon or they’ll go into Walmart and they’ll see a product inside there that they sell on Tik Tok. Like there’s a common phrase like, “Oh, I saw that on Tik Tok.” That happens all the time. And so for every dollar that we see spent on Tik Tok, we see about a 50 cent spillover over to Amazon and Shopify because the exposure. That’s amazing. You know, this platform is truly like so cool to me. Like it still blows my mind. the more I hear about it, I’m just like so inspired by it and how many people really are consumers of it. Do you think there’s a specific product type that maybe sells the best with print on demand on Tik Tok? Do do you have one that you think I think this is kind of my rule of thumb. The difference between Etsy, Shopify, um or Amazon is that everybody going to those places in pursuit of a purchase, right? You don’t go to Etsy for fun. You go to Tik Tok for I do. But at this point, I make the joke that like if Amazon had reals that people were addicted to, that’s what Tik Tok shop is, right? But because of that, your goal is no longer to convert a someone looking to buy into a buyer. You’re converting someone who’s looking to be entertained into a buyer. So, that’s a bigger step to be made. Now, you’re putting your things in your products in front of a larger group of people, but you still need that ability to convert someone into a buyer. And I think the best way to do that is having a product that sells itself. If you have a product that like every time we look at a Tik Tok, I think it’s way better for girls. But if if a girl like posts a video and whether they’re lip-syncing, dancing, telling a story about their life, whatever shirt they’re wearing, there’s probably going to be comments like, “Where did you get that top?” Girls say top, not where did you get that top? Or like link that top in your whatever. That means that product, you weren’t advertising the product, you were just wearing it and you were just doing your daily life, but that product is selling itself. So, however you can create a product that that achieves that I think is the best way to find a winner on Tik Tok. That’s great advice. Is there a product that maybe you have that you sell a lot? Well, I think of it in three. Right now during Q4, it’s four. I call it the mandatory three, but plus one for Q4. So, number one, it’s got to have a wow factor. It’s got to have that purple cow effect. If I’m driving down the road and I see a bunch of cows on the side of the road, I’m not going to think anything of it. But let’s say I’m driving down the road and I see a purple cow on the side of road. It’s going to be sure to grab my attention. I’m going to pull on the side of the road. It’s kind of a curiosity. It’s going to be a pattern interrupt. When we’re scrolling through Tik Tok, we’re doing the exact same thing. We’re driving down a Tik Tok road. That product has to catch our attention. So, number one, it’s got to be interesting. It’s got to be fascinating. It can’t be something you’re just going to find in Walmart or Target. Number two, it’s got to have a solvent problem. It’s got to solve a specific urgent problem. Number three, it’s got to be able to easy to make content with because Tik Tok is a content place. It can’t just be something just show show a photo of it. It’s got to be something that can be shown visually. And the last one for Q4, it’s got to be something that’s giftable. Everyone’s buying gifts during Q4. You go into a Walmart or Target, any big retailer during the last two months of the year, so November and December, which a lot of people are looking towards right now. Toys are always in the front of the store. Anything that’s giftable is in front of the store. parents are buying kids gifts or they’re buying uh toys for their kids for Christmas, right? And so anything giftable is something that’s absolutely necessary necessary during Q4. But those are the four main things I would say that every single product that I sell does well and what I see on Tik Tok works out. They have those four things right now. Yeah, Riley, do you have a product that you really like to sell? I sell shirts um primarily on Tik Tok and mostly in my Etsy store as well. I’ve also added some woven blankets, but two woven blankets specifically. I think having a slightly an item with a higher profit margin and that doesn’t necessarily mean a more expensive item, but something like bookmarks or stickers or keychains are going to be a little bit more difficult cuz yes, you can do the volume, but with Tik Tok, you’re ordering samples of your products typically, so that’s going to cut into a little bit. You’re sending out free samples of your products and so it’s going to be a little bit more difficult to make your first million because that’s an attainable metric when it comes to Tik Tok stuff. it’s going to be a little bit more difficult to make your first million on stickers versus a product where you maybe have 50% margins or higher. So, paying attention to those margins, not necessarily higher price, but higher margins. Great advice, too. Something that I think a lot of people don’t think about, too, especially if you’re starting a new platform and then you’re like looking at margins and fees and all that stuff and going into content because I we’ve all kind of been mentioning like with maybe affiliates dripping in there and it’s also such an important part of Tik Tok. I think that the way that people purchase on Tik Tok has so much to do with affiliate content. So, I’d love to talk about that and talk about how much content is really realistically needed by the seller on Tik Tok. Yeah, I can start on this one. I think the interesting thing about Tik Tok is it has its own shop, which is very reminiscent of like an Amazon, right? You can go, you can search for things, you can purchase things directly from the shop. But like my store for example, 85 to 90% of those sales are coming directly from a video. So if you’re not posting videos, you’re missing out on the majority of your traffic to your to your shop. So it’s not necessarily like about hitting a minimum when I think about the amount of content you need. It’s about producing at scale what you can that is already proven to convert. And I think what we’ll get into probably later, but it’s unattainable to strictly do your content by yourself. And because of that, Tik Tok has this thing called Tik Tok affiliates, which is the first platform where affiliate marketing is actually built in natively to the marketplace. And the great thing about being a new seller coming onto Tik Tok shop is that these affiliates that are really good at their jobs already know how to sell products. And they’ve probably sold products similar to yours, which means you can find affiliates that are great at selling your products for you. And not only should you slowly learn how to make content and sell products on your own, but you can learn from these affiliates that are that become your sales team for your store. Yeah, you kind of don’t really have to. And it works differently too because they create the content for you and you give them a percentage versus what it is that they’re purchasing. So they could make the content and don’t get a sale and you’re not necessarily paying for that, but you’re still getting exposure even if it’s not an actual purchase, which I find very interesting, too. I think Tik Tok shop alone has changed how marketing takes place from an influencer marketing perspective where you’re taking a risk on one video and that one video’s performance usually doesn’t really impact the compensation for that influencer, right? Whereas when you look at affiliate marketing, it’s no risk. It’s like print on demand for marketing really. And it’s it’s no risk. You only pay them when they’re already making money for you, right? They make you money to make money. And I think that is like the the turn. And you’d think, well, like why would anyone wouldn’t everyone just want to do like deals where they just get paid up front? Yes. But affiliates, this this this marketing system allows for anyone to be a marketer. You don’t have to have hundreds of thousands of followers. You don’t have to have everyone know your name. You just need to know how to sell a product. And I think it’s like an accessibility factor that has kind of leveled the scales in terms of marketing. Yeah. And there’s no really cap on how much you can make with something like an affiliate, you know, like if you hire someone like demand. Exactly. It’s just there’s it’s just unlimited, which is so cool. And I’m sure you both use affiliates in your store, too. So, I’m curious how how you feel. I think the the engine of Tik Tok I’m like, how do I follow up with that? But there’s this engine of Tik Tok shop affiliates. It it’s just crazy because 10 years ago, if you ever wanted to do affiliate marketing, if you ever want to find affiliates to make content for you, it was called traditional influencer marketing where you’d have to DM the affiliate on Instagram. You have to say, hey, how’s it going, Michaela? I’m going give you 20% and I’m going to send you a sample. They’re usually going to respond. Oh, you go back and forth through DMs and that entire process. And then you have to put a link in bio in your Instagram. Oh, if you want if that affiliate wants to sell your product, they got to put in a link in bio. Then they have to use a promo code. It was a huge mess. Tik Tok said away with that. We’re putting our entire affiliate system combined with the sellers. And so it makes it so easy. The attribution’s done. We don’t have to collect information from the affiliate. Everything gets tracked through that little orange rectangle that’s in the bottom left hand screen of the video. So that’s just one unique way that makes anyone be able to see success with affiliates. It just makes it so simple. Now, when it comes to actually the marketing strategy behind it, we could go into a whole this could be two hours long if you want to talk about affiliates, but um it’s one of those things. Affiliates, I think, and I was just talking to someone about this the other day. I think Tik Tok shop affiliates are the best marketers on the planet right now. Like, they are so good at their job. And like you mentioned, you only pay them when they actually generate a sale. So, it’s a commission-based model. The marketing only works or you only pay for marketing when it works. And that’s one thing that’s really unique about Tik Tok. Uh, and for anyone just just starting out and that’s I mean I was working construction 3 years ago and I’m able to I’m sitt up here. It’s pretty cool. Uh, but like three years ago I had no experience with marketing and now I can just use these creative what I can leverage other people’s time, energy and their skill of going viral to make me money. What? And so it was a light bulb moment for me. And they make money too which is cool. It’s like it’s like a whole thing. Like the affiliates make a lot of money. They’re like the best job they have. Yeah. Yeah. And they’re definitely needed like it’s it’s really cool. There’s so many people on TikTok especially that are getting on and selling products. And Riley, do you do the same thing with affiliate? Absolutely. Yeah. I I create my own content as well. I my viral product came from an affiliate video. Like my $20,000 week came from an affiliate video and this was my second month on Tik Tok. So this is not something Etsy it took me 15 months to see a,000 sales. Tik Tok it took me like 3 months. So the the scalability is just crazy. But one thing I hear so often whenever Tik Tok is introduced to someone is, “Oh, I don’t want to make content. I don’t know how to make content. I don’t I don’t feel like getting on video.” And this is kind of a truth bomb. And I’m I’m not trying to be mean when I say that, but get over it. Like, as not to sound in your face about it, but there’s no room for excuses in business. Okay? You don’t want to be on camera. Well, do you want to make money? Like, you don’t necessarily have to be on camera. Even even that $20,000 video, like I mentioned, was literally the shirt thrown down, her talking about it’s so important to order before the holidays happen and it’s going to sell out and it’s not going to sell out cuz we’re doing print on demand. But but creating content and working with affiliates, it’s so attainable. You just have to do the process and and work with affiliates, absolutely. But in order to work with affiliates, affiliates want to work with businesses that are making money. So you have to get those few initial sales. So you have to put in that work to create that content. Maybe it’s going live. That’s how I got my first affiliates because I got a few sales under my belt from going live. But you can also get sales on your own content. But what’s crazy about the affiliates is there are these people that are trained in sales psychology and making crazy money. Like like a a good affiliate, like just a standard good affiliates making six figures, which is crazy. And then you have like really good affiliates that are making seven, eight figures. And these people are making like six figures a month selling products. the girls that are selling you vitamins on Tik Tok are making so much money and so you’re leveraging that where the content that I make is not great. I get a few sales on my content. A lot of my content comes from the people that I’ve sent a free product to. But the people that are making the really good content know how to research, know the hooks, know the call to actions, know how to make every second of a video convince you further and further. And that’s what we should be studying as creators who are learning to make content is that kind of good performing content. Just like on Etsy, whenever you’re studying design and research, you’re researching bestsellers to try to make a good listing and what goes into a good listing, it’s very applicable, the process is very applicable to Tik Tok of you look at the top performing creators and the top performing videos and what exactly is it about that that made it get that sale. Is it how they caught your attention in the first few seconds? Is how they told you to buy the product at the very end, but looking at that top performing content and then emulating it on your own until you really understand the patterns. That’s such great advice. I think like the research process is so true for anything, product, design, content, is you look at what’s already working and then how do you apply something new and valuable from your product into the market? Cuz it’s not just like copying someone’s video verbatim that’s not going to do well. But seeing what’s working and then, okay, how can I put my own interesting spin onto this or my niche with my product or even make it even more interesting? Like the purple cow thing you’re talking about. Like you like I’m like gonna remember that. That’s like such a great I will say one more thing that I wanted to add to what John said um about how you used to have to reach out and like attain these affiliates by sending them a sample and giving them their own code and all this and then also collaborating that with how you you you can see how the the the ceiling on Tik Tok is just so unbelievably high. Well, the way that these these products um really catch fire is in combination with both of those things and the research of really good affiliates because as a product starts doing well and really good affiliates start making money, those other really good affiliates are actually researching which products are making money. And because I don’t have to reach out and find and acquire these affiliates, they can request a free sample and join my affiliate team directly through the app. So, it’s a domino effect that can create so much momentum so fast that like it’s just what’s special about Tik Tok. I want another thing too because Tik Tok gives you the affiliates too. Like you can see how many followers they have. You can see how much GMV they’ve done in the past month. If I ever wanted to do that on Instagram, I couldn’t see how much sales they’ve done before. And now I can see like, oh, this affiliate did 100K in the past month. They are getting 500 views. They’re getting a,000 views every single video. It’s like they give us everything that we need to actually see success with affiliates and then we just click on a button that says invite. I’m like that was really easy or approve like to be if you have a product doing really well once they are requesting to be on your sales team. You just pick from the best ones. And these are for the free samples not the refundable samples. There’s good creators will buy the product so that they can get it as soon as possible and not wait on you to hit approve. They’re buying the product if it sells. They get a refund and you can determine how many times it needs to sell for that refund. Yeah. And most people don’t understand that there’s 70 million people buying on Tik Tok every single month. It’s kind of crazy. I know my mom and my sister are one of them. They’re watching. They’re like, “Oh, shoot.” So, there’s 70 million people buying on Tik Tok every single month. There’s 5 million Tik Tok shop affiliates on the platform that want to promote all of our products and hopefully our viewers products as well when you launch. And then there’s only half a million sellers on the platform. And I I’d have to ask Profify how many print on demand sellers, but I know it’s a fraction of them. And so the demand is there and it’s only growing. So what you guys said earlier like we’re really bullish on it. I’m really bullish on it too. Yeah. And that was one of my questions you that I was going to actually bring up because I think that that’s also kind of something that people are concerned about when they want to start selling on Tik Tok shop is oh I’m a small seller. I don’t have anyone yet. How am I going to get affiliates? But there’s so many affiliates on the platform that are like waiting for the opportunity. And that’s a very common thing too is people think that they need a bunch of followers. My account’s been up almost 6 months. I have 500 followers. I’m sure these guys have a lot more, but I’m still getting daily sales. Like, it’s not You don’t need a million followers to get started. Your affiliates don’t need a million followers. The girl that sold my viral product, I think, had like 8,000. And that’s like not anything insane. Same with the views. Like, videos that are getting 3 to 500 views, which is average for a new video, can still consistently make sales. The ones that make a million views will get a lot more sales. But it’s not about you don’t need a million views to start getting sales on it. just start posting and be consistent with it because you’re not going to hit that million. You’re not gonna hit that $20,000 unless you are consistently posting and they’re gonna be bad at first. No one starts out. Even going Etsy 4 years starting Tik Tok, I’m still not the greatest at Tik Tok. I’m learning as much as I can and I’m really enjoying the process and I’m already seeing some success. But it’s because I’m consistent with it. Even when that consistency means learning and being bad at it, you just have to go through that phase. Yeah, I think consistency across the board is the most important thing. Like even if your products well even what you just said about not having followers that’s also a huge thing that people are like I can’t do that I can’t sell on a social media platform I don’t have followers but it’s actually completely separate cuz Tik Tok it’s not social media it goes back to the point this is interest media and so when you mentioned like you don’t need followers you don’t need views Tik Tok gives everybody an equal chance to see success on it like I we all had zero followers at the very beginning someone can start with zero followers today and can get more views more engagement than the videos that we post. It is a competition on marketing. So, no one has a leg up until you you have to possess the skills of course. Now, over time, like you mentioned, you possess those skills, you keep learning, keep growing, you keep wanting to learn. That’s who we see success on the platform right now. And I would way rather be involved in a platform where there’s a skill gap involved to be successful than just a a luck lottery ticket. I think there’s luck involved in everything, but clearly the better you get at Tik Tok shop, the consistently better you will do. And that is just so inspiring and encouraging because like for example, if you start learning how to sell just your product, even if you can’t acquire one of these top top affiliates, you can get any affiliate and tell them exactly the knowledge you have in order to sell your product and be like, if you do these things, it will help you make money. You can become a coach in the marketing and the selling. And I don’t know, it’s just it’s way different than any other platform. For sure. I’d love to maybe I mean, if we haven’t inspired people enough, I feel like this conversation’s been so great. But I would love to hear from all of your perspectives what you would tell someone that’s maybe nervous to start or that’s just like I don’t know like is there just a piece of advice that maybe you would give? Well, I want to ask the audience, if the if the lottery was free, let’s say if the lottery was free, how many tickets would you take? Most of us would probably be like, I’m going to take as many tickets as I can if the lottery was free. Uh, and what cuz you every single ticket could be a winner. Social media and Tik Tok is a lot like that. Every single video that you post is a lottery ticket that it has the chance to go viral and you can post as many times as you want. And every single time you post is one of those lottery tickets. And so what I tell people, of course affiliates, we can go down a rabbit hole and talk about all these cool marketing things that you can do. Uh if you post your own videos, every single one has a chance to change your life. I every single one of us up here, we posted a video that changed our life. And I know bunch of my friends, thousands of my students, like we’ve all done it and we’ve all seen that happen. And so for anyone out there, go take a lottery ticket today. Go pick it up and go try and cash it in. It might change your life. And I think it’s okay to be scared, too, right? I think sometimes doing new things in life is scary. I think about all of the things that I’ve done even at 25. I studied abroad in a new country. That was scary, right? Going to a country where I don’t speak the language to live for 5 months. But I think about the other side of all of those things that I’ve done in my life that is scary. And sometimes you have to do things that are scary to get results that you’re really proud of. And so if you’re willing to do it scared and do it anyways, I don’t know, like they’ve said, your life can just be changed. The potential that it has is is unheard of. Tik Tok, even at like what, 3 years in the platform, the potential is growing and growing consistently and there’s not like a ceiling to it. There’s new people on Tik Tok every day, there’s new people buying on Tik Tok. You just have to do it even if you’re scared. Yeah. Do it scared. Yeah. What I would say is really all you have to ask if you’re scared about joining Tik Tok, all you have to ask yourself is in 5 years, do I want to have a large Tik Tok shop brand? Do I want to be selling my products successfully on Tik Tok in 5 years? And in that case, you go back to the old wives tale of the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. So if you want to be like that in 5 years, why not start today? cuz every day you wait is only prolonging the growth. Especially getting into Q4 right now like you get so much momentum because everyone’s buying. Yeah. And people are like ready to buy. I feel like as soon as for me in my experience it’s typically like Halloween.
I want some clothes. I want some clothes for Christmas. Yeah. And you know people on Tik Tok dur of course any time of year they’re scrolling through and we all do it during Q4 people start scrolling with a list in the back of their head right on Tik Tok and that’s who we’re selling to. Yeah that’s a great point. That’s a great point. People are like and like someone like me I never know what to ask for for Christmas. I’m like during the whole year I’m like oh that would be like cool to get and then Christmas comes around and it’s like I’ve gotten the things that I was thinking about before and now I don’t really have any. But Tik Tok is like just a a wishlist creator. When when you’re scrolling through Tik Tok, you’re just seeing things. Oh, I’ll add that star. Oh, I’ll send that to my friend. I’ll send that to my mom. Like, oh, this would be great. It’s just a a way for consumers to build up that that holiday wish list. Yeah, I have an embarrassing Tik Tok shop cart. I’m thinking about I’m pretty sure it tells me like the cart is full. So I have to like move things to the favorite. I’m sure that’s me in my cart right now. Who knows? You know, we all sell such different things. We’re running out of time, but I would like to just leave with one last note. One quick little thing that you would um suggest to someone of maybe it’s a mistake that you’ve made that they can avoid and not mess up with. Does anybody have Well, you you should start that. Well, I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Is that why you say that? I’d say research your content. It’s so easy. We’re talking about how easy it is to make content, but if you just grab the shirt and then you stand still over it for 10 seconds and you hope someone’s going to buy it, that’s crap. Can I say that? Sorry. No one’s going to buy your shirt if you do that. So, just like you’re researching your designs and have good designs. If you’re not seeing success on another platform, just putting those designs on TikTok is not going to see success. Your design should be researched. every single aspect of your design, you should say, “I chose this font because I identified it. I noticed people are buying this. Chose this layout. I chose these elements.” Just like your designs, your videos should be researched. So, I say you can’t just stare at a shirt. You can toss a shirt down and point at the shirt in different places and talk about all the different aspects and be excited about it. Talk about the different selling points, its direction to garment, its comfort colors. And that right there will be so much more intriguing than just you hanging out with your phone waiting 10 seconds and hoping people buy. So research, research, research. That just comes from studying, watching videos over and over again, looking at designs over and over again, and noticing patterns. What are people doing over and over again that convert? That’s such great advice. That really is. I think so many people have learned so much. I know I have. And this has just been such a great conversation. I’ve enjoyed talking about this so much. And I really hope that we inspire people to get on Tik Tok shop. Start today. Do it scared. as we said, you know, even if you don’t know what you’re doing, none of us knew what we were doing and it works out. So, definitely something that I would recommend. So, thank you all so much for joining me for this panel and stick around cuz we of course have more discussion panels coming up that are really interesting and you’ll be sure to learn a lot more, too.
Welcome back upstairs, folks. With me today, I’ve got Michael Essic. How are you, sir? I’m doing very well, thank you, Jay. How are you? I’m doing well. It’s been such a ride and so much fun to be back here. Um, I got a couple questions though we want to get through so we can uh let you kind of explain a little bit about your POD journey. So, how did you first get started in print on demand? Well, I was uh newly married. I’d just sold a little business that I had and I was looking for a way to make some side income and I stumbled across this world of t-shirts online. And back then it was shirt day sites. It was places like uh uh Tfury and these others that would do quick sales and turnaround of t-shirts. And I thought maybe I’ll just create a few designs, see if this works. Uh, and I did and one of my designs got selected and uh, we made like a few hundred sales in like a day and I was like, “Oh, actually this this could work.” Um, so I kind of plowed into that. I uploaded to, you know, all the big t-shirt sites and got started and then realized that with companies like Printull, I could actually have my own store and I could list as many designs as I wanted and only when they sold would, you know, they be made and I could like test out all these crazy designs that I had in my head and uh yeah, it it just kind of grew from there and grown onto Amazon and Etsy and all these different places. That’s pretty interesting. I like that you mentioned that about print on a man and not having to house inventory. So my wife and I had our own print shop and we would have to kind of manage a turnover of inventory. So it’s a lot of work and you need dedicated workspace. Um you mentioned that you sold a business prior to print on demand. So what did that kind of entail and what did life look like before the freedom of print on demand? Yeah, that was just like a really simple blog that I’d made and uh sold it for not not a lot of money but it was just a little going concern. Um so yeah before it was I was working as a web designer and uh after prints on demand took me about two years to kind of grow the business to a point where it was matching my day job income. Uh so once that happened I had that great moment of going to tell my boss that you know I’m leaving. I’ve uh going to do something else and then uh yeah continued to thankfully grow the business from there and and keep going into art licensing into different routes and and ways to get these designs out there. And uh yeah it’s been great. That sounds like a lot of fun. And I know we’re going to talk about maybe the app that you built at one point, but was there a specific moment you realized that POD could be a real thing? Yeah, I actually remember being sat in a cafe uh with my wife and realizing that I could actually sell anything I wanted and use these companies to do the fulfillment and there was no real risk to me. The only investment was time and effort to get the designs up. But yeah, realizing that actually this dream maybe I’ve had for a long time of having my own brand, of having my own, you know, company uh could be realized with just a laptop and just me spitting out designs and testing things and testing the waters. So yeah, I still remember that feeling and realizing that and uh and it’s amazing to have it come to life. It’s pretty liberating in a creative way, right? That’s right. Awesome. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Jake. We are going to move over here and say what’s up to Riley. What’s up? Good to hear from you Jay. Uh yeah. So again, we’re going to kind of run through the same questions here because I think it’s really important to let the viewers know that we are just regular people, right? So like how did you first hear about and then get started with print on demand? Um okay. So I started when I was in college. I started four years ago. I was a senior in college and I was poor. Okay. Broke, broke, broke. I was on a semester abroad. Semester abroad paid for by scholarship. So, not like spending a lot of money to go on a semester abroad. Um, once a month we’re buying a big bag of rice. Once a week we’re buying some chicken. So, I’m like, I need to make money. How can I make money? So, I get on TikTok and I’m looking at some Tik Tok videos of what can I do for some income? And I come across print on demand. I’m really intrigued by it because I was studying media in college. I already had some experience with Canva. I do a lot of my designing on Canva. Um, so it was kind of like a natural next step for me. Um, started my shop, worked on it consistently, probably four to six hours a day for those first four months or so till I came back to the US and took a break for a month or so and then jumped right back into it. Awesome. And for those of you who didn’t know, Riley and I met, Riley was actually one of the Printify rock stars who won a trip out here for the first Amplified ever, which was 3 years ago. That So if I start talking about it too much, I’m going to get kind of emotional because it I don’t know. I literally was was 3 years ago posting on Facebook and being in the Facebook group and I get a message one day that I won a free trip to Europe. Are you kidding me? And and in that there’s a whole story which I’m sure we’ll all tell someday. But I had written a letter cuz I’m big into manifesting and what you put out there in the world is what you’re going to get. So I wrote a letter before I found out that I was going to the conference saying I got to meet all these big creators like Jay Duza and then I got the message that I won the free trip. And so then to be invited to come as a speaker and share my experience with it is just so full circle of like I was literally a broke 21-year-old college kid and now this is my full-time job. It’s just so so rewarding to be able to number one work for myself and number two to know that that’s something I’m capable of just because I’ve worked hard for it. Uh yeah, and I mean all the success in the world welld deserved. Thank you. Was there a point that you thought, “Holy cow, this could actually be a real thing?” I think it was my my hundth sale. So, big things always happen to me when I’m on vacation. Maybe it’s just cuz I like to go on vacation when I can, but I was I had just graduated college. I was, it was my birthday, and so I went to Mexico for a couple days. And before that, I had participated in a 30-day challenge that was listing five listings a day. And so because of that consistency, I hit my hundth sale and it was just kind of a lot because 100 different people bought from me and I saw that growth so quickly because I said I took that month off. I took that month off, got a second job and I’m like, man, I can’t do that. So I worked at a pizza restaurant for a month and then I said, just like I’ve said with Tik Tok, if I really truly believe in the potential of this business, why am I working a second job right now instead of spending this time building something for myself? And so from that April to May period, I think I went from 60 to 100 sales. That was 8 months into my journey. 7 months later, I was at 1,000 sales. Okay. Wow. It’s just exponential. It really, really is. And if you believe in the potential of it and you put that hard work in behind it, you really can see success with it, just as literally anyone who starts it and is willing to learn. I love that you said that because it’s about, you know, wanting to make sure that you are willing to put in the time to do this. So, thank you so much, Riley. We are now going to move on to somebody selling on a platform that I wish would allow Canadian sellers. With me now is Levi. How you doing, Levi? What’s up, everybody? I’m doing good. So, give us a little bit of history how you got into print on demand and uh where you sell. Well, to start out, COVID hit and I lived in Washington, which means I wasn’t in school. I was at home. And my dad told me and my brothers, he said, “If if you’re going to be at home, pick something that you can master. like take advantage of all this free time. My little brother said he was going to learn Spanish. I don’t think that really happened. My older brother um learned Python and my mom even learned how to play piano. I chose e-commerce. That’s was the birth of my print on demand brand. I didn’t start necessarily as print on demand. Um I was trying drop shipping, Amazon FBA. I was trying anything I could. I was learning as much as I could. When I got to college, um that was the outbreak of NIL. Athletes in college could make money off their likeness. So, I started doing batch designs for athletes and the best way to do it is print on demand because I live in a dorm room. I can’t house a bunch of inventory for these athletes. And then from there, um, I started making my making my own designs and eventually joined Tik Tok shop that same year, which really changed my life. That’s pretty incredible. So, just to all of you in college, maybe you know, maybe you love the program you’re in or what you’re learning. Maybe you’re looking for an early out or something completely unique to do. I mean, I would probably leverage the ability to Tik Tok shop if I was living anywhere outside of Canada ultimately. Uh, I’m going to keep going with that one, too. But, uh, was there a specific moment when you realized, “Holy cow, this is going to work and I’ve made it.” I mean, okay, I have three moments I want to reference. My first moment was right after doing NIL, I realized, you know, nobody’s talking about my college, nobody’s talking about these athletes. I need to figure out something else I can sell over the summer. So, I made my first like trend design shirt. And this was before Tik Tok shop was a thing, but I was using Tik Tok to market my designs. So, I posted this very first shirt and I posted a video about it. It got it went viral and I sold like 500 designs and I was like, you know what? I think I made it. But little did I know that less than a year later, I would be selling on Tik Tok shop. And the moment I realized that Tik Tok shop was going to change my life is I was starting getting so many sales from my dorm room that I would tell myself instead of like choosing how fast I should get ready. I’m going to get in the shower and I’ll get out when I make $100. And nobody knew what was going on. I I like kept it all to myself. But that was like life changing, especially when you have no job. And then just recently a celebrity, a NFL quarterback Caleb Williams, the cover of Madden this year posted on his Instagram account wearing my t-shirt and it’s actually pinned up top his profile if you want to check get out. Yeah. And I think that recently has been my new like, wow, this is like this is a this is the real deal. That’s an incredible story. Thank you so much, Leo, for taking the time here. I hope this inspires everybody to kind of, you know, maybe if you’re struggling with anything and not sure what you want to do, at least dabble, right? you were kind of forced into it.
