Author: davenkross2026

A blank t-shirt costs about eight bucks to print. You can sell it for 28, sometimes for $35. That is a $20 margin on a product you never touch, never store, and never ship yourself. You don’t need a warehouse. You don’t need $500 of inventory sitting in your garage. You upload a design, connect a store, and when someone buys, Printify prints it and ships it directly to them. That is print on demand and t-shirts are where most people start because the market is enormous and the barrier to entry is basically zero. But here’s the thing most new sellers miss. The product isn’t the hard part. The design isn’t even the hard part. The hard part is picking the right niche. Get that wrong and it doesn’t matter how good your design looks. So that’s where we’re starting today. Pull up Etsy right now and search funny nurse shirt. You’ll see listings with hundreds of reviews, some with thousands. Same thing happens if you search dog mom shirt, retired teacher gift, or trail running tea. These aren’t random. They’re niches. Specific groups of people who want something that feels made for them. Now, here’s the mental filter I use for every t-shirt idea. Does this design solve a problem or does it validate an identity? A problem solver is a gift. Something like funny retirement gift for co-workers. The buyer isn’t buying for themselves. They’re buying for someone else and they need it to feel personal and giftable. That’s a high intent purchase. An item that validates an identity is something the buyer wants to wear themselves because it says something true about who they are. Introverted, but will discuss dogs or a shirt with the specific mountain range someone hikes every weekend. They’re not buying a t-shirt. They’re buying a flag to wave. Here are five popular t-shirt niches on Etsy and Tik Tok shop right now. Use this list as inspiration to find your own. One, occupation humor. nurses, teachers, electricians, welders. The more specific the job detail, the better it sells. I became a nurse for the money with a laughing emoji. It works because it’s an inside joke. Only that person’s people get it. Two, dog breed identity, not just dog mom. Specific breed mom, golden retriever mom, dachshund dad, Frenchie owner. The specificity is the entire point. Three, running and trail culture. I run so I can eat tacos. My pace, my race. Endurance sports are booming, and runners love gear that signals their tribe. Four, retro vintage aesthetics with a modern twist. [music] Think 1970s font styles applied to current hobbies. Discolf, van life, vintage camping imagery. This is all over Pinterest right now, and it photographs beautifully for listings. Five. introvert and everyday chaos humor shirts that say things like, “I’m at capacity, not today,” or, “I need a nap and a raise.” They’re doing huge numbers because they’re relatable without being heavy. Pick one of these. Don’t try to do all five. Go to printify.com, create a free account, and head to the catalog. Find t-shirts, and you’ll see dozens of options. Start with items that have the best seller or trending badge. Three shirts come up constantly for good reason. Gildens, Bella and Canvas, and Comfort Colors. These are the ones serious POD sellers keep coming back to. Here’s why they’re different and when you might pick each. The Bella and Canvas 3001 is soft, lightweight, retail fit. Sitting around $10 to $12 to produce, it’s good for a modern look and boutique aesthetic. It’s a solid default choice for most beginners. The Comfort Colors 1717 is heavier and garment dyed, meaning the fabric is sewn first then dyed. It gives it that worn in, slightly faded vintage feel that’s all over Tik Tok right now. It runs boxier, costs a bit more to produce at $11 to $16, but sells at a higher retail price. Retro designs and earthy tones hit differently on a 1717. Then there’s the Gilden. Less glamorous, but it has a place. It’s the cheapest of the three, around $7 to $9, runs a little boxy, and the color range is massive. For humor forward designs where the message is the whole point, and buyers aren’t paying for premium fabric, Gilden gets the job done. High volume, lower margin, no frills. I did a full sideby-side breakdown of all three if you want to dive deeper. Once you’ve chosen your shirt, click into the product page and check the prices, available colors, sizes, and print areas. Then click start designing. This opens Printify’s built-in product creator, and it’s more capable and free than most people expect. There’s an AI image generation tool built right in. You type a prompt and it generates artwork you can add to the shirt. You’ve got text tools with a range of fonts or you can upload your own. You can use any of our graphics or you’ve got two paid options, a shuttertock integration for licensed stock graphics and a Fiverr integration where you can hire a designer directly from the editor. If you design elsewhere like KD, Photoshop or Canva, simply drag and drop in the file. Just be sure to read all the design requirements under product information to get the absolute best print. On top of all this, you’ve got the opportunity to let your buyers personalize any product. I’m going to drop in a design I created in a separate design program. Make sure you upload your designs with a transparent background. Otherwise, you’ll get a giant white square. Most likely not the look you’re going for. Any element in the template can be moved, resized, or rotated. All of this can also be done more precisely in the varants and layers panel on the right. This panel is also where you can add more t-shirt colors and sizes to your listing. In the top toolbar, you’ll see other options like flipping, fitting the placeholder, removing the background, creating a pattern, cropping, duplicating, or deleting. You can also apply the design to all print areas like the backside in this case or save multiple design elements as a template to use on other products. On the shirt template, you’ll see a dotted rectangle. This is what’s called the print area and is the only area where our printers can print on for this specific product. If any parts of your design are outside of this border, it won’t be printed and probably won’t look very good. If you’ve got a design like a logo that you want printed over the chest area, we suggest a maximum size of 4 in x 4 in, which you can see the exact width and height in the variance and layers panel. Then line up the side of the edge of the design with the collar of the shirt and make sure the bottom edge goes no lower than the armpit. When you’re finished, always preview to make sure everything is how you want it. I always recommend checking how it looks in CMK mode to get the most accurate expectation of how the colors will print. See how the colors become more muted. I go way deeper into all of that in this video. If you’re happy with your shirt, save product. Now you’re in the mockup library where you can choose or create photos for your listing. You can choose to use our mockups or create lifestyle shots with the shirt in a real life setting. A real person wearing the shirt outdoors doing something will convert a lot better than a shirt on a plain white background. Your buyer needs to be able to picture themselves in your shirt. Printifyy’s AI mockup tool takes that exact product you just created and generates beautiful lifestyles for you. It’s a great place to start and is included with the premium plan. You can also upload your own photos that you’ve taken yourself with samples or add purchased mockups. Rearrange your mock-ups and apply them to the listing. Now, you’ll finish building your listing by adding an SEO optimized and keywordrich title, description, and tags if selling on Etsy. If you’re totally new to this, don’t let words like SEO optimized scare you. We’ve got a tool to help with exactly this. Just type in the product and your niche, and it generates a title, description, and tags automatically. For a first draft, it’s genuinely useful and gives you a structure to work with, as well as keywords you maybe haven’t thought of. But here’s the important part. Don’t just publish what it gives you. Use it as a starting point. Then validate these keywords with the research you did before creating your first shirt. for Etsy. Go back to Etsy and search your niche. Look at the titles of the three or four top selling listings. [music] You’ll see patterns immediately. Compare those against what the AI optimizer gave you and see what it missed. Your description should answer three questions. Who is it for? What makes it special? And what does the buyer need to know before purchasing? Sizing, material, care instructions. Attention to this kind of detail builds confidence in a buyer who’s never ordered from you before. Next, fill in all 13 tags, every single one. These are extra keyword slots. Use the exact phrases you saw in your research. Don’t invent keywords you think sound right. Use the terms that are already making sales. Now, if you’re selling on Tik Tok shop, it’s a slightly different beast. Buyers aren’t searching the way they do on Etsy. They’re discovering. A lot of your traffic comes from short videos, not keyword searches. That changes what matters in your listing. Your title still needs keywords because Tik Tok shop does have a search function and they optimizer will give you a decent starting point. But to validate it, open Tik Tok, search your niche, and look at what the top videos for that product are saying in the captions and on-screen text. Those are your key words, the phrases people are typing into Tik Tok search. Your description on Tik Tok shop should be punchy and benefitled. Less, here’s what it is, and more here’s why they’ll love it. Think of it as the caption of a video, not a product spec sheet. Two to three short sentences max. Lead with the person, not the product. For the disc golf lover whose golden is always ready to help, this one lands. Also, Tik Tok shop heavily rewards listings with video content attached. If you can record a 10 to 15 second clip of the shirt, unboxing it, showing the texture of the fabric, wearing it, attach it to the listing, that alone can lift your visibility significantly. One more thing that applies to both platforms, personalization. If your design can be customized by the buyer, a name, a dog breed, a job title, turn this option on and write clear instructions for the buyer. Shoppers are willing to pay $5 to $10 more for personalized shirts, and they actually convert at a higher rate when someone’s looking for a gift. Speaking of paying, we can’t skip pricing. Here’s the formula. Production cost plus shipping plus platform fees plus desired profit equals retail price. For my comfort colors, production is 1072, shipping is $475, and Etsy fees are $375. That’s $19.22 in cost before you make a dollar. At a $28 retail price, you’re closing in on a 50% profit margin, and your profit is nearly $14. And pro tip, price for gift worthiness, not for volume. A t-shirt at $15 might signal cheap. At $25 to $35, depending on the shirt, it reads as a thought through purchase, something worth giving. Don’t race to the bottom because someone will always price lower than you. And that’s a game you can’t and don’t want to win. If you’re not ready to publish and want to come back later, you can save this listing as a draft. Or if it’s ready, hit that green publish button and it’ll go straight to your connected storefront. Etsy, Tik Tok shop, Shopify, whatever you’re using. Once it’s live, a buyer finds your listing, orders, and pays. Your storefront sends the order to Printify automatically. Printify routes it to the print provider who prints and ships directly to your customer. You never touch a box. You’ll get order status updates and tracking numbers. If something goes wrong, a misprint, a lost package, we’ll handle reprints. Your job after publishing is getting traffic. Getting eyes on the listing. That’s SEO, social content, maybe a few Tik Toks showing the design process, but the fulfillment side completely handled. The whole system, niche, design, list, sell. [music] The first design takes the longest. You’ll second guessess the niche, redo the mockup three times, obsess over the title. That is normal. Everyone does it. But the second design takes half as long. The 10th takes 20 minutes. Your first sale is the hardest. After that, you know it works. [music] And knowing it works changes

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 then 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 chilled. 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 Tik Tok 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 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 heavyhitter 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? 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. 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 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. Exly. 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. You know, Tik Tok’s the most exciting place to be. There’s so much opportunity on Tik Tok, 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. Yeah. 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. U 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 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 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 numbers 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. And 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 Ray 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 for sure. 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? cuz I know on Etsy it’s a marketplace. 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. Like let it go. It is all that 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 idea. 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. Nope. 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. Would you have got uh It’s the newer iPhone model threw me off. That’s where I kind of 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? 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 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, Tom? 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 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’ll 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? So, a 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 products. 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. 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. 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 guess. 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 engine I focus on and all that content could 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 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 ad 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? Because 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 expand 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 lowkey. 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. M. 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 Tik Tok and I’ve really loved it so far. Yeah, I think you made a good point there. Like when I say commit to mastery, 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. 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 and seller. I would very much love to be able to have a Tik Tok shop. So, I’m hearing, 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. But 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 oneizefits-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 mastery 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? Find 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 a 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 we 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, go over to Amazon, it can be it can be really quickly 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 with 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 doing the 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 print 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 Printify. 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’d 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. 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 the 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. Levi, I do 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 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. Oh, 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 as 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 of 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 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 so 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 upfront. 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. 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 an 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’re 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 I’m sitt up here. It’s pretty cool. Uh, but like 3 years ago I had no experience with marketing and now I can just use these creatile

to make me money. What? And so it’s 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 Tik Tok 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 going to 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 to add 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 Printify 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 going to 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 I 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 Christmas. I’m like during the whole year I’m like oh that would be like cool to get and then Christmas comes around 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. thinking about I’m pretty sure it tells me like the cart is full. So I have to like move things to the favorite 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 one? Well, you you should start that off. 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. I 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 Rockstars 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 chang 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 of 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. out.

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 going to jump right in. Let’s talk about Let’s just start with like our pricing strategies. So, I’m I’m with John, Sarah, and Dom, and I’m going to 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 Tik Tok 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. I don’t know what that translates to off the top of my head. I really should have done some research, but uh yeah, that’s my core selling product. You know, it 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 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 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 art 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 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, the 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 margin. 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, lowc cost 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. And it’s like a lot of people come 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 a to an actual customer. So Tik Tok has le leveled the playing field in so many different ways in terms of actually pricing. You can price it 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 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 color 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 crap, 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 product, 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 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 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 know it’s 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 in 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 CI stuff. How are you switching to another person though? I know I’m going to drag this song on, but like I just feel like those listener are probably like wondering the same thing. Like how is it tool 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 just animating that video. So, I’m using chat GBT just to make the images. Chat GBT is the best image generator right now uh 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 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 Higsfield 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 want to 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, 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’d 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. 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 but 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’s 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 five 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 focusing 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 just starting to do that right now. Yeah, it’s so 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. Terify 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 clips. 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 9 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. 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 be 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 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. Where if 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 filled 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 hat 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 dots store is essentially just the um extension so instead of having your website end in a.com you can have your website end in a dosstore so www say for example amplifystore 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. And also about like 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 take. For sure. Yeah. 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 dot store, 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. Yeah, and we always say that have it pass the radio test, right? 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 al 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 already 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 teeth. 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, 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 TE’s 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 a 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 brands? 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, 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 toss up 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’s 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 that 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 forbella 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 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 money 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 GMV Max, 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 100 videos and then you decided 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 GMV max 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 G&B 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 Llemon paying me to make a video in the first place, they c 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 I love 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 aired or 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.