Welcome to this session on positioning to win pricing strategies. In this session, we’re discussing pricing strategies to create a sustainable and a profitable business. Emphasis on the profitable because let’s be real, like you can make all the sales in the world, but if you aren’t pocketing any of that for yourself and all your hard work, what’s the point? There’s no point at all. So, we’re gonna jump right in. Let’s talk about Let’s just start with like our pricing strategies. So, I’m g I’m with John, Sarah, and Dom, and I’m gonna start with you, John. What is your core product and how much you sell it for? T-shirt Gilden 5000 is the main one, and we sell on TikTok for $18.99. $189. Okay, awesome. Sarah, what is your core product and how much you sell it for? Comfort colors 1717, so also a t-shirt. And with shipping included, just under $30, like 29 and change. Okay, Dom, what is your core product and how much you sell for? The same comfort code as 1717s. Um, we sell them for £26 British money, but I don’t know what that translates to off the top of my head. Really should have done some research, but uh, yeah, that’s my core selling product, you know. It’s really interesting. Well, I mean, my core product is actually hats. It’s funny, you guys are all apparel. I sell a lot of apparel, but my core product is hats, which I price between $30 and $40 based on the style. But apparel-wise, my core product is actually hoodies. Like I sell the most hoodies, which I actually sell for $60. But I mean, that’s kind of like, you know, branding through Shopify, one of one of like the big benefits. But, um, I’m interested to hear from you guys if you have any rule of thumb for pricing your products. Like what how do you come up with these numbers? Because they’re all very different. So, we got Tik Tok at the lowest and then we’ve got Etsy in the middle and then we got Shopify at the highest. And this is exactly what a lot of people have in their mind, right? And so, let’s hear from you, John. Yeah, Tik Tok is a impulse to purchase platform. People are running off of dopamine. They’re buying products. So, the number one rule is it has to be impulsively being able to make a decision that like, oh yeah, I can buy it. If it’s 40, $50, $60, it’s a little bit harder to get an impulsive sale. So, uh just testing around was how I land at $18.99. It depends on the niche, of course, right? Some different niches have higher buying power, right? A lot of t-shirts I sell, younger demographic, more in the Gen Z, so they don’t have as much buying power as someone who’s Gen X. So, that’s where we found our price just works the best. Cool. Sarah. Yeah. How about you? Um, well, I’m guilty of the impulse Tik Tok purchase for one. Um, yeah, on Etsy, it’s a little bit more of that like unique, one of a kind gifts that people are going for. So, you don’t have to race to the bottom pricewise. Um, but I do think first and foremost sellers want to maintain profitability. We want you to maintain profitability. So determine what your target profit is. And then um from there kind of look at your the audience and niche that you’re selling to and what that range is is typically what I do. And I like to try to aim for like mid-range, not the lowest, not the most expensive. And that’s always worked for me. Cool. Dom, how about you? How do you have a rule of thumb for pricing your products? Um generally because we’ve been in business for now eight years. The originally wanted to have the products as cheap as possible. Uh not just for like sales margins reasons in the amount that is sold but to also make it as as global as possible. The buying power of demographics from say poorer countries over ones that have like a higher amount of capital they’re they’re willing to spend. We wanted to make that balanced. And then over time with just things that come up over, you know, running a business, the prices have gone up with that, increased shipping costs, things like that. And after a while, we did reach a point where we thought to ourselves, are we proud enough of this product to put it at a higher price margin because we’re confident that people will buy it because we stand behind the art that we put on there. And by utilizing sort of our Instagram uh and to understand exactly what our does well before we even put it on an item, we’re able to sort of make a judgment call as to whether or not this is something that people are willing to pay a premium for. Right. For example, if I had to go back to something you mentioned earlier about the fact that your core product is hoodies, I noticed that your your uh prices are quite high as well. You must have found that if you price something, especially like a hoodie, at a lower price, people will question the quality of the item itself, even if they might be able to research the blank that you print on. It’s all about sort of selling like you and how proud you are of your item and how confident you are that you can sell it at that price knowing that you’re selling something that’s not, you know, flop basically. Right. Yeah. It’s so funny you mentioned that because I was really freaked out about having more premium prices at the beginning and I didn’t always have premium prices. I was actually trying to price where my competitors were kind of like mid-range or something like that. And there was a point in time like I was always hesitant about raising prices, but obviously everyone’s trying to incre increase their uh profit margins and I was targeting an affluent niche like one that has kind of like a you know higher income kind of bracket and so I felt like that was to my advantage and I was seeing other competitors doing it successfully with premium pricing. So that’s kind of at one point I was like you know what I just need to rip the bad off and try it out. This is the great thing like you can change your pricing anytime. Like you could literally go change your pricing today and if you’re like I went from a 100 sales today to zero tomorrow, change it back. Like you know like it’s it’s it’s like in real time you can be changing your pricing. But the crazy thing we did change one thing. We got rid of the uh uh manufacturer labels and we changed it out with branding labels. So no one knew it was a Bell & Canvas 30001 t-shirt or no one knew that it was you know this sweatshirt style that we were selling. And uh that was really the only change we made. And then we increased our prices significantly overnight. And what was crazy is nothing happened. Like the sales, the conversion rate was almost the same. Maybe a tiny bit less, but we were making way better profit margins. So, we were okay with that, right? Um, but, you know, that’s that’s one thing I really like about Shopify is like you have full control of the brand experience and there is like that, you know, debate between value pricing and premium pricing and a lot of people on Shopify want to be premium brands. Sorry to interrupt. I was going to say that that little touch of adding the um the tag to the back is a small price to pay for yourself. Yes. But it elevates the product significantly. Totally. And you’re also at that point as well when people look at the item, they’re not seeing the blank that you’re selling. They’re seeing your item. Exactly. Personalized. And it’s optional as well. So you don’t have to dive into doing that straight away. You can choose to do that later on if you want to elevate your product. Yeah, I 100% agree. I I call this price elasticity. And it probably I probably didn’t make up that term, but like it’s like the ability to like have a perceived value of your price. If someone sees Gilden, a Gilden tag on a t-shirt, they’re probably not going to pay $40 for it because they know it’s a Gilden. And nothing wrong with Gilden. Gilden’s awesome, but like there’s a lower perceived value of a Gilden something like a Comfort Colors 1717 where you can charge higher and people see the tag like, “Yeah, that’s that’s worth 30 bucks.” You know what I mean? Or even more. So, let’s get into um strategies. So we talked about kind of rule of thumb for pricing. I want to talk about the value versus premium pricing because we have such a wide array here. It’s kind of like premium somewhat premium and then middle of the range and then more value. Right? So when it comes to value versus premium one big question that I hear a lot I don’t know if you guys hear this as well um is that you know people are people are looking at competitors lowcost competitors and thinking they have to compete with them. Like how do I compete with someone selling a $10 t-shirt? Um, I want to hear your thoughts cuz I have a lot of thoughts on this topic. First of all, you don’t need to compete. But we’ll we’re going to I want to hear from you guys. So, what do you say to someone that says, “How do I compete with a $10 t-shirt?” And there’s a lot of those on Tik Tok. There’s a bunch of them who are selling five even $5 t-shirts on Tik Tok. It’s like a lot of people coming to me and ask, “How do I compete with these people?” One thing that’s just super unique about Tik Tok is that people aren’t going to the platform to compare. They’re going over to Tik Tok to get engaged and then they see only your product. If I want to buy a t-shirt, I go over to Etsy. I have to first I’m comparing. Okay, this design, this design, okay, that one’s cheaper. So, there’s more strategy that’s behind when it comes to Etsy. When it comes to Tik Tok, I can price my product at whatever price I want. Now, it’s just converting that person and what their buying power is to an actual customer. So, Tik Tok has leveled the playing field in so many different ways. In terms of actually pricing, you can price at whatever you want. There’s no pricing. There’s no price competition, there’s marketing competition. Right. That’s that’s really really interesting. And you mentioned that your niche is younger demographic, Gen Z, so they’re a little more price sensitive. And that’s how you came to your price. Exactly. Okay, cool. Sarah, let’s hear from you. So, value versus premium price. You’re kind of like in the middle, like you’re not the lowest, you’re not the highest. So, how do you what would you say to someone that came to you and said, “I’m selling on Etsy. How do I compete with these $10 t-shirts?” Which we know a lot of them aren’t actually $10. It’s like a sales strategy. But uh I want to hear your thoughts. Yeah. Well, to that point, I would say a lot of Etsy sellers will immediately be like, “What am I supposed to do? I see all these low prices, but I’m selling in the same niches.” So, exactly what you said. If you are brand new to Etsy selling, be sure to click into the listing to see what’s going on in that listing because a lot of times sellers are using a strategy to where they have a variation within their listing that is cheaper than all of the other variations. And so it’s possible that you’re clicking in and you’re not the cheapest uh the price that you originally saw isn’t even representative of the mockup product. And u so that’s for one. So, when you’re doing your pricing research, be sure to be mindful of what actually you’re comparing. You know, make sure it’s an apples to apples comparison when you’re doing your kind of pricing research. And then I would also just say like the the pricing strategies on Etsy can can vary. If you’re brand new, don’t worry about pricing strategies. Price for profit. That’s that’s my advice on Etsy. when you start to get those consistent sales, Etsy sellers do like to use the different pricing strategies and one of them can be to launch your prices at a break even um you know or even lose some money um at first and then once they get those sales rolling in they’ll gradually increase the prices. So just be mindful that that’s happening too, right? I I think that that’s so important because when I go on Etsy I do a lot of research on Etsy um and I always see those crazy low prices. is it’ll be like a comfort colors tee. It’s like $4.99. And I’m like absolutely not. No one is selling a comfort colors tea on Etsy for $4.99. You click onto list listing, you go down, it’s like digital print $4.99 and then like the actual cover colors is like $29.99 or $25.99, which I mean that’s that that’s a like really reasonable price. You know, I think about my high volume seller students uh all Shopify brands and they’re selling comfort colors TE’s between $30 and $35 on average in high volumes. And um so yeah, it’s yeah, I’m really glad you mentioned that because especially for those on Etsy, it’s like discouraging. You look and you’re like, how am I supposed to compete with a $4.99? Like that’s like half the cost of the blank, you know, before the printing and everything else. So Dom, I want to hear your thoughts. Uh you have like the most premium of pricing of the three. You’re iconic Shopify brand. Um so what would you say to someone that says, “How do I compete with $10 t-shirts, especially at your price point?” There’s um hundreds of websites out there that sell absolute cramp, right? And you cannot really in a way price-wise compete with that if someone wants to just spend $10 on a t-shirt. Mhm. I tend to find that people only spend $10 on a t-shirt like once and then they get it home and it shrinks or the design falls off and they can’t send it back or return it. So I think that instead of trying to compete necessarily with price, you got to compete with reputation, trust and build like a rapport with your customers to let them know that uh if you buy from yourself, then you can be looked after. You can have easy returns and also by uh harvesting reviews from customers, encouraging them to review your products, encouraging them to review your brand on something like Trust Pilot, people will come to the website, see that these are real reviews and know that it’s safe to buy from you and not feel like they’re going to get a poor quality product, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s so true. And the thing is like you’ve built this really cool brand with a lot of super fans who love your brand, love why it exists, and they keep buying from you again and again and they’re probably not even looking at the lowcost competitors. A lot of people when they look at a brand and they feel like this brand was made for me, that’s who they want to support. I have boughten t-shirts and paid more a lot more for the t-shirt because it was a brand that aligned with my values, passions, and beliefs. Even knowing there were knockoffs from that brand that I could have bought for like half the price, I didn’t want to support that personally. And you know, I would consider myself a super fan of that other brand. And so that’s the brand I wanted to support, the one that I felt like really aligned with my values, passions, and beliefs. So, let’s hang out here for a bit. I want to talk about differentiation and how you increase the perceived value because my thoughts on this are uh do not compete on price. You will never win. It’s a downhill race and someone will always be willing to sell for cheaper than you. So, it’s just not a good way to build a profitable and sustainable brand. But the good news is that there’s so many ways that you can actually stand out, increase your perceived value and charge those premium prices and get a lot of people happy to pay them, right? And that’s what it’s all about. So, uh, let’s start with you, John. Like, what would you say for how do you increase the perceived value? So, you sell your t-shirts for like pretty pretty low cost, but there’s way lower costs than you. So, how do you increase that perceived value? Yeah, the big thing on TikTok, as I mentioned before, is marketing. That’s the strategy behind how I beat other people and how sellers who are doing well on TikTok, they beat people because of the because of the marketing that they do, not the the actual pricing. So, one of the things that we do, we can talk about more in a second, is the the urgency value that I have and actually converting people uh that are actually seeing that product with a flash sale and actually focus on the urgency of the marketing. Other things that can be done more for the perceived value is also the quality that’s shown inside the video. Um, for example, just even showing it on a clothes hanger, different styles of the videos that present it on different people. One thing that we do with a lot of our creators, uh, me as a 23-year-old showing a t-shirt, I’m going to definitely attract 23-year-olds. Of course, I mentioned a little bit earlier, Gen Z is a lot of who we’re seeing, we’re also expanding into and going to millennials and also going over to Gen X. And so, it’s just about getting other people seeing the product. And the only way for me to do that is with other creators or we can talk about even more is AI. I can just get a 45year-old man or a woman to be wearing my t-shirt and I can just clone myself and that can just ultimately attract people through the marketing into my funnel who I’m actually looking to sell to. Right. Okay. I I want to get to them with their answers, but I want to hang out here for a minute because I think a lot of people listen like, “Wait a sec.” What? Like I open up a can of worms just like give us like the cliff notes on how this will work. So you’re a Gen Z. You wear a shirt for Gen Z’s or like hey that guy looks like me. I’m going to click and he’s wearing a cool shirt. Uh, and they’re more likely to buy because that’s the target demographic. So, how would you get like a millennial Gen X? Like, tell me how you’re using AI on Tik Tok shop to get these people like to stop the scroll. Let me reiterate and let me say it again cuz I probably went a little two steps too fast is meta and you you’ve noticed on meta. It’s all about messaging and targeting. If you are a if I’m a 23-year-old in the camera, meta is going to see like, okay, 23-year-old, I’m going to match this video up with another 20-year-old who’s going to be showing inside the content. Uh, and we see that all the time and inside of our feed. We typically see around the same age range of ourselves in the content that we see. Now, if I want to expand my market and get to a higher buying power audience, all I have to do is just switch into another PE person by using AI and I just snap into that person. And so that’s just what we we focus on right now. And it’s just it’s terrifying with AI stuff. How do you switch into another person though? I know I’m going to drag this on, but like I just feel like those listener are probably like wondering the same thing. Like how is there that you use like the main one is Higfield. So Higfield’s like the go-to. I’m not sponsored by them. I don’t I I just literally buy from them every single every single day. I use to make my content. So Higfield’s a go-to. And of course for prompting Higsfield and getting that content. Um, well, first I’m starting out with a reference frame and then I’m I’m just animating that video. So, I’m using Chat GBT just to make the images. Chat GBT is the best image generator right now out there with her GBT image 3 and then turning into that into a motion. All I’m doing is just getting a prompt, tossing it into Higfield with the reference image of let’s say a lady who’s 45 years old wearing my t-shirt and I just tell uh Higfield through Cense 2.0 or 2.5 is the model that we use. Give it a simple prompt. Please create a UGC style video that’s 8 seconds long that demonstrates my product in a very effective way. And I just click on generate. Now I got a video post on TikTok. There you go. With that target target demographic, more likely to stop the scroll. That’s awesome. Yeah, I I use KD to do something similar. They have like templates for UGC videos. Um, and you can modify those templates. But what’s nice is that the prompt is completely built for you and then you can just be like change out the age on the prompt and then it generates within a couple minutes and you’ve got a UGC style video that looks really realistic%. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you for that. Thank you for digging a little deeper on that. Sarah, how do you differentiate? Like you’re not the lowest cut uh no lowest price. So, how do you get capture those sales from the people that you know they might even be seeing that there’s something similar for lower price and they know it’s Comfort Colors? Yeah, I would say on Etsy, um, a majority of the sales do come from, you know, page one results. And so, um, when someone clicks into your listing, you want to be sure that, um, if you earn that click, your brand on Etsy, even though it’s not as branded as, you know, a Shopify brand, but you do want to have this cohesiveness because it builds trust, as Dom already said, like that trust factor makes a huge difference with just earning the sale, you know? people want to hand their money to someone that they’re like, “Oh, other people, you know, good reviews. Other people are liking this brand.” And so I think the reviews itself is great, but if you’re working towards those initial reviews as a beginner seller, having those listing images look like professional and, you know, have that cohesion is important because there’s a lot of people who are trying to get rich quick, you know, tomorrow. And so they open their shop and then they will just slap a bunch of listing images that don’t really, you know, help the buyer out, doesn’t even answer their questions. and that can just you don’t wanna you don’t want to hand your money over to them. So, I think in general that like trust factor and um makes a big difference. I think that’s so true. Like uh it’s so funny. Etsy has such an aesthetic and a lot of the high volume sellers are using the exact same mockups bought from Etsy, which hey, whatever is working is working. Do more of that, right? Like the best strategy is what works. And a lot of people are having success doing that. But you know what’s interesting is a lot of these people that throw up these mockups without intention that could be costing them sales because even though most of the time it’s the actual design that evokes emotion and relatability and leads to the sale. I I think of the mockups as an enhancer like this is this is likely to swing them. If someone’s on the fence they’re like and then they see this beautiful aesthetically pleasing mockup that looks like them. uh they’re more likely to buy it than if it was like a generic like white background mockup, right? So, um yeah, I think I feel like Etsy especially imagery is massive. Absolutely huge. For sure. And I’ll just add to that like you mentioned that you know it is the design and the product that people actually you know when they choose to make this the purchase but I think whatever platform no matter like if it’s a more of an impulse purchase or more of an intentional purchase it is always about how they perceive the value of the design whether it’s trendy and funny whether it’s very emotional and meaningful it is it comes down to that. So, the price, you know, I’ve heard Etsy sellers ask like, “What do I price this at?” It really does. It matters that your design is good and that your audience wants it um more than a specific like price. That’s so true. And there’s a really good quote that says, uh, bad products can’t be sold by great marketing and great marketing can’t sell bad products. Did I say that right? Bad products can’t be sold by Yeah, exactly. I know what you’re saying. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know if I said that right, but So, there you go. But essentially the the the premise is that you know if the product is not good it doesn’t matter what you price it at. Like the best market in the world will not sell that product. If the product is good you can even have mediocre like marketing like not that good marketing and still make a ton of sales. Ideally you want both. You want really good marketing and you want a really good product. But Dom, over to you. I want to hear because of course you sell at the more premium pricing. How do you increase perceived value for your brand and get people to pay a little bit more? Well, benefits of running a Shopify store is that you have complete creative control to how that store looks, is perceived, and essentially you’re building it from the ground up. You’ve already differentiated yourself from sort of being next to over competitors on say um Etsy for example, and you’ve already got people visiting your website. So, how do you gain more value when them visiting you in the first place? For us, it’s um we have like a blog post. We have like several different meme pages where we push funny pictures and the art that we do. And we try and make more of a community vibe than just having sort of a web store. We want it to be a brand that happens to sell clothes. And that’s always been way more important to me than feeling like I’m a business boy. I much prefer to think of myself as sort of a community builder who just enjoys talking to people, right? like um one of the other things that we have is uh like a very large news newsletter following and I use that almost like someone would use as a substack and if you’re putting that extra work into it, you’re retaining customers because you’re constantly engaging with them in ways that they actually want to communicate with you. So you’re creating a kind of parasocial relationship with them, but in a way that’s healthy and not strange and they come knock on my door and try and kill me. So yeah. Uh yeah, it’s funny. I know that you have like a very unique way of connecting with your audience which we talked about earlier. Um so for me I hate customer support. I hate it. I don’t want to do it. And so whenever I start a brand that’s the first thing I outsource find someone to take over customer support so I can just focus on my zone of genius which is like you know brand creation, product creation and marketing. But you actually still do customer support as a high volume seller. Yeah. Uh I do. Um, I think it’s because because I’ve always done it and there’s a way that I communicate that isn’t really you can’t really teach it. Um, you know, just my sense of humor. Um, and I think that people when they review the website, they can go to the about page there I am and they can they can also directly communicate with me. So I mean if you compare it to say like a Twitch streamer has direct communication with their audience. the fact that a customer can know that when they email the company, they’re directly talking to me, right? And then that builds that level of trust again as well. And firstly, it doesn’t bother me cuz a lot of things in our space is quite automated. And there is elements where, you know, you might find something more fun than other elements. Like you said, you just hate dealing with customer service. Um, but the benefits of doing your own customer service is you can be as rude as you want to people and nobody can tell you off. But locally, everyone I communicate with is really really nice. I like it. It’s rewarding. And your brand is kind of a funny sarcastic brand. So like people are buying funny sarcastic shirts. So hearing like funny sarcastic from you if if it you know if you make some joke and the response like that’s what I would that’s why I bought this t-shirt. This is what I expect. Do you actually enjoy doing the customer support? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. cuz I was going to be like, “Oh, maybe you can train like AI to talk in your voice and give you responses and then, you know, end off with Dom.” Yeah, you can. But I think it would it would uh it would get to a point where I just I wasn’t really happy with with the output. I think Sure. Sure. I mean, as long as you enjoy it, that’s cool. Maybe that’s a part of your creative outlet as a brand owner because a lot of brand owners do really hate that and that’s the first thing that a lot of people outsource. That’s really cool that you do that and it like definitely uh brings in the human element which is part of like it’s very like aligned with like a brand, you know, the branded experience. So, all right, let’s talk about pricing strategies. I want to kind of shift gears because there’s so many pricing strategies out there. There’s like the price anchoring, you know, like I see this on Etsy all the time where it’s like $34.99 for this comfort colors t-shirt, but it’s on sale for $24.99. And then every day when you look at it, it’s always on sale for $24.99. You’re like, “Wait a sec.” like it is it’s like an evergreen sale, right? But obviously it’s to increase FOMO and scarcity and urgency to get people to buy right away. And most people to be fair are not looking at your products every day. Like they probably wouldn’t notice if they went in and saw that once they’d probably be like, “Oh, I should get it now.” If they go in in 5 days, see it’s on sale, they might not be like, “That’s still on sale. It said the sale is ending in like 24 hours.” Right? So, I want to talk about pricing strategies. The strikethrough prices, price anchoring, you know, having different tier products like maybe you have like a Gilden uh Gilden t-shirt that’s at a low price and then you have like a comfort color 1717 at a higher price and it increases the perceived value of the comfort colors. Gives them the option of paying more for a comfort colors but also captures the demand for the people that are a little more budget conscious. So, how about you? How do you use price anchoring or any pricing strategies? Yes, great question. So, it’s funny you mentioned like the daily flash sales on Etsy. I do hourly flash sales. So, people lands on a listing and they see maybe 45 minutes, 23 minutes until the price goes from $18.99 to $25.99. And so, that’s what I do on Tik Tok. And you can have AI just automate that entire thing on Tik Tok, which is really nice. We also do a couple other things. Of course, a uh you know, buy two get free shipping. So, it’s a big one. I put a threshold. So, if they get if they buy two t-shirts, it goes over $30 and the customer get free shipping. There’s other things that you can also do when it comes to of course we have Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Definitely a lot of brands right now should be focused on trying to at least anchor the price a little higher and so that you can especially if you have a more established brand so that you can really anchor it and then drop that price heavily. A lot of Amazon brands you’ll see in the weeks leading up to Prime Day or the weeks leading up to Black Friday, they’ll raise their prices a little bit and then they’ll just drop them all at once. So, we’re starting to do that right now. Yeah, it’s so funny. I’ve seen a meme about that where it’s like countdown to Black Friday t-shirt is $29.99 on Black Friday. The t-shirt is like showing that it’s like $49.99 and it’s striked through and it says $29.99. So, I was like, “Yay, it’s Black Friday. I’m saving, but it’s actually the exact same price.” I thought that meme was hilarious and like so relevant for a lot of like shops. It’s real. That happens. I know it’s a joke, but it’s like and scarcity and urgency are effective sales strategies. That’s the truth. They They really are. Um, okay. Sarah, what kind of pricing strategies do you have? Yeah. Well, I’m pro the sales as well. Um, uh, daily sales or weekly sales. I see that higher conversion rates for sure with a sale on Etsy. Now, not necessarily like this is the cheapest you’ll ever get it kind of sale where I’m still creating the the urgency and the and the FOMO for sure, but also maintaining like what Dom said about kind of like the mistrust someone has with just a $7 shirt versus, you know, a more expensive one. I think that um Etsy wanting to maintain more of that premium brand um you don’t want to, you know, price it too high in order to put a sale on that’s too low, you know. Um anyway, but I definitely recommend sales. And then kind of more of an indirect pricing strategy would just be listing within your same niches and audiences. Once you start expanding products, you’re going to, you know, increase your average order value with, you know, they bought, especially Etsy is very occasion and event focused a lot. So, you know, baby’s first Christmas, girls trip, whatever it is. And they buy the shirt and oh, you have a tote bag and oh, you have a mug for it, too. And that can be a great way you can Etsy has like a bundling feature to, you know, to add those in. So, people in your shop know like this is kind of niche you sell in. I know if I come back here, I’ll and I loved my purchase. I know if I come back here, you’re going to have more awesome stuff for me. Especially for the next year, a lot of like again these milestones and events, they’ll come back and shop because, oh, I’m going on the same vacation next year. I’m going to come back to this shop. Yeah. No, that’s that’s powerful. Uh Dom, what kind of pricing strategies do you employ? Um bundles are fantastic. Uh there’s a lot of options on Shopify for many different types of checkout experiences. So, you can tailor one to be what really suits for you. M for example with ourselves at the moment when you buy a t-shirt it will use AI to work out which t-shirts have been bought with those uh which have been bought together before and then advertise that t-shirt in the checkout for say 5% off tiny thing but it’s you know mentally puts the customer into that point where they’re like oh I’m getting a deal here and then what you’re trying to do is push them over the free shipping line because that will just even though you obviously you don’t get the shipping you you you’re massively increasing like the average order value. Right. Right. Yeah. I know. That’s that’s so powerful and I feel like a lot of shopify brands do that. You know, they’ll bundle. They’ll have the free shipping thresholds to incentivize people to spend more. Um that’s that’s all powerful stuff for making more sales and getting people to spend more. So guys, we are out of time. That was so much fun. I feel like we could definitely keep talking about this, but I’m going to send it over to the green room and I will hand it over to you guys. Buddy, welcome back to the Roman camp. My name is Levi. This is Crystal Lee. And whether you realize it or not, if you’re starting a POD brand, you’re becoming an entrepreneur. You’re running your own business. So, I’m going to be asking some questions to fellow entrepreneurs about entrepreneurship. Crystal, first I have to ask, are those glasses prescription? They are. They’re very prescription. I can’t see anything. Probably the coolest prescription glasses I’ve ever seen in my life. But back to entrepreneurship. Um, what is one thing that inspired you to become an entrepreneur in the first place? I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. My dad was an entrepreneur and he was like losing businesses. I hope he is not watching this by the way. And so I said, I’m never going to do this. And then I got a job and then they didn’t want to pay me. I think we can all relate to that. And then I had to do it. So here I am. Out of need she became an that that is not what you hear from most entrepreneurs. But I think that is true for a lot of people. And I think Crystal’s just someone who figures it out at the end of the day. Second thing I want to ask, what is a brand or something you look to for inspiration as an entrepreneur? This is going to be controversial, but those Kardashians, they know how to sell. They know how to market. They know how to market. They know how to get you to the product. So that Kylie, that Kim, they know what they’re doing. Yeah. For youngest billionaire ever, I think, is Kylie Jenner. Verify that. No, absolutely not. But what I say is usually pretty correct. Um, what about for like clothing, dressing yourself? What is your favorite brand on that side of things? Dang, that’s hard. Uh, I like Adidas. I got my little Can you see them? Cow shoes. Moo. We call those moos. I like Adidas. My mom likes Adidas, too. It depends on the day. Okay. And last thing about entrepreneurship, what is one skill you have that makes you a good entrepreneur? Man, I’m never giving up. I am never giving up. I have been on the like ends of like I don’t want to do this anymore and then I cry a little bit and then I get right back up. I would say resilience is something that you see or some people call it perseverance. Something you see in every good entrepreneur. There’s a lot of doors that need to be broken through in order to be successful. And she clicks. She’s got it. Okay, come with me. We’re going to walk to someone else. We’re gonna find someone else in the green room. Oh, Riley is over here. I’m going to ask Riley the next questions about entrepreneurship. Riley, um, introduce yourself. Tell us what you do as an entrepreneur. Uh, my name is Riley. I’m an Etsy seller. I’ve been selling for four years. Just started on Tik Tok. Tick tock. I do a lot. Etsy, Tik Tok, popup. I teach now in the sellers club. I just started a YouTube channel and put some teaching content on there as well. What do I do as an entrepreneur? Whatever it takes, I guess. What is one skill you have as an entrepreneur that you think makes you successful? I think I’m willing to learn. Obviously, you don’t know everything, but it when you’re the owner of a business, you wear all the hats, at least until you have some sort of employees. But most POD employees, POD businesses don’t have employees. So, being willing to learn and know what you don’t know, but figure out how to learn it is going to be what what makes the biggest difference. Those who don’t see success and they say, “Well, print on demand doesn’t work.” are not the ones that are really diving deep and paying attention and learning. I think something that entrepreneurs say all the time is like be a sponge. There’s always someone who knows more than you. Even if you think you know everything, there’s always someone that you can take something from. Um I’m going to ask you one more question, Riley. Riley, what is something you’re excited for coming up in Q4 as an entrepreneur? I think having started a new platform, it’s Tik Tok. and having heard like the potential of Q4 since the beginning. What they’ve always said is you can make in the last 3 months of the year what you can make in the first nine months of the year, which is completely crazy. Um, call me out on this, someone check back with me in Sellers Club come December, but I think I’m going to make six figures this Q4. And that’s like mindblowing to me. And that’s not like me as, oh, I’ve been selling for four years. That’s me. I started a Tik Tok shop 5 months ago. Like I’m I’m me and I I don’t know. The potential is just crazy for a normal person. Yeah, you heard it here first. Okay, let’s stay on the move here. It’s called the roaming camera, not the stagnant camera. Um, I mean, I think the next person I should talk to is Mr. John over here. John, um, looks like he’s we caught him mid work, but introduce yourself. Tell us what you do as an entrepreneur. John. Uh, my name is John Ryder. I run, of course, my own brand, Tik Tok shop. I also run a consulting company and an agency. Mr. Do it all, they say. John, what is one thing that you think makes you a good entrepreneur? Um, I would say it’s just thinking at all times. I don’t know anything. I’m like always wanting to learn. I never think I’m the biggest person in or the smartest person in the room and just focusing every single day on the things that are the bottlenecks inside my business. That’s a big thing. Like attacking the bottleneck every single day. So basically just called himself humble and he said that’s what’s good about me. I don’t know if that is humble. Yeah, being humble probably does make you a better person and a better entrepreneur. Um, John, another thing as an entrepreneur, who is someone that you’ve looked up to or maybe someone who inspired you to become an entrepreneur in the first place? Yeah, has to be my mom. My mom is by far she is someone she’s immigrated from Vietnam over to the United States after Vietnam war. She was a boat person and she grew up in America. Had a crazy story. Definitely one to make a movie about and for another for another one of these interviews. But she inspired me every single day to just push myself and just get to the next level of myself that I don’t even know is possible. Yeah. I think something that I enjoy about being an entrepreneur is the freedom. It’s there’s a reliance on yourself, but at the same time there’s a freedom where you can kind of do what you want and that’s a blessing and a curse. John, when you’re looking at entrepreneurship as a whole, being your own boss in a way, what is something that you value the most? Time. Time is finite on this planet. So number one thing is time. I know we were talking a little bit ago about just being able to outsource the things that you don’t want to do. Outsourcing an editor or being able to outsource media buying, be able to do all these things so you can actually buy back time. That’s all of our goals is to be able to leverage other things, systems, other people to be able to scale our business and buy us back time to spend with our loved ones. That was a big thing for me. I think right now we’re in an age where there’s a lot of change in technology. You mentioned something called systems. I think to the average person, they might not know how entrepreneurs leverage systems to become better at their jobs or to scale their business as a whole. Can you explain maybe one system that you use on a day-to-day basis that has made the biggest impact on your business? Yeah, has to be AI. So, in our last session I just did that just came back up and Levi’s already hit me up is uh the flash sales like having hourly flash sales and I have AI setting those up every single actually I started at the beginning of a month and I set them up for a whole month. So that’s one of the things uh systems when it comes to affiliate outreach. I know we talked about affiliates on the shop talk. We were talking about how it’s a volume game with creators. Instead of me messaging every single affiliate one by one, I have an AI bot that sends out thousands of messages every single week to creators. And so it’s a big one that I focus on to just get widespread net that buys me back more time to either focus on the business or be able to have a better life. Think about how much time it would take to message a thousand people in order to get on the same page and market your products. nearly impossible. But with today’s technology, it’s something you see almost every big player doing. I want to move on from just technology for a second and talk to you about a new currency we’re seeing every day, data. I think in pair pairing with technology being able to leverage such high volume of things like messaging and sales, we’re getting we’re getting access to more data than we ever had before. What is one way as an entrepreneur that you use data to enhance your business? There’s a lot there’s there’s a lot. One of the things that we look at is conversion rates on Tik Tok. Uh being able to scale content is one of those things is it’s so up and down. There’s so many different roller coasters and what do you read? How do you read it? So just reading data on conversion rates on Tik Tok. What is my conversion rate? How many videos am I getting posted every single day? Are creators posting enough videos every single day? Do I need to send out more samples to creators because they’re not getting enough videos out? Are those videos that those creators are we getting a lot of good videos out but they’re not converting very well? Is it the problem with the creators? Should I shift focus on to a different style of creator content? So, it’s really about the video engagement and the conversion rates that I look at that optimize the success and the scalability. Yeah, I think obviously Tik Tok shop is a content engine. So, a lot of the data we look at revolves around that content. But even if you sell on Etsy, even if you sell on Shopify, don’t think that data isn’t valuable. Data will show you what products to sell, what products to make more of, what products to promote more. All of these things can grow your business and help scale the winners. Um, one last quick question for you, John. How have you liked your time at Amplified? I loved it. It’s been awesome. I’ve just went for the past hour and a half. We had so much fun on T the Tik Tok one. We had a great one. The pricing, I’m having a ton of fun. I’m also learning a ton, too. And a lot of people look at me like, “What else could you learn?” I learn something every single time I walk into a room with people like this. So, I’m having a ton of ton of fun. And hopefully everyone out else out there is also having a ton of fun as well. As am I. Well, that’s it for the roaming camera on this time. We’ll see you in a little bit.