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. M. 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 because 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 ad 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 going to 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 I spent 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 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? Sorry. Oh yeah. 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 daytoday. 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. I’d like to unlock every marketplace eventually, but yeah, 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 is 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. M 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 magic hearts, 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 2 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 two 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. 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 a 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 time saving. 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 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 are 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 talk 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 2 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. 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 the goal 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, the 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 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 because it’s funny and it’s easy and it’s memorable. Um, you know, a lesson in branding there, right? But 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% may be 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 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 claude 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 Chat GPT Astra no problem. In 27 minutes I figured out why Claude was ignoring me and we built this kind of 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 more organic designs, little off-kilter, 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-h

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 it look 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 you made a lot of really good points there and I think like the design element 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 textbased 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 textbased 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’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 looked 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 Chachi came over to your side and now you guys are kind of like buddied up against Claude. So, just tell Claude tell Claude to let Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As long as the problem’s solved, you know, like you know, ChachiBT 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 cloud to come up with like to actually help me create a design prompt that I could put into like a chatbt 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 then got to but basically you know AI has allowed us to build tools the way we want to build them like a tool for me which is exactly what I’ve done is called ideally appapp 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 is 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 chatbt 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, Chat GBT 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 and 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 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 um 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, but with, 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. Mhm. 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 the 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 fit 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. He’s a 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 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 they 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 detail. 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 in 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 it a comment earlier, but uh no, it’s going to sound the same. It’s literally people out farming the entire thing, I’ll call it, 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 design 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 avoiding AI slop? 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. 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 cuz 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 going to suck, suck loudly. Yeah. Because if you’re going to 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 be all 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 a 100, you know, in a 100 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, 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, “Ooh, 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, and 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. Hey 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 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 use 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. And then we have like me plus guy. We have mom plus guy. We have like wife plus guy. 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. Jooko. What does St. Joo mean? Um, it’s inspired by where I live. the area in which I live, which we’re gonna 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 St. Joo on Tik Tok 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, Jeff? Hi, I’m uh Levi Younger and I sell on Tik Tok. No kidding. I’m Jay Duz. 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 he’d be able to do it. How old were you when you got your ears pierced? 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 Adobe 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 soon to 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 of 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 advertisement. 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 820 rule definitely applies as well. That’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 cuz 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 power interrupt and every single hook can be broken down into 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 salesy. 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 someone’s like, “Oh, what did this guy on my feed? What did his dad buy him?” 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 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 meat 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, it 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 the 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. 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 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 up 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 that 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 would just do it faceless. Maybe they even have AI during the voiceover. 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 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 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 they 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, I guess a photo slide. Yeah, we we originally just used in 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 mockups 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 is 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 can 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 and 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 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 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 anyone’s seen those, but that was like 3 years ago and we could tell like, oh my goodness, that’s kind of spooky though. There’s 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 chatbt, how to use Higsfield, how to use KD, and understand 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, right? Uh, showcasing a creator who’s not real, showcasing that product, and you can do that volume, right? It’s just it’s 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.” can just create so many different things all off of 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 AI, if you go even deeper, the process set. 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 catch 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 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. For photo at all or No, we use everything in house. A lot of Photoshop. That’s really cool. Apart from maybe um Photoshop’s ability to generate uh photos 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 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 chat GPT 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. We’ll 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 they’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 to practice 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 who to practice for and 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 health conscious 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. They’re finding out what styles of content work and they’re learning from each other. And also, one thing is really fun is competing against each other. And I’m okay with playing 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 too, 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, it’s pretty easy to grow in that way. Yeah. I I mean I want to go back to what you’re 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’re tight in what you’re trying to achieve without being all over the place, but not being too tight that you’re stuck cuz 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. So 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. you 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 I can understand what I can sell them, what kind of content I can make for them. So, it can be 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’ve 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 cuz then it also makes the process like more enjoyable too cuz you actually like kind of know what you’re talking about. Well, say 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 how 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 going to 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 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 to try to keep everything involved with trends. Where’s 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 into Halloween right now. People are wanting Halloween products right now. Huge opportunity. Same thing with Christmas. We have a big opportunity. Same thing with 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 are 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 cuz 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 audios 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 down 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. 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, I’ve 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 is 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 to 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’ll 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 why 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, it 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. Awesome. 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’ll 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 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 step by 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 what 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. And 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 like 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 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 or 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 be like this wasn’t always easy. It’s still not easy, right? Like 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 learn? 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 the 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 this upward spike. It’s not like that for anybody. It’s more it’s more like this. 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 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Way up. 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 over 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 because my brain you know side 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, right? 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 turn 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 the 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 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 artboard. 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 mishere 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 oftent times 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 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. And 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 print 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 because 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 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 can 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 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 in that text. And uh 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 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 timesaver.” 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. 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 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 an ironic type font. Same idea. Yeah, we’re also juggling so many things like as like print on demand sellers, you know, you’re 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. 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 there’s 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 sloth 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 end all 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 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 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 are 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 a design eye that things that maybe you look out for with, you know, trends or just a 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 just says sorry for what I said when I was docking the boat. It’s just straight sans serif 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 take 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 burn 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. I mean, it was something I’d 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 avenue. 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 AV 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, you know, going back to, you know, starting then it’s like that aha moment. You’ve 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 the 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, those three colors. That sold. It sold like crazy. And then I just took that same design element cuz 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 pull up 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 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. 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 spec 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. Um, 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 wrong. 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. Like 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 the 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,99 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 sell 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. uh 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. 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. 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 going to be doing another giveaway. So, we are 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. Jovidita 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, Jovita Benson, Isma 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.

Y

good job everybody.

Thank you love. Thank you so much.

Wow. Oh my gosh. We are live and you guys, we are going to have the most fun today. We are here for the fourth Amplified ever and the fourth Amplified of my career and honestly, I think it is going to be the best one yet. I am beyond excited to hang out with all of you today for a whopping 6 hours. Now, for those of you who are totally totally new here, my name is Leah and I am your host for today. I’m the Printify person or whatever silly title the team decided to give me this year. They give me a new one every year and I never actually see it till after the fact. It’s really fun. Anyway, we are at the biggest print on demand event of the year, Amplified. Welcome everyone. I’m excited to have you here today. Now, we’re gonna have a ton of fun inside Amplified Arena in Sellers Club or over on YouTube if you’re watching from there. Now, just remember if you are watching from YouTube, all of the awesome giveaways that I’ll be doing, the sponsor gifts, Q&As’s, and the community aspect of this is happening inside Sellers Club. Now, it’s totally free to watch from there as well, and it is certainly not too late to join. We will share the link in the chat right now for that. Now, while you’re over there in the chat, say hi to our moderators. We have Cynthia over in Sellers Club. Say hi to Cynthia. And our moderator over on YouTube, Raul. Say hi to Raul. And make sure to please be nice to them because they are my friends. Now, speaking of the chat, I’m going to do my very best to follow along with you today in the chat, chitchat with you, answer your questions as they come, but you guys sometimes get so excited, type so fast, and I just cannot read that fast, but I will do my best. All right, let’s get the chat warmed up. My first question for you, where are you watching from? And who here has never ever opened up Printify or just very recently signed up? basically who’s here for the first time ever and who here already has a little bit of experience with Printify. I’m gonna see what you guys are saying here. Give some shout outs. So, wow, we already have so many of you guys. Four almost 500 of you. Wow. Okay, can I get all 500 of you to say hi in the chat? We have Rachel Guyger. She says hello sellers. Hello, Rachel. Leandra, so excited. Who else do we have here? We have Alyssa. She says hello to the moderators. Thank you for saying hello to Raul and Cynthia. We have Janelle from Canada. Marie from Norway. Christy from Florida. Hello. Who else do we have here? You guys, again, you guys are going so fast here. From Texas. I think I saw someone. Pamela says, “Hello.” Marvin from Virginia. Hello. Orland Park, Kansas. Brenda, hello. Oh my gosh, you guys are going way too fast. Anyway, hello to everyone. Make sure to answer that question. Oh yeah, I didn’t ask you that question yet, did I? I did ask you that question. Okay. In sellers club now.

Where are we at here? Okay, show you what you can do inside Printify and all the cool things that you can do. We’re going to build some products. We’re going to build a store. And if it ever starts to feel a bit too beginner for you, I do need to say there is another live stream happening right now inside the Amp Fight Arena. It’s going to cover slightly more advanced topics, so feel free to check that out as well. We’re going to do a little bit more beginner things for this first session with Printify. Later on, I’m gonna have Etsy joining me for the first time ever. That’s going to be in the next session. And then a bit later, too, I’m having KD joining us. We’re going to do a live store review later also with Crystal Lee and Stara Moore. and we are going to have the best conversation, I promise about Tik Tok Shop with April Duplantis and Riley Richardson. Now, I do need to give an extra shout out to our sponsors, KD andstore Domains. Make sure to check out their pages inside the Amplified Arena because they’ve got some extra goodies for you over there. And as always, I also will be doing giveaways throughout the entire show. So, think official Amplified merch and store credit for your Printify account. So, keep your ears perked for those. Just remember those are happening all in Sellers Club, not on YouTube, but you can join at any moment throughout the show and even afterwards if you want. It’s totally free. We will share the links for that in the chat. All right, I think we are off to a really good start here, but it is time to get into the meat and potatoes of this very first session. I’m going to take you right over to my Printify account here. So, you should see my screen now. And feel free to follow along on your own account as well if you’ve already created it. Play around a little bit. There’s not really a wrong way to get started here unless you haven’t signed up. Okay, so after you’ve signed up, after you’ve done the onboarding, you’ve answered some simple questions about your goals for Printify, for print on demand, you are taken right to your dashboard. This is basically your Printify homepage, if you will, for your specific store. And right away you would see if you have any orders that need to be submitted or double checked or reviewed, how many products you’ve published, and your total costs to date. Okay, so this will be your homepage. On the left side here is your entire menu. This is how you can navigate through your entire Printify account. So you can see all the stores that you have connected. You can add new stores, manage all your sales channels. You can access the catalog from here. You can see all the products that you’ve created and you can go in and edit your products from there. You’ll see all your orders of course, your store settings, um trends, we’ll talk about trends a little bit later. We have branding of course and down here will be kind of all your account settings. Now, we’ll get into that a little bit towards the end if we have time, but we’re going to start off right away with just the fun stuff. We’re going to get right into the catalog and we’re going to create our first product. So in the left menu if you click on the catalog this is the catalog homepage. Now right away you see kind of our top sellers here our different categories. We do give you top picks. So if you are completely totally new and don’t know where to start maybe you can explore those top picks. Now if you do have a sales channel connected already like an Etsy store for example you would actually see different products. We take the data right from Etsy or Shopify, wherever you’re selling, and we will recommend the best products for that sales channel. But we’re going to go back to my unconnected store for now. And now here in the catalog, so at the top of the page, you’ll see all the categories that we offer. The for you will kind of be all the new rivals, best sellers. You can favorite some. If you use the same ones, you can access those easily. But then you can go by things like Tik Tok specific uh products. We have seasonal things like Halloween is coming up, eco-friendly recommended things, stuff that is best for personalization. We’ll talk about personalization a little bit later. And of course by the different print techniques. We’ve got a couple new ones, some really cool ones, the standard DTGs, embroideries, things like that. AOP or all over print clothing if you want everything covered. We also, of course, have kind of subcategories. We have men, women, standard, t-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, all the best sellers. We’ve got kids stuff, accessories like phone cases, bags, sports, stationary accessories, home and living journals, all the cool stuff. And the coolest part now is that I can officially say in the Printify catalog, we have over 2,000 products. I think that is just absolutely insane. So, explore the entire catalog. Obviously, we have all those bestsellers. T-shirts, t-shirts, and sweatshirts are always going to be top sellers, but you can get into some really niche products. One of my favorite ones that I think is really underrated is the hoodie blanket. I ordered one for myself, I don’t know, probably like two years ago. I wear it all the time. And the print and the feel, just everything was perfect about it. So, if you are new, explore literally all 2,000 of the products, okay? But we don’t have time for that today. So, let’s get into creating a product. Let’s go with the standard t-shirts here. We’re going to click into our t-shirts page. Now, for every category, you can filter down even further. If you want, you can filter by print area. So, if you want it to print just on the front or the left chest, on the sleeves, the back, you can filter by that. by colors, by brands. We can open up this too and have a few more options like decoration method. The cool new ones are here. Glitter and metallic and puff. I’m going to show you guys real samples of that later, but you’re going to have to hang tight. Okay, back to the t-shirts here. So, we have all our t-shirts. We’re going to click into comfort colors 1717. I chose this one because it is the top selling t-shirt right now, especially coming Q4, the holiday season. The colors they offer are just mind-blowing. They have so many cool colors. So, we opened up the t-shirt and this is the product page. So, here you would see all of the details for that specific product, right? We see what it’s made of. It’s a heavy fabric. Um, it shows you all the decoration methods. So for this comfort colors t-shirt specifically, you can get it in standard print, DTG, embroidery, glitter, metallic, and puff. Okay. So each product will see the different methods. You will see the fulfillment options. So you have a choice of who you want to fulfill this specific product. Now, I would suggest doing Printify Choice. You’re going to get the cheapest option. you’re going to get the fastest shipping because what we do with Printify Choice basically we will take your customer’s order wherever they ordered from. If it’s from Chicago or Florida or Germany, we will find the closest print provider to them so they can get it faster and that saves you money on shipping costs, things like that. So, Printify Choice will kind of do the thinking for you in that sense. And so if we scroll down a little bit further here, you can see what’s offered with Printify Choice, you see the price of the product, the shipping options, about how long it takes to deliver, which print areas they offer, all the sizes, and of course all the colors. So I told you Comfort Colors had awesome colors. I think they have over 60 colors here. Okay. And we can see that you can offer branded inserts. So if you want to say send a thank you message or something with that package from your brand, you can do that. gift messages and of course the printing type. Now, if you want to, you can choose the specific print provider. So, if we go on choose manually here, you’ll see all the options that pop up. These are everybody that fulfills this specific product. Okay? We see the location, the price, all the same details. I’m not going to get too indepth with this because I have a lot of cool stuff to show you other than this, but I do have a full video over on YouTube. We’ll share that that kind of explains how to choose a print provider. So we will go with Printify choice today. When you are ready, we click start designing.

Okay. And here now we are in the product creator. This is really truly where all of the magic happens for your shop. This is where you can create your designs, add your designs. I’m going to kind of break down all the little buttons here and then we’re going to create a design as we go. So, the first thing that we see is our product template. Okay, this is the t-shirt. We see a dotted line on the garment. That is what’s called the print area. So, all of your design, everything needs to be inside this square. Let’s go ahead and just grab an example real quick. Here we go. Okay. So, that’ll load onto the product hopefully at some point. Okay, there we go. So, you have your design on here element. You can resize it. You can drag and drop and move it around. Now, notice as I take it outside of this print area, that dotted line, it gets cut off. Okay? So, anything that’s outside of this area is not going to print. So all of our elements need to be inside the print area. Okay, let’s go back to our toolbar here. So first things first that you should look at is this information panel here. This is going to tell you how to design for the specific products. We have some guidelines here. You can download design templates as well. Not for all products, but for a lot of products you can. Basically, if you want to design in Photoshop or KD or somewhere else, you can download this t-shirt design template and work with that in a different tool. You see the production cost. So, we break down the cost for you as you’re designing. Okay? You see the price of the blank product and you see the print price for the front side. Now, if we were to add, let’s say, a print to the back, we’ll just grab something real quick to the back side here. Now we have two print areas. We go back to our cost. We see that we have to pay a little bit more for that additional print area. So be mindful of how many print areas you add as you’re creating and as you’re setting your prices. Okay. Next up we have the print area size. These are also very important numbers that you should follow along with because this is the exact size of the print area. So, especially if you’re creating your design elsewhere, you want this size so you get the best resolution so you get the cleanest, clearest print possible on your product. Okay? Okay. And then we have some guidelines that you should definitely read through because DTG versus embroidery versus puff, you’re going to have slightly different guidelines. Okay, let’s close out of there. So in the left menu here, this is kind of all of your design options. What you can do with design, you can of course upload your own design from your computer. So you can either open a folder or you can also let’s drag in a design. You can simply drag and drop in a design. So if you couldn’t tell already, the theme I’m going for today is kind of ice cream, gym, working out. So, I went with a I earn my sprinkles because I like going to the gym, but I enjoy a sweet treat every now and then. So, let’s remove one of those. Okay. So, we can drag and drop in our own design that we’ve created elsewhere. And we can again edit edit it the same way. Drag and drop. We have some tools up at the top here as well. When you’ve selected your design, you can duplicate it. Oops. Okay. You can crop designs in here. You can create it into a pattern. You can remove the background if you need to. You can fill it to the entire size of the placeholder. And of course, you can flip it if you need to. Now, if you ever want to get more precise with your design sizes, here on the right side, you see the variance and layers panel. You can enter in exact numbers. You can see the height and the width of it. You can rotate it, scale it, and of course, you can make the position a bit more precise. So, we can just put this right at the top and make sure it’s in the center. All right, what else can we do? So, back to the left side here, you can create designs with AI. So, it’s just like any other AI tool you would write in your prompt. Let’s just say, I don’t know, an ice cream bar. Okay, you can let’s say an ice cream bar in pink and blue pastel colors. Okay, you can enhance the prompt if you want it to be a little bit more indepth. Okay, you can choose the style. I found with my kind of experiments here that either digital art, the line art, or the comic book style are the best for POD, but it really does depend on your design style, what your audience wants, the products you’re creating. But for today, we’ll just try digital art. And let’s generate the image. We’ll just see what comes up. Now, you do get only 15 attempts a day, but those do reset every 24 hours. So, it typically is enough. Okay. And once that generates, you can actually see Oh, this is actually kind of cute. Okay. You can see your history. So all the other images you’ve generated in previous days or in the past, they’re still right here in that library. So you won’t ever lose those. Okay. If you like the image, we can also check it out a little bit bigger here. And if you like it, we can apply it. And it goes right onto our product. Okay. Now, you might see it says medium resolution here. Don’t worry about that too much because we will kind of autoenhance it before sending it to print. Okay. All right, so that’s the AI tool. We of course have text tools, right? Some of the top selling t-shirts, actually a lot of best-selling t-shirts are just plain text. One, two, three words. People like funny, relatable text on their shirts or something that kind of loudly says their identity, right? So, we have a text tool. Now, you can either upload your own font if you find something elsewhere. You can bring it right into Printify and access it. or you can use any of our fonts. They are all free to use. They’re all commercially licensed, so you can use those in your products. Now, my favorite here is our templates because I can never choose which fonts to use and more so I have a hard time figuring out which fonts actually go together. So, our designers have created a whole bunch of templates and they know what looks good. So, they’ve created those for you to already use. and we’re going to use one as an example today in our design. So, I’m actually going to simply delete my other ones for now. Okay. Now, we’ll see I highlighted all of these layers at once, all these text layers at once. And you’ll see here in the various layers panel all the separate layers. So, if you want to click on one specifically and edit that specific text or layer, you can click it here or on the template itself. Let’s move this a little bit. We can zoom in a smidge. Okay. So, we can highlight them all. We can change the sizes of them all. We can rotate it if we need to. And of course, we can edit that text. So, I’m going to change up this template to fit more my niche, my brand, which I’ve chosen to be ice cream and the gym today. So, let’s say my my brand name is Sweet Gains because we make gains at the gym, but we like a sweet treat, right? It makes sense. Okay? And we can just say Sweet Gains. Let’s say they’re not made of fleece as far as I know, but they are made in the gym. So, these are all completely customizable, these templates to your niche, your design, whatever it might be. And up here, we don’t want it to say custom sleepwear. Let’s say maybe Whoops. lifting bars as in ice cream bars or like gym bars, right? It works. Also, if you have any funny like gym or ice cream or cheat puns to put on a t-shirt, I want to see those in the chat, please. I’m sure you guys have a lot of funny ideas. Okay, so we can say lifting bars, for example. We can do establish or I don’t know, let’s just say since we’ll just leave 2021 for fun. Okay. So, we can edit each of these text layers separately. Now, it’s still kind of a plain boring t-shirt. It’s not what I would want to sell, right? Let’s keep editing it a little bit further. Now, what I’m actually going to do, I’m going to add a little graphic in here. So in my library, this is all the designs that I’ve uploaded previously to Printify. So if you drag and drop in a design like I did earlier, you will find it in your library. Any of the any of the AI generated designs, you can find them in your library as well. So we can let’s go with Oh, let’s go with this one. I’ve made this one before and oopsies. I think it’s a really fun ice cream bar. So, we’re going to adjust it a little bit. And let me zoom in here a smidge for you so you can see better. Here we go. And we’ll center that. There we go. Okay. So, now I have a little extra element here. Now, of course, I can’t see the text behind it. To rearrange our layers, you can go to the variance and layers panel here, find the ice cream bar, and the dots. We can simply drag it all the way down. There we go. And now, of course, we would probably want to move. We can select the two layers, move this down. Maybe we make it a little bit smaller. Something like this. Okay, we’re getting somewhere here. Not a big fan of the colors. We want it to look a little bit cohesive. So, with the text, you can edit all of the text colors and fonts as well. So, if I click on a text layer here, okay, at the top toolbar, we see all of our font options. So, you can change the font actually if you want. You can change the size up here, can make it bold, italicize, change the alignment, and we can change the color. Okay, let me move this a little bit so we can see that. So, you can choose any color here. You can enter in a hex code or you can use this handy dandy eyropper tool. So for the eyedropper tool to make it look all cohesive, I’m actually going to take a color from let me zoom in again for you from this little ice cream bar that I created earlier. Right. So let’s take this and let’s go with this pink color. It’s kind of a fun color. Okay. So now it’s starting to look a little bit better, a little bit more matching. We’re going to change the same text. And now you’ll see that same exact pink is in our recently used. So I don’t have to keep using the eyropper tool each time. I can simply choose my pinks there. Okay. And actually this is kind of hard to see. Let’s maybe choose kind of this brown color from the ice cream bar. Okay. This looks a little bit better. Now that I’ve done that, I actually might change this to brown. Maybe pink will be like kind of our accent color in the text. Okay, I’m getting too nitty-gritty with the details here. All right, still not fully how I like it. I actually would change this color now. Let’s use that pink for sweet because that’s kind of the emphasis. I don’t want gains to be pink. I think that we can make the same brown. And we’ll make this one that brown as well. All right, we are getting somewhere. So, for time sake, I will speed things up a little bit. Now, another nifty tool here. I want the design I want part of it to be on the back side. I don’t want this design there. We have a tool. I’m going to move this big text to the back. Now, when you highlight a few layers together, you can have the option to save it as a template. So, let’s say I wanted to add this text specifically to a sweatshirt or something else. It’ll save as a template. We’ll just say weekend gains for now. Okay. You save it as a template. And here in the left side, you have the my templates option. So, you can find this for a different product right in the product creator. You don’t have to recreate it every single time. Okay. And same thing now at the top of the toolbar. I’ve highlighted the same layers. I’m actually going to apply it to all areas. This means you’re applying it to all of the print areas. So, now it’s on the back, this text. So, I’m actually going to delete it from the front side. Leave it on the back. And of course, we’re going to make it a little bit bigger. We want to center it. Maybe something like this. Yeah. Okay. Back to the front side. Ooh, Barbara said, “I sprint to the freezer.” That’s a good one. That’s a really good one. Okay, back to my lifting bars here. Let me zoom in again. Let me move down. I actually want to make this a left chest designs kind of or like a pocket design kind of. I’m going to highlight all of my layers here and bring it right over. Now, my little kind of hack for getting that nice left center design without it being like awkwardly low or in the armpit. You want to look at kind of like two invisible lines. So, look at where the collar comes together with the shoulder and you want to line it up with that. You don’t want to have it kind of past that line, otherwise it’s going to be more centered. I mean, maybe your design you want it more centered, but that’s kind of the line that I look at. And I look at the invisible line with the armpit. Okay. So, at this size, I probably wouldn’t want it down that far. It’s going to be a little awkward. And size-wise, for a chest design specifically, typically you don’t want to go bigger than like 4×4 in. Otherwise, it’s going to be starting to be a bit too big. You might want to have a center design then instead. And how to check that again in the variance and layers panel. So if we look at our ice cream bar for example, we see right now the current design is a little over 2 by 2 in. So I think that’s a good size. Now if we make it bigger, that 4×4 in about like this. It depends how big you want, but I would not go bigger than 4×4 for a chest for a left chest design. Okay, let’s bring that back. Something like this. Maybe move it down. Okay, with the design, I think I’m happy with this. Now, we do want to offer I at least would want to offer more colors than just a white t-shirt. Right now, before I get into that real quick, I want to say if you really have no idea what you’re doing with design or the design aspect of print on demand doesn’t interest you, you can find Fiverr right in the toolbar here and it’ll take you over to our partner. We have some kind of like discounts with Fiverr. You can hire someone to create a design for you and bring it right into Printify. We also have a whole bunch of pre-made stuff that you can use from Shuttertock. Just note that with Shuttertock, you will be paying for the design per sale. So, you would just have to work that into your price. And of course, we have a whole entire graphics library. We have editable shapes that you can change the color of. Here’s our text tool, the curve text, and we have a whole bunch of text elements and kind of free stuff for you to just play around with if you’re totally new. Okay, let’s go back to the variance and layers panel here. This is where we can choose all of the colors that we want to offer of the actual product itself or the different sizes if it’s like a canvas or something like that. So, here we see all of those awesome awesome colors that we had. And for time sake, let’s say I’ll choose pepper, black, and espresso. Oh, and let’s go with ivory. Ivory also. Espresso. Espresso. I think I could use an espresso. Actually, espressos are or the color is very popular right now for shirts. I think I’ve been seeing it like all over Etsy. Okay, so we’ve chosen five colors. Now, if we go back to the variance layers here, we see all of the color variants here have popped up and we can kind of sort of preview what they look like. Now, the white one and the ivory colored shirt, it looks fine to me. The text is quite noticeable. It’s readable. But now when we get to these darker colors, it’s kind of hard to see. Okay, the black still looks a little bit okay with that brown, but the gray, it really starts to kind of blend in. So in this case, we would want to change the color of our text here specifically so it’s readable, right? But I don’t want to change the color of the white shirt. For example, if I make white text here, I’m not going to read be able to read white text here. So if you have a specific variant, you can click make a specific design and for whatever color variant it is. Now when this is a enabled, you’ll see a blue dot up here. You are changing the design only for this pepper colored t-shirt. None of the other ones. So, we could actually take our text here now and we can make it maybe like this cream color for example and we can go through and change all of the colors to that. Okay. So, maybe now I would actually move this down a little bit because then it starts to blend in. Something like that. And on the back side we can do the same thing. Okay. Okay. Now, I probably do that maybe for the espresso one and the black one as well, but for time sake, we will not do that. Now, when you are happy with your design, you always, always want to preview it. So, this is going to give you the most accurate representation of what it’s going to look like in real life after it prints. So, you can preview all the different sides of it. You can preview the different colors, the variance here. There we go. You can see how it looks on a model. All right. Now, my biggest note here, let’s go back to the back one here. My biggest note, always preview in CMK mode. And we have it labeled as realistic here because what your screen shows and what actually prints is going to be different. A printer uses CMK. Your screen is emitting light. It’s going to look a lot brighter. And a good example, let’s actually change to the black one so you can see. I want you now take a look at the pink. You can see that it kind of changes. It gets a little bit more muted. Maybe we should use like a brighter pink real quick. You’ll see. You’ll see what I mean. So, if you’re expecting like a super super bright pink like this here, it looks awesome on the screen. It’s kind of like this neon pink. Now look at it in the CMYK preview. It’s a little bit more muted. It’s still a really bright pink, but it does not look the same. So, make sure you’re always checking in CMK. Make sure this is kind of what your buyers are seeing also, so they’re not expecting a bright pink like this. All right, let’s go ahead and save the product. Now, when we save the product, now we are taken into the mockup library. Here, we can choose all of the mockups we want to show on our storefront, we can choose which colors we want to show. And these are all free for you to use. You can upload your own mockups. So, if you buy your mockups or if you order samples and take your own photos, you can upload those here as well. or you can generate your very own mockups right here inside Printify. So, let’s show let’s show a quick example. I’m going to go kind of quick. I have a full tutorial on YouTube about this as well, but just so you can see what it looks like. So, you can choose which product variant, so the t-shirt colors. Let’s go with that espresso one for fun. You can choose which print area. Let’s go with the back. And you can choose if you want a model or the product by itself. Now, how this works, basically, we’ve already kind of written the prompt for you, and you just choose which features you want. So, you don’t have to know how to write a prompt or anything. So, you can choose the age of your model here. You can choose male or female. Let’s let’s go with female. And let’s say, okay, East Asian. Give her lighter skin. Let’s say, okay, she’s probably at the gym, right? Because we all eat ice cream at the gym. So, I’m going to give her a ponytail and I don’t know, let’s make her a brunette. Let’s make her athletic because she’s at the gym. And she’s going to be smiling cuz we all smile and laugh at the gym, right, when we’re in pain. And since since I chose to show the back print, let’s say we can kind of choose her position here. Let’s say she’s standing, not looking at the camera. Okay. And then last but not least, you can choose the background. So we have a few preset option here options here for you. Or you can write in a prompt for a custom background, which I’ll do because none of these kind of fit what I’m looking for. So we’re going to put my person in the gym. Let’s just say a weight room. When you’re ready, generate mockup. Okay. So it’ll think it’ll generate that image for you. Do note that this AI mockup tool is only available for Printify premium users at the moment. And you get, I think, 10 generations a day, but I find that that’s more than enough. Okay. And now we can zoom in on it. Okay. I should have changed this color back. And I probably should have changed the text color, but the model looks pretty great. Okay. Maybe like I wouldn’t be wearing jeans in the gym, but that’s such a tiny detail. the um the model itself, the weight room. It’s pretty cool. Okay, so let’s say we like this one. We can if we don’t like it, you can regenerate it. You can change up your prompt. You can choose to do uh the product by itself. You can change the color, etc. But we will select this one for now.

And here we see it in our selected mockups. Perfect. So when we’re happy, let’s save this. Okay. And now we are in the listing details page. So the listing details page, this is where you would add your listing details like the SEO, all your keywords. We do have an AI tool to help you kind of get started if you’re totally new to SEO and aren’t sure. We’ll kind of scan whatever sales channel you’re connected to and use what we think is the best SEO, but you should always validate that, double check that with your own research. Okay, so you can do that. You would add your description, personalization. We’ll talk about that in a little bit. Of course, you would add all your prices here. And then you have your publishing settings, but we have not connected a story yet. So, we have nothing to publish. Okay. So, you’d either publish it if you were connected or you can save it as a draft. And you’re going to be taken to the my products page here. And here you’ll see all of the products you’ve previously created. You can always come back to this page. And if you click on it, you’ll be taken back into the listing details. Or if you need to get back into the product creator to work on the design, you can click on this little paintbrush icon here. But first, we need to actually add a store. And it’s a lot easier than you would guess. So to add a new store, we’re going to do Printify popup because it takes about five minutes to do. So in the top left here, you see all the stores you have connected. You can add a new store. Okay, here you see Etsy, Shopify, Tik Tok, all the integrations we have and you see Printify popup. You will click launch pop-up store and you can name your store. So, let’s call mine the same thing, sweet gains, your country, and of course, agree. Now, you can either choose a template. We’ve made a few preset templates like store templates that you can see here. You can choose one of those or you can create it with AI. And the AI option is really cool, but I’m going to show you that in a little bit. So, we’re going to go the kind of more manual route here for a second. So, we’re going to choose a template.