Welcome back to our discussion panel where we’re going to be talking about all things SEO and how you can improve your SEO regardless of what platform you are selling on. And for this discussion, I’m here with Jay and Nyla from dostore and we’re going to give you some tips and hopefully things you can do to get more traffic and sales by targeting the right people with your products. So, I’m so happy you guys are here joining me today. I’m going to get right into just talking about research because I think that that’s a really big part of finding who we’re actually selling to. So Jay, I’d love to know how important it is for keyword research before creating and listing products. How do you put that into your research process? So what I think a big mistake is that people do especially newer sellers is they’ll go and put all their time and trust and you know everything they’re doing based around search volume on specific keywords and now you can even do that right inside your Etsy dashboards with the marketplace insights for example. It’s great to have those uh numbers there so you know what is working and what is you know helpful. Um, but leveraging the high searched volume keywords for the sake of leveraging, you know, keywords isn’t necessarily going to get you the sales or eyes on the prize for the right customer if you don’t know the niche enough. So, I would dive into, you know, understanding the niche, use the idioms, the quips, the the lingo they use ultimately, uh, for your listing titles and your tags and things like that, right? That’s where I think that you’ll have the most success that way because you’re speaking the language of the customer who is inevitably going to be the one wearing the end gift, right? And then keep it a little bit more surface like go a little more broad when we’re talking to um the audience because it’s not always the college grad who’s going to be wearing the like who will be doing the shopping for example. It might be their parents that are buying them this awesome thing. and for them to be able to buy the item, they’re gonna have to understand what it is they’re searching for in order to buy that for their college grad kit. Such a good point. I think sometimes, especially for me when I first got started with listing products as I mainly an Etsy seller and when you’re posting things on a marketplace like that, you lose sight of what someone might actually be like typing into the search bar. Exactly what you just said. Whereas I’m selling a shirt with something on it, that’s what my mind thinks someone’s searching for. But maybe it’s a gift. Maybe it’s something for somebody that’s in that specific niche that you really have to have an open mind with that. So with your when deciding your keywords, would you say that you go about it looking at competitive listings at all or is it more so what you feel someone would type in? I I would go I would I would implore everybody to trust their gut a little more than they already do. Um, so there has to be a gut feeling, but in the beginning when you don’t really understand and you’re not entirely sure, you looking at competitor listings is a great way to see what they’re doing that you are not doing right ultimately. Um, you know, any big brand out there will tell you that they study the marketplace. They study their competitors. They want to one up the game and understand, you know, what their competitors are doing right that maybe they’re not or where they could improve. So yeah. And do you do you feel the same about that or is there something from the customer’s perspective that you think? Yes, totally. And I think I made that mistake when I started as well. So um I started this company called Maison Charm which is a decoding um cream business. Again this sounds very very complicated but what it basically means is that you put sort of decoding cream on um bases like a phone case or a photo frame or whatever and then stick glue on it, right? And then when I was selling um I realized that I was optimizing for keywords like decoding cream blue or kavai or you know the themes that um my products were based on but actually when you think about the customer what the customer is looking for is a solution to a problem that they have right um so mostly the the TG was uh parents or children children looking for just you know fun activities to do uh parents looking for you know cool activities to have on slumber parties for their children and that’s essentially what I should have been optimizing for and instead what I was trying to look at was look at product attributes, look at features, um you know look at technical things and I think uh that’s a trap that I I really really want to double click on. Um people generally, you know, start to think about how a seller talks to another seller. Instead, I think what works best is to think about your customer and how your customer is thinking about that problem. You know, what is the outcome that they’re looking for? What is the solution that they want? Um try to think about it from that perspective. And when you look at it from that lens, you realize that there’s a huge gap in between what it is that you’re um trying to do and what the other person is trying to to do to to make a purchase for, right? Um jewelry also has the same example, right? Um when you’re thinking about say goldplated or gold fil jewelry, I don’t think anybody understands that. What I’m looking for as a customer is, you know, jewelry that doesn’t get spoiled or lasts longer. So try and use those phrases in your keyword research. Um, I think a great way to also do that is to potentially just use the platform and the autopop populate on the platform that can help guide that research, right? It’s a free way to do it. Um, so why not just utilize that and type in maybe say jewelry and let the the platform, whatever it is, Etsy, Amazon, um, Google, let it guide you on what comes in next. I think that’s a free way to do it. I think that’s such a great point because if I’m shopping for jewelry, for example, for my mom, let’s say, or my sister or something like that or my wife, um I wouldn’t necessarily be looking at using words like goldplated or um you know, the the amount of carrot in the gold or the herring bone pattern. These are words I’ve learned over time, but I’m looking for, you know, a nice necklace for mom, a gift for mom, like the more broad overarch arching keywords, right? Because I I feel like the way we search naturally as buyers and not sellers is, you know, first we’re going to look, it’s an example I was talking about yesterday with somebody else, but we’re going to search for uh funny cat shirts and then we’re going to see a whole bunch of cat shirts that maybe now we’ve seen a black cat or a Siamese cat or a tabby cat and then all of a sudden we realize, well, oh, we’re actually searching for a Siamese cat shirt, right? So now you’re going to get into a little more technical. So, don’t be afraid to go broad with, you know, what it is, who it’s for, and then potentially the occasion, right? Answer the who, what, where, why, when, and you can’t screw it up. You can, and you can always update it later, which we’re going to touch on cuz I I have a whole thing about with especially selling on platforms like Etsy and how you need to give it a little time for the algorithm to really put the product in front of the right person regarding SEO. But with the research aspect, I think it’s very important, especially for somebody that’s maybe newer to selling or not sure how to structure a title of their product or a description. It is okay to to type these things in. Look at what’s coming up. Look at what other people are saying because it will give you a different perspective that maybe you’re not thinking about for adding and then even adding different SEO in for holidays coming up. I know we talked about that in sessions before if maybe like adding gift or a specific holiday, trying things out in your actual SEO can be beneficial too. And I guess knowing when to update the SEO as well. If when we have it to where is this actually working? you sell on Etsy. I’m sure you know what I mean by when you post a listing, it’s better to let it kind of have its time, see what works before updating it. And typically, how long would you say that you do that when testing out some SEO? Minimum of like 60 to 90 days. I mean, it’s no secret. Everybody will tell you that all the YouTube people out there are preaching it takes 60 to 90 days to have, you know, Etsy to kind of analyze, digest your listing enough to know when to surface it in search results. That said, it can take as quick as hours or minutes to get a sale if it’s, you know, what somebody actually wants. Flip side of that though is like at the 90day mark, a lot of new sellers will be, okay, well, we hit 90 days. I’ve got no views, no sales. I got to re, you know, revamp this whole title and tags thing. At the end of the day, what you’re doing is, you know, you’re resetting the clock on something that may only may have only sold in a few months from now. Like one of my best sellers on Etsy, it took six months to sell for the first time and then it started blowing up. So, what I would say is like don’t just rely on Etsy SEO in terms of titles and tags because there’s so much more to it. with Etsy. Now, you know, the the listing photo matters. Where the person is searching from matters. The time of day, their search history matters. Their previous purchase history matters. The attributes in your listing. You don’t have to have birthday shirt in there 10 times when it’s already selected as the occasion in there, right? So, uh, pump the brakes on making big changes, if I could put it in a nutshell. And if you’re going to test something that may get a little bit, that’s when I would say duplicate the listing and try a different set of, you know, title and tags. Absolutely. That’s something I do a lot is duplicating a listing, maybe even changing the first photo, too, to kind of see like, okay, is this something that’s more clickable and, you know, just testing out different keywords to just try things out? Especially on a marketplace. On a standalone website, I think it it can be a bit different because the traffic’s coming from where you’re bringing that traffic in. But just ultimately keeping it simple, clear, and concise, especially the newer updates we get on Etsy where it’s not the same as it used to be where they want you to fill out every single thing and it just needs to be relevant, short and sweet to what the product is. And then even adding in SEO and keywords that are helpful in your tags, in your descriptions, in your different attributes, and not overdoing it, I think is a really important thing. One thing you mentioned there is like not overdoing it, not spending too much time. I think it’s so relevant because no matter how many times you optimize your SEO and by way of titles and tags, if the design isn’t on point, you’re just making your crappy design easier to find by more people, it does not equate to sales. Absolutely. For sure. And I know we talked a lot about Etsy, so maybe we can put some knowledge for people that are selling on other platforms too. when it comes to selling on maybe a standalone store like a Shopify store. Um, do you have any tips on that on how maybe somebody can, you know, update their SEO to reach more people whether it’s in their description or their photos or even something like the name of their store or something that you can give some insight on? Yeah, I think um the base principles continue to remain the same whether you know you’re on a platform or you move out. I think the nuances obviously keep shifting um but the base principles are are still the same, right? Right. So I think one thing I definitely say is um look at what the customer is looking for and then target that. Um I think the second most important thing would be um like Jay said to try and look at high volume keywords but also try and look at high CPC and low competition keywords. Right? This is something that Neil Patel who’s literally known as the guru of SEO uh when it comes to at least platform based marketing. He’s the one who talks about it. um and this is quoted from him uh that you know you want to make sure that the the CPC is high enough because that means that an advertiser is actually willing to pay those dollars um for that particular product right and obviously you want to have low competition as well because it doesn’t matter if the the volume is high enough if the competition also continues to be high there’s no way that you’re going to rank um and another thing that I would say is that when you’re starting out you would try to get whatever advantage that you can um when you’re just in that phase of getting started and if that comes in the form of a domain name I would say grab onto it right um so I work for dotstore and using a dotstore domain does give you better SEO advantages dotstore is essentially just the um extension so instead of having your website end in a.com you can have your website end in a dotstore so www say for example amplifiedstore um would essentially be the URL and that can give Google a very very clear signal that this website is an online store and therefore it signifies that you’re selling something and that means better results. And of of course we’ll get into the data of this in a bit. Um but just wanted to say that you can literally sell more on a dot store. Ah that’s really great and it’s lets you know it’s a store you know versus just a website that maybe someone isn’t selling stuff on or you know there’s so many different websites out there and how who really knows if you’re selling products or not. And I think the overall key with SEO in general, we think, okay, yeah, our title, our descriptions, all of this, but also in aspects of marketing. That’s somewhere that I kind of struggled at first. Whether you’re running ads or you’re doing organic traffic, it’s also something you have to keep in mind that’s relevant to your product of if you’re posting let’s say on social media or on Etsy like or not Etsy, sorry, Pinterest, something like that to work the same way of, you know, getting those keywords that’s going to bring you traffic that’s relevant to what it is that the product that you’re selling. So definitely I I use it a lot in marketing, especially with Pinterest. I’m a huge Pinterest marketer, but I know that’s not Yeah. about if um you’ve got people in with a certain promise, just make sure that you’re fulfilling on that promise on your listing or on your website as well, right? Because that can be the fastest way to lose a customer. Bring them in with certain keywords and then not have that um particular, you know, uh benefit or the the outcome that they desire on your listing. Um so I think that’s critical as well. Well, that’s a great point and that when it comes back to keyword stuffing is what you know in the industry we call that when you’re just basing you know the keywords based on I guess buyer intent or search volume as opposed to what is actually a good fit for the listing because not only are you going to surface your listing in search results because you’re paying for the ad on it or the cost per click. Uh you’re going to get clicked on, they’re going to look at it, they’re going to realize that it’s not what they bargain for, it’s not what they intended to, you know, land on. Uh, and then now you’re paying to sync your listing in search results because if it doesn’t convert, it’s going to inevitably tank. For sure. Yeah. And that’s I think overlooked a lot too because as sellers, we have so much going on. There’s so much you have to pay attention to all the time, you know, and where exactly those words are going to. And when we’re talking about to I think you had a great point where you mentioned in the brand name that you had of maybe making it relevant to what it is that you’re actually selling. That’s a huge thing with searchability, especially if you’re on your own platform. If you’re selling on a Shopify store, a Wix store, if you can even put your brand name that’s relevant to the product you’re selling in there and then also have something like a domain that talks about a store, that’s that’s really powerful. Yeah, for sure. And I think um that’s what it is, right? With a dot store, you include a very very relevant keyword within your URL. Um, so that’s indication itself to Google to to even AI today and to your seller who’s sorry to your buyer who’s looking at it that this is indeed an online store and this is where I can make a purchase. Um, say you have a store that says artisalgift um.store that clearly means that this is uh obviously a store that sells artal gifts as opposed to a.com website which can practically be a blog, it can be an affiliate site, it could be anything under the sun. Um, so this really really helps and we’ve got data. We’ve carried out independent research that actually says that websites on a dots store do far better than a website on a.com. They do as much as 2x the impressions um organically. And that’s literally double the amount of impressions that you could have potentially got just by using a dot store. And that’s not the only thing, right? I think um there’s also nuances to making sure that your brand name is brandable enough. Um, so a lot of times we’ve seen people um just sort of use hyphens, use numbers, use misspellings just to sort of get the brand name that they want on a.com. And that um fixation with a with a.com is is almost bordering on unhealthy, right? Um you don’t have to sort of, you know, try really really hard to to get a com domain. Just get a dotstore, but get a more meaningful name for yourself, right? Get a stronger brand name. Get a brand name that means something. get something that’s um going to tide you in a in a longer period of time because you know you want to be doing this hopefully for a long period of time of course especially all the time and energy it goes to like creating a store in itself you know I mean that alone that’s such a relevant point too but think of it another like a big mistake that I see in terms of SEO is like calling it like Jay’s Crafts and more think of where you want your business in years from now and treat it like a business not like a perpetual hobby name yeah I think so too and I it’s hard to like switch that mindset when you first start out of like that this could go so far. I know I had that when I first started. I was like, “Okay, it’s like whatever. I’m just doing it.” But once you actually put the time and energy and flip your mind to think like, “No, I’m going to make this work. I want this to be a successful business.” That’s that’s really meaningful, too. So, I think that’s a great point of having that. You can always change the name of your store. You don’t have to have it perfect in the beginning. Nobody does. But, that’s such such a valuable and great tip for somebody that’s starting out, too. And I I had a store where Coette items sell really well for me. Always have. I’m just into like the little girly fun stuff. And on Etsy. And when I wanted to kind of branch out and start a standalone store, I messed up at first because what I should have done is included in that actual name of my store, Coette Cases, what I was selling. I was selling phone cases that were Coette Designs. So, it just makes sense to have a store of like Coette Cases.tore store or something like that where it’s like literally telling not only the customer that’s searching and sees that on Google or wherever they’re clicking it, but also for Google and the algorithms that are actually pushing it to people that are going to find the product. So, that’s that’s a great tip to I guess have your name that also goes for Etsy too, I think, to have maybe relevant name in the shop. Yeah, I think it’s crucial to at least speak somewhat to what you’re selling. If not the product, then the niche. If not the niche, then at least the aesthetic, too. Yeah, and we always say that have it pass the radio test, right? Uh if you were actually saying this on radio or saying it verbally to someone, would it clear that test? For example, Cassandra’s Natural Cosmetics is a great name, but it’s extremely long. It’s like literally 30 characters, and nobody’s ever going to remember that and type it onto um Google or anywhere else, right? So, make sure that you choose short, brandable names for yourself. Um use names that have some meaning to yourself, have some passion, right? like you mentioned, coette cases, they do really well for you. Um, so it has some significance to to what you’re doing. Um, so just make sure that it makes sense. It helps for brand building all together, too. And we’re running out of time, but I do I would love to ask if there’s someone watching that wants to improve their SEO. Is there one like big tip or something that maybe was a mistake that you had that you would just adjust whether they’re new or just trying to grow their store more? Jay, is there a tip that you have? Yeah, I think the biggest one and uh what I would have done in the beginning as well is like really get in the trenches. Go deep dive into the niches where your ideal customers hang out. We’re talking Facebook groups. Get in there, learn the lingo. If you’re not already privy to the niche and what you know it encompasses as a lifestyle, then really, you know, ask yourself, are you choosing the niche based on, you know, your own uh knowledge or are you doing it because somebody else is doing it and making money at it? Uh so get in the trenches and understand it if it’s something you like or enjoy, you’re probably going to be 10, you know, miles ahead of the next seller. So, you’re going to want to, you know, learn all the lingo. Use words that people are using in those Facebook groups. Use what’s hot, what’s fun, um, what’s trending in terms of, you know, I mentioned in the previous session, like if you got this like off-white, maybe this season it’s a crew, maybe next it’s taupe, you know, what monikers or names and idioms change seasonally as well. Just get in there and like be part of the conversation. Absolutely. Those like important little things that a lot of sellers miss that can get you an advantage. that little extra time of just taking the time to do the little deep dive of research to change your name to make more sense. I think all of those things do make more of a sense. But we are at a time. I think this has been so great. We’ve learned so much about SEO. I’m sure those watching have too. And thanks so much for being here for both of you. Thank you. And we’re about to go check out what’s going on in the green room because there’s a lot going on today. And come back to the discussion panel for the next one as well. Again, I hope you guys are all learning so much from all of our amazing speakers and soaking up as much as possible. If you’re here, odds are you’re selling print on demand, right? I hope we’re all in the right place. But if you’re selling print on demand, you have likely considered selling t-shirts. So, I’m here with three of our most popular t-shirts and John, one of our best sellers here on Tik Tok. We’re playing guess the tea. So, we’re here with John seeing if he can guess which t-shirt brand is which. We have Comfort Colors, Bella Canvas, and Gilden Tees. John, what do you think? Grab the stickers up there and put it on the matching T. We have T number C. T number C. Uh oh. C, B, and A. And then some matching stickers up there. Okay. Yeah. Feel them. Feel them. Touch them. Smell them. Whatever you need to do. Take a look at them. I look at them like I don’t know. They’re all white tees. They all have the tags cut out of them. So So we’re not cheating or anything like that. All right. All right, John. Let’s see. How do I do it? Which way do I take this? Pull it down and then put it on the Gilden T. The Gilden first. Oh, [ __ ] And if you can guess which one’s G if it’s Gilden 64, Gilden 5,000, you get bonus points. I think this is the Gilden here. I don’t I don’t really hold my t-shirts very often. I don’t really like make content with it. I think that’s Gilden. Okay, let’s Bella canvas. Bella. I don’t even know what a Bella’s canvas feels like. Um, this feels like a This feels like heavier. I think this is the comfort color. Okay, I’m going to go with this first. Which tea do you like to wear? Well, or do you wear t-shirts? I don’t wear t-shirts very often, but I sell Gilden, but I don’t usually wear Gilden, which is kind of hypocritical of me. I usually I like the comfort colors like this. I feel like this is a comfort color. It’s thicker. I like like the feeling on the top is really nice. So, I personally like the comfort color the most. I’m going to give that a shot here. I’m not very confident, though. How did you land on selling the Gilden if you prefer the comfort color? Well, just for pricing, like Tik Tok’s impulse purchase. Um, and so the margins just make way more sense selling a Gilden. I can get the production to seven bucks. I’m selling it for 18. So, I can make the margins work. If I’m selling comfort colors, my margins have to raise them a little more. I get into different demographics. So, I guess make the sale on the more expensive product for sure, 100%. And by process elimination, we’ll go with the bell. All right. Well, I can’t tell you if you’re right, but I do think these are good shots. One more question while we’re here talking about TE’s. So many people who are selling print on demand say number one print on demand is oversaturated. It’s not. Number two, t-shirts are oversaturated. What do you think? Are tes oversaturated or can you still make sales with TE’s now? Not absolutely not. Especially on Tik Tok. There’s not a lot of people like really on the platform and then let alone sellers who are doing print on demand on Tik Tok shop. So we sell a lot of t-shirts. I know a bunch of people who are crushing with t-shirts. And everyone needs a t-shirt. Exactly. People wear clothes every day, right? So there will be a ton of demand. All right. Thank you, John. and I’ll tell you soon if you’re right. Next up, we have Michael. Michael, I’m really curious on your experience here. Before we get into guessing, we already have a couple guesses up there. Do you sell t-shirts in your shop? Yes. Nothing but t-shirts. Nothing but All t-shirts all day, every day. All three brands. Uh, I like the Bella Canvas. Sticking with the Bella Canvas. That’s still a perfectly good t-shirt and the margins are a little bit better. Not as good as the Gilden, but yeah, I like the Bella Canvas. What do you say to people who want to sell t-shirts and think they need to sell all of the brand? Um, no, just pick one and stick with it, you know, and order a couple of samples, you know, you can get those discounted, order, you know, a few designs on a few different versions and have a feel yourself and say, would I be happy wearing that t-shirt? You know, it’s a t-shirt. You know, thousands of these are sold every single day. How how much could be wrong with it, really? But exactly. A t-shirt is a t-shirt. Even with the materials, they’re still t-shirts, right? So, having felt them, which do you think is which? Go ahead and pull some stickers and let’s see if we can label them. Do you think John’s right? No, I think John’s wrong on on at least one of these. But um at least one of these. Yeah. I think this is the Bella canvas. So, let me stick that one there. It’s going to be embarrassing if I’m wrong about it. Especially selling only t-shirt. Exactly. Yeah. Gilden, I think is this one. Oh, no. Here we go. Okay. I think that’s a Gilden. Okay. So that and process of elimination. I think this one is comfort colors right there. All right. So, everyone’s pretty confident on the comfort colors, but we have a little bit of a debate going here versus Bella Canvas or Gilden at home in the comments. Which do you think is which? I think some of us are pretty sold on the comfort colors. Do you think they’re right? What about the other two? We got a little bit of a tossup here. Let’s see it in the comments. All right, Jay is up next. Jay’s going to give us some votes on what he thinks is right. Jay has been telling t-shirts probably longer than I’ve been alive. Sorry, Jay. Not to age you here. Um, what do you think here? I was hoping that, you know, the camera wouldn’t add 10 pounds, but makeup took 10 years off, I think. So, uh, yeah. Um, when you start selling t-shirts, how Oh man. Uh, when I started selling t-shirts, I was selling t-shirts out of a backpack when I was 16. I was airbrushing, that kind of thing. So, yeah, riding my BMX around with my backpack. Was that before the year 2000? Yes. Then you got me beat. Okay. Sorry, I had to ask. Jay has so much experience and I’ve loved to learn from Jay. Print on demand I started at the end of 2012. Okay. Yes. I’ve been alive since then. I promise. Okay. Let’s go through these. We have C, B, and A. I’m curious what you think. Do you know what these brands are? 100%. Uh, and I can tell you just by looking at them. My wife and I had our own print shop as well. So, it’s easy for me to look at the neck here right here. That’s a comfort color 1717. This I would have said until before touching it that this might be the Gildan soft style 64,000. But touching it, it’s a little more robust. It is definitely the 5000. Okay. Uh, and this would be the Bell & Canvas for sure. Okay. Will you put some stickers on there so we have our stats up there for people at home to view? I know you got to peel them off. We’d be here for a minute. I didn’t mean to throw you under the bus. You’re just experienced. I know that Jay’s been selling for a while. As Jay mentioned earlier, we got to meet at the first Amplified 3 years ago, and I’ve heard about how much experience he has, and it’s so insightful and so fun to learn from him. All right, Jay, you have your votes. What do you think? I asked earlier, do you think t-shirts are oversaturated? Uh, yes and no. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter because you’re not selling a t-shirt. You’re selling the emotional hook you put on it. Any POD product you pick is just the vehicle to get that gut punch to somebody. And one more question. A lot of people when they’re starting out see how many colors we offer in Printify and want to sell every single color. Are you team every color, give people options, or just stick with a couple? I’m team almost no option. I don’t want when I walk into like, you know, one of the coffee shops that are out there now. I just want my coffee with like a little bit of cream and sugar. I don’t want 18 ways to make the same thing. So, give them less options. They’ll have less, you know, decision fatigue and they’ll add it to cart quickly and check out as fast as possible. Exactly. They call it analysis paralysis for a reason. All right. Thank you so much, Jay. You’ve done a great job. On to our next guest. All right. Eric, come on up. Eric, introduce yourself for the team, please, and then we’ll get into guessing some TE’s. Okay. Hello. I am Eric Kramer. I have a print on demand store called uh Sobervation that I started in 2023. And I actually sell all three of these on my store. So, I agree with Jay. I think that we got more up there. It’s okay. I think that this middle one is the Gilden. Okay. And I’m sure this one is the comfort color or not the comfort colors, but the Bella canvas. I was going to say controversial here. And how I can tell is it’s longer than this one. And uh the the Bella canvas is slightly longer than the Gilden. And uh this is the comfort colors. So you mentioned you sell all So you mentioned you sell all three. Do you sell the Gilden 64,000 or the Gilden 5000? I I sell both of them actually. Um the Gilden, I use those for my print designs that I can sell them for a little cheaper in my store. And then I use the comfort colors when I’m doing an embroidered design because you can’t see the backing through the design on the shirt. Okay. Okay. So, you sell t-shirts. What is your opinion? Are they oversaturated or is there still room for new sellers starting today to sell TE’s? There is still room for new sellers to make uh make a profit selling t-shirts. Um with the right design, anybody uh you could sell to anybody. What’s your favorite printing method? You mentioned you do a few. Whenever you go to on a new design, what do you think? Embroidery. And uh I do embroidery because it is like tactile and you can touch it and it just feels so premium and you can charge people more for it and the higher profit margins and that’s why we’re all in this business, right? All right. Thank you so much, Eric. So far, we have four for comfort colors. I think this is kind of a shoe in. This would be my guess as well. And this is what I primarily sell because of that double stitching around the neckline. I feel like I’m trying to sell you guys a t-shirt right now. The double stitching and just because it feels like that vintage tea. That’s why I love comfort colors. We have three for Gilden and John for Bella Canvas on this B shirt here. And then we have Gilden and three Bella Canvas on this C. So, it’s almost pretty much unanimous. I will say we’re going to go with the majority here. A is a comfort colors t-shirt because of that double stitching around the neckline. B is going to be our Gilden T. Let me make sure I’m right. Yes, Gilden T. This is our Gilden 5000, not our 64,000. So, this one is a little bit heavier. I think that’s why some of us were getting confused cuz the 64,000 is very similar to Bella Canvas. And then this last one is our classic Bella Canvas t-shirt. Thank you guys so much for joining me. We’ll see you at our next session.
Welcome to this session on advanced ads for serious players. This session is going to be all about marketing, which I personally love talking about. You guys do a lot of marketing yourselves. And we’re going to be talking specifically about how to reliably get your products in front of people, one to test, and then how to scale up your winning designs. If you have a true winning design, generally by amplifying your reach, you amplify your sales. And I think that’s what everyone wants. Of course, it has to be a winner. You want to be profitable, right? So, let’s get right into it. I’m here with Sarah and Levi, and we’re going to talk about running ads on the different platforms because the ad platforms are a bit different. Um, especially Etsy compared to like Tik Tok and Meta. So, Sarah, let’s start high level, like 20,000 foot, like someone who’s not familiar with how ads work on Etsy. What are they and how do they work? Yeah. So, um, paid ads on Etsy are pretty simple. you actually um when you click into Etsy ads, you’ll see the option to turn an ad on or off. And it’s at a listing level, so it’s not shopwide. You can choose which listings you want to turn an ad on or off. And then within that listing, once the ad is on, you can see kind of search terms that are leading the buyers to that ad. Um but it’s it’s pretty basic and simple for anyone who’s new to managing paid ads on Etsy. It’s it’s a userfriendly first, you know, platform. I I love that. I mean, it’s said that, you know, complexity is the enemy of execution. And these platforms, they want us to run ads. They make money when we make money, right? Like we run ads. Even if we don’t make money, they still make money, right? Like that’s how they make a lot of their money is for advertisers like us. So, they’re incentivized to get us to run ads. And the incentive is that ideally we make sales, but the the the guarantee is traffic. That’s all that’s guaranteed. you’re not guaranteed any sales, you know, and and that is just how it is. Like, we’re not entitled to sales, but if you do have a true winner, then you can successfully scale that very quickly with paid ads. So, um I’m glad you mentioned the simplicity of it because I think ads are very intimidating for a lot of people. And it does sound like Etsy is like I think all of them are pretty simple, but like Etsy is probably the simplest in terms of like you don’t really have many options of like what you can do with them. And that might be a good thing, especially for beginners that are just feeling a little freaked out. Yeah, for sure. And I will just add to the question of how do they work so that people do better understand uh when you turn your ads on on Etsy, you are guaranteeing that page one uh you know rank. So when you initially do your when you initially list your listings and you’re just relying on organic traffic, they at first are going to be on page 7 8 9 10 etc. And then once they get that engagement from customers, add to carts, favorites, sales, they gradually increase in rank. And how ads work is you’re simply paying money for that listing to be on that page one for the search results. So you’re essentially paying to skip the line. Yes. Exactly. And you’re like, I’m going to be on eight or nine and probably not going to make any sales because if no one sees your products, you can’t make any sales. And you’re like, let’s just pay to skip the line and hope that this works. I mean, there’s obviously very calculated risk approaches that you can take and I know you guys have those and we’ll get into those, but let’s talk to you, Levi, about what is let’s focus on Tik Tok right now. So, what are Tik Tok ads and how do they work? So, um I think Tik Tok kind of took a page out of ETS’s book in a way and so has Meta, both simplifying how ads are run. Um relying on algorithmic tracking based on conversions to decide who sees your content. Um but at a high level, what you’re doing on Tik Tok is you’re not necessarily promoting a listing like you are on Etsy. On Tik Tok, the goal is to get content behind your products, right? You want yourself and affiliates to make content, make Tik Tok videos that are going to promote your products. And once you have a base of content, you can start running ads for that product, which in turn boosts those videos that are linked to that product. And the way that GMVX, which is what Tik Tok ads are called, decides which videos to boost is based on conversion rate. So if like you let’s say uh you had 10 affiliates and yourself posting videos, you got a hundred videos and then you decide to run ads on a product. Mhm. It will train and test every single ad set, every single video within every link that is linked to that product. But if one of them gets for every thousand views only four people click on the link and one of them 114 people click every thousand views the one with the much higher conversion rate is going to draw a lot of that GMVX spending. So in essence that’s all you’re doing is relying on algorithms to test content and reward high conversion. Yeah, it’s super similar to Meta, of course, like exact same process where I think it’s funny for a lot of people when they’re new to running ads. They might, let’s say they run a $25 a day Meta ad and they’re running it to, let’s say, three different products and they notice that one product is getting 90% of that and the other two are getting a combined 10% and they’re like, “What is going on?” Like, that’s because they’re making the decision for you based on the data and what they think is most likely to get you sales. It goes back to these platforms are incentivized to make you successful because when you’re successful, they’re successful. You will run more ads and pay them more money if you’re making money, right? Um, but I want you to talk about uh, you know, Tik Tok, there’s kind of like two different platforms. There’s also like the affiliate platform. So, what would you say about that? So when it comes to marketing in general, I think the affiliate marketing engine within Tik Tok shop is probably the greatest breakthrough in ecom marketing we’ve I’ve seen in my lifetime easily. And ecom is such a new thing, too. So um but basically what it is is anyone can promote any product on Tik Tok shop as long as they’re part of the affiliate program. What that means they have 1 to 5,000 followers at least. Um, and you basically just opt in for it. What that does is it adds a showcase to your profile, which means you can add products as an affiliate to your showcase and then promote them in videos. You can request free samples and it’s obviously up to the selling party to decide if you get that free sample or not. But affiliates maximize like what I said earlier, if you were just posting videos by yourself, you wouldn’t have a hundred video. Like having a 100 videos for one product to run ads on would be very difficult. There’s not that much data to test. If you only post one video a day for a week, you only have seven videos that you’re relying on one of them to be a winner. Whereas introducing Tik Tok shop affiliates, not only do you are you introducing people whose only job is to market Tik Tok shop products, but you’re increasing the volume of content in your funnel that then can be trained using GMBB Max ads. And there’s something similar actually that has been introduced into meta. Meta was lacking this funnel. Um, as ads fatigue on meta, oftent times the only way to go about it was paying for new creators to make new videos and sometimes you are getting an ROI on that. Sometimes you’re not. And if you don’t have an inflow of ads coming, you don’t know when your next ad’s going to fatigue. There’s a lot of issues with not having a lot of content to run your ads on. And like I said before, pretty much if you ask any professional marketer, if you’re not scaling your business, they’ll say more ads. When in doubt, more ads. Well, you can’t have more ads if you don’t have more content first. So, and on Tik Tok, you’re you’re relying on these Tik Tok shop affiliates to make that content for you. In order to fix that problem, there is an external platform that can connect to Meta called Tribe. T R Y B. And tribe is exactly that. It allows creators to join the platform and connect with a seller. So let’s say like any let’s say Lululemon is on there. As a affiliate, I can join Tribe. I can join Lululemon and then I can request free samples or purchase their products, make videos and submit them to Lululemon. Then instead of Lululemon paying me to make a video in the first place, they ca they can if I have a if I had made a good piece of content elect to take that piece of content and run it as an ad. And every time that ad makes a sale, I get a commission based off it. Just like on Tik Tok shop, instead of paying creators to make content for you, you are leveraging them as salesmen and they are earning a commission based on how much they sell. So you only pay if the advertisement works. That’s awesome. It’s like having a sales team working for you. And I mean, isn’t that the dream? Isn’t that what we all want? We all want other people on our products, too. That’s a great scenario. And it’s interesting like Meta’s Meta’s interesting like anytime there seems to be one of their competitors doing something really well, they very quickly create something similar. Like I immediately think of Tik Tok and then reals came out, right? And like Snapchat and then Instagram stories. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like it’s so funny. And so it’s just funny that like though that like um I think the the big winner for Tik Tok is obviously the shop feature. Mhm. If you are buying something on any other platform like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, you have to go to a website to purchase it, right? And I think US regulation probably has a lot to do with that. But for that reason, they couldn’t even build like an affiliate system because they don’t have a way of tracking sales directly through Instagram itself. It’s actually through Shopify, which is external to Meta in a way. Um, so this is one of those rare times where a third party is stepping in and like filling that gap for meta, but it’s awesome because it gives us as sellers a way to replicate what’s happening on one platform on another like our own website through Meta. Exactly. Tap into the best of that other platform and have others selling for you, which is obviously hugely beneficial. And you know, it wouldn’t it wouldn’t surprise me if Meta figured out a way to replace that app uh in the future because that like they’re probably watching them get a whole bunch of business and they’re like that could literally be like I mean it is not I don’t think the the build of the business I actually know who started the business not personally but I feel like it’s not it’s one of those things where like I could vibe code something similar to Tribe in maybe a week, right? Everybody has access to basically explain what tribe is and have AI build something similar using code. Yeah. But I think it’s more the distribution that matters. Having the buyin of all these brands and creators as a network already at scale on this one platform probably has a value to Meta, right? And it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Meta essentially just tried to take the entire playbook from Tik Tok. Like, you know, anytime you’re looking at competitors and you see them doing something really, really well, you’re like, well, should I be doing that? You know, like I mean, these companies like they’re both massive companies. It would not surprise me if in the future we see like Instagram shop look like Tik Tok shop. I mean, I’m just like, you know, guessing here. I don’t have any insider information. There have been rumors that, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Yeah. So, um, let’s talk about ad spend. So, you guys are high volume sellers. you’re spending a good amount on ads, but probably not what you’d recommend to a total beginner. So Sarah, starting with you, how much do you spend on ads, let’s say on average in a day, and what would you recommend to a beginner? Yeah. Well, first I would say um you know, I I have my ad budget maxed out as I think it’s $1,000 a day on Etsy. Um it has never even spent that um full budget, but if you are a beginner, I’ll reverse a little bit. I would not recommend ads just for the sake of trying to get sales. Um, if you are new to getting sales, we want to make sure, like you already mentioned this a little bit, but like it’s pouring gasoline on the fire. And so ads sometimes can feel like a magic pill to people, but if someone is not going to buy it organically, they’re not going to buy it just because, you know, it’s higher up in ranking on Etsy and they see it, they’re not going to like it still. So, um, definitely don’t grab a hold of ads as like a a magic pill, like this is going to fix your shop. Uh, first, if you’re once you do start to use ads, and I recommend doing so once you have um a listing that’s doing really well, selling really well, and amplify it with the ad. Um, you can start small. You can start with a dollar a day, $5 a day. It also depends on the type of seller and their approach to ads. Um, I think we’ve talked previously about a lot of sellers viewing it as an expense instead of an investment. And so for the seller who really is jumping into Etsy and like, I want this to be a business. I want to scale this up. and they understand that running ads is an investment in getting data and information that they can use to create better listings, then you can do it without having great selling listings because you’re getting that information and then you can turn the ads off at the appropriate time to use that information. For most sellers who might not be ready to have a marketing budget, per se, and invest in them that way, I would recommend waiting until you have those listings that are doing well. Start with just a couple listings, not your whole shop. And um let them run for a while. You know, 30 days is kind of um just a random number, but it it depends on your budget. You know, if you’re spending $100 in one day versus $100 over 30 days, you’re getting that data at a different speed. But essentially, it’s just letting them run long enough to get enough data to know what I’m going to do with it. Yeah. And to um not confuse the algorithm. when you although Etsy ads are very simple, toggling them on and off on and off on a listing um emotionally can really harm your listing in the long run because it’s kind of confusing Etsy of, you know, not not confusing Etsy in the sense that your buyers are still going to interact with that listing the same way, but it’s taking the algorithm is trying to learn how to push people in front of that listing. And whenever you kind of reel it back, push it out, reel it back, it can just kind of be harmful to your listing’s trajectory, I think, in ranking. So, but to answer your question, short, yeah, a dollar a day, $5 a day, it’s kind of how your your risk tolerance with it, right? I I liked a lot of things you said there, but I want to start with the strategy. So, you recommend that new sellers uh go the organic route, meaning no paid ads to start, and then they look for signals of success organically. like what would be some of those top signals that they’re looking for? Yeah, I love that you said that. In the Etsy mentorship group, we’re always talking about those signals because as much as easy as it is for any print on demand seller to start their journey and I mean they can grab a hold of all sorts of strategies that are out there and content. I am really trying to encourage people to stay the course of what’s working and until you see the signals which on Etsy is just in the form of um clicks into your listing uh favorites of that listing add to cart which you can kind of see in a reverse way and incognito you can see how many people are adding it to your cart and then of course sales and so looking at those signals on a listing level um is really helpful versus a shopwide level which I’m just going to say this is like kind of not ad related exactly, but the stats button on your listing dashboard is automatically toggled off when you’re a new seller. Toggle it on because that’s how you can like when you first log on, see exactly what listings are kind of building that momentum without having to look and find the favorites. Of course, you know your sales, but um it those signals specifically, the visits, the click or the clicks and the add to cards, favorites and sales. Yeah. You know, there’s so much value in the data and it goes back to something you said earlier where you’re like a lot of people think of ads as an expense. I totally agree and not an investment. And I was that person too. Like at the beginning, I was like, I can’t afford to run ads. But the thing is, you know, you look at the highest volume sellers, almost all of them are running ads. And the thing is, if you have a true winning product, you can run ads at high budgets. I’m talking like a,000 to $2,000 a day profitably. And I mean that’s really great for your growth. But even aside from the sales like at the beginning you might not get ads or you might not get sales but you’re gonna get data which is still super valuable. You can see I I mean I I’m speaking for meta here but you can see like demographics like age. Maybe you are way off on who you’re targeting in your ads for age and you’re like oh wow I was targeting Gen Z but I see that it’s all millennials buying my stuff or all millennials showing interest in my stuff. Um you know location all this different data. Not to mention like again talking from a meta lens, many times you’re going to organically get more followers on social media if you’re driving ads because they’re just being they they see your ad and then they go click on the brand and they want to check it out. Uh not to mention you can get email signups. A lot of people do not buy the first time they see a website or a product and it might take them a couple visits uh or a couple times before they convert into a customer. It’s not uncommon for people to join an email list or visit a website and end up buying like 2, three, four months down the road. Maybe they’re waiting for Black Friday, maybe they’re waiting for Christmas, maybe they’re, you know, who knows what they’re waiting for, but a lot of people will not buy right away. Um, Levi, I want to talk to you about ads. So, you have done $700,000 in sales from your dorm room. I imagine that wasn’t all organic. That was close to all. I mean, we’ve probably over doubled that now. Um, I’m a little past graduation. I graduated in May, but um I technically graduated in December. I graduated early and I worked a different job. Um but I will say I have watched the change in Tik Tok shop. Um the reason why I wasn’t running ads for the first whole probably year and a half of Tik Tok shop was because it was a subsidy based platform. All Tik Tok wanted was people to come onto their platform. They needed sellers. They still need sellers. They needed consumers as well. and their long-term goal is to be a competitor to someone like Amazon. Well, you need a lot of people buying and selling in order to build that trust to start. So, there was really no internal ads. There was only external ads, which means like driving people to your website. But promoting your products on Tik Tok shop was strictly like posting. Um, now the game has changed. It’s pay to win now, just like every other platform. And that’s kind of what you expect out of a maturing marketplace. Totally. Um, but in terms of how much I spend a day now is probably like you said, close to $1,000 a day I’m spending on ads um when I’m having good days. But how how um GMV Max works on Tik Tok shop is you’re trying to hit an ROI. And what’s special about Tik Tok is they actually ensure that whatever ROI you set, you will be paid out at least 90% of that ROI if you can hit 20 orders per day. So that’s called the ROI protection on Tik Tok shop. So if just to kind of put that in perspective, if you’ve never sold anything or maybe you didn’t take finance classes, when you’re setting your products to a two ROI, okay, that means for every $1 somebody spends on or I every $1 spend on ads, I should get $2 back in revenue, right? 2x what I’m spending on ads. So if I have a $20 product, that means I will be spending at most $10 per sale, right? Mhm. So Meta or I mean sorry, Tik Tok shop is basically ensuring that I will at least hit 90% of that. So I will at least have like $11 per sale. And if I’m not hitting that and I have over $20 or 20 orders per day, they will refund me an ad spend up to that 90%. That is wild. Now, that is a really cool thing because it allows you to scale and spend $1,000 a day because as long as it’s hitting my ROI, it’s I’m just making more money, right? The hard part is hitting that 20 orders a day on one campaign to start. And that’s why it’s a lot like Etsy where just turning up ads and raising your budget won’t really matter if people aren’t already buying your product. Right. Right. That that’s so interesting. And uh I know Meta isn’t listening to this, but it would be great if you came out with a feature like the ROI protection that Tik Tok has. I think every Meta I think I’m speak for every Meta ad seller. Uh that says that sounds incredible. We all love protections. So wait, let me add one thing though. Tik Tok shop isn’t all rainbows when it comes to ads. And one of those things is I feel like you don’t get the same data back in terms of what you’re actually spending to what it’s converting to on like a views basis. Um sometimes you’re kind of like throwing money into the wind and getting sales and it’s magically feels like it’s hitting your ROIs which is a little scary. Um the other thing that I wanted to mention is I mentioned not turning on and off your ads because it confuses the platform on Etsy. It is very similar actually on Tik Tok shop because every time you change your ROI or the selected products in a campaign obviously the training of the algorithm in that campaign has to change. So you lose that ROI protection for 24 hours. So a lot of people say something even I promote is starting your ROI a little bit lower somewhere closer to break even where maybe it’s not your end goal profitabilitywise but it’s gaining momentum on a product and then slowly raising it based on the data you’re seeing. So, if you’re setting it at a three and you’re hitting like a 3.7 consistently, well, then you can slowly like move it up. But know that every time you change it, you’re losing that ROI protection for 24 hours, which usually isn’t a huge deal because it’s still they if you’re going to hit 20 orders, it needs to be hitting that ROI for it to continue to spend. If you set a $100 budget with a 25 ROI, you’re it might it’ll probably just spend like a very minuscule amount because as soon as it realizes we are nowhere close to hitting this ROI, it’ll just stop spending. Right. Right. No, that’s that’s very very interesting. And what you said about the toggle on both platforms goes the same for Meta. Same thing. You are not advised to turn on and off. It messes with the algorithm. Mess it messes with the optimization. So, not not a great strategy. But let’s talk about I know you use meta as well. And I know a lot of Tik Tok shop sellers also use meta. So, for example, if you see an ad doing really well on Tik Tok shop, you’ll throw it over and turn it into a meta ad. And I know other people who are doing that successfully as well. And many times if they convert well on Tik Tok shop, they will convert well on meta as well. So, what’s your experience with that? Okay. It’s funny you say that. Um I do think like the halo effect itself on Tik Tok shop is very real which means like people say for every dollar that is spent on Tik Tok shop another 50 cents will be spent somewhere else in the ecosystem of your brand. So whether that’s Amazon, Shopify or wherever else people can find your products wherever they else they’re probably seeing it next like bottom of funnel. Um but when it comes to well what was your second part of your question? Yeah. So, talking take the Tik Tok ads from Tik Tok over to Meta. So, it’s funny because often times what works on meta almost always works on Tik Tok. So, going from if if somehow like you sourced an ad on Meta and you tried it on Tik Tok and it’s a video, it will almost always work. I think going from Tik Tok to Meta is a little bit more difficult and that’s because of how you buy things, right? I think a lot of the ads are catered on Tik Tok shop towards a impulse buy call to action based on like the little orange cart at the bottom of the video. Whereas on Meta, the process in terms of buying something takes a little bit longer and it’s just a slightly different funnel in terms of how you purchase. So although you you definitely can just take those creators from Tik Tok shop, granted you have the rights to the content from the creators like affiliates and run them as ads on Meta. I think they are still a little bit different and um it’s not like a for sure if one’s killing on this platform it’s it’ll work on the other, but it is great to be able to test, right? And I think having that content available is like the number one savior for keeping ads successfully running and healthy. Have you been able to do that successfully? Take a winning ad from Tik Tok and then throw ad spend behind it from meta and and see results. Yes, for sure. Um I think like a lot of the same tactics apply obviously. Um, I actually market a lot of different products from Tik Tok to Meta, which is kind of interesting. On Meta, I focus more on premium products and then on Tik Tok, I’ve everything. Um, and the reason that is is because premium products usually have a slightly higher margin. And so changes in spend um don’t affect profitability whereas like on Tik Tok I’m doing much higher volume and so my statistics are usually a bit more consistent dayto-day. Yeah. I’m I’m curious like so you’ve got Meta and you’ve got Tik Tok. When someone is purchasing from Meta, where are they being routed to complete the purchase? Is it a Shopify store? Yeah. So I do have a Shopify store. I also have an Etsy now. Um, I think like my products have begun to kind of pop up in the wild and when people see them, I need the ability for them to find my products, not necessarily the knockoff version of them. If you look up Launch Club products, you can probably find a million different people selling them. You can find them on Walmart. You can find them on Sheen. You can find them on T-Mu. You can find them wherever, but I only sell them on my website, Tik Tok Shop, and Etsy right now, right? I’d like to unlock every marketplace eventually. But yeah, I I I’m major majority of everything meta is is directed directly to Shopify, which is just my website and then everything Tik Tok is native within the platform. Okay. Very interesting. All right. I want to talk about beginner mistakes that you guys see. You both coach uh a lot of newbies, a lot of new sellers, and I want to know what the most common ads mistakes you see from a platform perspective. So, um, I know for meta ads, a lot of people have this illusion. I’ll call it an illusion. I I was one of those people. They’re like, I’m going to make sales if I run ads. And if I’m not making sales, something’s wrong with Meta, like, oh, my ads are broken or something like that, right? That’s not the case. Like, you actually have to have a product that a product that evokes emotion and relatability for the target audience to build that connection. And many times that does lead to conversions, but many times that’s only like a small percentage of your actual designs that you roll out, your actual products that you roll out. And so it, you know, it’s important to expectation set when it comes to running ads. I feel like, especially at the beginning, many people will not make a single sale running ads at the beginning because a lot of times they just don’t have a winning product. And that’s okay. All of us started without a winning product. So, um, Sarah, what are some of the most common mistakes you see from Etsy sellers wanting to run ads? Yeah, I think um one being what’s already mentioned, which is just trying them too early, you know, trying to use them before you have winning listings. Um the whole toggling on and off. And then the other mistake I would say is kind of like um ignoring the golden nuggets that is are given to you with those Etsy ads, not really knowing how to use the information that it’s given. So, with um Meta, I ran ads with those a long time ago, and I know with the, you know, the demographic and the location, it gives you so many um metrics to pay attention to. With with Etsy, the only thing you get are search terms that bring shoppers to your listing. And so, why that’s helpful is because a lot of times you are learning SEO and phrases and kind of audiences sometimes that are bring that are coming to your listing that you didn’t think of or find in your own research. So majority of the time your SEO that’s in your listing is within those search terms that you see in your ad. But a lot of times through the algorithm knowing that hey this person who you know this group of people who use this group of SEO to find these types of listings also use this SEO. We’re going to try to show this ad when this person types this phrase. Even though Sarah didn’t put it in her listing, I’m going to give it a shot. Right? And so then I can then see and open that listing and see what were the search terms that brought people to my listing. It helps you optimize your listings within that niche and that audience moving forward or um you know editing a dormant listing that might be getting a lot of signals besides sales, you know. So sometimes you’re getting that traction of favorites and visits but it’s not converting. And so sometimes, you know, uh, understanding the buyer’s process there, adding some of that SEO that you might see in that’s drawing them to the ad. So, yeah, I think the other beginner mistake is just kind of ignoring the precious data that Etsy gives you with within those ads. Uh, that that’s that’s gold. I mean, common beginner mistakes to avoid. This can potentially save people a ton of money in the beginning, and I feel like I made every mistake under the sun when I first started. Um, and I wish I had the beginner mistakes avoid playbook like put right in front of me when I was starting because I was that person. But Levi, real quick, we’re almost out of time here, but I want to know like what’s the most common mistake you see with people on Tik Tok shop who are running ads? I was actually going to say not looking at your data. Um, I’ll go really quick, but when when you’re running ads, you’re actually you’re purchasing buyer information. So, what that means is you’re seeing on Tik Tok shops specifically what kind of content is working, what products are working, and what it costs for you to get a conversion. That is golden information. And if you’re getting information showing that a product’s not working, you need to be able to look at it, realize that this is what my data is saying, and know to turn that product off, make some sort of pivot. Yeah. In the same way, you need to do the opposite when a product is absolutely killing it. So, I think You don’t just turn on your ads and say, “Okay, make me a million dollars.” It’s let’s look at how things are performing and what changes can I make to continue optimizing my ad set, right? I I I love that. You know, intuition is great, but data always wins. And I think that that’s it’s really easy to get emotionally attached to our designs and even to see some signals, maybe some ads, maybe some clicks where you’re like, “Oh, wow.” Like, there’s interest here. But if you’ve spent $1,000 and you haven’t made a sale, I mean, if you haven’t even spent $25 and haven’t made a sale, um, you know, then then like I think you need to take the emotion out of it and look at the data. It’s very, very important. It’s easy to burn through money. So, with that, this was an awesome discussion on marketing. Thank you so much for all your insights, guys. That was gold. I’m going to send it back over to the green room. Over to you.