Okay, we have a few templates here. We’ve got kind of more urban street wear style, kind of maybe like an outdoorsy one. I like this minimal one for my brand cuz I like that pastel purple. And then you can change the color palette if you want. If you want a bit of a darker theme or a lighter theme or colorful, you can choose. And the coolest part, we have this little phone icon up here. You should always check what the store looks like on mobile because most people are shopping on their phones these days, right? So, we’ll continue with this template. Whoops. I did not mean to do that. I wanted to add more products. That’s okay. So, you can publish your products right away. Okay, here we go. I wanted to show you the create products in bulk. So, we’re going to go back into there. Here we go. This is where I wanted to be. So basically the next step if you want if you want to launch I don’t know five 10 products at once with just your brand logo or something quickly you can do that here and you can choose kind of you can always add more products later keep that in mind so you’re not limited to the products here. So if you have a more corporate vibe or something music related school spirit etc you can choose some like bundles so to speak. So, let’s choose some top sellers here. Something that would make sense for gym and ice cream. Probably a couple of tank tops, t-shirts, hoodies. You can pick and choose which ones you want. We’ll keep that. Comfort color is one. Maybe you can remove that one. Okay. You’ll see the categories. We probably wouldn’t want a poster in this store. Maybe a sticker. Maybe not a journal. Some mugs. Accessories. Maybe we want a tote bag. Definitely we want a hat in there. Okay. So, you’ll be able to choose from a lot of best sellers here, but again, you can always add more products later. Then you’ll be taken to upload your image. So, here for example, I would upload, I don’t know, my store logo or something. You would want to upload a design that looks good across multiple products. Okay. So, because if we continue, okay, it’s going to process it. Because a design on a t-shirt, something that’s like a big text design on a t-shirt, may not look great on a mug or a phone case, it’s going to look different. So, I found for like logos or something, if you kind of go with that simple badge style, something circular, it tends to translate across different types of products really well. So, if you’re going this route, think about that. Okay. Now, it’s used AI to kind of figure out which colors, which product colors best stand out with your design. So, here it chose gray, blue, and yellow. For me, I’m not a huge fan of that palette. So, here I would actually just choose my own colors. Let’s say white, black, and have kind of this tan color. And let’s go with light blue for fun. Or teal, actually. I like teal better. And we can deselect these if we want. Maybe we’ll keep the navy one. Okay. Choose your colors. and continue. And there we have it. You see that it automatically put that design. So, we’ll say this is my logo across all of these products at once. I didn’t have to go through the product catalog and the creator. What do I have here? 12 products or 10 different times to create these. It happened all at once. Okay. Now, you can save them, come back to them later, or we can publish those all to our store. So, I’ll publish the products and we’re going to be taken to customize our store. Now remember all of these products I just created, you can go back, you can adjust the designs. If you decide you don’t like a specific variant or you don’t like the product or you want to change the design, you can always do that later. Okay, so it’s going to publish our products. And what do we have happening in the chat here while this is loading? Okay, how can you change what the shirt is on that screen? I’m not sure I understand that question. You can replace your shirts like in the my products page. If you don’t like the specific shirt variant or you want to change from comfort colors to Gilden, you can replace that in after you’ve created the product. It’ll just swap out the actual shirt with the design. I’m not sure if that’s what you were asking. Kim Wer is asking, “Is that with Oops, I just lost it here. Is that with the premium to see all that merch at one time? I don’t see that option.” Um, no that is I think it’s a free option. It is for Printify popup specifically. So you have to launch that popup store first and then you should see the option to create in bulk. Okay. What did you click on to build a number of items at one time? Again, so I was in the um I had just launched the popup store and I think it brought it back to the dashboard because I hadn’t created a product yet. You have the option to create either both products or one product at a time. Does a pop-up store create a website? Yes, it does. And actually, while this is loading, it did not take this long yesterday. I can show you an example of a pop-up store. Um, I made a full tutorial that’s way more step by step over on YouTube, but I can show you the store there. So, let’s find that here. This is kind of what a finished store would look like. Now, these are totally customizable. I changed I chose the background color. I chose what images are here, the button colors, what logos, how I want the menu to be. You can add a banner here. I chose how the product cards look like looked like. So, it’s really customizable to your brand. Now again, if you want to launch really fast, again, 10 products or hop on a viral trend or you’re a content creator, you can choose our templates and just have a nice looking store from the get-go. And then when you find time or you figure out kind of what your brand palette is, then you can start customizing things. So, this is kind of what a finished product or a finished store would look like. Now, the domain for the free one, um, it will have aprintify.me me domain and that’s free to you, free to use. However, you can buy your own domain and connect that as well if you want it to be your store name. It’ll be your store name at print or.printify.me. So, you’ll see here mine’s slowday.printify.me and you can have it whatever domain you want. So, you get the full product product page, you get the descriptions, everything you would get in a typical shop and you can add all your social media icons. We have the whole add to cart function. And this is all totally free to you. Okay, let’s check back in. Here we go. Okay, so nice work. Now we have 10 new products. They’re almost live. If I had followed the flow correctly, I think they would have published. Oh, here we go. Now we do see that they are all published. We see that our store is connected. Now we are doing okay on time. I’m I’m going to have to speed things up a little bit here. So, let’s say I do want to customize this store. If I go into more here, we can click customize store. And now you’re brought into the store builder. This is where you can change the color of your backgrounds. This is where you can add your custom images if you want. Okay? You can change those banners, the menus. You can change how the product cards look. for example, or how how many you want to show. You can create all your pages, add your social media, choose your your typography, the button styles, basically everything that you want to customize, you can do that right in here. Okay? And you can always get that mobile view as well as well. And from here, you can also preview what your store would look like. Now, do make sure if you’re making any changes inside the store builder, always publish your changes before you exit. Otherwise, you will lose your progress. Yes, I have learned that the hard way. Okay. Um, now, if building the store is not for you or you just don’t want to deal with it, we have a really cool way to do that. We have the AI way to do that. But before I show you that way, I think we need to do our very first giveaway. What do you guys say? I I think it’s time. Okay, so the very first giveaway, we are going to do a store credit giveaway. I am going to give five of you $20 to add to your Printify account. And so how it’s going to work, I’m going to ask you a question. You will answer it in the chat. Okay. Now remember, only answers inside the Amplified Arena in Sellers Club are eligible to win. So if you’re watching on YouTube, go over to Sellers Club to be eligible. Now, how is it going to work? I’m going to answer ask you a question. You’re going to answer. You do not have to be the fastest typer. Don’t worry, but also like don’t dillydally because we’d have a little bit of a time limit here. I’m going to have the moderator enter 10 random names from the chat into a randomizer and then randomly choose five more winners. So, it’s going to be completely random. Now, my first question to you to answer in the chat, what product are you most excited to create first? Or if you’ve already created some products, what new product are you excited to try? Let me know in the chat. Okay. Now, how’s it going to work? Once our moderator chooses the winners, you can expect an email from with the coupon that you would enter into Printify. You’ll get that store credit and it’ll be to the email that you used to sign up for sellers club. Okay. Now, what can you actually do with store credit? You can put it towards any orders. So, if you get an order, you have to pay for the production cost. You know, the cost of printing the

blankets are a really good one. And Q4 also blankets go hard. Okay, back to my screen. Wow. Okay, so this is totally different from the first one I made, but it’s still super awesome. It basic it just created an entire storefront for me. Do you guys see all see this? This is amazing. Okay, so it chose the colors for me. It already put together a mockup image for me. It even came up with a slogan. Cute fits, serious reps, whimsical performance apparel for gym lovers who train hard and still save room for a sweet treat. I mean, I feel like I don’t even have to edit this. This is amazing. Okay, now we still get all of the same options as before. So, we can see it in mobile. We can still choose kind of our color palette. We can choose a lighter one. We can go with a darker scheme. There we go. I kind of liked the first one here, the default one. Okay. We can choose the typography one if we want to change it maybe. Okay, we’ll go with that. Or if you really don’t like it, you can edit and regenerate. You can go back at your prompts, change some things, and redo that. Now, it kind of already built the menu and put the title of the store everywhere I need it and it added. Okay, these are blank products because remember I just launched a new store. So, we don’t have any designs here. But it would be the same process as before now. So, if we go to create store,

okay, now we can either visit our store here. If we click customize store, it’ll take us into that store builder. Or if we publish products, that’ll get you the option to individually create products or that bulk create option. Let’s go back into the store builder real quick.

Okay, so now we’re in the store builder and we see the same exact thing that the AI generated. If we wanted to change the slogan here, we can say, I don’t know, just for example, serious lips, you can change the slogan. You Oopsies. We didn’t want to do that. Oopsies. We’re getting a little bit of a glitch here. That’s okay. It happens. Okay. Well, while while this fixes itself, I think we can announce our winners finally. So, our winners of the $20 store credit is Amanda Ray. Congratulations, Dana R. Anderson, Marina Munos, Tiffany Franklin, and Michael Stalicker. Congratulations. You got $20 in Printify store credit. You can check your emails. You will get information on how to use that and what code you need to use. So, shout out to you in the chat. Congratulations. Okay, let’s continue here with our AI store builder. So, as I said, you can edit everything like you would before. Okay, it still seems to be getting stuck. That’s okay. Let’s pretend I changed the colors and everything. And we would publish our Whoa, there we go. We would publish our changes. And then if we want to see what the store looks like, it’ll open up right here. Now, we haven’t made any products of course, but you have a homepage in what was that like five minutes. Super fun, super easy. Okay, let’s go back into we will just discard our changes for now. Okay, now we can add products to the store. You can actually Let’s go back to the first store that I made. Which one was that? Sweet gains. I can actually, let’s say this is like an Etsy store or something or I’ve already had products in a different store. I could take the products I made here and I can copy it over to any of my other stores. So, I can copy it directly to here or to my Tik Tok shop if that’s where I have it. Copy products and it’ll go into that store as well. So, if you have different products in a different store, you can easily bring those over.

Wow, that was a lot and really cool. Let me see what questions we have. Okay, questions. Any plans to add PayPal or Payaneer payouts for pop-up stores? Stripe is not supported. Um, we do not have any specific ETAs. We are very aware that it’s very highly requested. We’re still working on expanding all of this and if you keep requesting things, we will keep hearing it. Um, but we know there’s a want for this in other countries as well that don’t offer Stripe. But for now, it it is only available in those select countries. We have a help center article that says specifically which countries it’s available in. Okay. Any other questions here? Oh, you guys are typing so fast. Saying congrats to everyone. That’s nice. How do you handle sales tax for pop-up stores? Oh, that’s a good question. Also a tricky one because I’m I am not a tax expert by any means. Um we actually have a whole help center section dedicated specifically to sales tax or VAT if you’re in the EU. We kind of break it down and there are options for you to submit um oh man I don’t want to get this wrong. You can submit a resale certificate. So you can either take care of the taxes yourself if you have like a professional on hand or we would charge the sales tax in your place. But I would suggest going through those help center articles because I don’t want to give you wrong information off the top of my head. Again, I don’t know a ton about sales tax. But we do kind of guide you through that because it is a tricky topic. How can I market my products without showing my face? I mean, there’s a lot of ways to still do it on social media. You don’t have to always show your face in video or if you just create like photos and giveaways on social media. You can have text, things like that, or I don’t know, you can like force your younger brother to do it to do it or something. Um, there are plenty of ways to do that. I would suggest scrolling other brands on social media or elsewhere and seeing kind of how they’re marketing their products. Okay, there is one more thing that I want to show you before we do another giveaway. I do have another giveaway planned for you. So, we’re going to switch gears a little teeny tiny bit. Now, I created products here inside a pop-up store. I’m going to take you over to Etsy now. Not enough to actual Etsy, but like my Etsy shop connected to my Printify account. So, I want to talk about personalization. And we’re going to talk about it a little bit more in depth in the next section or next segment, I guess. But if you’re starting out, personalization is such a great way to really to help you get those first sales because people want personalized stuff. they’re willing to pay a little bit more for it. And we have this super awesome new tool specifically with Etsy. So, basically, you can personalize your product. It’ll get sent over to Etsy and your buyer on Etsy will be able to see a live preview of what they created. Okay? And then when they order it, it’s going to go automatically into Printify without you ever having to like manually bring in a design or a photo. You can just submit it or it can be submitted automatically. So, it’s much more handsoff for you. So, I’m going to kind of show you the flow of this. Now, it would be the same um product creation process that I brought you through before. Any of the products in our catalog can be personalized. any of the 2,00 plus products. So, we can go we’ll go I’ve already pre-made a product. It’s in my products page. Let’s go into the product creator. Okay. Now, and now I want to say to personalization, it’s awesome for Etsy, but you can personalize no matter what sales channel you’re connected to. So, if you have one of these pop-up stores, you can offer personalized products there on Shopify. So, it’s not Etsy exclusive, but these live previews are on Etsy right now only. Okay. So, when you open the product creator, you’ll see a tool here that we did not see before. This is the personalization button, and this is how we can offer personalized products. You can add personalizable text. And you’ll see that it opens up as a standard text layer. It shows up in our varants and layers panel just like all the other designs did that we did before. Let’s delete this. So, I’ve I’ve pre-created a product here for time sake. So, we can add text or you can add a personalizable image, meaning your buyer over on Etsy, they can type in whatever text they want and they can add whatever image they want to your product. Okay. Now, when we add these layers, let’s open up the text. Now, we can offer our buyers more than just text and image. We can have them choose the color of the text. We can give them the option to choose the font of the text. So, there’s a lot that we can do here. Let’s say for the text we want to offer. So, first of all, I need to show where we can add the text. Here you would put your placeholder text and then you have the text options. Here you can let’s say oops here we go. You’ll have add text options. Now it’s not showing for me because I’ve already added them here. But you can offer the colors. And if we click edit you can add up to 30 colors I think for your buyers to choose from. I would not add that many 30 colors because otherwise it’s just going to be like choice paralysis and they’re gonna have no idea which color to choose. I think I would say three to five is a good number here. So you can add all your color options for your buyers. Save those. And then you can add all your font options. Again, you can add up to 30 of those. Now you can delete anything if you want to change the default one. The default one will be the ones that your buyer sees in the picture and what you’ll see in the preview here. We can save that, right? And then here you can So this is let’s just say uh buyer text. This label here, your buyer will not see this label. This is more for you. So it’s not super important right now. I’ll see where your buy where you can add instructions for your buyer. Okay. We can edit it like we did any other text. Same with the photo. We can resize it if we need to. Now, the most important thing that I actually want to say here or point out is this little text here, the fields. So, right now, Etsy only allows up to five personalizable fields. So, that means you can offer different combinations of things, but right now I’m using four fields. For example, the photo, the personalized photo is one field, one of five. the text, the text itself, that would be a second field. So, the more personalization kind of layers we’re offering, the more fields we’re using. I added a text color option, that is a third field. I added then the font option. That’s a fourth field. So, I could add theoretically another like personalized photo option or personalized text option, but then I would hit the limit. And if you hit six out of five fields, it’ll show you, but it’s not going to let you save the product or publish it. So, be mindful of that. Okay, we are going to save the product real quick and be taken into the listing details page right here. So, this is all exactly the same as we saw before. If we scroll down, here we go. Now, you’ll see the personalization section. This is where you can enable or disable that live buyer preview. I I would keep it enabled because I would love to see my products before I actually buy it. You know, before on Etsy, you had to they had to buy the product or they wanted a mockup, you had to DM them, this and that. You had to actually make the product before before they actually bought it. So, here we add the instructions. Okay. Now, if we click on this, we see all of the fields that we just added in the product creator. Little pencil icon will open up a panel and we can change the title. So, for the image, for example, we can say your picture and this is what they’re going to see in your Etsy listing now. Okay. You can give them instructions here. For example, what kind of picture or how big, etc. Apply that. We can change the instruction for the text. We can also make it optional text. So maybe they just want a t-shirt with their image, no text. That’s fine. So we can change this. Now, the text we add here automatically, it is the most kind of clear that we’ve found to be most specific for Etsy buyers. You can still make it whatever you want, but we’ve made it super easy, so you don’t have to think about it too much. And of course, you would probably want a character limit. And make sure to apply that. Now, I’m not going to go through all of these. Um, so once you’ve added the personalization instructions, you actually do get a preview here of what it looks like. You would publish it. You would fix all your pricing, publish it, or you can save it to work on it later. Um, I’m not going to show you the Etsy side of it yet. You’re actually going to have to hang out with me in the next segment where I’m going to show you the actual preview, but this is how we get it set up. So, I’ll show you the the real preview in a little bit. Okay.