Hey, everyone. We are in the green room here and I have the pleasure of talking to really great people that are in our communities for both Printify Rockstars and the Printful Insiders. Here I have Robin and Eric. I’m so happy you guys are here and I really want to talk to you about just your journey with print on demand because it’s so inspiring especially I’m sure people in the community as well. So I’d love to just jump in and ask you a little bit about your stories with print on demand and the communities too. So Ramen, where where did you get started? How has print on demand changed your life? Yeah. So, I got started about two years ago. Um, my son was just born. Um, he was born really tiny. And so, we had spent quite a bit of time in the NICU. Um, just as a a new family, and it was at that time we decided I needed to step away from a 17-year career in nonprofit. Um, I love being at home with my son, but after a few months, I was itching to try something new. and my husband read um an article about a guy that was selling candles using Printify and it just kind of went from there. My husband said, “You should do that.” I went on the Printify website, looked into it. I have a background in graphic design as well. So, I started designing and trying out things. Um and we when we made the decision for me to stay home, we had planned on just having one income, right? Um, and so we had made that plan, but uh, after my first year, we had to make a plan to go to back to two incomes because what turned in what started as like 2 hours a day turned back into what I was making in my full-time job. So, after the first year. So, yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Congratulations. So, and that’s probably a huge reason of why you’re in the print or printify community and helping others, which is such such a cool thing. Yeah. I’d love to hear your story about print on demand and how what it’s done for you. Okay. So, my story um print on demand actually came to me as a result of a change that I had made in my personal life. Um in July of 2021, I got sober and quit drinking alcohol. Um and the my brand Sobervation is a result of that. When I had gotten sober, one of the first things that I noticed is I had all kinds of extra time that I used to spend consuming alcohol and ending up in bad situations and you know um made for some funny videos online but uh you know not not where I wanted to take myself. So when when I was sober, I had all this time and I started as a blog and just to kind of get the feelings out onto onto paper or on my blog, but but um so I I got my feelings out in the blog and uh I I identified my triggers and I identified what it was that was pushing me to the alcohol. And once I had gotten past the triggers, I was looking for something to um fill my time with my creative side. So, I had started making myself a couple hats to wear that one said, “I’m sober because dot dot dot.” And I had made that because I wanted people to know that it was okay to talk to me about my sobriety. I didn’t want them to think, you know, if they saw me out that, hey, it’s hush hush. This guy quit drinking. we can’t ask him any questions about it. So, I wanted people to know that it was okay to talk to me about it. If they had questions, I would talk to them. And I put that I put it on my store after people started asking me about it. I turned my blog into a storefront and I added the hats first and I started selling some and people liked it. So, I started making shirts and I started making other designs and it’s just transitioned more from a personal blog into the store now. That’s so inspiring. and so cool. I I love to hear when people can take something that they’ve been through in their life and apply that. That’s something I did with the mental health niche and selling on Etsy. And that’s how I got started in it. And it’s it’s just so nice to spread things that you’re actually passionate about. And then be able to like sell products, make money, and like build your own community through that. I think that’s so awesome. And I’d love to ask you guys both about the community itself and maybe what it’s done for you. Has it helped you in a way? Have you learned something? like any specifics that you would love to share to maybe entice people that are not in the communities yet to join because I think community is so valuable especially as online sellers. We are constantly at home in front of a computer screen in front of whatever device you use and it’s like lonely. There’s not a lot of people to talk about things with or learn from. So Robin, do you have an experience with the community that you want to share? Yeah, that’s kind of where I started. I was kind of creeping in the background watching what people were asking. It was like coming up on Q4 and I it really opened my eyes to the successes and also the things that people struggle with in print on demand. And so I kind of already had an idea of what to expect. Um and like you said, it’s the print on demand world. If you own your own business doing this, it is pretty lonely. But what the community does is it it helps lift you up. And I’ve made friends. I there’s people I talk to every single day now that I met in the community through print on demand. Um, yeah, it’s just totally changed how I look at, again, this is my business. This is something I built. Um, and I’ll continue to do that. But it’s really cool to have others lifting you up at the same time because there is room for all of us in print on demand. And yeah, I love that. Yeah, people people don’t think that. They’re like, it’s too late to get in and this and that. No, that is not true at all. There’s room. There’s so many people constantly buying products and the amount of products that are available with print on demand now is crazy. You can make so many. What about your experience with the community? I’d love to hear about it. Sure. So, I have a Shopify store and um you know, Shopify has a bit of a learning curve. It’s not something where you can put a bunch of products on and you’ve got an amazing store. It takes a lot of work and for me the uh insiders community was invaluable when I first got started because if I was running into a problem on my store, then chances were someone in the Printful group had the same problem. So, I’d go to the the insiders group and I’d ask questions and, you know, people were kind enough to answer my questions at the time, which really helped me get my store together. So, I kind of pay it forward. You know, I I in turn when people ask questions that I knew the answer to, I was the first one to jump in and give my experience on how I handled the situation. And uh I feel like coming off as a know-it-all sometimes, but uh you know it’s really helpful to people in the group that because sometimes they’re afraid to ask questions and just they don’t know how to ask it. And they describe it in the group and you know we all oh this is what you’re talking about. You’re not really talking about that. You’re talking about this and it’s just we all learn from each other and it’s uh it’s really fun. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think what’s cool too in the community is it’s kind of like you’re encouraging each other through wins, through losses as well. And then there’s also different things that come up like certain prizes or giveaways to like really help keep that momentum going. And if you’re somebody right now, speaking of giveaways, we do have a bit of an amplified merch giveaway going on. So make sure that you put some emojis in the chat with your favorite emoji to get ahead and enter for that giveaway, too. I would just love to say I loved chatting with both of you. I think this is so inspiring hearing people’s stories and so much about your community and I think it encourages other people to join. So if you’re not in a community yet definitely something that I would consider because you know why not be in a community after we’ve heard these beautiful stories, right? But thanks so much guys. And next up we have another panel that’s going to be sharing some really cool stuff that you should definitely check out.
Welcome to master level AI moves. In this session, we’re going to be talking about I think one of the biggest problems people are trying to solve with AI. That is how to save time and make more sales. So, I’m here with Michael, Sarah, Jay, all high volume sellers who have a lot of experience leveraging AI in their business. So what I want to do is I want to you know it’s interesting with AI because I think that it seems so easy and in theory it is like how it can help us but it’s also very easy to get overwhelmed by it. I feel like there’s a bit of AI fatigue right now and I also feel like for people who are new to AI um they end up spending a lot of money a lot of time working on it which can make it feel overwhelming time consuming and even expensive like regenerating a bunch of images because they don’t come out the first time right and there’s a lot of ways that you can prevent that you generally use AI tokens whenever you are regenerating these images but we want to solve those problems so I want to talk to you guys and I want to start with you Michael, let’s start with timesaving. So, how are you currently leveraging AI to save you the most time? Like, what task is saving you the most time now replaced by AI? Yeah, I think the first thing you got to know is that there’s things AI is good at and there’s things AI is not so good at. And if you try to use AI for those things it’s not so good at, you’re going to actually end up spending more time and getting more frustrated than if you just, you know, did it the oldfashioned way or a different way. Uh, an example is like coming up with new ideas. AI is not good at being funny out of the box. It’s not good at giving you original ideas that haven’t been done already. So, you need to find ways to do that. Um, I built some software to help me do that. It doesn’t actually use AI for the ideas part because we found that it’s not that good at that particular topic. What it is good at, if you’ve got a problem you need solving, if you’ve got repeat uh workflows that you need doing, uh, the newest models are great at browser use. So, anything you can do on a laptop, you can get your AI to do that for you. I’m thinking particularly of listings, you know, I’ve got 100 listings here to go on Etsy. It’s going to take me a long time to do that manually. Let me get AI to do it. And particularly some of those difficult tasks where, you know, you got a lot of listings to get up, but you don’t want to use these automated tools because there’s something in your process. For example, I like using custom mockups. That makes it hard to kind of do that with Etsy. So you can ask AI to do that and then it’ll go back and you know upload those custom mockups and things like that which require more of a human interaction element in a browser or something like that. So yeah, anything like that where you are doing something repeatedly and where you’ve got a problem you need solving, you can just ask the AI to help you with that. Yeah, it’s so nice like when you can use it successfully to save you time because many times these these tasks that are bogging us down uh a lot of us are solopreneurs or you know one two people businesses and we become the bottlenecks in our business and to be able to unlock that time and re redirect it to sales generity can be a real gamecher for a business. So Sarah I want to hear from you how are you leveraging AI in your business? like what would you say is the single most effective way that you’re using AI to save the most time right now? Yeah, I think that what’s been most helpful for me with Etsy has been utilizing it with like customer service and operations. And so it really is basic like I’m I I have not built my own software, you know, but um I’m just using it like in the way of hey, I have um you know, this these customer service messages that are sometimes four or five different questions from a customer. You know, that’s not the the norm. But on Etsy, you have these like canned responses you can typically use to speed up that workflow. But if you’re selling custom items on Etsy and there’s a customer that just has 10,000 questions, I’ve been loving using it to do like the voice to text and training AI to say, “Hey, this is how I like to greet my customer. This is how I like to sign off. This is how I like to format the message.” And so, and you know, that’s its specific thread. So, whenever I go to do the voice to text, it automatically knows to give it back to me and I just copy it and send it to the customer. very simple, but it really does speed up um the time. I’m a I do a lot of typos, so it really does speed up my time. And and then yeah, like in an operations level, like kind of I know that a lot of new sellers, they’re like gaining momentum and then there’s new pricing updates, which is just the name of the game, but it slows you down. And so even just telling AI, hey, this is these are the products I sell. This is the price. This is my target profit and profit margin. now these are my new costs you know help me kind of you know repric everything and you know you can still have the final say of course but it just helps speed up some of those things right no I think that’s really helpful especially the customer support element like it’s not only timeconuming especially the higher volume sales you do the more customer support questions you’re going to have but like for me it’s just soul sucking like we’re entrepreneurs we’re creators we’re doers we don’t want to be doing that $10 $15 an hour admin task stuff like put a computer in front of us and let us cook on our businesses. You know what I mean? Like take that off our plate. So I really like that you mentioned that. I think that’s like kind of like a unsung hero in a in a way to use it. Especially like if you can find ways to like create templates. It’s like you know use AI to create a canned response because most of the questions you get like 80% of the questions you get are going to be the same questions from people and many times you can have a canned response where you might only have to change one or two words um like the style or the product or whatever it is. So that was that was really helpful. Jay, I know you are loving AI, which it’s cool because you are a graphic designer. You have like a long graphic design background and you know there’s a lot of debate. A lot of graphic designers don’t like AI and that’s okay each to their own, right? But like you come from an AI or a graphic design background and you’ve really embraced AI to the point that you’ve created your own software. So, why don’t you tell us how you’re currently leveraging AI to save you hours, you know, on things you were doing before? One of the things I just want to cap on what Sarah was talking about with uh the um you know, customer service scripts kind of thing. I had to build them over like 14 years of POD of the it’s the same over and over, but then I could, you know, you could save it as a snippet in Etsy and then make it kind of little bit go a little bit faster that way. Had I had an AI to help like back then, it would have been, you know, a game changer, right? Uh that said, how am I implement so I’m going to take a page out of your book on that end, but um how I’ve kind of, you know, started to leverage it for our business or or my community is that like you said, you know, soul sucking that to me is creating mock-ups, listing the mockup, uh getting the title and tags right, and then syncing it to the pod, pushing it to my shop, my Etsy, and now going to go to Shopify, but then having it to actually sync with the catalog be it, you know, print a fire, print full, uh, and then have that all work. Now, you can drag and drop that onto the app interface, and it’ll tell me like it’ll give me options to pick for what colors I want the mockup on. Typically, I’m three or four max. Uh, you we don’t want, you know, analysis paralysis, otherwise known as decision fatigue. Pick the four colors. It’ll upload it. It’ll drop it on the mockup, create the mocket, upload it to the whatever platform I’m selling on, and then sync it on the back end. So, that is like such a timesaver. I get to do the fun part which is design. I I love that. I love that. And I mean that that is your zone of genius. And you know like most people are are you know best when they’re in their zone of genius as much as possible. So I really I really love that. And I want to kind of stay on this topic. I one thing I do want to mention is I think a lot of people don’t realize that AI is working for them even if they aren’t aware of it. For example, a lot of ads platforms use AI now to analyze data very quickly to make decisions to optimize. And so like you might actually be using AI in your business and not knowing it and you’re benefiting from it. And the reason I brought up ads platforms was because we all want to find ways to use AI to make more sales. Like I love we all love time saving, right? Everyone wants to save time and that allows you to focus more time on sales or activity, but how can I leverage AI to actually make more sales? So, I love knowing that a platform like Meta Ads has built-in AI and they’re using it. I don’t have to do anything and it’s being used to make my ads better, more effective, get in front of the right people. So, I want to know from you guys, are there any ways that you’re currently or your students are currently leveraging AI to make more sales? That’s a great question. Yeah, I think um coming back to what you said about ads, that’s obviously happening behind the scenes. Um, AI is so good at the analysis part, especially, you know, you give it a CSV or we talked about browser use. I’ve been pointing uh Claude at my Etsy ads and just saying, “Hey, look, here’s our Etsy ads for the past two weeks. What’s working? What isn’t? What would you advise?” Not necessarily that you should take everything AI says, uh, but it’s a good idea to just, you know, it can do that massive data input analysis in a way that a human never could, right? And it can break those things down into categories and say, “Hey, actually, you know, these kind of designs are doing well for you. These ones not so good.” Uh, for example, it pointed out to me that we were spending an awful lot on a design that just wasn’t selling. And, you know, to find that in the data would have been quite difficult to scroll through. I’ve got something like 700 designs on the Etsy store, so it’s quite a quite a task. So yeah, anything like that where you’ve got uh big amounts of data you want it to analyze that’s, you know, that’s already seeing an improvement in sales for my business, right? Yeah. No, I really like that. That is like a very like like very tangible benefit. And what I like about that is that it’s essentially looking at the data for you and it’s making decisions based on the data so that you don’t have to. It’s essentially empowering us to make better decisions. Like they know more than we do. they’re analyzing it unless you know you’re you’re doing it all yourself which will probably take a lot longer but that is going to you know hopefully lead to more sales like that’s that’s the outcome. Um Sarah are there any ways that you’re leveraging AI that you would directly tie to helping you make more sales? Yeah, I would um say the same similar with what Michael was saying in that um with Etsy I’m typically listing for similar like events or occasions throughout the year. Holidays are obvious like you know when the day of the year it is but for some kind of like vacation spikes and you know family reunion spikes these these things are happening there’s like spikes in the year’s calendar can get away from me and so I’ve loved using it to you know download the data from my Etsy shop from previous years to to inform me like make sure I’m on track with my listing. I think that’s been really helpful and I’ve made the mistake in years past of just listing way too late and that’s kind of a big thing on Etsy if you’re listing for certain events and occasions to be early with that. So that in general and then otherwise for me I haven’t had experience with any AI. Um I’m still you know learning to where it um has directly led to sales but more than ever it’s just saving time right and what I’ve seen for myself and other sellers. So, um, the ability to work on the things that actually move the needle and, you know, revenue generating activities kind of thing, AI can free up some of that time. That’s what I’ve seen, right? And and to your first point, like that there is like a direct tie to sales there, right? Like if if it’s reminding you about an opportunity that you would have missed and potentially miss out on thousands of dollars on sales, that is a way that AI is helping you make more sales. So, I think that’s awesome that you’re doing that. And especially, you know, if if you are on Etsy and you are big on capitalizing on all the occasions, all the milestones, there’s so many there’s so many like it would be so hard to remember all that stuff. You need like a calendar, like a physical calendar by your computer, just like looking at all the time. What am I what am I planning for now? And then you want to be like way ahead of those, too. So, like you actually need like the reminder way in advance. So, that’s really good. Uh Jay, I want to hear from you. What are some ways that you’re leveraging AI to help you make more sales or or your students are? Yeah. So, going back to what I was saying originally with the the app I’ve kind of built, that’s available inside my community, uh, one of my own communities, my inner circle. But on the shirt head side where we do level up redesigns with a good buddy of mine, and a few of you know him, Junah Duncan from Detour Shirts. Love Jun. Um, we call ourselves the shirt heads cuz it’s funny and it’s easy and it’s memorable. Um, you know, a lesson in branding there, right? uh in there, Junah decided to, you know, this is his baby. Uh he he wanted a phrase generator because funny phrases, you know, even just text on shirt, words on shirts can sell for days. So, we wanted a phrase generator. And to Michael’s earlier point, some most of the stuff you get if you say, “Hey, give me 20 phrases for a dog mom niche, funny phrases, you know, to put on a shirt.” 80% of what you get is going to be garbage. 2% maybe usable of the 20, you know, maybe 90% if you’re lucky. And then you’re going to say, “Give me 20 more. give me 20 more. And then so what we did is kind of give it uh a bunch of phrases that are what everyone’s calling AI slop. We just kind of refer to it as AI crap. Uh because it is what it is. Um and then tell it what we don’t want. And then now we’ve got it to a point where it’s making you know rhyming. Uh chat GPT Astra shout out there because claude my cla hates me. And don’t feel like you know if you are having trouble with designing with one and not the other then or creating something you know an automation or something like that don’t be afraid to just shelf it and try a different AI um because my cloud hates me I don’t understand m in my community said gave me a playbook to literally build my own mockup generating app and my cloud said nope screw you don’t want to do it your way we’re going to do it my way and it didn’t work chatbt Astra no problem in 27 minutes I figured out why claude was ignoring me and we built this kind you know, got on a path. So, like that goes from the mockup generation to the phrase builder. I mean, what’s left after that, right, is the SEO titles and tags. I also built the listing optimizer. You can drag your URL from your Etsy shop or link your Etsy shop via API. So, three separate apps. They solve three separate problems, but that can give you like from front to back without having to guess at, you know, what will work and just the amount of time spent. The only thing I’m not going to ever implore AI to do automatically is the design part. And I think that’s that’s the heart and soul of what we do. It’s a creative business. And if we outsource absolutely all of it, I think that is the biggest nemesis and the biggest reason buyers right now are craving an element of humanity. You’re seeing like a rise in like uh more organic designs, little off-hilter, a little less perfect, you know, fonts that uh maybe don’t look like they were an actual font, right? something that is a little more organic or off filter a bit to a point Michael and I were having a conversation yesterday where you said like you know it’s a beautiful time to be alive because you know you can get a a drawing or a phrase from your child and then have uh AI create or assist in illustrating a design about that based on the phrase right and have it look like it was created by a child so uh yeah all kinds of ways and at the end of the day it’s all about making more money otherwise we wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing right right you made you made a lot of really good points there and I think like the design element and you know being able to improve on designs or leverage AI not fully but like to help you prove on improve on designs there’s like a direct correlation to sales there because at the end of the day your designs dictate your sales and the the phrase generator I think that’s super underrated because uh there’s data to show that the majority of uh products of designs that sell is very simple very simple so I was actually looking to at a Printify blog article recently with 2026 stats and they were saying that 80% % of designs that sell have one to two elements. That means either they’re purely text based or they have text based plus one sorted design graphic on there. So like that shouldn’t be lost in translation. It’s so easy like AI has made it quicker, easier, and cheaper than ever to to pump out designs, but there’s a ton of AI slop. And I think a lot of people, you know, when it comes to like fully text based designs, you don’t need AI for that. You could do that in like a couple of minutes. And the other thing I like that you said is like there’s kind of like we’re kind of leaning there there’s a craving for imperfect designs and I’m seeing that too and it reminds me of actually the KD design trends report for last year. They were predicting the trends for 2026 and they specifically had a trend called naive design trend and literally it it was like designs that look like a 5-year-old drew them. And I went over to Etsy and actually found some bestsellers that literally looked like a 5-year-old drew them. It was very imperfect. And I’ve seen quite a few of those naive style imperfect designs really crushing it. And you know, it’s funny because you could use AI to make an imperfect design, but like I I agree with you that uh a lot of people are craving that. And uh it’s you know, it’s it’s kind of ironic. It’s almost like before it was all about perfection, like making sure everything looked perfect. Now it’s like imperfection. It’s like the opposite, right? But I want to talk about actual tools because a lot of people are probably wondering what AI tools are using. Now, I know you guys made a couple yourself, which is super cool. Um, and we can definitely hear about those. I also want to know any other tools that you guys are using to save time and make more sales. I personally love Claude. Um, I use it for a lot of things. And I It’s too bad it hates you. Maybe maybe it’ll come around, but it sounds like CHBD came over to your side and now you guys are kind of like buddied up against Claude. So, just tell Claude. Tell Claude to Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. as long as the problem’s solved, you know, like, you know, chatbt stepped in and solved the problem for you. So, so, so that’s really cool. But I actually really like Claude because I don’t consider myself a prompt master. And there are so many times where I don’t know what to prompt the AI for to create the design I want. And the more you mess it up, the more generations you do and the more tokens you use and the more it ends up costing you and time it takes you, right? It can be super frustrating. So, I use claw to come up with like to actually help me create a design prompt that I could put into like a GBT image 2 image 3 um or into KD or something. But I want to talk about to you guys about your favorite AI tools. So, Michael, I’ll start with you. Yeah. So, my favorite is the one I built. You probably got to but basically, you know, AI’s allowed us to build tools the way we want to build them. Like a tool for me, which is exactly what I’ve done. It’s called Ideally.app with one L. Um, but what it allows me to do is I’ve got all my favorite graphic styles in there. We’ve got the different AI models. And what it allowed me to do was just that streamline process of, you know, once you’ve been doing this game a while, you know, there certain styles you’re going to be using over and over again. And you can almost, you know, know immediately like, oh yeah, that idea needs to go with that style. So, let me just, you know, make use of the AI for what it’s good at, which is replicating some of these simple styles that we know work really well. Obviously, there’s going to be stuff the AI can’t handle or it can’t do a great job of or, you know, you need to bring it into Photoshop or do whatever you need to do. But for a lot of that stuff, you know, AI is the uh the missing piece that’s allowed all of this to come together much more quickly. So, yeah, I use obviously Chat GPT uh Claude use Hermes agent to do some of that stuff. I’ve got that set up on a laptop at home so I can, you know, message it and ask it to do things uh when I need to. Um, so yeah, all the stuff that people are familiar with, but I think um, if you’re looking for something to streamline the process, uh, you can obviously ask AI to build some software to help you solve that solution. Um, or you can come over to my app or or Jay’s and, uh, we’ll help you solve some of those solutions, some some of those problems as well. Yeah. And it makes sense that, uh, your own app is your favorite, not just for that sake, but because you scratched your own itch. Exactly. And I think like when people solve their own problems, it’s usually a problem that a lot of other people have. And so there’s probably a lot of other people that like, “Oh, thank God. I’m so glad something exists to solve this problem. I’m so glad Michael created this.” Um, but that’s that’s awesome. Sarah, what about you? What are what are like specific AI tools that you’re using in your business? Yeah. Um, for kind of the operations, customer service stuff we’ve talked about before, chatbt and Claude. And then for design, I’ve really liked playing around with the KD AI, you know, flow workflows. I’m still kind of new to figuring that out, but um because I’m new to figuring it out, I have played around with the prompts a lot, too. And there’s so many different versions and models. And so if you’re new to using AI um with design, it has been nice for me to kind of test around with using the same prompt for each model so you can kind of understand which models are better at what. That said, um I think we’ve talked about this previously and kind of are on the same page with, you know, wanting to encourage newer sellers to be able to do these more higher skill set like passing off a mundane task to a software is nice and easy and frees up your time. It’s amazing. something like design and understanding how to do market research and those actual skill sets that if you know those softwares went if AI went down you know you still can know what you’re doing. Um so it can be with KD you know with the the design workflow it can be really helpful. Yeah. Um, but I’ve also made the mistake of not being, you know, kind of understanding it fully yet and being a little impatient and then, you know, I’m trying to reprompt things and then I’m downloading it and I’m editing it on a different on Canva, bringing it back in. And you really have to be patient with whatever you are going to use with AI. understand that it will save time and make you more sales um in eventually but at first like obviously they both built softwares and it’s freed up a ton of time and made them more sales but it took a lot of time to probably build those so whatever you are going to lean into AI wise and I’m trying to lean into KD um it does take some time and some testing I think that’s really good I use KD a ton myself and I just want to kind of clarify a couple things you said for anyone who’s not familiar with it so first of all KD is a graphic design software with built-in AI and they have essentially all the best models built in which means you don’t have to have like a chatbt subscription. You don’t have to have a cloud subscription. Well, actually they don’t have cloud yet, but u chachi bt seed dance like you know nano banana these are all built in and um so you can use all these all in one place which is really nice for time saving and then having all those subscriptions but the nice thing about AI workflows which you touched on is essentially it takes it a step further. They are pre-made like done for you templates for common tasks that we do. So this could be for like creating UGC generated content. Content that looks like a real person is like wearing your product uh you know for uh designs. There’s a lot of different ways that you can use these AI workflows. I like to think of them as promptless AI. And as someone who admittedly doesn’t consider myself a prompt engineer and not very good at prompting, I love that. I love that. Like the prompting is done for you. All you have to do is answer a couple really, really simple questions and then it comes out with something. Is it perfect every time? No, of course not. It’s AI. Of course, it’s not going to be perfect every time, but it gets me like a lot better of a result than I did before because it gives me a reference. It shows me like this is kind of the style you’re going for. This is what we’re creating it for versus like having to start from total scratch and trying to like explain in the prompt like I want it to look like this and that. You know, even sometimes with your own reference images like you can like be like banging your head against like the computer, right? Uh so that’s all I’ll say about that. Jay, I want to hear from you. What are some of your favorite tools? Um, I mean this is turning into a kiddo plug here, but as a designer like you said, so the AI, you know, it’s using all the best image generation models and some of their styles and their workflows and things and it absolutely is. But what I love what KD has done is they taken the best parts about all the traditional tools. So for me, you know, um, photo filters that they now have, I don’t need to use Shopify for that anymore. You can just select a color with the eyropper tool if you want to remove the black out of a shirt out of a design so the black shirt shows through. That creates what’s known in design industry as white space. Contrary to popular belief, that is not negative space. Negative space is where you use the empty space to create an actual imagery. So, the best way I can describe it is like the FedEx logo between the E and the X. That makes that’s negative space creating an arrow. That’s probably the most, you know, if you’ve never noticed it, go look at the FedEx logo and you’ll see. Um, but yeah, so it allows the shirt to show through and gives you a little more white space or empty space that doesn’t feel like a hot patch of rubber on a shirt. what would you know to fine-tune that in Photoshop would take you a lot longer than just eyropping the color and turning up or down the saturation removing the color entirely. Um and then on the the illustrators of the world for example KD now has um just taken all the best parts like you can use their pen tool and instead of switching between tools to do different things you just have to double click into things and then you can double click off it and you’re right back where you started. So for me I like using you know leveraging the AI styles that we kind