How much time do we have? Okay, we need to speed things up here. Um, I’m going to show you one more thing, but before we do that, I want to do another giveaway. So, this time we are doing a merch giveaway. This is merch for the official Amplified Popup Store. So, one person, so last time we had five winners. This time, one winner is going to get a $50 coupon for the official Amplified merch store. And it is going to work the same exact way as before. I’m gonna ask you a question. You’re going to give your answer in the chat and one winner will be chosen at random. Okay? And then the winner will be email the code. So my question to you is on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being like the highest, the best, how excited are you to explore Printify and all of these new features? 10 being like you are already building right now. one being that you’ve probably already left the chat. And do remember that

And this is like a brand new feature. I think we launched it maybe last week, maybe even this week. But yeah, that’s kind of the main one I wanted to show. One more thing that I wanted to show. We have Okay, we have a little bit of time still. Uh, one more thing that I wanted to show is in Etsy. I’m sorry. I’m po I’m hopping around all over the place here. in the products. We can now you can now offer multi-product listings. And I’m going to chat a little bit later with Star Moore about why multi-product listings are good, but I’m going to show you how to set that up in Etsy. Now, basically what that means is in your Etsy listing, you can offer like a t-shirt, a sweatshirt, and let’s say a hat with the same design all in one listing. Before you had to make all these separate products and then kind of like manually enter all the SKs in Etsy. Well, now you can all do all of that super easily right here in Printify. You’ll see in the my products page, you can select your products. Okay, we’ll just do these random ones here. And let’s say I think I need two t-shirts here. Let’s take the two different sweatshirts. This is not the store one. Okay. Ah no I see my problem is it is not available yet for personalizable products. Let me find some nonpersonalizable products or okay let’s say we want to offer two different types of canvases. Here we go. So I’ve selected my products and we see this button create multi-product listing. We click on it. Now we have two different products in one listing. So you would add your title here the description. And it’s kind of the same listing details you would add if you’re doing like a a single product, right? All your tags, attributes, and then you get a preview of what it looks like. So, this is a really fun new tool that we’ve recently added. If you’re selling on Etsy or thinking about that, definitely think about multi-product listings as well. And again, I’ll have a session later with Starla Moore. She’ll kind of tell you why that can be a good thing. All right, I think let me check here. Yes, I think it is time to slowly wrap up here, but we need to announce our merch winner. So, congratulations to drum roll, Lindy Deng. Congratulations. You won $50 coupon to the official Amplified merch store. Lindy, if you are in the chat here, obviously you are somewhere. Let us know what you buy. I think we got like a t-shirt in there, a hoodie. I think we’ve got some tote bags. But congratulations. Use that money wisely. Okay, I had a good time today. Thank you very much. I had a good time in this session. We have five more sessions with me all about Etsy. We’re going to talk about popups some more. We’re going to talk a little bit about Shopify, store previews, all that stuff. Um, but right now next we are going to show you how to make the boring admin type of stuff like actually setting up your account way faster, way easier with our new guided onboarding flow. So, we’ve made it super easy for you so that you can actually focus on kind of the fun stuff like creating all these products, like getting sales and designing. And of course, if you prefer doing any of this stuff on your phone or on the go, you get all of this same stuff, including this on this guided onboarding flow that we’ll show right inside the Printify mobile app. So, it’s available for iPhone, it’s available for Android. We’re going to have a little bit more later on that app as well or on that uh feature. And also, this is what I’m really excited about. For the first time ever, we are chatting with Etsy here at Amplified. That’s going to be in the next segment. We’re going to talk about how to find trends, why personalization is the go-to move, and I’m going to show you what that live preview for your buyer looks like. So, that t-shirt that I created with the picture, we’re going to see it in action on Etsy. And I’m going to show you how you can create your own personalized products again. So, I hope you guys had a good time. Thank you, Isaiah. I’m going to give some shout outs here. Thank you, Jeff. Jeff says, “How many earrings do you have?” I have eight earrings. I have more on this side. That’s the first time I’ve gotten that question. That was a good one. Okay. Um, thank you, John, for joining us. Thank you. Oh, Linda, you’re in the chat. Thanks for everything. I’m so excited to start. Oh, we’re so excited to have you here. Okay. Thank you, Christine, for joining us. Tracy, Isaiah, Samantha, thank you so much. All right, everyone. We’re going to take a little break here. I’m going to show you that new AI onboarded guided flow. See you in a few minutes. For years, Printify has been a leader in print on demand and building online businesses. Thousands of products, the sharpest technology to help your business thrive, the platform everyone else tries to catch up to. And now we’re taking that even further. We’re changing the way you start a POD business. Introducing Printify’s new AI product creation tool. The fastest, most successful way to build your online business. We took everything we’ve learned from watching thousands of POD stores succeed and thousands more flop. Design trends and bestseller products. That’s millions of data points crunched down into this one feature. a tool that just hands you the answer for free. It all starts with discovering what’s selling right now. Because here’s the thing, you don’t have to guess what to sell anymore. We already know. We built short lists of what’s working today. Signals straight from Etsy, Tik Tok Shop, Shopify, everywhere buyers are actually spending money. Then we hand you styles labeled and ready. Beginner friendly, trending, giftable, the styles people are already buying. And there’s always more. No guesswork here. You pick with the confidence that there’s verified demand behind it. Real business owners don’t publish one design and call it a day. That’s why we hand you a whole collection. Choose from a handful of them, all built around the style you just picked. A process that takes most sellers hours done in seconds. Every collection is generated just for you. We work with artists to fine-tune every design to be perfect for POD and built to sell. You’re not just walking away with a design. You’re walking away with a brand. Our data shows this is where most sellers actually fail. They don’t know how to make a listing look like a real product, the kind that gets that first sale. So, we fix that for you. We’ve studied millions of listings to figure out exactly what works, so you don’t have to write yours from scratch. You get expert listings created for you, the way top sellers make theirs. Descriptions, sizes, colors, prices already by default. Over a third of all POD sales are t-shirts. The data is unmatched here, which is why we always start you off with this best-selling item. your first sales streamlined so you can start with profits from the get-go. Your whole business created in just a few clicks. And if you already know your way around POD, don’t worry. The regular product creation process is still right there. But if you want a quicker way to get started, this new AI product creation tool is your fast lane. Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve already got a store and want an easy way to explore new niches and expand, this is built for you. Head over to printify.com/ai. We already did the hard part. Printify presents badass ways to quit your job.

I quit. But how? Every week, thousands of people open a store and make their first sale with Printify. And so can you. Printify has over 2,000 products waiting for your designs, so you can launch your store in minutes. We make starting your own business so easy, quitting is all you’ll think about. 25.

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Welcome back again. If you did not meet me in the very first session, my name is Leah and I am your host for today. Now, this is going to be an awesome session because for the first time ever, I have Etsy right here with me and we have got a packed session and not a ton of time. So, we’re gonna get right into it. I’ve got Toulojo with me. How are you today, Tou? I’m feeling amazing. How are you? Oh, I’m feeling fantastic. I’m having so much fun already. Um, we’ve got to start with a quick intro, though. Who are you? What’s your role at Etsy? Yeah, I am a product marketing manager at Etsy. I lead marketing for our seller inventory tools. essentially making it easier for sellers to list, manage, and grow their businesses on um our platform. So, I work really closely with our research, marketing, and product teams to bring to market a suite of new tools um that add value to our seller community. So, you’re like the perfect person to be here with us today. Um let’s dive right into it. Tell us about Etsy. What are some of the absolute biggest trends you’re seeing on Etsy right now? Yeah, we’re seeing three major key trends that are actually really related. So, the first is everyday exhibits. So, buyers are turning their homes into personal galleries. So, they’re choosing pieces that reflect their interests, memories, and also individual style. And what we’ve seen on our platform is searches for wall art decor are actually up 110% this year. And searches for gallery prints are also up 80%. Um, we’re consistently hearing from buyers that they’re looking for more than decor. They want pieces that help them show who they are and also tell and reflect their story. Um, the second, which is actually my personal favorite, is treat yourself. So, buyers are also celebrating the smaller moments. So whether that’s a new job, completing a course, um a pet adoption anniversary, or even just making it through a really tough week, which I’m sure we can all relate. Um everyone is trying to find these mini mini milestones and and treat themselves. Um so 39% of Gen Z buyers celebrated a just because moment last year and that has not stopped on our platform this year as well. So for sellers, that creates an opportunity to move beyond major holidays and life events and really think about how you can show up in the everyday moments people want to recognize. Mhm. And the last trend is human touch. So we’re living in a time where it has never been easier to make more products, launch more designs, and also automate the most of that selling process. So products that feel thoughtfully made are really standing out. Um, we’re seeing, for example, sales of handmade crochet clothing are up 36% this year. And also, searches for handmade embroidered bags um are up 20,000% this year. So, it’s clear that buyers are valuing the care, the creativity, and the personal story behind what they’re buying. Um, and that’s really true across all three trends. Like, buyers are looking for things that are more meaningful and connected to their lives. So if you’re thinking as a seller, how can you apply those trends to your business? Personalization is one of the simplest ways in which you can meet that growing buyer demand. So thinking through how you can turn an everyday product into something that feels specific to a person, a relationship or even an occasion. Um and for Etsy, we are a natural fit for that personalization because buyers do come to our platform to find creativity and human connection. So, it’s all about turning a mug into potentially a retirement gift or even an ordinary t-shirt into like a family reunion memory. Um, and really connecting that product to something the buyer loves. So, the key takeaway is to not think about like adding um a name or personalization to every product, but identifying the moments where a buyer is already looking for meaning and making it easier for them to express it. Mhm. So, basically like personalization here is a big trend on Etsy also. Um, and it’s also a way for new sellers to really easily maybe kind of get their first few sales because that’s exactly what people are looking for, especially as the holiday season is coming. You can ask a little bit more money for it. And again, it gives that human touch, not just for you as a seller, but I would say like as a buyer, you had a hand in creating the product or creating this gift for someone, right? So, yeah, like you said, the human touch here. Um, what are some of the top products right now for personalization? Yeah, I will I’ll share the top five that we’re seeing. So, the first is t-shirts, which feels like a no-brainer. Um, second is ornaments. Third is mugs. Fourth is signs. So any sign having that blank canvas and adding personalization to it. And fifth is digital prints. Um I think what’s super interesting is when you take a step back, all of those products serve really different purposes, but they all give buyers like that simple canvas to mark a person or a relationship memory um or even a moment. So again, when applying this to your business, really think like what products um can you bring that turn a moment for a buyer into something that they can celebrate, remember or um make their own. Mhm. I think too like the the moments um I read something about like you know you have these big milestone like the typical moments you might personalize like I don’t know a 50th birthday or a 20th wedding anniversary or something. But I think I saw something too about ma basically like mini milestones or like the Jenzie you said the just because moments. I feel like even this was like every day I got out of bed moment like can be personalized in a way. So yes, big milestones are great, but even those mini tiny I don’t know micro moments if you want to if you will. Um, yeah. So, you mentioned t-shirts was still one of the top selling ones. And in my very first session, I created a personalized t-shirt and I showed a lot of you, if a lot of the same people are still watching, how to personalize a t-shirt on Printify and get that onto Etsy. I actually want to show you the Etsy side of things now to see what your buyer would see as they’re getting the personalized t-shirt. Now, real quick, you actually totally mentioned something to me yesterday. How can people find these trends? You mentioned something about marketplace insights that’s relatively newish. Can you quickly tell us about that first? Yeah, there’s a few places. So, what we spoke about yesterday is what we call marketplace insights, which is on Etsy shop manager. any seller can go into it um and look through what buyers are searching for, keywords, tags, and really use that as the start point of your research for more of the broader trends that you’re seeing on our platform that I kind of covered the top three um earlier on. You can look for that on our Etsy seller handbook. So, if you search Etsy seller handbook, Etsy trends, those should also come up for you um as well. Right. So, I’m going to show you also quickly the marketplace insights just to kind of give you guys a taste. But this is a really cool tool. I think if again if you’re totally new to Etsy and you’re not sure maybe what to create, what to design, this is just another tool for you. So, let’s go over to my screen here. And I am in Etsy right now. In my shop manager, you have the menu here. Under the stats here, you can actually find the marketplace insights. And so right away you can browse different things that are I’m guessing popular right now. These are what people are searching for and different categories, but you can also search a specific term. So for example, let’s just put in t-shirt and see what comes up. So you see how many searches there have been in the past few days here. How many total search results. If you scroll down, you will see some other keywords here. Now I Oh, you actually see listing price range. You kind of get all the whole like listing information from this for that specific term, right? Yeah. Um I do understand though. Yeah. So this is with Etsy plus, correct? Yeah, that is correct. So to access the full tool, you would have to sign up for Etsy plus. But again, for a new person or even if you already have a ton of sales, it probably is a very helpful tool. Um, all right. Let’s switch gears to that personalized listing real quick. So, back in Printify in the first segment here, I created this uh I’ll say it’s a retro birthday t-shirt. So, this is the exact one I created in the Printify product creator. Now, I’m going to open up the listing details here on the Etsy side. And if you scroll down a little bit, you do all your keyword stuff. Here we go. In the custom options here, we see all of those same exact fields that I created in the Printify product creator. So, we had the picture, we had the front text, color, the actual text, and we see the same exact fields. We have three of the five here. Now, one quick comment. If you want to edit the fields, if you want to change the fields or change the instructions, do not do that on Etsy for now. Right now, the the way the integration is set up, it has to be done on the Printify side of things. So, if you want to change something in the specific product, you can just click this go to Printify button, edit your personalization options there, and then you would republish it to Etsy. Okay, now let’s see the actual product now. So, we’ll go back to our listings and if we view it on Etsy, we’ll see. There we go. So, this is exactly Oops. We should we should see the personalization button. Let’s try to refresh. Here we go. Okay. So, now we are viewing this listing how a buyer would see it. Okay, you see everything, the mockup pictures, we have the standard colors that we can choose, the sizes, whatever. And then we have this awesome little add personalization button. Okay. And again, here we see all of the fields that we created in Printify. So me as a buyer, I can change the text. Let’s just say I don’t know, 40 and still cool. I’m not 40, by the way, but we’re going to use that as an example. Um, so they can add their text and then you can choose the text color. So, let’s say, I don’t know, we want the cream colored. And if we had a font option, it would also show up as as a drop down here. Okay. And then we can upload our picture. So, again, I’m like in buyer mode right now. This is what buyers see. They upload files. They can choose their own picture

and oopsies. It looks like we have a glitch here. There should be the live preview. You know what? It’s okay. I’m prepared for this moment. Maybe. Let’s try it again. Okay. So, we’re we’re going to try it on this listing. I’m still 40. Still not 40, but I’m still cool. Okay. Choose. Now, let’s go with the cream one. Let’s try this again. Add our picture.

Okay. Well, I am being put on the spot here. So, theoretically, there should be a live preview button here. Maybe if I refresh this one,

maybe because I changed it in Printify. Oh, it’s such a cool feature. I really hope it works. We’re going to get this, guys. I promise. If not, we’ll come back to it when I figure out what’s happening.