of talked about. So, um, those different kinds of like the there’s a naive whatever it was called the style. You can just type in like two words or three words that you want and then it’ll make it in a different aesthetic. Uh, and then you can always add I’ll use it for imagery and then I’ll add my own text and manipulate the text with the pen tool and it stays editable. So, you’re not stuck and having to redo something. You can go in and now make it for if it’s like a birthday shirt and it says 1966, you can go make a 1956 version without having to reworp and reshape everything. Just double click on it and edit the type. So, it’s bringing it down to like absolute basics. Um, and then you mentioned the workflows, uh, or I think you mentioned the workflows, man. It’s crazy, too, because they got you’ll see the the bootleg shirts that are super popular. They’ve been popular for I mean, literal years. Uh, and they’re kind of resurfaced in the last two years. And I thought it would be something that would fizzle out by now, but it’s just getting better now. And KD has the workflows ready where you can just make a bootleg shirt. So, I have a picture of my dog, Tonka. He’s lying on the beach. There’s a blue fence in the background, palm trees, coconut on the ground in front of him. Upload the photo. Drag and drop it literally again. Um, and then I just wrote his name, Tonka, for the only text on the entire thing. And then it just created in under 60 seconds. It was literally 52 seconds. I made a video uh on YouTube about it. So easy to do. It positioned his face in seven different directions. One of them even had him walking down with like a coconut in his mouth, which is completely crazy because he does that. He fetches coconuts now. Something I never thought I’d say. Um but you know, the privilege of POD, right? Moving and living on a Caribbean island now instead of cold Toronto. But uh in 52 seconds, this thing created this bootleg shirt where I would have normally needed to have, and Michael knows this, seven different photographs of that dog. And you’re going back and forth with the customer saying, “Please, can I get a better quality photo? Can I get it on a, you know, a solid background to make the background removal easy?” KD did it all in 52 seconds. One photo, seven different locations. Got the lightning in there. Got the chrome look for his name. Done. Like you like this is literal hours down to under a minute. So, it’s print ready. Yeah, it it’s funny you mentioned that. I’ve played around with that, too. And I mean, bootleg was always tough to design for because you need customers to send you all these photos and, you know, they need to be good angles and they need to be high quality. And you’re totally right. Like, when I was playing around that, I was really happy with the experience. And I was like, “Wow, this is this solves a huge problem.” Because they’re still crushing those t-shirts, especially on the comfort color 1717 in like the color pepper. Oh, man. They crush still to this day. Uh, so it’s funny you brought that up. That is a very trendy design style. Uh, all right. Let’s kind of shift gears here and talk about you guys all have students and I’m sure some of them are using AI in ways that you would tell them not to or uh are making mistakes that maybe you made before um and that you don’t want them to make. So, what are some of the most common AI mistakes that you’re seeing from your students? Starting with Michael. Yeah, I think the the most common is just assuming that AI can handle everything and it can do the whole design process and we just hand everything over and let the robots do it all. I think um you need to understand the fundamentals, especially if you’re a beginner, you know, looking at AI thinking, well, this this is a designer. I can just ask it, you know, give me a funny dog t-shirt and away it goes. Well, it’s not good at the idea side. it doesn’t come up with concepts typically that are actually usable or or great or especially uh for my type of business I’m like no you know okay that might work but it’s very generic and it’s been done a million times before and that often times I’m like well that just doesn’t make sense at all so it’s not good at that so don’t be relying on it for those kind of things um you know people who have been in the space for a while will have tools that work better for particular things and on the design side I would say yeah think you want to use AI where it’s useful for example my typical use case would be I’m using AI for inspiration for layout purposes for giving me some some options and ideas I’m rarely using it to do a complete design from A to Z. So, it’s cool for, you know, doing that custom illustration that I’m then going to bring into Photoshop and add my own text cuz I want to use this font and, you know, all those kind of things. So, yeah, thinking in terms of using it for what it’s good at again, rather than thinking this is a solution for for everything, you know, right? Yeah. No, you made a good point there. And I think a lot of people think that that is the way to go. They’re like, “Oh, AI has just made it quicker, faster, and cheaper. Quicker, easier, and cheaper than ever before. I could crank out a thousand designs just like plug plug plug in the prompt, it comes out and then throw it on a shirt, slap it on a shirt and get it up. And many times those designs do they are not print on demand ready. Like the the graphics, they’re blurry. They’re pixelated. There’s like weird edges around the colors and little weird pixels and all these things you have to do and you can create a lot of AI slop that way. And we’re seeing that. We’re seeing a ton of AI slop, but not all AI designs AI slop. I like what you said because you said essentially you use AI to create like a version one and then you iterate on you improve on it. So it’s like you’re you’re using it for version one and then you’re which is going to save you time and do what you want to do and then you’re going to improve on that with your own kind of eye and details. It’s a tool. It’s a tool, isn’t it? Like it’s a tool to get you somewhere. It’s not the solution from A to Z. It’s going to be using it for part of that process. Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. Sarah, how about you? What are some of the most common AI mistakes you see your students making? Yeah, I agree with um Michael and saying just the full you know handing it off and relying on it too much. And I would say that if you are wanting to start to use AI to you know speed up time, make more sales, this is very practical advice, but I would recommend you know when you have many POD sellers, especially in the beginning, they have very small margins of time to work. have, you know, your time to do your normal workflow of work and then set aside a different time to just learn and play around with AI. um from my own mistakes. I would like get too excited about it and oh maybe I maybe AI could help me with this idea and then I try and then it ends up being an hour that’s lost that I was planning on you know listing X number of designs and now I didn’t because I just got excited and impulsively you know and AI is fast but it’s not always good. It can be good, just not the first time, right? So, you have to be patient with it. And that’s why I recommend kind of carving out a separate chunk of time to learn it and play around with it. I really like that because as entrepreneurs, you know, a lot of us are ADHD and we are like, give me dopamine now. I want dopamine. And so, like AI has been like a kid in a candy shop. We’re like, whoa, I can do all these things I couldn’t do before. I can look like a graphic designer when I didn’t know how to graphic design before. And it can be really easy to suck up your time with AI and you’re like, “Wait a sec, this took longer because I was like dillydallying with this AI. I could have like created this myself manually faster.” And I like that because like I think a lot of uh entrepreneurs, you know, with all the bright shiny object syndrome, it’s very easy to get distracted and to like go on a side quest. It’s like, “Oh, this side quest brought to you by ADHD.” Like I’m an entrepreneur. This is so many of us, right? And so, yeah, I I I think that’s really important that you kind of like rein it in because I definitely have spent way too much time on on AI and like not got like tangible like results for like the time investment. So, um Jay, I’d like to hear from you with your students. What are some common AI mistakes that you see? I’m going to sound like a broken record here if anyone remembers what a record is. Um yeah, somebody made an old aging comment earlier, but uh no, it’s going to sound the same. It’s literally people out farming the entire thing, alcohol, to AI and like, you know, trusting that it will have your best interest at heart. It does not. It does what it’s programmed to do. Um, and sometimes it doesn’t do what you want it to do. Like my battle with Claude, it explicitly ignores me and says it thinks better. So um yeah that said I mean like if you are entering a creative business and you are not prepared to have at least some kind of human element in there involvement then maybe this isn’t for you. And I think that’s what’s different with a lot of uh really good successful POD sellers is that we know whether you’re a graphic designer or not. You know that you need to have the final say and final touch and only you can resonate or create a design that resonates emotionally enough where a robot cannot. And that’s going to be the thing. So if you rely on that robot to get that emotional hook across, it’s just not going to work. It could look like a beautiful piece of art, but at the end of the day, if it’s got these, you know, the telltale signs, the whiskers or a weird hyphenated place or like a a giant shade of beige, you know, people are wise to that now. And people don’t want that. Less is always always more. And I mean, that’s the same idea with the principle what you talked about of having some kind of like icon or iconography inside of a a design with a majority text. I think sometimes text will always sell. Illustrations can sell. uh text with illustration can sell, but for me, the majority of the sales I see is largely text based with like little bits of iconography in there. So maybe um it says something like awesome uh but on in inside the E or on the end of the E it’s got maybe I don’t know a heart on it and and you know for a mom or something like that or it has like a the medical cross and now you’ve you’ve exclusively made this word awesome for somebody who might be a paramedic or in a medical field, right? uh without having this ornate kind of design that maybe mom thinks that’s a great design for her daughter. But will her daughter wear it? I don’t know. It’s a lot, you know, it’s a lot louder than just something that says awesome. Right. Right. I I like that you said that cuz again it goes back to simple cells. Like the data shows that simple designs sell better. Like and the way that I kind of think of it too is like the more elements that are added there’s the more room for error and the more that people be like I just don’t like that little heart there. You know what I mean? It’s like there’s there’s hearts, there’s stars, there’s lightning, there’s all these things. I mean, there’s certain examples where that works really well, like doodle art designs that can work really well, but for the most part, like when you look at the data, simple wins. It’s like one to two design elements and many times like you don’t even need AI for a lot of that stuff. Uh, but I I do really like what you said, you know, using it to evoke emotion and relatability, but like not relying on it to do everything for you. Um, so I kind of want to stay on this topic because there’s a lot of talk about AI slop. Uh, we’ve all heard the term, I’m sure. And, um, a lot of AI designs like the V1, the version one, it’s not optimized to be put on a t-shirt. And some people don’t know that, understandably so if you’re new, like I didn’t know that at first, right? But then when you actually put it on a shirt, it it looks terrible. Like it’s like you this is not optimized for this t-shirt or whatever product you’re putting it on, right? So, what are some ways that essentially we can avoid designs looking like AI slop? Michael, over to you. Yeah. Well, this is not uh an exclusive solution that I have because Kettle has this and and Jay has this as well, but you know, we have an app that allows you to bring that that AI artwork in. We can upscale it. We can knock the background out, not using AI, but using, you know, kind of pixel method like you would in Photoshop. And then you’re going to get that crisp design that you can upload. So, that’s kind of a solved problem. Now, you know, it was an issue in the early days of AI. it’s only generating a 1,00x 1000 image. It’s too small. And then we had some advances. Now we’re getting bigger images and stuff like that. But yeah, generally it’s um it’s a solved issue for for the AI imagery. We can now use that. And I think as long as people know that that’s out there, you’re pretty much solved, right? No, that’s a great great great example. Um Sarah, how about you? So what are some ways that you’re using AI or what are some ways that you’re aop Yeah. Um, I think sometimes my visual aids to AI are better than my written prompts. And so sometimes just adding some inspiration images are helpful. Um, that’s not always it can still produce AI slop. Um, but actually I have found some experience and now that um, Jay’s mentioned the kind of the phrase generator where I don’t want these phrases, I kind of want to play around more with the whole like reverse training AI because I I do feel like I have more success with that where it’s like this is what I don’t want. I don’t want it overcrowded. I don’t want these, you know, and sometimes I think that that can be a little bit easier than over typing your prompt. M um maybe the more complex the prompt for me sometimes the more complex the image and I’m not even going for a complex image but anyway so yeah that’s what I would say. Cool. Jay, how about you? Um basically if you’re going to use AI for the any kind of design here like what I would say first and foremost to to avoid like what you said mentioned something before like maybe it works on this but not on this color and it looks different. Make the artboard the color that you intend to list that design on to start. So, if you’re going to list it on like a a comfort color is pepper, right? So, make it like a, you know, a shade of a darker gray and then start designing on that and you’ll know immediately if the contrast works. If it works on black, then list it on black or navy or like a military green or maybe pepper. But if you have some grays in there that will stand out on the black, they might not stand out enough and there might not be enough contrast on that pepper. So, the whole thing is that you don’t want people to It’s kind of funny because I’m going to say a phrase here in a minute, but it’s like I should put it on a shirt, but it’s like it’s suck in bold. So, if you’re gonna suck, suck loudly. Yeah. Because if you’re gonna have like non-contrasting colors on a listing that shows up in somebody’s search results, for example, and it’s or it’s too crowded like an AI slop design, you people are going to click on it so that they can see it bigger, then they’re not then they’re going to realize they don’t like it. Doubly worse if you’ve paid for that click now by advertising it. So, now you’re paying for them to click on a listing to realize they don’t like it. Yeah. tank the conversion rate on that listing because they’re not adding to cart and conversion is the best driver. I don’t care what platform you know that’s the beall end all and then you they’re not converting so inevitably that design just will will stop surfacing. So be intentional about every step of the way regardless of how you’re using AI in it I think is you know ultimately um and again it just comes back to you know knowing the niche and stop farming everything out to AI. More is not better. Would you rather be like, you know, a mile wide and an inch deep in 100, you know, in a hundred different things or would you rather be a mile deep? Always, always a mile deep because that’s where the repeat customers come back. That’s where, you know, the email blast makes sense because people are waiting for your next drop. If you’re trying to, you know, spray and pray, yeah, it’s not going to work the same way. So, yeah, I I really like like the the tip there about the canvas. A lot of us create our designs with a white background and sometimes the designs look really good and then you remove everything and you throw it on like a Comfort Colors t-shirt and pepper and you’re like, “Oh, that looks terrible. I got to go back to the drawing board and fix this.” Right? So, that was that was great advice. Uh, we’re out of time, but this was such a fun discussion. AI is such a hot topic and I think we’re all in agreement that there are ways that can help us save time and make more sales. Uh, it’s a somewhat controversial topic, so I’m glad we got to kind of dive a little deeper. Um, this was a bit of a longer session, but guys, thank you so much for your valuable insights and we will send it back to the green room.
What is good everybody? It’s Levi back on the roaming camera to again with Crystal. Crystal, um, these are going to be some rapid fire questions, so I just want you to be ready and answer two. First of all, what is your brand and tell me a little bit about it. All right, so my brand is Girl Plus God. This is actually a brand that I acquired from somebody else. So, this was not my first t-shirt. Okay. When when you say acquired it from somebody else, is that a like Shopify store transaction? Remember they had that Shopify marketplace? Is that how you acquired it? No, it literally was like, I really like this brand. I want to buy it from you. Can I ask how much you paid for it? You want to know for real? I’m going to give you the real tea. $3,000. So, $3,000. You acquired a POD brand. It wasn’t POD. What was it at first? Was it like bulk orders? Like you did you get some inventory or did you just get trademarks and like styles ideas website? So the original owner uh she would just like print it get get it print somewhere and like ship it out and then I kind of came on and was like, “Hey, I know I can take this brand to like six, seven figures. Let me just buy this. Let me take this off your hands.” And then I actually had my own warehouse. So I used a warehouse and I used POD. But using POD will be me for life because it’s so easy to like maximize your brand using it. So also you’re not taking that risk where if you don’t sell out of your inventory in the warehouse at that point you’re kind of just stuck with it. No. Did that ever happen for you? Absolutely. You’re giving me nightmares like buying stuff and you’re getting it like from China and you’re spending so much money and then you just have it on hand and you have to discount it. which is why I love print on demand. When I say please get something from print on demand, it works. Not to mention now ordering things overseas, you have the the chance of losing an entire inventory order, which can be thousands and thousands of dollars or things getting stalled and missing drop days. There’s just so much involved that Printify just takes care of for us. Tell me about Girl Plus God. The person that owned it before, did you know them personally? So I actually started as a brand ambassador for the brand. They reached out to me and they were like, hey, can you wear it? I was like, I love this. Why didn’t I think about So a model really? Yeah. You know, a little something. And then I said, you know what? I love this brand and so let’s partner. And then I figured like, let me just take it over. But it’s a faith-based brand just for women who love God, whatever that looks like for you. I have an amazing community of women, about 200,000 across like social platforms, and it’s been great to build it with print on demand and with my own warehouse. I think one cool part that I see from an outside of your brand is such a specific niche and like you know exactly who you’re selling to. I’m not a woman, but I love God and I love women. So, can I still buy your products? You can’t. And then we have like me plus God. We have mom plus God. We have like wife plus God. So, I’ll get you a me plus guy or maybe even a Levi plus guy. Can be a model sometime, too. It was great talking with you, Crystal. Let’s keep going over here. Oh, I see Sarah. We’re going to sit down with Sarah, and she’s going to be our next person to get interrogated. Sarah, can you can you tell me what your store is called? St. Joo. What does St. Joo mean? Um, it’s inspired by where I live, the area in which I live, which we’re going to keep that gate cap. Somewhere in America. It is in America. Yeah. And St. Jooko, is that your only store? Uh, good question. Yes, I’ve dabbled in Tik Tok. I’ve not I’ve not done enough in it, but like do you call it Staint Jooko on TikTok as well? I did. Yeah. Okay. And And h how did you come up with that name? Did you Did you Was it somewhere you were already living or somewhere you moved to? Moved to. So, it was kind of Oh, manifestation almost. Yeah, it was kind of happening at the same time. So, it’s starting my shop and moving. What was your very first product to get a sale? A mug. What did the mug have on it? Um, I will tell you what the mug had on it. It had um something that it shouldn’t have had on it. It got taken down because I didn’t know. Um it was like a TV reference. And so, no, don’t do any of that. Don’t do your TV movie show. I was an amateur. But yeah. Okay. A a mug. Very different. I think a lot of us sell t-shirts here. I think t-shirts are the easiest thing to mock up, sell, and market most importantly because everybody has to wear clothes preferably. Um, but not everybody needs mugs. Do you use mugs on a daily basis? Are you a coffee drinker? Oh, I use mugs on a daily basis. 100%. Yes. But I primarily sell shirts more now. Yeah. Okay. Get on the shirt train. Shirt train is definitely the train you want to be on. But when I’m thinking about using mugs, are you a coffee drinker? Tea. Coffee. Iced coffee or hot coffee? Both. Mostly hot. Do you drink coffee? I do. I’m iced though. Iced everything. Iced tea, iced coffee. In the winter? Yep. Even in the winter? Wow. With milk or without? Um, it depends on how I’m feeling that day. Either black or with milk. I’m not a cream. No cream. I was hoping she was going to be like, I like all the sweeteners and cream stuff. That way I so that way I could feel more manly like Oh yeah. Usually I like it black with sometimes a little cream and sweetener in it. But okay, Sarah, great talking to you. Let’s see who else we can find over. Oh, Mr. J, can you tell us about yourself, J? Hi, I’m uh Levi Younger and I sell on Tik Tok. No kidding. I’m Jay Duza. I’m Canadian and I’m not allowed to sell on Tik Tok. And he wears really cool hats. Thank you. And he has cool earrings which I cannot pull off. Uh yeah. I think you’d be able to do it. How old were you when you got your ears pier first? Oh man, I don’t remember. Probably 14, 15. Seems like about the right age. What’s your favorite product to sell on your stores? T-shirts. Um, I actually have a community with another graphic designer buddy of mine. It’s called the Shads. Um, tell me about learning how to be a graphic designer probably a few years ago, at least one or two. How has that changed from then to how people graphic design today? Wow, great loaded question. Yeah, right on the spot, too. Kind of just came up with that one. Yeah, I I appreciate the one to twoyear guesstimate there. Um, yeah, it has come so far with the introduction obviously of AI, you know. Um, I think that’s in every conversation almost now when it comes to design in some capacity. Uh, gone are the days where I would spend four hours illustrating something or designing something that or or creating like an illustrative element in a t-shirt design. Now I can kind of farm that part out to AI. I like to play with text myself still. So there’s a lot of it that I’ll keep, you know, old school if you want to call it, but I think having that human element in the design is always going to be paramount. Um, but it has come so far. Uh, yeah, the the early Adobe Creative Suites came on a DVD probably before your time. I uh yeah, I haven’t seen a DVD for probably 90% of my life. That said, we were able to like burn them and rip them and like Dang, that’s awesome. And wait, you didn’t have to pay monthly then for it. That would be sweet. No, it was a one and done, but then we would burn copies and hawk them on the deal. Yeah, allegedly. Allegedly. Um, what is your favorite creative tool that you’re using today outside of the Adobe suite? Outside of the Adobe suite, my favorite tool is absolutely KD. I don’t even use the Adobe suite anymore. It’s allowed me to kind of cancel that subscription. So, uh, yeah, again, AI fueled on one half and then they’ve taken the best parts of, you know, the Adobe kind of suite and put it into one sweet, sweet tool. I think one thing when it comes to design, people frown upon the use of AI a lot, but I think one thing that AI can do that nothing else can is bring ideas in text format to life. And when you learn how to bring an idea to life and then go ahead and edit it into an optimized t-shirt design, that’s I think how a lot of people are finding winners today. How do you see people using AI effectively? Uh effectively, honestly, is is kind of the way I was talking about, right? So, it’s having a little bit of a human element in it and then not farming the entire thing out to AI. So using it for things as a tool to speed up the workflow but not relying on it entirely. You heard it here first from a graphic designer. That’s it for us today. We’ll see you again later.
Welcome back to the discussion stage. I’m so excited to talk about this because social media is something that a lot of people are really getting tripped up about in marketing their products, creating videos for their products. So, I’m here with Dominic and John and we’re going to go over basically everything that you need to know with discussing content or creating content in social media, whether it’s for marketing or for your business. So, thanks guys for being here on this panel. I want to jump right into product creation. I think that’s where a lot of people do kind of get nervous and how to create a video or photos of their products, especially with print on demand because we don’t actually have the physical product. Well, sometimes if you order a sample, but could you tell me what goes into your process of creating a short form video if I were to hand you a product right now? Yeah, absolutely. And the first thing is actually not think about the camera setup or anything like that. It’s doing the research. So, a big thing that I always tell my students is number one, if a video has gone viral in the past, it can go viral again. So, I want to first understand what content has worked of maybe a product or something similar inside my niche. I want to understand the audios. I want to understand the sounds that are being used inside those videos, the style of content, and I really want to examine what’s worked. After I’ve understood that, now I just have to use what I call the 8020 rule. So, I take 80% of what worked in that first video and just tweak in that little 20% with my own creative touch. Whether it’s a different shot of the the content or maybe it’s a different background in the video showing the product, whatever it could be, I just want to twist up in my own creative way. So, number one is the research process. and then it’s just duplicating what’s worked in the past. Wow, that’s really cool. I think research does have a lot to do with it because if you just go and try to like make a random video, it might not convert for what you’re actually, you know, selling. And for Dominic, I’m curious if you have a specific way that you make content or like what you feel makes a good short form video. Um, we use a lot of sort of very silly kind of videos. Um, we have always seen ourselves as quite a lowfi brand. Okay. something that we try and use and make content as cheaply as possible but in a way that resonates with the customer because they can say to themselves this is something I can do and it’s also feels a bit more genuine because like if you think about the rise of Tik Tok and short form videos and what’s popular on those on those um platforms is it’s not overly produced content. It’s real people in their rooms trying their best and people appreciate that because there’s a realness to it. Many times if you watch any kind of like advertising on television, your brain instantly just switches off. You’re like, “It’s an advertising. I know it’s an advertisement.” So having when you’re making something, try and make it feel natural, feel like it’s you. Otherwise, you’re going to be trying too hard, failing at making something that’s good and kind of getting burnt out on the creative process. So, I know that’s kind of kind of a little vague with what I’m saying, but what I’m trying to say is that you don’t really need a lot of money to make a short form video that works. You’re right in the sense that 820 rule works. You’ll often find a lot of content creators have very repetitive videos. And the reason why those work is because people like the repetition. If something works, tweak it a little bit, try it again. Once you’ve got a winning format, you can basically run that into the not into the ground, but you can run it for quite a while before people get really tired of the content. So, yeah, the A20 rule definitely applies as well. It’s a really good way of putting it. Yeah, for sure. I I personally like I’ll look up a product that I’m selling, like let’s say it’s like an embroidered hat, and I’ll look that up on multiple platforms. Like I’ll check out Pinterest. I’ll check out and see if it’s on pretty much anywhere, you know, Tik Tok. and I see the videos that maybe are being clicked on are performing and I take that into consideration with the video that I’m making too. So that way kind of like what you both said, seeing what’s working and not having to overly produce it either. Just sometimes it’s like really basic stuff that works really well. Also, if you don’t do the research, you’re not going to know your audience. Because if you’re doing the research and you’re thinking that works for me, then you know that the product that you’re selling should sell to the people that are like you because you’re making things that hopefully you like and you’re selling it to people that relate to yourself as a person. Absolutely. And for content, there’s a lot of ways to actually create it, right? Whether you want to order a sample or if you want to use AI. Is that something Well, that’s a broad question. what what is your favorite ways to make content if if you were to tell somebody that’s maybe new and starting out? What’s something you could suggest for them to do? Yeah, so every single piece of content that I make, uh especially if you’re selling any sort of product has to have three things in every single video. Number one is the hook. It’s the most important part of any video that’s posted. People are scrolling through their feed rapidly. We have to grab their attention immediately. So having a parent interrupt and every single hook can be broken down in three simple things. Number one, it has to have a text on screen hook. It also has a visual hook being shown within the content. And then thirdly, it has to have some sort of audio hook. It has to have some sort of sound happening. And the hooks that work are typically the ones that have a cliffhanger. Um, something like for a t-shirt would be like, I just got this off the Tik Tok shop. That would be something that’s like, oh, really like, oh, this guy’s coming off sales. It’s not much of a hook. But saying something in the realm of check out what my dad just bought for me. And now something’s like, “Oh, what did this guy on my feed? What did his dad buy?” Oh, he bought he bought me this t-shirt. It’s this thing I got off and he off the Tik Tok shop. It feels more natural when you have some sort of cliffhanger in that hook that holds people through the first 3 seconds. From there, it’s called the meat and potatoes. So, that’s where you actually hold the viewer longer. So, uh it’s typically some sort of change. Mr. Beast calls it uh the two to three second rule. Every single time you see a Mr. beast video, there’s something changing every 2 to 3 seconds where it’s a frame, there’s a color, it’s a new character, whatever is being shown, there’s engagement happening. That’s the meme and potatoes of the video. And the goal is to retain your viewer as long as possible. And at the very end is called the CTA or your call to action. That’s where basically you’re taking whoever made it to your end of a video, I want to make sure that they actually buy whatever product or at least clicking on the link to buy the product, whether it’s in Shopify, it’s on an ad, or it’s through Tik Tok shop. And so there’s four things I always tell people that needs to be included inside of every single call to action. Number one, it has to have FOMO. It has to have a fear of missing out. Number two, has to have urgency. There has to be a time frame to actually buy. Number three, it has to have the Jones effect included inside. The Jones effect is idea keeping up with the Joneses. We all want things that other people want to have and they other people are buying. And the last part is the indifference in it. So if I was to put a call to action, I’m selling this t-shirt. It’d be something like, I just got this off the Tik Tok shop. If you guys want to grab it down below, everyone in their mothers has been trying to get it, but they keep selling out. So, I click the link down below and grab it while you still can. Has every single piece of it inside that call to action. I provide urgency. Everyone else is buying it. I also mentioned the Jones effect. Keep going with the Joneses. Everyone in their mothers has been trying to grab this off Tik Tok, but they keep selling out. Fear of missing out is that it keeps selling out. So, that’s super important. I tell every single creator who whether it’s an affiliate or myself making content all has to include. Wow, that’s some really great advice. That’s that’s really cool. I think that can be applied to so many types of videos. It’s kind of just like you follow that framework and whether you want to do a video of you with the product or someone or even just showcasing it. That can be something as simple as a voiceover, right? Like order. A lot of people do that on TikTok. They literally will just do it faceless. Maybe they even have AI doing the voice over. If they’re like, I’m a little bit afraid to film my t-shirt on this table right here. They can just plug it into 11 Labs is like an AI software. You can just literally have it say something and you just send a voice over or of course naturally you can just say that script out loud. Right. And that’s even like you said faceless. I think that’s a good topic to kind of like move over to it for a second because so many people that want to sell online might not want to create content. And I know when I first started I was like I don’t really want to do content. I don’t think many people you either have that urgency or you don’t. But you might not necessarily have to show your face or even yourself at all. You can use stuff like that or AI in general to create like an AI video of that. I mean, one of the things that we did once uh that worked really well as a Tik Tok Tik Tok advertisement was u a series of just simple mock-ups put together in Cap Cut. Maybe a little bit of uh editing with the way that the transition, but like you said, keeping the attention. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And what that did was it it kind of in a humorously lowfi way, like I said earlier, showcased all the t-shirt designs that we had in a way that was quick enough that it didn’t insult the audience’s attention spans and kept them around just long enough to ask what the hell did I just watch? And that like confusion, it’s like you said when you were saying the hook, it’s like what what is what’s it’s a natural curiosity in people that wants them to find out more and you can use very simple techniques to acquire that. And you said um just to confirm that you used photos like I guess a photo slide. We originally just used the mockups and we had them spinning around on the screen and we just it was so kind of childlike and childish that it naturally made people want to buy the product because it had um sort of a realness to it. Yeah. And what we found is that just using the tools that are available to you and the skill sets that you can, but being open and honest about how you’re using them, you can be very creative because sometimes the limitations of what your own abilities are can make you then be more creative because you’re forced to. For example, I say to people, if you if you struggle with what to put on uh a design, why don’t you just stick with words until you’ve worked out the imagery that might go with those words? And you can come back and adapt the t-shirt later at a later date once you feel more confident or if you’re working with somebody who’s better at graphic design than you initially were. Yeah. And you don’t have to be like an expert at everything right away. It’s kind of like you can master one thing and then move along from it. I think uh with the photo um aspect with mock-ups, that’s something I do a lot is I’ll take mockup photos, whether you know it’s the ones that I download from my print on demand store and either use AI to create that into an image or something that works well for me is just photo slides, which is not even like that hard to do. It’s you can do it on, you know, Instagram they perform really well. I believe they’re called carousels, but then on Tik Tok it’s like a little photo slide and you could just include keywords and such with a trending song or a saying like this is about to sell out. You know, there’s a lot of cool different ways to do that. The the trending song in itself is a hook if you think about it. It also allows you to be connected to things that people are searching for. For example, if people are looking up that trending song because they like the videos that are associated with it, you can get your brand in there in a more subtle way than sort of being too overly obvious that you’re advertising a product in the first place. Very cool. And I’m curious if we can talk about AI. Yeah. And AI and editing because there’s obviously a lot of ways to use AI in that. Is it something that you use a lot in your video creation? Absolutely. Especially right now, it is scary what we’re seeing. If we look at models three years ago, if anyone remembers like the Will Smith eating like spaghetti, I don’t know if everyone’s seen those, but that was like three years ago and we could tell like, oh my goodness, that’s kind of spooky though AI. And then a year ago, we’re like, oo, that’s that’s pretty interesting. And now we’re at the day and age where at least on my feed, 30% of my feed is AI. What’s it going to look like in a year where we’re not going to be able to tell who is an influencer and who is fake? And so we do a lot of AI stuff right now. Um, it’s first understanding how to use AI. That’s kind of the first step in the process. Which models you should be using. They’re evolving all the time. I’m switching models all the time because they’re getting stronger. Each one is competing against each other. So, it’s first understanding how to use Claude, how to use Chat GBT, how to use Higsfield, how to use KD, and understanding the platform and understanding prompting. Once you’ve done that, then it’s going into diving into actual creation of it. So, a lot of the AI stuff we work on is very UGC style videos. uh showcasing a creator who’s not real, showcasing that product. And you can do that volume, right? It’s just is kind of like when it comes to the carousel, those slides. We do a lot of that under our shop. And the reason why is because photos are easy to create. You can take them in a second if you’re taking them yourself or you can take photos off the internet or you can take a photo of your product and just reproduce those so many different times. And with AI, it’s kind of the same idea. Anything on social media when it comes to what’s working is a volume game. And I mentioned earlier in one of our one of my the talks I was talking about like volume is the game and with AI it’s one of those things that you it’s truly limitless what you can create because it can just be made with a couple clicks on your computer. Yeah. And then you can like create one thing and then just keep going off of that. That’s what I always do with prompts is like I just get closer and closer and then I’m like, “Okay, now change the angle or do this and that.” You can just create so many different things all off with like one image and one prompt that starts out. Exactly. Exactly. And and for those viewers out there who are like, okay, you just talked about your process for, if you go even deeper, the process that if I’m making, like, for example, a photo mockup, I first want to get the mockup that I have from Profy. I toss that into uh into either Higsville or Chad CBT. Chad is probably the best one right now for image generation. And then I also throw in maybe a character who’s being maybe a character that I find on Pinterest or I find on Google. And maybe I’ll change the look of her face, the different hair, the color, skin tone, and I’ll just have her wearing my product, and that’ll be my mockup image. And I I send in that prompt to chat, and that’s what I use. And that same process of taking a reference and putting in a prompt with your product, is the same thing when it comes to video creation. Really cool. I do something similar where I’ll take inspiration from other mockups, whether I find it on something that’s trending on Etsy or something that I see on Pinterest, and I’ll use that photo and ask I usually use chat GPT for it for an im or a prompt for an image generator to create something similar with my product with a transparent background and that that works so well for me. And then I go a step further on KD and I make it into a video and it’s just like a whole process. So it’s really valid point of understanding what works for you and what you understand with AI and just kind of play around with it, you know. How do you use AI with your video creation? Uh we don’t. Okay. Yeah. For photo at all or No, we use everything in house. A lot of Photoshop. Oh, that’s really cool. Apart from maybe um Photoshop’s ability to generate uh photo generated in within Photoshop. Um, we really like to keep it more uh like in-house more lowfi like I said uh utilizing creators, utilizing people that work in video and photographers as well. So instead of sort of trying to lead into the AI thing, trying to keep it as real and as like understandable as possible. You are right that there does sometimes feel like how long is that possible in a world where AI is getting more and more harder to to understand and spot. Um, but at the same time, we enjoy working with individual creators and photographers and videographers to create content that we feel is sort of unique and real to ourselves. I love the power of that. It’s It’s interesting cuz I think we’re going to see a big movement of people like going back to analog. Like I have a digital camera, which is really nice. I think people are going to be getting in. We’re already seeing like a big boom in film making now. People want to use film cameras because they want that energy. Yeah. It’s tough though because it’s like you said I mean it’s um on one hand you’ve got a tool that lets you generate so much in so little time for so little money versus a more longer form uh more it it’s a more of an investment. So it depends on if you want sort of the quantity or the quality and whether or not you want to differentiate yourself from from say other brands that can do the same. So I know that there is obviously creativity in trying to get the prompts and trying to merge the images within Chachi PT but in my opinion there will always be sort of a level that it it sort of creates like a it gets rather nuanced it gets quite similar. So we try and avoid that but whether or not that’s the future I mean I agree with you there is people going back to analog as people try and get uh try and fight back against like the death of physical media. Um, but you know there’s future, there’s past and who knows what might work and what might not. I I’m curious for you mentioned you work with UGC. Is that through creators? Like do you work with creators that um maybe fit like your branding and you have them create content for you? We do. Yeah, we get a lot of people that reach out wanting to work with us and we’ve also used affiliate partners before. Um what we tend to do is find um affiliates that uh we like their content. will reach out and say, “Would you like to work with us?” Or maybe we’ll say, an easy win is to say, “Would you like a free piece of merchandise?” And don’t ask anything in return. And what you’ll find is often a creator will wear the merchandise, and you will get hits back to your site without having to really, you know, do anything other than say, “I really like what you do. Here’s some free merchandise, and hopefully it’ll come back to you.” You know, it’s really cool. That kind of brings me into a topic I want to talk about with branding and following on social media cuz you know sure if you have a big brand on social media and a following it it can seem like you can get more, you know, engagement and stuff, but I don’t feel that sometimes that number really matters for if you really find your people that are looking for your product. If you can really build that community regardless of what platform you’re on, those are the people that are going to buy from you. And I’d like to ask if maybe there’s a way that you feel you can take that traffic from social media and kind of turn it into more of a community. Whether that’s creating content that makes people want to subscribe to an email list or wants to just follow you in general. Is is that something you do? Yeah, absolutely. Branding is is really important when it comes to scaling. At the very beginning, I I don’t I always recommend people like don’t brand your products. There are some benefits that some people do really well, but my general recommendation is focus on the branding when you’re scaling. And I if there are some tips when it comes to building community, it is around your brand. Um, you have to draw a line in the sand who the product is for and who it’s not for. Because if you cater to way too many people, then there’s going to be people that like aren’t really passionate about it. And then there’s on the whole flip side of things, too. If you’re too tight, you’re going to have too little of an audience to market to. So, it’s really important about understanding there’s that balance of drawing line of sand who product is for, who it’s not for. For example, we’re seeing like Bloom Energy Drinks is a massive brand. They just crossed 500 million cans sold. And their branding is totally different from like a Celsius or a Red Bull, but they come in and they have like this healthconscious awareness product and that’s how they market very very well. Um, so that’s how you first build a community is with your branding and then you’re investing back into that community. You’re asking them for reviews. you’re taking their the content that they’re making or they’re leaving uh in the reviews and you turn those into pieces of content that you can maybe run as ads. And so there’s a lot of things that you can do when it comes to building a community. And on the flip side too, there’s not just a marketing and customer community. There’s also what’s called like a creator community as well. That’s something huge we focus on Tik Tok shop is our creator group who’s making all the content. All these UGC creators, I want to put them into like a basically a big old group chat where they are sharing their wins. They’re sharing the videos that they make. finding out what styles of content work and they’re learning from each other. And also, one thing that’s really fun is competing against each other. And I’m okay with putting affiliates against each other. They be create content for me if they’re competing because they’re helping me make money. So, there’s a whole rabbit hole we can go down on that. But, uh, community is everything when it comes to scaling. Yeah. And I think with two, people that are interested in your product will naturally kind of join your community. And I think like especially if you’re on like multiple platforms or a very like niche specific store that’s pretty easy to grow in that way. Yeah. I mean I want to go back to what you saying there about whether or not to go with branding first and then the products. You are right. You need to work out what you are wanting to achieve. Find products that are actually selling and then you can move on to branding afterwards. Otherwise, you might sort of create a brand, create products that don’t really match the brand identity that you’ve just created and you’re working backwards at that point. Um, and also what you said about um making sure that you are tight in what you were trying to achieve without being all over the place, but not being too tight that you’re stuck because you don’t want to be a website where or or a store that just has so many so many products that it becomes overwhelming for the customer to complete their sort of sales journey. And you want to make sure that the products that are on the store have at least a tiniest bit of like resemblance to each other. It’s a it’s a a vibe. Your brand has a vibe that is identifiable and also relatable in a way that people will want to talk about it. So they’re talking about not just say one product on your on your side. They’re talking about your brand as a whole. Like everything you sell is something that they might like and it might resonate with them. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think one thing that I think is important for viewers to understand too is you don’t go into branding first. to understand and you don’t even go into the product first. If you’re thinking about branding, you think about who you’re selling to first. Like who is your ICP for it means ideal customer profile? Who are you selling to? What age are they? What are their habits? What are the things that they engage with on social media? I want to go really deep first into understanding who I’m selling to. I want to put my literally my shoes into their shoes and understand what they’re looking for and then I can understand what products they’re looking for. and they got to understand what I can sell them, what kind of content I can make for them. So, it can we branding is like one of the things I love talking about because it’s so fascinating and I study some of the coolest brands in the world that I love. And it’s important to understand that it all started with the customer. It wasn’t about the product. It was always about the customer, right? It’s about like researching what they want versus maybe what you want to create sometimes, which can be difficult to comprehend, but it’s it’s true. We want to create products that they’re looking for and that they’re interested in first cuz that’s what’s going to overall convert. Yeah. And it’s it’s some one of the biggest mistakes I see a lot of new beginners just do is they like, I want to sell this cuz I I want to sell K-pop demon hunter t-shirts on TikTok cuz I love K-pop demon hunters. Number one, I want to understand maybe there’s research behind it that did work, but also I want to think like does it have the the community on the platform? Does that customer really want to buy K-pop Demon Hunter t-shirts? Maybe they do. I haven’t done a research on it, but I first want to understand that ideal customer profile before I ever sell anything. And so when you’re thinking about what you want to sell, I think those are great things to think about like what do I align with? I always tell a lot of my students like look at what you bought on Amazon or on Etsy or in Tik Tok recently. What have you bought inside of there? Because there’s other people that have bought it as well. Maybe there’s an identity behind you that you can tap into what you sell. So it’s understanding you first. What kind of niches do you like? What are some habits, some thoughts, some things that you’ve bought in the past? And then think, do consumers and customers out there want that as well? By looking through data, it’s a lot easier to sell to an established market than it is to try to create something completely from scratch, especially if you’re a beginner and you don’t have that experience. Obviously, once you, you know, have more experience in building brands, then go for it. But I always tell people too, start with something that you’re familiar with because then it also makes the process like more enjoyable too cuz you actually like kind of know what you’re talking about. Well, it’s something that if you enjoy it, you know, people are you’re not the only person on the planet that enjoys it. So, you want to be able to find an audience that resonates with yourself. Some people that you know, you’re trying to sell something because you know to sell it because you like it yourself. You mentioned with the um going through your Amazon list and looking at what you’ve been buying and is there is there like a theme there? Are you say passionate about this is gonna sound corny uh grilling and barbecuing? Maybe you could think about well what does grilling and barbecuing people want to buy and is there products out there in print of demand stores that you could then design that would I don’t know be a funny grilling and barbecue t-shirt for example. I mean, that’s like the most base level I can think of, but it’s an example of playing within what you understand. And then once you’ve once you’ve got to the point where you understand how to run the business, you can then expand out there and think, what’s my next venture? For sure. I want to talk about trends because with social media all all the time there’s new trends popping up everywhere. Sometimes it can be hard to figure out if it’s a trend that you should jump on, especially if you’re trying to keep with a pretty, you know, strict branding. not strict, but do you try to keep everything involved with trends? Where is the fine line of like should I really get into this trend or even holiday just things that are happening? Yeah, it’s it’s such a difficult question because it depends on what stage you’re at. True. Right. I I think right now for a lot of listeners like there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be getting on Halloween right now. People are wanting Halloween products right now. Huge opportunity. Same thing with Christmas. We have a big opport Thanksgiving. There’s lots of opportunities for you to get on right now. Um, it’s just understanding that your time frame for capitalizing on that has an end date, right? There’s an end date to Halloween. Now, Christmas is one of those things that giftable products can be sold all year. For example, we sell a lot of like greeting cards on our store, like like simple greeting cards. Now, some of them say are like Christmas cards, like they were Christmas, so I get one chance at that, but I also have some Christmas cards that are just gifting for your mother. So, I can sell that all year round. If it’s her birthday, I can also sell it during Mother’s Day. So there’s a evergreen effect to some products I sell and there’s also some that are very like capturing a viral moment or has a time frame at the end. Yeah. Okay. And I think like if you see a trend like let’s say you’re a newer seller and you want to create a video for social media and you see a trend that pops up. Is it something that you think you’d encourage someone to try or is it kind of like H? There’s some things it it really is very unique cuz audios for example like like trending audios are something we use all the time because those are kind of a make or break for a video and for a lot of viewers out there that might not understand. You’ll see the same videos pop up in your feed and they have the same audio in the background because they’re getting pushed out really heavily like people are swarming around it. And so trending audios are a big thing that we definitely jump on virally. That’s that’s a given. Um, when it comes to styles of content, sometimes it just doesn’t blend with your product that you might be selling. Um, typically trending are just a go-to, but sometimes trends that are popping up can’t always be something that can be copied. Yeah, I I tell people not to like jump on everything. It’s true. I mean, if you jump on everything, the chances of you creating something that could be considered controversial is quite high. And also, you can age a product really hard. So, I mean, maybe you can get a quick win, but then maybe you’re selling something that is completely outdated in the cultural zeitgeist. Yeah. So, we are slowing down on time here, but I would love to just see if maybe we can give some tips and something that you feel maybe that sellers tend to over complicate and how they can simplify. Is there any suggestions you have with that? Yeah, it’s just going back to the core idea of looking what’s worked in the past and not having to recreate it, right? You mentioned earlier like most people and you recommend people to not go out there and sell like a unique product or build their own brand unless they have that background experience. Same thing when it comes to content. Maybe I’ll play around with new ideas and try and create my own viral moment or my new trend. But typically, I’m just taking things that have worked in the past. I don’t need to reinvent the wheel and just take that what’s worked and just post it again. And it’s also like focusing on the inputs is a big thing. content. When we post a video, especially on Tik Tok, it’s going to get 200 views almost every single time. I’ve not I’ve posted so many videos that have not gotten traction and it’s just focusing on the inputs every single day. Uh, one thing I I come from a swimming background, so my swim coach at the very beginning of the year like told us like, hey, if we just think about the end of the year, the our NCAA, our final meet of the year, and we think about that every single time we come to practice, we’re never going to make there. We’re never going to have progress. It’s just showing up every single day, getting 1% better, and just focus on the inputs. The outputs will come eventually. And the for us outputs is the money coming into our bank account. But at the very beginning, it’s just like getting a little bit better every single day. The consistency. That’s very true. Even with you know, you’re if you’re creating your own content on your own platform, say that’s Instagram, for for reals or for uh Tik Tok, you can’t expect to just be winning straight away. You really do have to throw yourself at it. Be passionate about it and say to yourself, “This is what I do now. And I’m going to keep going and get better and better every day until you never know. Something that you never thought would work explodes, right?” And then when you get those moments, you’d be shocked by just how much it translates to sales and to your store. But it doesn’t happen overnight. it is something that requires you honing sort of whatever your theme or your your vibe or like your style or even if it’s a repetitive thing that you’re doing. It you’ve got to hone it. You’ve got to work on it. Take time. Just appreciate the fact that it’s not going to be an overnight thing. And it’s understanding too like once you do start winning, it’s impossible to get tired. I don’t know how it is for you. Like once you start winning, I know for a fact I used to just beat myself every single day when I went to bed like, “Oh, why isn’t it going viral? is nothing working. Once you get that first little bit of a taste, you’re never going to want to quit and you’re never going to get tired. And so that’s the beautiful part about business is most people never get to that point. They usually give up. I’ve we I’ve seen it. I know all of us have seen it time and time again where someone says they want to do this and they will just quit because it got too hard. And at the end of the day, every single one of us felt that way at the beginning, but we push past that point and we once we start winning, he just doesn’t stop because you have so much momentum and so much commitment to it. Exactly. Just one other thing I want to say is uh don’t be scared to keep things simple. You’d be surprised that you can spend a long time creating some kind of video content to find out it flops and you will be disappointed, but you can spend 2 seconds with a really silly idea and it will it will be way more successful. So try and find that balance. Don’t sort of break your back trying to be very like high-end already. Just do what you can with what you know. That’s such a great tip and to just try because you really never know what’s going to happen, especially with social media. It’s a toss. It’s there’s a little bit of luck involved in it, but it’s all about putting the inputs and I kind of mentioned earlier like taking out those lottery tickets and one day it will cash in. Absolutely. Thanks so much for talking about this. I’m sure that everybody has got some good tips. Hopefully, it makes social media not feel as intimidating hearing all this. But thanks for watching and we’re going to go check out what’s going on in the green room and we’ll be back for another discussion here on the stage.
Thank you. All right. So, I want to ask you a couple of questions. Explain Amplified in a few words. So, Amplified to me is all about the community, right? I think it’s wonderful what these guys have managed to build and it’s just so cohesive. It’s a lot of people. It’s a marketer’s dream out here. So, really, really love uh the community that’s coming out of this. I could not agree more. I feel like it’s so cool to have so many amazing, ambitious entrepreneurs hanging out with us. Everyone like it feels like everyone’s here, you know, everyone has a seat at this table and it’s just such a cool event. No gatekeeping. It’s like amazing. So, let’s hear about your biggest takeaway. I want to know what’s your biggest takeaway from this event. I think for me it’s just realizing that the opportunity lies literally anywhere, right? We’ve heard from some very very young entrepreneurs, 20 year olds who’ve made like a million on TikTok in a month. And to me, that’s just mindbaffling. It just shows there’s so much opportunity if you only um sort of try and make sure that you’re giving it your best. Um so I think that’s going to be my one message to people. Just keep trying. Don’t give up. Right. That’s that’s really good advice and I maybe you’ll have a similar answer for the next question but I want I want to know what you what’s one lesson that you want the viewers to take away from this event. Um so listening to some of the stories that people had right um I think the one lesson to take away from is is really sort of trust your gut trust in yourself um trust that the products that are coming out of your store are really really the best ones and then sort of just just try just give it your best and keep trying. sort of stepping on the toes of my last answer, but yeah, just keep trying. Yeah. No, I think that’s a really good answer because all of us in the beginning like it’s not easy. You know, everyone started at zero and some people figure it out, some people haven’t. But I do think that staying power that long-term mindset is extremely important. You know, entrepreneurship in general, right? It’s just so powerful. And you know, we don’t we don’t talk about mindset too much because people want to hear like the the data back like give me the stepby-step back of the napkin strategy. But like everything starts with belief. Everything starts with belief. And a lot of these entrepreneurs, the high volume sellers, when you talk to them, you can see that like they’re believing in themselves. Now, it might not have started that way, but that’s one one thing that’s nice about once you start getting the results, it almost reinforces the belief even more. So, thank you so much for your time. I loved your answers. Sarah, what is going on? Our 1% Etsy seller, Sarah, I want to know, explain Amplified in a few words. I mean, it’s been so much fun and um genuine or honest. I just love how honest every seller has been because um I know that it can be easy as a newer seller to just feel like there’s a missing key and they’re not sharing the good stuff with us. But I feel like everyone’s really been honest about this is what’s worked for me, what hasn’t. Um and just inspiring. Like I always leave these kinds of events motivated myself. Yeah, you’re right. And the word I think of is authentic. Like people have been so authentic here and you know we’re not just talking about the good like you know like it’s it’s great to talk about wins but everyone I feel for every win we’ve had like 10 losses and I that isn’t talked about nearly enough. So to get like the human element the kind of unfiltered where people are getting a little more vulnerable and raw and saying like yeah I I failed at this or I wasn’t good at this or I’m not still good at this. I think that’s really important. So I want to know what’s one of your biggest takeaways from today? Yeah, I will kind of like go off of what we just mentioned when it comes to being honest with our failures. Like what I take away from today is that you can never stop learning. Um, and at first it can feel discouraging, especially when you’re getting all this content and information. But knowing that all of us here are still learning something from each other um every, you know, session, it’s encouraging. It’s fun to learn. you you grow from it personally and I take away that there’s just like there’s there’s so many different ways to be successful too which is really encouraging. Yeah, I really like that. Like I think it’s so important especially as entrepreneurs to have a growth mindset. Like a lot of us are doing this at home. We’re doing this with full-time jobs. We’re doing this with families. And there’s a quote I really love that says it’s what you do in the dark that puts you in the light. And you know being honest about that and being like this wasn’t always easy. It’s still not easy, right? We’re still having lots of struggles as entrepreneurs. So, all right, final question. I want to know what’s one lesson that you want viewers to take away from today. Yes. Okay. So, I would love viewers to take away. Um, everything that you learned, of course. So take your notes, go back to these videos, but I I would like everyone to identify the one thing that they want to take away to start with first that will make like the highest impact for their business. Everyone’s on different platforms and different stages of their growth. And it can be super exciting to like hear all of this and like I want to do it all because I’ve been that way too. And just taking one thing and committing to I think this will be the highest impact for me and then going from there. Yeah, I actually really like that piece of advice because it’s very easy to get overwhelmed even from this event. Like you learned a lot today. We talked about so many different topics and some of you might feel like you’ve been drinking from a fire hose. I I I totally relate. Like there is a lot discussed and know that you don’t have to go apply everything today. Like it’s inhuman to apply everything today. But I like what you said like take one thing and and grow on that. So take one big learning and say, “Hey, what can I do today or tomorrow to improve my business?” What’s one learning? So Sarah, thank you so much for all your insights. The panels is great. Thank you. All right, Crystal, come on over. Our media mogul, CEO of Girl Plus God, you have just such an incredible past history in media. It’s wild. like some of the biggest names in media and then you create this incredible merch store. Um, I just want to know I got a couple questions for you, but let’s start. Let’s start like simple. All right. How would you explain Amplified in a couple words? I really don’t have words. Number one, I’m exhausted. Okay. I have poured it out today. All right. I want for people to take what I have and to go execute it. And so, I think this was just the platform to do that. I love working with you guys. You’re incredible. I have met some amazing people. This was like again, no words. I don’t have a word. Thank you. The feeling is mutual and I I kind of know what you mean and and tired. Yeah, it’s been it’s been a long day. My eyes are a little bit bloodshot. I’m not going to lie. But yeah, you did you put it out all on the table. And I think that was like the the point, right? Bring bring people who have like, you know, high volume sellers, people have a lot of experience to come here and just put it all out there. No gatekeeping, unfiltered, and that’s the way it should be. So that that that’s an awesome answer. I love that. I I totally relate. Okay, next question. What’s one lesson or what’s one takeaway that you have from today like that that you learned? It’s time to try some new things, right? I have mastered Shopify in a way, but I have learned from each and every one of you and I can’t wait to get back home and like execute. It may not all work out, but I’m going to certainly try because I have heard some great stories today. So, uh, catch me on Tik Tok shop, catch me on, uh, Pinterest, catch me, uh, with whatever Adrian is doing. Like, just catch me cuz I’m taking it on. I I love this. That is a growth mindset of an entrepreneur. It makes me so happy. And like, you know, the fact that you’re here as a speaker saying, I’m taking things and I’m going to put them into action. But like that is it, the growth mindset, like action takers. I do feel like the quicker you’re able to take action, the more likely you are to succeed. So, uh, yeah, very good stuff. One more question for you. I want to I want to know what is one lesson that you would like viewers to take away. I want you to know that you are going to mess up. You’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to fail at some things. And I would want you to do it fast. Get it out the way. You don’t have to be perfect. Just be yourself. Amen. Amen. No, I I completely agree. I think that failure is part of the process. And I I I’m a big believer that like failure is is not necessarily a bad thing. You know, I’ve heard before like fail forward, right? Many times our failures lead to some of our biggest successes. And it’s funny, the path of entrepreneurship is not linear. I think a lot of people look at high volume sellers and they just think it was just upward spike. It’s not like that for anybody. It’s more It’s more like this story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. There’s there’s pain. There’s pain all along the way. Let’s keep it real, right? And so like it’s more like it’s more like this. That is the common path of a Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wait a minute. That is the common path of entrepreneurship. So if you feel like that, if you’re experiencing that sort of thing, like do not feel discouraged and do not feel alone. Everyone in this room, I’m sure, can relate because still to this day, we continue to put out fires and we know that that’s never going to end. So Crystal, you brought so much great energy to this event. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for your insights. And uh we’re going to hand it back down to the panel. Thank you.
Welcome back to our final discussion panel where we’re going to be talking all things designed. And I have two of the best people with me to talk about that. Two pro designers here. I have Michael and Jay. We’re going to be sharing some tips on how to make better designs, maybe some design process that you can take to your print on demand businesses. Thanks so much for being here for this last panel, which is so exciting and one that I’ve been anticipating. It’s been so much fun here. It really has. I would love to start off with something that I think so many people get caught up on, which is the actual design process. I want to hear maybe what’s the first thing that you do? Is it researching? How do you actually get into that? So, is there a process that you do, Jay? Yeah, I think it kind of changes and evolves depending on, you know, what’s how stimulated I am. So sometimes I’m a guy that I have like incessant amount of voice to text to myself or ideas. Uh cuz my brain, you know, sight order of ADHD in there. I’ll forget if I don’t put it down somewhere. Uh and sometimes that’s the best and most creative ones. Like we were talking about maybe you’re having a drink somewhere like I’ve written down design ideas literally on a napkin at a bar and they’ve turned out to be awesome, right? So that’s the kind of thing. Uh, but if I am starting fresh and I know I need to get out another design for somebody and I’m looking for a new angle, like going in cold, I’ll probably hit up Pinterest first, uh, and then I’ll use like Google Trends to see if there’s any kind of search terms within that niche. But I’ll just start with a niche word, like one or two words in Pinterest to get a visual cue. And then I just like copy paste all around my artboard. it’s a giant mess kind of like my brain with like a little singular focal point in the middle uh of all kinds of colors and influence and and different things like that. Uh and then I’ll just try to, you know, see if there’s something worth uh investigating in terms of what’s showing maybe on a Google trends or what’s surfacing. So I’ll start there. I’ll come up with some phrases using like one of the tools that, you know, Jun and I have built as our phrase uh builder there. Cool. Um and try to place some words together and see how they look. So, it’s not even like if you can make five or six phrases with a few different words and then seeing how they fit together. I’m very uh visually type oriented. So, I like type first and sometimes the entire design can be just type and you can make a beautiful looking design with just words on a shirt and not just two words stacked on top of each other. So, yeah, there’s a lot to it. Um, but it’s fun and I think that’s the biggest thing that I don’t think people allow themselves the ability to have fun with it anymore. They want to do more faster, but more doesn’t equal better. For sure. I I actually resonate with putting a bunch of photos just like on an art board. That’s something I do. I take like all these different things for inspiration and then I just start kind of like pulling pieces whether it’s like the colors or the different elements or, you know, all things like that. Michael, how is your research process with design? Yeah. So, typically I will, you know, ideas will come at me or I’ll overhear something or mishar something and think, “Oh, that could be a funny pun or whatever.” And I’ll just make a note of these and, you know, I’ll come back to them later. And then, uh, it’s usually that kind of process of I’m taking those initial sparks of ideas and then I’m analyzing them and kind of filtering down and seeing, okay, has has that been done before? Does this already exist? Is there some kind of market for this? uh not necessarily that I’m looking to see that there’s a market, but oftentimes I’m actually going I want to do stuff that’s not been done before because that gives me an advantage, a leg up, you know, I’m ahead of the competition there. So, I’m looking for ideas that haven’t been done before and where I can have that advantage. So, I’ll often take those ideas and then if I see, yeah, that’s not been done, we’ve got a a clear runway, if you like, then I’ll start brainstorming how we’re going to then take that and turn it into a a design concept. And obviously that depends on the idea. It could just be a phrase where it could go in almost any direction. It could any font, you know, any color combination, but often times you kind of have a feel, especially when you’re as experienced as we are now. You have a feel for the direction that a design should go in or the the the concept should go in. And I really like thinking in terms of I tell people to think concept first, like idea first. That’s the primary most important thing. Your job should be to create the design that just elevates and carries that idea to a to a buyer. However that you know, however that is done. So if it requires fancy graphics, you go for the fancy graphics. If it requires text only, you go text only. But the most important thing is that the idea is the paramount thing. So that’s often how I work. And then obviously the design process could be AI, could be Photoshop, really depends on uh the idea and then we take it from there. Really cool. You said something that’s interesting to me. You look for something to do that hasn’t been done yet. And I think a lot of people go from the process of like this is trending. I need to do this. So that’s that’s kind of cool to of like a mindset shift to think about is like what can I see what’s working, but then what other concept can I add to this that hasn’t been done yet? Yeah. Yeah. I think exactly like that there’s so many ways to make prints on demand work. There’s different strategies. You know, not everyone needs to do it the same way, but what works for me is having a new idea that hasn’t been done where there’s a blue ocean where I can put that out there and I know that anyone who looks for that design is going to find my design and my design only. I’m going to have an advantage over copycats who might come along later. I’m going to be snowballing and making sales before they can. And so that’s a strategy that’s really worked for me is original ideas, you know, in blue oceans where where there’s not competition. Absolutely. is now let’s talk about the cuz that’s more like our research and our idea process right for actual creation of designs. Do you use a lot of different platforms because there’s so many options out there now whether you want to draw something on like maybe something like Procreate or physically draw something and then bring it into you know an app to create it with art or things like Canva or KD. There’s so many options to create designs. Jay, how do you go about that? You said you use a lot with text first. Is there a specific place that you do that? Yeah, honestly, um, like I said before, like I keep plugging KD, but they’ve done it right in my opinion. They’ve taken the best parts of traditional design tools, put them into KD, so you don’t need 800 different ways to achieve an outcome. You need one or two of the fastest, easiest ones, and they’ve done a good job with that. So, I’ll manipulate text and it keeps it editable. You know, gone are the days of having to outline something and then put a warp effect on it. Um, and you can just do it over and over and you can do all the same things. Outline a text. Uh, use their even their styles now. Uh, sometimes are coming out in vector too, which is nice because then you can scale them to any size. You don’t have to worry about upscaling or anything like that. Uh, so yeah, I mean tech embrace texton designs please. I implore everybody because that is the fastest way to get your idea out there if it’s not an ironic image only type thing. Um, but then, you know, play around with the text and have fun with it and just see how letters fit together. Yeah, for sure. And even with I love KD, too. I I really think they’re such a great platform for all design levels. Like if you’re a beginner, you can figure it out or if you’re a pro, they have a lot of features that I feel a lot of design tools don’t have or like relatively expensive design tools that you have to use. So, I definitely love that too of being able to like warp text manually. Michael, what is your process with that? Do you draw for for first? She’s a long day. I can’t even say words anymore. Depends a lot on the on the concept. And obviously text only. That could be, you know, that we say text only. That could mean so many different things. That could mean, you know, I open Photoshop and I type out two lines of text. It could mean, hey, I want this to be like a heavy metal black letter design. So, am I going to draw that from hand? A couple of years ago, maybe I would have had to do that. Now I can ask AI to give me seven black letter options for this text. Usually it’s going to be an ironic phrase that doesn’t shouldn’t really be in that text. And that’s going to be the process there. So yeah, um I have my own app. It’s called Ideally.app and it allows me to do a lot of those AI um uh brainstorming stuff really quickly and you know pick a few styles and just get back something really quick. So that’s usually my process now is unless I’ve got a really clear concept to where I’m like I know exactly where we need to go with this one. Then I’ll open up my app. I’ll, you know, put my text in there. I’ll pick a few styles and that will be the beginning of the brainstorming process. And usually this is what AI’s I found it to be really useful for is that process of filtering out what doesn’t work and what does and you can really see hold on a minute I hadn’t thought about that idea in that design and that puts a spin on it and now it’s ironic or whatever and and now that elevates the whole concept that’s an that’s a new concept essentially that I I didn’t come here with and AI’s allowed me to find that. So yeah, those kind of processes are are so much different now than they were a couple of years ago where everything was Procreate or you know, I used to actually physically draw on paper with a pen, scan things in. Those days are long gone. We can do a lot of things faster now. But yeah, that’s my process. I think that’s really cool though and a great point to because you’re an artist, you know, you know how to illustrate, but you’re still open to using different AI platforms because I think that sometimes people that, you know, do have this art background, they’re like hesitant maybe to use AI or they’re not sure exactly how to use it or how to prompt it correctly. So, it’s really cool that you kind of brought it into your own art. And I I like to say that too of using AI as a tool, not like replacing yourself. Like I like to bring things in and then ask an AI to make it better, to change the graphic style, to add color or make multiple variations of that design, change the text. For me, I think that that’s really valuable. Mhm. Yeah. There’s so many situations like that where, you know, you’ve got an idea. Let’s say it’s a going to be a skeleton set at a computer. That’s the idea to get that physically visible. You know, that takes a, you know, you’re going to sketch things out. This used to take hours of, you know, filtering. Give it to AI. get five options. Here he’s in this angle. Here he’s in that angle. You’ve got the lighting all right and stuff and you’re like, “Okay, that is really a genuine time saver.” And I don’t care how much water this thing is using or, you know, how many data centers it takes. This is cool. It is cool. That I I totally agree. And then it we’re coming to a point with on the illustration end like you said, instead of, you know, spending the hours to make sure it’s just right. If you kind of tell that skele like the AI that I want the skeleton at a 45 degree angle looking over the right shoulder kind of thing. I mean it’s going to give me let’s say we get five generations. Two of those are like probably pretty bang on to what I had in mind now, right? We’ve come so far in like two years. Uh it it’s mind-blowing. But yeah, it was the same hard hardcover black sketchbook uh drawing for sure. So uh it’s nice to leverage something to just speed up the process and allow me to focus on the other elements. you know, an ironic type font. Same idea. Yeah, we’re also juggling so many things like as like print on demand sellers, you know, it’s constantly looking for trends and then SEO and posting and creating mockups. It’s a lot. It’s a lot. So, I feel like anywhere that you can bring in that extra help that can create faster is so valuable and it’s like time is money. Like the more you can free up, the more you can create, more money you can make. Even if you don’t use that image generation, it allows you to get that image idea in your head onto something concrete and tangible that you can see with your own eyes and then you can kind of, you know, you’ll at least have that there for reference around that artboard again. Right. And you can often immediately see this doesn’t work, that doesn’t work like that, you know, this idea has not got legs or there’s a there’s a massive hole in there without having to spend three hours. Exactly. Because I’m looking at something visually rather than imagining in my head, you know, this great idea. Oh, that’s a funny idea. Well, actually, you know, put it on paper now, it’s not a great idea. So, right. What would you say to somebody that’s maybe new and doesn’t have a lot of experience and that is intimidated by designing? Maybe just encouragement, like words of something that can help them feel more inspired. Cuz as you kind of just mentioned, we’ve all had an idea and we make something and we’re like, “This is really cool.” and then we post it online for sale and it gets no traction and you’re like, “Oh, that actually was not good.” Well, I think this this AI revolution is um it’s great for the people who actually can’t design in that sense because there is now, you know, this is kind of weird. I know I’m playing both sides. I am a designer. I recognize the value in quality design. I recognize the stuff AI can’t do. Having said that, there are ideas which you now don’t need to hire a designer to do. you can get AI to do it. And if you’re the ideas person and you have a strong enough idea, then you can, you know, AI can execute it and you don’t have to, you know, know all the ins and outs of Photoshop and this and that and the other. So, it’s a it’s a great time for the ideas guys. You know, we’re seeing that with AI video and stuff. You know, people are creating little animations and stuff which would obviously have been impossible for them. If you have a genuinely good idea, which is going back to what I said about the idea is first. The idea is the most important thing. everything you do serves that. You know, you can use AI to spit out these ideas, turn them into something good. And if you’re communicating that idea well through the AI, then you know that’s valuable. That is truly valuable. You don’t have to handdraw everything. You don’t have to learn Photoshop. You know, you can genuinely produce some good ideas that way. Yeah, it’s definitely lowered the barrier to entry, I think. But in the same time, if anyone’s farming out the entire process or the entirety of the design to AI, like that’s what’s creating the AI slop that everybody talks about, right? So, I think there’s a fine line between like leveraging it as a tool and then relying on it to do the beall endall because this machine that is smarter than you created it, therefore it must be amazing. Not always the case. And in fact, more often than not, I’d say is not the case. Yeah. I mean, there was there was slop, you know, before AI, right? We just didn’t call it that. But there was a there was a lot of human slop created before AI came along of people just doing generic designs, you know, boring stuff, just the same same old same old. And we know that and we, you know, we’re we’re just banging the drum for, hey, do something different. Yes. Use AI if it helps, but you don’t have to. You know, I know have a lot of artists and designers who follow me who are using um not using AI. You know, they’re handdrawing everything. They’re doing stuff their own way. So, it’s not either or. It’s not, you know, you have to choose. It’s what works for you. Yeah. I always like to incorporate both. Um, especially on Etsy, they have some, you know, rules and stuff that they want to keep you in because they are originally a handmade platform, but now they’re allowing, you know, different types of tools. And that was something and something I talked to a lot of people that I help is like bring in your creativity first. You know, whether that’s starting with text in an element and then just again, as I mentioned earlier, asking the AI to improve it for you. I think that there’s a lot of value in that. And even if you don’t have design experience, if you’ve never designed anything before, you can look at something for reference that’s maybe working in your niche or selling and then change the phrase around. Something I love to do with research on Etsy in specific is I’ll look for a trending phrase, whether that’s on a t-shirt or a mug or whatever, and then I’ll look for design elements that are trending. and I’ll kind of take from both of those to combine my own new design that’s new and valuable to the market versus just like ripping off someone else’s design, you know? So, do which is a problem on Etsy. I’m sure we’ve all had stolen designs on multiple platforms, but that’s really cool. And then being able to do something like that plus using an AI, I think, is a great thing for somebody that’s a beginner. Yeah. And I mean, this is kind of in the same realm where there’s there’s a book called Steal Like an Artist from Austin Cleon. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Um, it’s the idea that even though you’re saying you’re creating absolutely something completely unique, it’s the idea that no matter what we create, we’ve been we have a lifetime of influence. We’ve been inundated with ads, advertisement, marketing. Um, so that it’s it’s the idea that maybe there is almost nothing 100% completely unique. Everything has had an influence on us at some point in our lives to some capacity. So don’t feel like it has to be so out there that it’s you know so far removed from the idea or the niche right like so uh to your point like you can mix and match a little bits of pieces but as long as you understand why the design sold right so like if you’re going I try to think of an example if you’re if you’re doing a a fall y’all shirt for example just a popular design out there but then you tried to do it in like Christmas like red and green instead of the fall colors well the core of that design is because of the aesthetic of the color palette. So, like you have to be conscious of what you’re trying to switch and pick and mix accordingly. I think having the experience in that, is there a tip maybe that you can give? I mean, obviously it’s broad. Everyone’s looking for different types of designs and stuff, but is there a way to know whether it’s a design you create or a design that you see that you want to make something off of? Is there a way to kind of like know maybe what’s going to work about the design or something that people can keep an eye out for? Um, an easy one, and this is again going back to what I was saying uh earlier panel, like going into the trenches. So, really knowing your niche inside out so that you get in there and you can just say in groups, let’s say, I don’t know, it’s a a Great Dane group, for example, like my wife and I have a Great Dane. Uh, she makes some really funny Great Great Daneesque or centric shirts. Um, and it’s just knowing the nuances in those Facebook communities. So, you can just post in there and say like, “Hey, what do you guys think about this design or this design?” Not post a listing. you’re going to get kicked out of the of the group, but you can ask them and they gauge the interest in that niche community. And I mean, they’ll give you feedback what they think, what they don’t like. Uh, and then, you know, by the time you kind of iterate on the suggestions they give you and post again, okay guys, I took your suggestions. What do you think? By the third time you do that, they’re going to feel like they’ve had a hand in your design and they’re probably going to start asking you for the link to that design when it’s ready. So that’s the kind of thing that you can, you know, ask the community. Ask the people who will be the, you know, the end users at that point. That’s so smart. That’s really cool. It’s almost like you’re AB testing it before you even create the full design. Also free. Wow. That’s a really good tip. And niche specific, too. Absolutely. Wow. Okay. Is there any tips that you have with the design eye that things that maybe you look out for with, you know, trends or just design in general? Yeah. Yeah. So, like I said before, my process is idea first and then I will kind of work back from that. Now, of course, I’m 10 years into this. So, I have some kind of experience of what works and what doesn’t, you know, and and obviously if you’re starting out, maybe you don’t have that. So, it is going to take time for you to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Um, but yeah, in my experience, it is that the idea that connects with someone is usually something that makes you snort, that makes you laugh. It’s usually going to be something that kind of really rubs, you know, that humor thing of something kind of controversial or spicy or something like that is the thing that creates that, you know, that joke in the first place. So, it’s hard to it’s very hard to say, you know, ahead of time what that is going to be. And often it is a guttural kind of instinctive reaction. So I actually I remember one time we had a lot of designs. We were trying to filter them down for a brand deal that we were doing and I just had me, my sister and my dad and we just pulled up all the designs and went through them one by one and uh you know the ones that we all laughed at or snorted at or you know I remember one one in particular that my dad just like spat his coffee out and I was like okay that one’s going in. You know it’s it’s that kind of reaction that you’re looking for. And I know that’s that’s not particularly helpful when you’re on the other side of this, but you need those ideas in the first place. That’s why you need, you know, a great big pipeline of ideas. That’s why I built my tool. Little plug there. That’s what it’s for. You know, give yourself that pipeline of ideas cuz not everything’s going to work. And you need to be on the lookout for things that really, you know, pop. That’s really cool. I I think you you made so many good points there about just kind of knowing that. I I think the idea first is so important first trying to like just come up with something and then having a design that has way too much going on and as you your point was Jay like sometimes like the simpler stuff can sell too just having that like text on a a page that someone finds funny. Exactly. I have a shirt that I wear on the island and so it’s like kind of like niche specific. It’s just says sorry for what I said when I was docking the boat. It’s just straight sans s of text. It’s not laid out in any particular way. It’s on four or five lines. It get it gets laughs all day. I’m a graphic designer. I didn’t create it. I bought it. Found it funny. So like you don’t have to get convoluted with your designs. You don’t have to make a Picasso or a Mona Lisa. You just have to make something that somebody says, “Holy crap. Where’d you get that shirt?” You know what I mean? Exactly. And and that’s an idea that you can say cuz that’s a framework you can use for other niches. Sorry what I sorry for what I said when I was X. You know, sorry for what I said when I I don’t know, burnt the toast or burnt the coffee backing up the RV. You know, if you’ve got phrases like that, that’s one of my methods is build yourself a bank of these phrases that you can then just scroll through and go with a niche in mind. Oh, what would, you know, what would that niche do with this phrase and what would that niche do with this phrase? And you’ll see things popping out and uh one of my all-time bests sellers is exactly from that method. It’s like a a phrase that everyone knows just with a bit of a twist on the end uh for a particular niche and it, you know, sells daily. It’s incredible. So, if you can do something like that, it goes back to what we were saying, not everything’s 100% original. I’m not talking about, you know, some new combination of words that’s never been done before. It’s often going to be a joke that, you know, it has that setup and then it has the punch line. That’s what a joke is. You know, you need to have the setup in the first place. Otherwise, there’s there’s no punch line there. So, yeah, you’re not looking for something that’s out there and completely crazy and no one’s ever going to get. It’s got to be something, you know, it’s usually going to be something that follows a kind of pattern. So, if you can learn those patterns, it’s really going to help. Yeah. Do you tend to kind of like AB test designs? And what I mean by that is like maybe you have a phrase that you really like, but you want to add elements to it, whether it’s for a niche or a trend. Do you do multiple variations of one design and test them on products? Is that something you do in your store? Very rarely, personally. me. I mean, it was something I played around with a little bit in the early days, but once you begin to see, you know, the elements that make a design work, you begin to know exactly what it needs. You know, there’s a graphic, there’s some text. Um, as long as you’re not doing something incredibly wrong in your design layout or something, then people are either going to get that or they’re not, and the joke’s going to either land or it’s not. And there’s no, you know, no amount of switching the text around or changing the font is going to change that. So, I don’t AB test to that extent. Maybe you might want to do something on two different colors and things like that. Um, but usually I’m pretty set on this is how it should look and then put it out there into the world, see what happens, move on to the next one, keep things going. I’m, you know, going to sound like an echo chamber here, but absolutely the same thing. Um, I’m, you know, you’re at a point now or I’m at a point where I know the niche, I know the market I’m designing for, and I make that like that’s absolutely paramount. That’s the number one goal is to understand what the market wants. Uh, and then that’s going to lead you down aesthetic avenues. So, like you don’t have to veer too far from that to have an idea and oh, that’s going to work. Um, but that said, it will get you, you know, some time to get yourself into that situation where you can just see an array of designs or aesthetics or have ideas and then and just know something will work. So, don’t feel like just because Michael and I can not have to AB test something that, you know, that’s the way it has to be. Like, we all started from zero. We started from nothing. And we I I wouldn’t say I AB tested. I probably ABCDE E tested. You know what I mean? Oh, different colors, all kinds of different layouts and like all of a sudden what might stick might totally surprise you. But when you have that and it sells more than one time and all of a sudden it’s selling maybe three or four times a week going back to, you know, starting then it’s like that aha moment. You got this epiphany like, oh man, now I’m going to try this idea in that same kind of aesthetic and see what happens. You’re crossing your fingers. If it works again, now you know you’re on to something and it’s not luck anymore. That’s such a great point. I my first best-selling design on Etsy, I still remember like I was trying so hard. My the first niche I was in was a mental health niche and I was creating designs for mental health and I kept doing what I saw everyone else was doing and trying to play around with phrases. And then finally I figured out what worked and all it was was taking the same phrase that I was using on all these intricate design shirts where I was like trying so many things. All I did was change the color of each individual letter was three colors. That sold. It sold like crazy. And then I just took that same design element because I’m like, “Okay, this is what’s working.” And I applied it to multiple different phrases and that ended up being what grew my Etsy shop and made me realize like the power of selling print on demand products. So I feel like sometimes it’s like simplifying it, but to find what works takes time. like your first design. I know for me, my first million designs were so bad. When I look at them, like when they fall off on my computer, I’m like, we need to get rid of that. I mean, this is evidence that I don’t need on online or anywhere. And I’m sure you could probably say the same when you started designing. Absolutely. But I think there’s a beauty in that, right? Because it’s not only like it’s not about celebrating how crappy you were once. It’s about seeing how far you’ve come. uh and you know, you went from like a couple of views and maybe a a sale a month to maybe now you’re selling, you know, a few hundred a month. And then you compare those designs from 5 years ago or whatever. like even as a a lifelong designer like 20 yearsish. Um I’ll stress the ish but like looking at how that’s evolved in terms of like going just from you know writing graffiti or drawing in a sketchbook to airbrushing to putting it on a shirt to using graphic design tools to uh now strictly designing for t-shirts for DTG getting hyper spe uh specific with everything and intentional. It’s it’s night and day compared to what was what I was designing in the beginning to now knowing what I know. Us it takes forever sometimes, but that’s the beauty in it is learning. And you know, as soon as we think we have a good grip on it, there’s like a new aesthetic that pops up or there’s something else. It’s like a new idea to try. Um, algorithms change all the time. So, the one thing I would stress is like don’t wait until don’t just consume. And I think that’s the biggest um misconception is that people feel like they need to consume, consume, consume, watch videos from maybe you and I both on how to design, how to get this right. Um just get the design out there because sometimes some of the simplest stuff will sell and you have to implement what you learn or you’re going to forget it by the time you watch that six YouTube video, right? Yeah. And when you’re like spending all that time trying to be perfect and create the perfect design, like you’re kind of wasting time in that sense. It’s almost better to just like create something that’s like learn something, implement, then you only then can you sell it, right? Yeah. And even if it’s like not that great, but you’ve done a little research and you know that things are selling in that way, just try it. Like especially with print on demand, like we’re not wasting any money by like creating products, you know, that’s part of the beauty of it is you really do have that space to try different designs and to mess things up and to move on to the next one. But yeah, as long as you’re thinking in terms of I think that was a big thing for me early on. I was like, “Oh, I’ve created five designs when I started out. I’m going to upload them to Redbubble. We’ll see what happens.” And then I was like, “Oh, a few of these have sold.” And I thought, “Whoa, maybe maybe I could make 50 designs.” And, you know, everything was like in terms of like blocks of like I’m going to make this many and this many. And what I should have been thinking was factory, you know, production line. This business, a business is a factory. Inputs, outputs. Things come in and things go out. And if the factory stops, the business stops. So, you need to be coming up with new ideas all the time. Keep them going. That’s the way to think about it. And then your process and your business improves by improving what’s going on inside the factory. And yeah, it’s not thinking like once I reach this many designs, then I’ll be done. It’s hey, you’re a business, you’re a factory, keep producing and and you get better. And that’s that’s what it is. Just remember to do it sustainably, right? Don’t do it in a pace that you’re going to burn out. Because a lot of people try to hit, you know, uh I want to get 100 designs a month for 12 months. And you got 1,200 designs. If they’re not any good and you don’t know what you’re doing or the fundamentals, they’re not going to sell. It’s just 1,200 that are now 1,199 that are burying that one that you might want. Yeah. You wouldn’t start a factory until you’d sold some products in the first place. You know, you wouldn’t be able to convince someone to give you the money to start it in the first place. So, yeah, I I you know, you prove it first and then you you grow it. It’s also like quality over quantity. I say that a lot on YouTube. People are sick of hearing me say it, but it’s it’s true. It’s like if you it’s better to take your time, do your research, make a design that if you’re not sure about it, that’s fine. But rather than just like putting a bunch of like slop on a shirt and like posting on your store, it doesn’t really benefit you. It’s not very long term. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I think one way too that uh we see a lot of new sellers do this is like if they have maybe more of a general store, for example, and maybe you’ve got like, you know, a couple of different niches in there. you’ve got this one uh cat mug that is selling like 20 times a week or something to that effect, right? So, it feels like you’ve got this like this is the number one seller in your shop, but you’ve got five other um maybe nurse shirts that are selling five times each. They don’t surface the way that one kind of spikes, but that’s where you should be focusing because you’re making more sales. You’re making 25 sales versus that one unicorn product. And I think a lot of people would just focus on that and try to iterate, make new designs based on that one unicorn product when really you’ve got the makings of a, you know, a foundation of a business here. You got five unique designs that are selling multiple times a week. How can you improve on them? That’s where I would focus. So like, yeah, I I mean, and that comes with learning. And the fastest way to do that is download on Etsy anyway. You can download your CSV of your order items, put them into an AI, a cloud or a chat GPD and ask it for an unbiased opinion of where you should lean in that kind of market. and then, you know, ask it why it thinks those designs have sold versus that one. That’s really cool. Well, we’re just about out of time, but this has been such a cool discussion. Like, I feel I feel inspired. I’m not a designer, but I I try, you know, and I’m sure everybody else can. Definitely drop in the chat if this was helpful to you or any just tips that you learned from this. I think it’s it’s so cool. And so, thank you so much for being here and talking about this. Amplified has been so good and this is our last discussion panel. I know. We have to go check in with everybody and find everybody and hopefully. But thanks for watching and we’re going to have a little bit more exciting stuff. So yeah, we’ll see where everybody is.
Wow, what an incredible event this has been. I hope you guys have enjoyed this as much as I have. Uh I have learned so much today myself and I think that goes for all the all the creators here, all the sellers here. Whether it’s talking about AI, I feel like we covered so many hot topics. We talked about ads, we talked about platforms, we talked about AI, and you learned from a lot of high volume sellers. These are people that are actively seeing results. So, you’ve got John, the Tik Tok wiz did millions within the last two years. You’ve got Levi making $700,000 from his dorm room. He’s made a lot more than that since then. You’ve got Sarah, the 1% Etsy seller. Crystal Girl Plus God. You’ve got uh Dom from Doge Core, an iconic Shopify brand. So much gold in this episode, in this in this in this session, in this event. And I hope that you guys feel like it was as valuepacked as I do. And I’m curious, what was your favorite session? I actually really want to know what was your favorite session because we had a lot of different sessions with a lot of different topics. So I’d be curious to know like let me know in the chat. uh what your favorite session was today. And uh I do want to mention too, we’re gonna be doing another giveaway. So, we’re going to be doing a $20 store credit giveaway for 10 of you guys. All you have to do is uh uh interact in the chat. That’s it. And so, shortly, I’m going to have those names populate of individuals and I will read those out to you. A couple things I did want to say too is if you were late, uh, if you missed some, I mean, I know it’s been a very long event, so I don’t expect that you were all here the entire time. You might had to pop in, pop out, totally fine. But I want you to know that if you did miss any, uh, not to worry, the replay is going to be available to you very, very shortly. So, uh, what I want to say now is kind of in closing here, I want to say like I I heard a Tony Robbins quote that really inspired me a couple years ago and I want to share that with you guys because I think it’s really relevant for this particular event. There’s been so much knowledge like knowledge, proven strategies, unfiltered filtered advice from high volume sellers that you can take and you can apply to your business today. But if no action is taken, do not expect a result. The Tony Robbins quote that I want to reference that I’ve always found really inspiring is knowledge is not power. Knowledge applied is power. And so I want to challenge everyone here. Don’t just, you know, like this. This was great. You probably learned so much. I hope you’re all being sponges and just sucking it all up. And I hope you guys are really excited to go and put this into action. But the action needs to be taken. Nothing happens without that action. So I want to know what action are you going to take in the next 24 hours. Right? It’s very important to I feel like be quick with delivery because I don’t know about you but I find that many times if I let something drag on it eventually just slips away and gets away from me. And in a very distracted world where there’s so many bright shiny objects I wouldn’t be surprised if by this time next week you forgot everything you learned today. Luckily, there’s going to be a replay available, so you can always reference back to it, and I recommend you do because there were so many different strategies for different individuals here, right? Like, if you want to sell on Tik Tok shop, there’s there’s something for you here. If you want to sell on Shopify and use meta ads, there’s something for you here. If you want to sell on Etsy, there’s something for you here. If you want to find ways to leverage AI or that high volume sellers are leveraging AI right now, there’s something for you here. But I want to know in the chat, what’s something that you’re going to promise to yourself? Um, I can’t hold you accountable because I won’t see you tomorrow, the next day, but something that you’re going to promise to yourself that you’re going to apply in the next 24 hours. That’s what I’m asking. I think in 24 hours, uh, you know, that’s a good amount of time to go and implement at least one of the learnings from today. So, I’m just seeing here if I have the names of the um, winners. I want to announce these these winners here. Uh let me let me just It’s not coming up yet. So, let me pop back in and see. They’re uh they’re inputting the names in real time after we announce the giveaway. So, um I just need to wait for them to populate. They have not populated yet. I’m not seeing the names populating, but um not to worry. We can I’m sure we can have the moderators announce the winners in the chat if you are sticking around. Um so yeah, there’s there’s there’s no names here. So um I guess we’ll just kind of move on. Uh so let’s actually you know what? I’ve been informed that apparently there are some names here. So let’s let’s find those names. I don’t want to I would love to be the one to announce you guys. So let’s see here. Uh, okay. I think I found some winners. Jovita Benson. I don’t know if that’s a name that was announced already. Um, that’s one that I’m seeing. I’m just going to see if there’s any others. Make sure I’m not missing anything here. Okay, I’m going to I’m going to announce these names here. So, Annie Fontinez, Benjamin her, Linda K, uh, Shelby Renee, Cheryl Derkott, Jovidita Benson, Ismmail Omar, Alex Everett, Irish Roberts, and Mini Bloom. I love that. Great name. Uh, so you guys have won prizes. So, congratulations on uh winning store credits. Uh hopefully you guys are all still around and you can uh apply those and you can get those. So, congratulations. But, you know, it’s interesting. I’m looking around right now and I’m realizing it’s very very lonely here. There is no one else. I kind of am starting to hear my echo in the room. I do not see anyone else. So, why don’t we go find out where everyone is? I’m sure they’re all together. I have a feeling they’re all together. Wink wink. So, let’s go find everyone else. And while we’re doing that, I want to know what one of your what one of your biggest learnings of was today. So, uh I know that there was a lot of different uh lessons for a lot of different sellers. And so, some of the stuff may not have been totally relevant to you and that’s totally fine. Right? We’re trying to talk to a large group of print on demand sellers, not of all not all of which are selling on the same platforms. So the goal was to try to create, you know, sessions that were relevant to all of you guys. So I hope you guys feel that way and I want you to drop in the chat like what was one of the big learnings, one of the big lessons and maybe that’ll be the takeaway. Maybe that’ll be the thing that you go and you put into action, right? I hope so. So I see everybody. All right, here we are.
Wow, there is where everyone is. Mac, we were looking for you. Well, here I am. Mac, how are you feeling about the event? I think I can speak for everyone to say it’s been so much fun. There’s been so much knowledge, so many incredible speakers and things we talked about. So, it’s just been great. I feel amazing. How do you feel? Oh my god. I totally agree. everything you said. Yes, lots of that. The energy has been amazing. I hope that came through for the audience. We love having you guys here. It was so fun. It feels like everyone’s in the room, even the audience. So, um, the vibes have been really high. And that is a wrap for Amplified 2026. Thank you so much for tuning in.
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good job everybody.
Thank you love. Thank you so much.