Okay. Well, it looks like it looks like it’s not going to happen in this very moment. Theoretically, you should be seeing here a button that says preview your item. and it opens up a whole new window with the actual product and the picture and the text that I just typed in right here. And so your buyer can preview their personalized product before they even add it to their cart. Okay. Now, you will see it a little bit later. I promise I have a I have a full tutorial that we’re going to show after our next segment that does show the live preview. I’m going to play around here more and get it to work. But in the meantime, I do want to say all of this live preview stuff has been expanded to most of the products in our catalog. Um we’re still working on a few categories like um like AOP, embroidery, kind of those different print techniques, glitter, metallic, and puff. Those are still to come. And all of this can also be done and set up in the Printify mobile app. So you can edit all your fields, you can change the design if you need to, and you can toggle on that live preview control. All right, before we get back to questions with TLOU, I think we need to do another giveaway. What do you guys say about that? I know you’re super excited for it. Okay, we are going to do a store credit giveaway this time. So again, five of you will win $20 in store credit. That is for your Printify accounts. Okay. So, the question same same thing as before. Answer it in the chat. The question, what product would you personalize for Etsy? Let us know in the chat and the moderator will pick out five random winners. Okay? So, you don’t need to be the fastest typer, but do put a little bit of pep in your step because we don’t have all day here. Type in your answers. And then while you’re doing that, let’s see what you guys are saying. Uh Beanie JG says

So, in short, there are no shortcuts. You’ve got to you’ve got to do your research, fill in all those details, add a little video. If you get the store credit, order a sample, you can take a video, and it’s okay to use the same video across multiple listings, right? Um, okay. About personalization. If I’m totally new to Etsy, should I try personalization or is it too advanced? I would say you should absolutely start with personalization and keep it really simple. Um, as you went through the features that we’ve developed on our end, we’ve designed it to make it super easy to get started with personalization, collect all those details you need up front from buyers, and really streamline your fulfillment process. Um, so reducing that back and forth messaging with buyers and focusing your time on what matters the most. Um, so advice on getting started with personalization, choose one product that has a natural personalization opportunity. We’ve kind of gone through those trends and those key areas today and make the instructions very clear for buyers. You don’t need to offer every single possible choice from day one, but the best first step is to offer something you know you can fulfill consistently. And as you start to learn what buyers respond to and what they ask for, you can always build from there. So in short, make sure it has it provides genuine extra value. Don’t force personalization on something that doesn’t work right. Um, are there niches that you see where personalization works best in? Are there niches that maybe it doesn’t really work in? Yeah. So, we’ve kind of went over the top five items, which obviously that’s based on on results at stats. So, that’s definitely what’s hot right now on Etsy for personalization. But thinking more broadly, personalization works well when there’s a strong relationship identity or occasion behind a purchase. So, think weddings, new babies, pets, anniversaries. We’ve spoken about mini stones and Gen Z just celebrating everyday life. Um, so all those items are natural examples, but I think it’s less about finding the right category and more about whether personalization adds genuine value. So ask yourself, how can it make the item more meaningful, more useful, or just more clearly suited to the buyer? Um, instead of feeling like an afterthought, um, what is the best use of personalization? Um, that’s always a better starting point than just adding customization because it’s available like you mentioned. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that’s a good point. Um, slightly different question. In your shop, is it okay to have both POD products and handmade together or digital products and POD or all three types of products? Yeah, that’s that’s a good question. I definitely think it can be. I think the key is to make sure your shop feels cohesive to buyers and that every item meets Etsy’s requirements. So the strongest shops that I see tend to have a very clear point of view. So for example, a shop that is centered on celebrations. They might offer digital invitations, um personalized keepsakes, and also handmade party items. So all of those formats differ, but the buyer, the occasion, and the visual identity can still make sense and tie everything together. So be super transparent about what you design, how your items are made, and any potential production partners you work with. But the ultimate goal is that buyers understand what they’re buying and why it belongs in your shop. Um buyers typically see an item they like on Etsy and browse the whole shop in its totality. So make sure that that first impression makes sense and makes it super clear um what your your value is. Right? So yeah, make sure it is okay to have all three, but make sure it’s all cohesive and again that it makes sense in your shop. It’s not like some random products all put together. Um, okay. So, we only have about five minutes left. I do have good news. I figured out what my problem was. And now we I can show you what the live preview was. That was totally my mistake because I said as I said, I showed you how to set it up on the Printify side of things, but I didn’t republish it. So, it didn’t make the connection. That’s on me. And I did see someone ask a question here in the chat. Yes, Adam Reed asked, um, where can I see how to set up the personalization side on the Printify side? So, all of the sessions today are going to be recorded. You will be able to rewatch them later at any point on our YouTube channel. Um, also in a little bit, I will be showing you a full tutorial um on how to set up on the Printify side and see it on the Etsy side. So, hang tight. You will see that. But, let’s go back over to my screen real quick here. Okay. So now, so we have our listing as the buyer would see it. They would choose the variant color, the size, and then they have the add personalization button. They would upload their images, add the text, the font color, and the font options. And now you see this awesome little awesome little button that says preview your item. Do keep in mind if the buyer has not filled in or selected a size all of these options then it will be uh unhighlighted. They won’t be able to click it. But we filled everything in. You click preview your item and boom. Look at that. This is a product I created. I can see it right in front of my eyes before I even buy it. I mean this is pretty awesome. And yes, that is baby Leah. Okay, not baby, but like toddler Leah. So, still going. I maybe I should have worn pigtails and bangs today to match that picture. But anyway, that is what your buyers see. That is the live preview. It’s a super cool tool. If you haven’t tried it out yet on Etsy, definitely try it out. Okay, let’s get out of that. Tou, any final words of wisdom or inspiration or something we can look forward to for the holiday season before we sign out here? Yeah, I think we’ve covered a lot. Um, if I was going to leave everyone with a few gems, it will be to start with the human moment, not just the product. So, all the tools we’ve mentioned today, definitely use them, go and check them out to understand what buyers are looking for. Um, spot both major milestones and everyday mini stones, which is a massive opportunity for sellers right now. and really look to create a meaningful option that you know you can fulfill consistently for buyers. Um, and in terms of the holiday season, we’ve got a lot that we’re preparing um, for sellers. So, definitely stay tuned. We have a special holiday trends report. So, if you loved some of the trends that I went through earlier in our talk today, definitely stay tuned. We’ve got more of that coming. Um, along with checklists, guidance, best practice for how you can succeed on Etsy. I still love the concept of mini stones. You guys should look into that. I It’s cute. It’s awesome. People love it. Yeah, it’s a great great concept. Okay, real quick. We’ve got a minute left. I’m going to announce the winners of $20 store credit. Congratulations. Let’s celebrate them in the chat. Tiffany Jones, Rachel Guyger, Vanessa May, Karen Sanford, and Lee Roy. You have $20 in Printify store credit. Keep an eye out on your emails for further instructions on how to use that. Thank you again so much, Tulu, for being with us. We appreciate your time and the fact that you could speak about Etsy for us. I think you truly brought some very special insights just for our viewers here today. Um, all right, I’m going to take a quick break here. We’ve got some pretty cool new decoration methods that I’ve mentioned briefly that people have been asking for. Check them out right now and I’ll be back in five minutes with Drew from KD.

Some products you scroll past, some you have to touch. When you make products that feel as good as they look, people stop scrolling. Three new decoration methods are ready for your designs. Puff, metallic, and glitter print. Each one adds real texture and dimension your customers can see and feel. And you can start using all three today, right in the tools you already know. Let’s start with Puff, the one customers really want to reach out and touch. The ink physically rises off the fabric for a bold raised 3D finish that turns a simple shirt into a statement piece. It’s built for big, confident designs. Go bold and Puff photographs beautifully every time. We’ve seen Puff do especially well on evergreen designs like religious niches and sports parents. It’s the kind of thing people buy for themselves and grab as a gift. Then there’s metallic, your premium upgrade, a reflective foil-like finish that catches the light and instantly reads as high-end. It’s how a basic garment starts looking boutique so that higher price feels earned. Metallic prints are a natural for sports teams and gifting and for wedding season. Bachelorette and bridal party pieces are a wide open lane right now. Make it modern and sharp or lean into full luxury. And glitter, pure sparkle, pure impact, a shimmering texture that’s perfect for sweatshirts, hoodies, and specialty pieces people love to gift and wear. Think team spirit, celebrations, bachelorette weekends, anywhere the moment calls for a little sparkle. This is the finish that fits. Bold designs light up big sparkling. Impossible to ignore in a photo. One simple approach works across all three. Bold, consistent fonts look amazing in puff, metallic, and glitter alike. So you can build a whole product line around one look you love. Keep your text nice and large and it comes out gorgeous every time. Then preview your mockup and there it is. The metallic sheen, the glitter sparkle, the raised puff effect, all in full detail. That’s the moment your idea becomes a product you can’t wait to list. Whether it’s your very first product or your next bestseller, it all happens in the Printify product creator you already use. Pick a product, type in your text, and you’ve got something ready to sell. Puff, metallic, glitter. Three new ways to make products people can’t scroll past. Jump into Printify and start creating yours today. If you’re struggling to make print on demand sales, then I want to show you a workflow that will save you a ton of time, which is important, especially if you’re doing this as a side hustle right now. With AI workflows in KD, you can easily create merch designs, mockups, and even social videos for your products, all pre-built to speed you up. Find the perfect style for your merch design and select a preset or upload your own. You’ll get a feel for how your merch is going to look even before you hit generate. Then make your mock-ups and even make social videos to advertise your merch on Pinterest or Tik Tok. And new workflows land all the time. Whatever’s trending, it’s probably already in there. This isn’t just a feature. It’s a library that’s going to help you grow your shop. So try AI workflows in KD now.

Welcome back. For those of you just tuning in for the first time today, my name is Leah. I am your host, and I just have to show you how cool these look. So, you just watch the video about the new decor methods, puff, glitter, and metallic. But you don’t need to trust just the video because I have these awesome samples. I’m going to try to show you up close how each of them looks. Here we go. So, this first one is a fleece hoodie with the glitter print. And you can see, look at that sparkle. We have a ton of colors, too. And it kind of has like the feel of glitter, but it’s not super like it’s not like you glued glitter on some paper, but it’s actually very sturdy. And I just have to show you how pretty it is. And the fleece in this hoodie also, these are brand new. Look how soft that is. There we go. Now, these print methods, too. We offer more than just the front print. Look at this beautiful glitter sleeve print. I think it’s so fun and so pretty. I mean, look at this sparkle. Okay, that’s the glitter one. I have a few more to show you. Puff print. This is probably the one that you all have been asking for the most. So, puff print is this actual kind of like it literally puffs. It has kind of a 3D effect. So, I’m trying to show you the best here. And how it works. So it gets printed onto the shirt, onto the sweatshirt and literally after it comes out the ink like rises or it puffs and you can see this texture here. So here we have it available for front print as well as this awesome sleeve print. Now these decor methods are super popular on Etsy right now. I’ve seen them a lot for like sports team. Like this one says go wild cats for religious niches. basically any like simple text designs, they work super well. Okay. And Kelly Kelly Lamontane is asking, “Can you do personalization with puff print?” That’s a good question. Uh I don’t want to lie to you. I think we’re it’s still in the works, but we know people want that. Um if it’s not ready yet, we are working on it. Okay. And oh, with the puff print, too. So, you would think I actually confused this at first. You would think this is the metallic one, but this is kind of like a combo deal. This is puff print with a metallic sheen. I think there are gold and silver options available, but then you also have like the matted muted puff print colors, but I just had to show this one because this is super cool. Look at that. Okay. And last but not least, we of course have the actual metallic print. So, this metallic, it’s similar to glitter, but it’s not as like sparkly because this is more of like a foil on there. And we have I don’t know how many colors we have available, but you can see all this pretty shine. And how about Amber is asking, “How about graphic puff print?” Do you mean like a design that’s not text? If you mean that, then right now it is only available for text specifically. And we do recommend going with like bigger bolder text because you will see it it’ll just print a lot nicer. But we’re going to be updating and developing these features as we go. And of course the metallic has the sleeve print as well that I need to show you. I think this blue color especially looks super cool. So I needed to show you these. Here we go. Now, for any of those any of you winning that $20 in store credit, you can order a sample of one of these new methods and check them out for yourself. But anyway, super cool. Check them out in our catalog. Now, let’s get on to this session. So, we have KD here today with me right now who is one of our sponsors. Now, I love KD. I use it regularly. They are an awesome design resource to have in your toolbox. You will see, especially if you are a beginner or if you know nothing about design, you will see why KD could be the perfect tool for you. Now, if you’ve seen any of their content online, you probably know who Drew is. But if you haven’t, Drew, why don’t you take over from here? Tell us a bit about yourself. What is KD? Yeah, absolutely. First, let me say I’m happy to be back. I I did this event last year. It was a ton of fun. I got to do some really cool designs, which we can do again today. But yeah, my name is Drew. I’m the production manager at KD. So, a lot of the YouTube that you’re seeing if you check out our channel, you might have seen an ad or two or you may have just seen an ad. I don’t know if it was me or Graham in that ad. Uh, as well as other things, basically all video, you know, animations and basically just trying to get people to go farther faster, learning KD, getting more design. And it’s a great design tool for not only print on demand but for you know business owners who need marketing. So the the niches and the use cases really span quite wide from needing graphics or templates or fonts or whatever you might need is in KD for you to use. And so you’re actually going to show us a lot of this stuff today. Why don’t we just go right into it and you’re going to walk us through some of these processes. Yeah. Yeah absolutely. So, what I want to do first here is just kind of show you what you’re going to be seeing once you have gotten signed in. Once you get signed in, you’re going to come here to what I just like to call your dashboard. Now, you’re going to see a couple of different places you can go. You’re going to end up here in the AI studio. You’re going to be able to create a project right away. You could go start creating things with AI. Right here, we have a mode called Agentic, which will kind of take your prompts. can be a super simple prompt, can be a robust prompt, and we actually built Agentic to take your ideas in the prompt and then actually choose a model that works best for you. We’re going to look at some of that a little bit later. Uh, but you can scroll through different templates. So, if you wanted to go to the templates feed, you could go through and type in anything you might be looking for that’s related to print on demand, for example, any kind of design style, any kind of design niche. You can look through different graphics if you want to be looking at, you know, images, illustrations, icons, all that kind of stuff. You could browse through our different fonts. You do all of this later in the editor, which I’m going to show you, but you can do a lot of things from right here in the dashboard. Not uh including this is a new thing we just released, which is a bulk mockup feature. We had a lot of people saying they need to create a lot more mockups a lot faster, which I know for many of you who are getting into print on demand, you really need to see not only what your design is going to look like, but maybe you want to just have a ton of mockups to show on your social media or email or website or Etsy or whatever it is. And we can look at this a little bit later. But what I want to get into first, and if there’s any questions, you know, go ahead and throw them at me as as they come up. I know I’m gonna I’m gonna feed you from a water hose here, a fire hydrant, but I want to get you from going from zero to something very fast. And we have built these things called workflows. You can see right here under the AI studio, we have these workflows for a variety of things. Product visuals if you’ve already got a design, but we also have these merchandise workflows which I can categorize right here. I can just go to merchandise, for example, and we have these different styles. Now, don’t be don’t be led astray in thinking that you have to make a design that looks exactly like these because if I click on one of these, you’re going to see more styles inside of them. You can also describe the style, choose a background, all the things like this. So, let’s go ahead and do one together because this is going to help us get a t-shirt, a tote bag, a hat, whatever. It’s going to help us get a design very quickly. So, I’m going to describe my topic. These are very, very user friendly. We’ve we’ve tried to keep it as simple as possible. I’m just gonna say a toad riding on a lily pad. And then let’s see. I just want to make sure on water. I don’t want it to be on land. And then I’m going to say I’m going to do a little pun. I was struggling yesterday, but today I’ve got some good ones. So, totally a drift is going to be my pun text. And we’re just going to do it in this. I really like this main quest. I don’t know who came up with that. Uh, and I’m just going to pick it on a on a on a white background. We can explain that a little bit later why we might want it on a white background. I’m going to go ahead and hit generate here. You can always see how many tokens, how many AI tokens it’s going to take to generate something as well as which model. So, what’s really really great about workflows is you see this notice up here. It says I can leave. So, I’ve actually already prepared some of these for us. So, while this one is generating, if you look in your dashboard whenever you get signed in, you’re going to see these recent AI creations. As you can see, I’ve done quite a many. I did one in a different kind of doodle design. And you can see right here, here is my my doodle design version, which is more of like a an outline uh style, like a you know, like a doodle is basically what I’m what I’m trying to describe. And we can do a lot of things from right here in the workflow. Um on the right side, we’re going to see things like removing the background. Okay, removing the background is very important for those of you getting started. You you want the design to be, you know, on the garment itself. You don’t want a white box, right? You don’t want a white box or a gray box or a blue box on your gray shirt or your black shirt or whatever it is. So, we could remove the background right from here. We could edit a particular area. So, let’s say you you don’t like totally a drift anymore. Maybe you want to highlight over that and change it. Um, we can layerize the image, which is a new feature coming. Uh, you you all probably don’t have this one unlocked yet, but it is coming, which will allow you to separate things from this image. So, to kind of parse that out a little bit, we’re looking at a completely flat image, basically as if you printed it out from your printer at home. The the the text, the frog, the water, the background, it’s all baked in together. But if I click layerize image, what’s that going to do? What that is going to do is make the text individual so I can edit it. Make the toad individual so I can edit it. Make the background individual so I can edit all of these things as individual layers. Another thing we can do right from here is vectorize it. Now probably not as important at this current moment because it’s still got a background on it. But to explain vectorizing, which we’ll look at in a little bit, a vectorzing is going to take your flattened pixelized image and turn it into an endlessly scalable colorable graphic. You can make it as big as you want, as small as you want, and you’ll never lose clarity. That’s about as as simple as I can make vectorizing, but we can explain it later. Now, if you don’t want to do that, you can also just upscale it. Maybe you have a colored version, a colored in version of this that has too many colors. you don’t want to vectorize it because it’s like a million colors, but you can just upscale it to make this image even bigger. And then if we wanted to add more text on top of it, we could we can also download this and and and be ready to upload this right into Printify or we can open it up in the editor and continue editing. Now, I’m sure there’s going to be questions. I want to go back and look at the one that we just made. So, here is the totally a drift one uh in the different style. So, this is actually a lot of fun to to mess with all of these. Uh, so here’s an example where maybe I don’t want to vectorize it because there’s maybe too many colors, but I want to upscale it so that this graphic looks really really nice on a shirt. But I know that was a lot in a short amount of time. If there’s any questions, uh, now is the time before we we go even further. There there’s a good question actually from um Denise Baldwin. Are you able to download those layers like separately if you wanted to? You will be. Yes. when when the layeriz image is available for everyone, you will be able to see each of the individual layers and then you’ll be able to uh to export them individually. So, for example, if you wanted the text, this is a great question. If you wanted the text by itself, you’d be able to export that text if you want to. Um you could download just the toad if you want to by itself. Now, there are ways around this right now because you if you don’t have the layeriz image, uh you can do that right now with a different method which I can show you, but you will be able to do that quite easily. Yes.

And so, uh, yeah, let me know if there’s any other questions, but I’ll kind of just continue because I think what’s really, really cool about these workflows is how you can keep on, uh, iterating and changing design. So, you’ll see this button right here. I mentioned you can download it straight from here if you’re if you’re happy with it, you want to remove the background, uh, and then download it, upload it, and you’re ready to go. or you can up uh open it up in our editor. And so I have already done a fair bit of that with the original one, the doodle one that I mentioned right here. Uh and so you can see that what happens is we are opened up in a different area. Now don’t don’t be alarmed. I know what you just looked at in the dashboard was different. Now we’re in an editor. That’s okay. There’s a lot of different cool things you can do with the tools in the editor. For example, I mentioned that we can vectorize it. If I click on any one of these, you’re going to see this same tool set over here. It says vectorize. It also says upscale. You can do the same things here in the editor. But what vectorizing does is now allow me to take this graphic and change the color to whatever I want because maybe you want variations of this on different colored t-shirts and one color design won’t look good on another t-shirt. Another thing I mentioned is now you can make it as big as you want or as small as you want with no like graininess with no like image messiness to it. So that’s really really good for DPI. Another thing that we can get into if we need to, but very important for being able to print very very clear things. Now what I think is really cool about using the editor mixed with what we’ve made in the workflow, any kind of design, you can do this with anything. Even if you’re not trying to do this for a t-shirt, maybe you just wanted uh something without text and you’ve brought it into the editor. We have a tool I mentioned called a gentic. And you can see I was working on some prompts down here where a gentic will take the prompt albeit however simple or robust and it will decide which model to use and it will enhance the prompt to be extremely clear in a language that the the AI is going to understand. So, what I’ve asked it to do because there’s a lot more, you know, woodland and pond creatures than just a toad, right? Is and and somebody in the chat if you want me to turn it into something else, let me know. We can we can do that. I asked it to actually create four different variations and it made all four for me at the same time. I said, “Make four different variations with these animals.” I listed out the animals, fox, turtle, snail, rabbit. And I also told Agentic to change the pun or to change the text to something else. So now you have like setting shell for the turtle. I think that one’s pretty clever. Uh you have snailing it at C. No idea what that means. Uh foxes see, you know, it tried its best. You know, it’s it’s AI, but like I think it did a pretty cool job. Now, what I want to show you that’s really, really nifty about the editor, remember we were talking about having these on a white background. If I exported this, it’d have a white box on my garment. I don’t want that. So, I can just click and drag my mouse over all four of these. And then I can simply hit remove background to knock all of that white out of it. Just like that. And so, now if I were to, for an, for example, I’ll just make like a box and I’ll send it to the back here. I can make this box any color. Now, if I move this around, you can see that it’s fully transparent. So, it no longer has that white on it. So, whatever t-shirt color you might be doing, uh, this design is going to be flush on it. Just like that. Now, the other thing I asked Agentic to do with these four was I said, “Well, maybe you don’t want it to be outlined.” Okay, you used the workflow. The workflow was a doodle. It was a scribble. And that’s cool. It’s definitely cool for certain things, especially if you’re going to have tote bags, hats, garments that are light, very light color, right? Maybe you want to have them filled in. So, I simply asked a Gentic to make colored in versions. So, I said use natural colors that would make sense with the actual animals. And here we have colored in versions, right? So, the lily pad is green, the snail, the rabbit, the turtle are all actual colors. That makes sense. And I can do the same thing. I can drag over these, remove the background. So again, that white is knocked out from them. Just like that. So now I’ve got multiple designs in minutes really that I can put on a variety of different things. Now I also said uh if you notice these are kind of like frowning like animals. I’m not really sure why. And I said, well, maybe I want to have them smiling. So then I selected all four of them again. And then I went down in Agentic and I said, “Please create four of these with smiling faces.” So now I’ve got all of my animals that are smiling. So I’m gonna stop here for just a second in case there are questions, but there’s a lot we can do just from using the workflow, opening up in KD, and then just kind of endlessly variating on it over and over again. I love that. There are a lot of good questions. Quick comment. I love that you can like bulk create these designs because this is literally like when you make your first sale or you start getting sales, this is how you double down, right? Whatever sales you’re getting for one specific t-shirt design, bring into KD and make variations of that same thing that you know that idea is working and you can just mass create, not mass create it, but bulk create it here. I love that. Exactly. Um, we have some really cool cool questions here. Kristen Mcuan has an interesting one. Can this work? I’m guessing this like process with your own artwork like paintings or something. Yes, absolutely. So, let’s just assume that I, you know, we just focus on this one for example. Maybe I made this like I I actually do this quite frequently as well. I might draw something in Procreate or I may have downloaded it from another uh graphic site or maybe I found, you know, a different kind of fox over here in our illustration. So maybe I found one of these that I liked. If you simply select it, you can use um aentic or you could switch over to any of the models you see here. We have a whole bunch of, you know, AI models is just kind of endless. I think one comes out every day or something like that. Uh I keep it on Agentic because it is actually the most um conservative in the amount of tokens that it uses. Actually the best bang for your buck. And so you see here um this image has been selected. So, let’s say it was your graphic that you you uploaded that you made yourself or maybe you downloaded and then you could say, you know, create variations of this or change the fox color to white or, you know, show me what this would look like as a X. A lot of people do that. They may change the style or keep this illustration style the same. Uh, excuse me, keep the illustration the same, but change the style to v vintage etching or something like that. So, yes, definitely you can use your own things. There’s uh I’m glad you talked about the tokens, too, because Melody Sanford asked, “Does it cost AI credits to see the four or does it only cost if you pick like two of the four images?” This is a good question. So, it it will cost to create something. Now, uh like as in if I said four, which I did when I originally did this, I selected the one here and then I said create four. It was individual tokens for each one. Um, so let’s see which one this used. Chat GPT image two, which I believe is image two. See what it is. Uh, 15, which is pretty much what it’s going to try to default, which 15 is always going to be the the least amount. Now, if I were to um, let’s see, say create a variation. Let’s see. Yeah. So, if you hover over this little button right here, if you I don’t know if you guys, this is maybe a little small, but you can see there’s a number there with the token, it’s going to warn you, hey, you’re about to create this and it’s going to cost 24. If I were to change this to like three and I hover now, it says 72, right? So, we try to give you those warnings as best we can. But, yes, it is. I I think I understand what the question is getting at. We have some things coming out soon where you’ll be able to like preview a very very low resolution scale version and if you like it, you can hit yes and then it uses your tokens. That was free. I don’t know if I was supposed to say that, but that’s not out yet. Secrets for you guys. Just for you guys. Um Evelyn Weber has a good question, too. Can you show us the prompt, the original prompt that you use to get the four images at once? Yeah, absolutely. So, we have this cool thing now, which is called prompt history, uh, which is going to save you guys so much time. It saves me a ton of time. So, I’m going to open up my my my prompt history. And then this is the one. I’m going to go back and click on this one. And then I had this selected. So, you can see right here, you can see my image is selected. My original prompt was create four different versions of this design with the following animals and be sure to change the text pun above it to fit the animal. Then I just listed out one with a fox, one with a turtle, snail, rabbit, and then I said make all of them one by one ratio as in like a square. You can say square. It understands that as well on white. And I’m happy to even do this. Um, again, make sure the animals are smiling. And then I’m going to hit go. It’s going to say it’s thinking because it’s trying to decide which model to use. And because there’s text in it because I’m asking it to to do stuff with text, it’s probably going to use chatpt 2 or 2.5 or whatever it might be using. And then you can see they all load in right here. And that’s exactly what I did to get these. And then I just kept doing it again and again. So, I would like select all of these and then I think I said, let me go back to prompt history. I said create four versions of these. Keep the text black. Keep the background white. Keep all four images. Use natural colors that would match the animals. And then I did it like so. It’s actually quite simple. That’s not really a a novel. It’s not really anything heavy that you have to explain to the to the chat. It’ll just kind of figure it out and really because like if I select this one, check this out. Prompt details. If I open this, look how massive this prompt is now. Like that’s what our our agentic mode uses like a writing skill to come in and give you all of this so that it tells uh chatpt what to do and it does it for every single one of these to give you the best kind of outcome. And so here’s a very very simple similar version with all of them smiling here. So it works actually quite fast, a lot faster than it was two weeks ago. So yeah. Um, another good question by Swagata, and I think you actually mentioned this, but you didn’t quite show us. When you layerize these designs now, can you go back in and change the text? Can you show us? You will be able. Yes, you will be able to do that. I am using an account that’s very closely uh related to your all’s account. So, I’m it’s a it’s not out yet. So, I’m not able to you will be able to do that’s why I’m trying to show I was trying to explain that you will be able to do that. So, the answer is yes. But that’s the final step that we’re working on is essentially making the text its own separate thing. Now you could always come into any of these. We have a uh cropping feature here. So let’s say or eraser. So let’s say we just wanted to get rid of that text. Then we could simply add whatever text we want. And then we can come over here into our font, you know, and pick from whatever you want and then keep editing it. That that may be the fastest way to do it. I just showed the workflow with the text because if you don’t want to, it’s going to probably give you a text like you’re seeing here that’s closely related to the design style. But if you have one in mind, like this is kind of more handwritten, I think, right? Uh yeah, so it’s more handwritten style. So if you have one that you like, I don’t know, maybe like that, then you could do all of your puns in text and set up all of your illustrations, set up all of your text, you can easily change them out like that. Okay. So it is coming. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that that that feature is coming. Uh, let me check here. What other questions? There was I’m sorry I lost your question. Something about ah Isaiah Cells is asking, “What is the best design advice you can give to get a good cut in the background removal tool like to get like a perfect background removal?” Yeah. Uh maybe prompting wise is maybe what they’re asking specifically because you can actually design anything you want with any of the illustrations that are already like kind of perfectly cut. They’re already have no background to them. But if I’m talking about um with AI specifically, I always want it to generate on a white background. So, if I go back over to uh this area, for example, uh in in all of the workflows, all of the merch workflows, even if we wanted to work on text, for example, this, you know, this probably will cut out, okay? Because the edges are pretty clearly defined, I would say. So, if I remove the background, it’d be fine. But you can just always select white. And white is always going to give you a better version of a cutout because it’s very clearly, you know, what is the word I’m looking for? It’s it’s very clearly contrasted from the background because this already has like a very nice border to it. So if this was white, you could hit remove background and then you’re good to go. Another spoiler, uh, we will actually have an upgraded version of the background remover that you can choose to use for it does cost like I think four AI tokens, but it’s I don’t remember which model. It’s incredible. I’ve used it a bunch and it’s even better. So, you could even have like a crazy like barely any like contrast and you hit remove background and it works. So, anyway, that’s also coming. Don’t know if I was supposed to say that, but that would be my advice is to always put it on a clean white background. And if you’re really worried about it, you could say something like make sure the border is thick, right? So that there’s a clear cutout between uh the the contrast of the design and the background. I love that you’re filled with spoilers for us today. That’s exact that’s exactly what we want here. I know. Yeah, I wasn’t thinking about it. Um, but what’s really really cool about the even though I know I’ve been flipping back and forth between the editor and the dashboard here, you can see a couple of these other things that we we may get into in a minute because I’ve already designed those in the workflows. I can actually go into the mockup studio here and you see all these designs that we’ve already made. So, I’ve already made them. So, they’re already in the the the mockup studio. So, I could just select one and hit use image and this is going to appear on all of my stuff here. Isn’t that pretty neat? Like just pretty much good to go. I can download it if if I want to or I can keep editing it. I can do the same thing that I showed you with the designs and I could open this in in KD and then uh you know use aentic to say create four variations of this sweater in and then list the colors. I think that was another question we get a lot is how do we change the colors of a of a mockup? You could change the color here, but it is going to change um all of them as you see down below. So, if you need individual ones, uh you can edit them and keep on changing the color. So, anyway, a lot of really cool things that we just released right before this. So, that’s very cool. This is kind of this kind of leads perfectly into like the second half of our uh segment here because Melody is asking, “Can you create videos in KD?” And the answer is yes. But we’re going to show you in a quick second because Drew has some goodies for us, right? Yes, I do have a a a coupon code for you. Uh it’s very very easy to remember because the code name is called Amplified. That is the coupon code. Uh that will get you when you’re signing up that will get you your 50% off your KD subscription. Now it I also right before literally right before joining this session I said you know what I we’re about to show you some cool video. I don’t want you to just have 50% off. I want you to also have extra AI tokens to make more videos. So, you’re going to get the 50% off, but you’re also going to get 300 additional AI tokens to get in. You could use Agentic the way I was doing it to create variations of your design if you want, or you can create UGC videos, you could create listing videos. So, your code is amplified. Now, that is going to be available to you until October 15. So, basically, uh, midnight October 14th. will figure out which which time zone that is because I know we’re all watching from different time zones, but essentially you have till October 15th. So definitely don’t wait. Don’t wait. Uh use the code for 50% off. And quick reminder that is all happening inside sellers club in the amplified arena. Go check out the sponsors page and you will see all the goodies over there, more details and you know you don’t have to wait till October 15th. You can do it before then just to be safe to get it. Um we had a good question in the chat. I’m sorry again you guys are chatting so fast I can’t read that fast so I don’t know who asked it but does KD offer a free tier? Yes we do. We have a free plan. Uh we were we also will have I just also got confir a lot of confirmation today. Um there will be some of the video workflows available to you on the free tier. Now you’re going to have some other things locked. So, a lot of the things that I’ve already done, you may see a little crown symbol next to them, which means you need to get the the paid tier, which is why we’re giving you a discount. But yes, there is a free tier um that allows you to create projects, use the tools, get in, really try it out, and see if it’s best for you. Uh Linda Reese also has a good question. Is the 50% off only for new users? What if someone already has a premium plan or something? It should be for um just any annual plan. So, as to my knowledge, it’s not new. I think it’s just if you upgrade to the next plan, it should it should take effect. If it’s not, you can email um support and tell them that I said to do it, but it should I don’t think it’s just new. I think it’s it’s just annual. It has to be annual, right? Because that’s where you really get the benefit of the of the amount of money taken off, right? So, if you need help, email KD support and said Drew said this. Drew said it’s okay. Upgrade to the max plan or whatever. I think we have four plans now. Yeah. And then, all right, let’s do one more question quickly. Uh, again, I’m sorry I lost who asked it, but does KD have a mobile app or something? Good question. Uh, more spoilers. So, it is in the works. Uh, I have seen it. It works. Uh, but it is not out yet. Good point here, though, because I know actually quite a bit of users have been emailing us, uh, these fake apps that that have like a K on them or something, and they’re called KD app. I don’t know what they are. Those are not ours. If it doesn’t say officially from KD, I don’t know how they’re getting it on the iOS, but it is not our app. We are working on our own and we will notify everybody. So, make sure you’re on our email list for when the mobile app drops. You guys are asking all the right questions because Drew is just spilling the beans for us. This is awesome. Um, yeah. All right, let’s get back into KD now. Get back to that question. Melody asked, “Can you make videos?” Yes, you absolutely can. And though so this second half, Drew is going to take us through that workflow. Yes. So in the AI studio, you can see up here back in your dashboard. I can also show quickly how you might be able to do it in the editor if you want to, but we already have workflows for different kinds of videos, actually multiple kinds of videos. So we have these product listing videos. This is going to be really important for you all that are selling on Etsy or you may be selling on Shopify. you want someone to see that video in the feed and it kind of catches their attention, right? Stops the scroll, you can easily do that. Now, you also have these UGC style videos. You can see the little Tik Tok symbol. Just because the Tik Tok symbols on there doesn’t mean you can’t use it on Instagram. It’s just it means 9 by6 essentially. It’s going to be vertical, which is really what you want for maybe you you’ve connected to your Tik Tok shop or something like that. And these work the same way that I showed you how to do the design one. So, if we wanted to do this one, the authentic flatlay, uh, all we have to do is simply upload an image and select a surface. So, we can go here and we are going to go down to, let’s say, this tote bag. I’ve actually already done this, so I’ll show it to you in a second. We’ll click use image and then let’s say we want to do this one on carpet or you could describe your own if none of these suit your fancy. And then you’ll see right here how many uh how many tokens it’s going to take. You could also make multiple if you wanted multiple. And then you can see right here it’s going to be 9 by6. Now again the workflows you can leave. So while this one is loading I’ve actually already done this a couple times. So I did the authentic flatlay that I just showed you uh on a tote bag. And so I think yeah I clicked grass. And so here it is. It’s just kind of as if somebody was taking a POV uh with their phone, you know. And if you’re not where grass is, maybe that’s maybe that’s a good one for you to do. But we also have um these really really cool ones like uh mocked up on people out in the wild. So I did a couple of these in a couple of different colors with different avatars. So some of them are going to have just simple like as if you were holding the phone. We’ll just call those POV shots. And some of them are going to be these avatars, these AI avatars. And if you notice right here, you’ll be able to upload your own. So, if you have a specific uh character in mind or maybe someone you’ve gener like a character you’ve generated with AI, you could upload that avatar to put the product on it, then you can pick your backgrounds. All very, very userfriendly, very, very fast. Or you could describe your own. You’re always going to see how many tokens it’s going to take. You can see which model it was uh done with. And let’s see, let’s go to another one. This also works. I just want to make sure everybody knows it works with multiple products. It doesn’t have to just be a t-shirt. So, I did one with uh a bottle. So, I mocked the the same little design from one of them up on a bottle, and I just uploaded uh the image here, selected an avatar, and then Okay. Yeah, cozy living room. Yeah, it looks pretty cozy, actually. And then generated. So, it doesn’t have to be I don’t want people to be scared that when they see these uh you know, we call them thumbnails, the video thumbnails, that this can’t be a hat or it can’t be a bottle or it can’t be whatever. You know what I mean? You you this could be it doesn’t have to be what it’s saying on there. Now, we also have many more coming out. I think we have another seven or eight dropping very very soon that are specific to print on demand. Although, you could use any of these for for print on demand. But, are you allowed to spill the beans on which product templates? Um, let’s see. I I looked at them today, but I I I’m I would do it, but I actually cannot remember what they were. I can’t remember what what their product was. They’ll just have to go into K and find out for themselves. Yeah, there was more shirts. There was more I think there were stickers. I mean, again, like let’s say that you’re selling, you know, bracelets instead of I think there’s Prime on demand jewelry. I can’t remember. But let’s say you’re selling something that’s like, I don’t know, not a necklace. You could still try that with this um this necklace one. Or this doesn’t have to be coffee or whatever package this is. This could be the bottle that I mentioned. Uh or it could be a hat. They could be holding a hat. Oh, unboxing ones. That’s one I can share that are coming uh coming soon. So, uh it’ll be like the product in a package and the hands are like unboxing it. That’s some that are coming out. That’s those are really really neat. They’re super high quality. I’m excited for those. Um but what’s really neat about this is you’ve got some uh the avatars. Like this is the character. I can’t remember what the character’s name is. I clicked for this one, but then I also used the same avatar Kai for this one. So now I’ve got the same avatar wearing the shirt on a bus and I’ve got the same avatar in his living room holding the thing, you know. So you can you can create some uh brand consistency, if you will, to your products and to how you’re advertising it or you can customize and upload your own. And then you can actually just download these straight away. They’re ready to go um for you to upload. Now, these won’t have any sound in them. Um, if that’s the next question that people are going to ask, you’re probably going to want to use a trending sound on your Instagram or your Tik Tok or something like that because these are really just for the these are these are really mirrored after viral best performing videos that our team has taken and watched endless hours of and most of these have someone voicing over them or, you know, trending audio or captions and things like that. So, yeah. Now, what if there’s a product? What if someone’s selling a product from the current catalog that there’s not a template for like a I don’t know a yoga mat or like a suitcase or something? Could they theoretically somehow bring the mockup image from Printify into KD? Absolutely. Get a video. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So, if they just downloaded it right from uh I mean honestly maybe even a screenshot would work, but yeah, they could download that that mockup from um Printify and then you just come back here and then you could just drop it in right here. So, you could just drag and drop it right in. Click use image. This is actually a great one, the flatlay. That’ll work with pretty much any product I think. I I don’t I think we’ve tested this on almost every product and it’s fine. It doesn’t there’s no discrepancy, but you can really do that with any of them. Even if you wanted to make these uh product listing ones, I mean, you know, ones like this, the product grab probably you would want to do something that’s like grabbable like a bottle or something like that, you know, but it just because all of these have like a sweater or a shirt or a bag doesn’t mean that you have to use a sweater or shirt or bag. You can come in and use any uh any product that you may not see in KD already, like a notebook or something. Mhm. Mhm. Um, we had another good question here. Ah, April Ford is asking, “What about flows that go together like three to seven second flows? We’re being we’re now being pushed harder to 15 plus second videos.” So I guess like can you stitch all these flows together these videos or uh yeah I mean that hopefully will be something we have in KD but I mean the easiest thing to do uh would be so this is 8 seconds already. You could generate another one of these. I would just download it and then in the the app whether it’s Instagram, Tik Tok, I would just add the clips together and post it. That’s probably the the way I would do it for now is I would generate all your clips in KD, download them, and then, you know, I don’t really use Tik Tok, but in Instagram, they both have an editor where you can basically create a reel and then just add the clips together, uh, cut them to however you want them to be, add some fancy captions or something, trending audio, and that’s how I would do it. Because these apps are really going to reward you for using their tools like, you know, Tik Tok, in Instagram, they want you to use their editors, right? uh to you know make your make your stuff. So that’s that one’s a pretty easy fix, but I am also yeah hoping that one day we will have uh our own little editor that you could stitch these all together with. Uh Linda says we need blankets and wall art, but did you guys not have a blanket template or was that one that was in the works? I feel like we talked about this. Let’s see. There may also be some that are in the works. Um, but there’s again, uh, you know, this could be this person holding the blanket. It doesn’t have to be the the AI are pretty smart, especially seed dance. And a lot of these are made with seed dance. Um, so I think you could do it. I Well, I wonder if we have a blanket in Let’s see. Bags, apparel. Let’s see. We may not. I don’t know if we have a bag. I want to try that. That’s actually a really good question. Let’s see. We have flags. That’s interesting. Are there flags in Printify? There sure are. Let’s Let’s make a flag one for fun. See how it turns out. Okay. So, let’s go up here. Yeah, that’s an interesting one. So, let’s let’s go back to our little design here. Let’s do the snail. Uh I don’t know how that’ll look on a flag, but that’s okay. Uh let’s go down and find it. Let’s see. I think you guys definitely have this one. I think I’ve seen this one before, right? Pretty sure. Uh I don’t know if we have the triangle ones actually. I know we have like the basic like garden flags and like banner type flags. Okay, let’s see here.

Okay,

let’s see. I want to make the design just a little bit bigger. So if you Yeah. If you bring these like templates, you open it in the editor, you can kind of edit it a bit further if you want more like manual manipulation, right? You can I think Yeah. So like what I’m what I’m doing right here is kind of small, right? So I’ve opened it here in the editor so that I can move the the snail around and make it bigger. Um because it was a little small, right? Um so I wanted I don’t know how what the size is. I would always have to double check and Printify to make sure that it’s, you know, the right size. But now we’re looking a little bit bigger, right? And we’re going to convert this to an image. And then we can go try it in one of our uh try it in one of our workflows. Okay. So now there’s our image. Let’s go back over here.

You guys are putting it to the test today. I This is all live. I have no idea what’s going to happen. Let’s try this one first. That’s the fun part about AI though, right? Right. Okay. So, let’s Okay, here’s the bigger one. So, let’s use that. And let’s just do grass because that would make most sense, I think. And then let’s go back and let’s see. I wonder if this would work with this person holding the flag. That would be crazy sauce, actually. So, you guys are going to be as surprised as uh as I am. So, this one will I believe this one actually does have audio. I’m not sure. I’m not going to have any right now. So, let’s just go with Jonas. And we’re gonna go with uh uh So, yeah, this one is more of a testimonial, but we’re going to try it anyway. So, let’s go outdoors. Walking could work. 8 seconds. Uh let’s see. What do you think AI AI would say about like a flag for a testimonial that’s got a snail? I have no idea. Yeah, I mean you can describe the this is one I will have to be honest with you. I have not like played with this specific workflow, the testimonial one, the direct to camera one, but I know that you can you can say something here like this is the highest quality flag that’s ever been existed. You know, it comes in 18 colors and they will factor it. The AI will factor it in and then you can like pick a hook and pick a, you know, whatever and it should work. Uh those may take a little bit of a while to to generate, but again, the answer is if you don’t see a product or if you don’t see a a template or if you don’t see a mockup in KD, the answer is yes, you could bring your Printify one over, try it in the workflows. Uh give us a feedback. You know, if if there’s if they’re not working, let us know so we can add more that do work. Right. Michelle Ray has a really good question. Uh she says she sees the cup the cup one um and she also sees rotating pictures. Could you have the mockup do a full rotation of the mug to see the design on both sides? Can you manipulate somehow? Yeah, I believe we have this one uh right here which will rotate left to right. And I don’t know if we have any Do we have UGC ones that do that? Oh, yeah. That one also does it too. Uh some of these Let me see if this one allows you to do Yeah. So, you could upload an image. Okay. Okay, let’s say it’s a bottle uh that uh like a or a mug that has the design on both sides, right? I think that’s the question. You could upload the one here. Okay. And then you could upload the other angle. You see right here it says angles. So you could add I mean yeah you maybe you had a what is it called? Sublimation or something when the the design is around the whole thing. Maybe you could add like four or five here and then as it turns around it uses the context to create um a 360. Yes. Um so I guess the answer is yes. Yeah. You would take those mockups if you’re making like a a wraparound mug design or Tumblr. Take all those mockups from Printify. You can download them or screenshot them and bring them right into here and play around with it. For sure. Yeah, because Printify gives you the the angles of it. Especially for mug. I know. It has the editor of where you need to put the design on either side and then it it’ll show you all the angles. Yeah, you would pop all those in here and then yeah, let the AI do the rest of the work. Mhm. Uh let’s see. Interesting. Okay. So, it made the flag a little small, but it it did do something. Uh it didn’t probably do it exactly right. But hey, this is good good feedback and context to to to take back. If people start selling a whole bunch of flags, let me know and we can make a flag video. I’m curious if it would understand better if again you took that mockup from Printify like the exact one with the more accurate dimensions or whatever. You would have to play around with it. Um especially with multiple angles, you know, and and context. That’s another thing that a lot of these workflows, you know, we’re trying to make them as as as simple and user friendly as possible, but if people start needing more editability, we can keep on adding features to it um to work. We have we actually have a lot of really good questions here. We’re gonna take a quick giveaway pause because we’ve got to do another giveaway, right? So, Drew already gave you guys what? 50% off plus 300 AI tokens. We’re going to do another merch giveaway. So, this time, one more of you will win $50 to the official Amplified merch store. So, it’s going to work just like it has been. I’m going to ask you a question. you’re going to answer it in the chat and our moderator will choose a person at random. Okay. So, my question for you in the chat is which of the KD features that Drew showed just today absolutely blew your mind? Let us know in the chat. Again, it’s not a typing contest, but we don’t have all day. So, do get your answers in there. If you’re still watching on YouTube, you still have time to come on over to Amplified Arena and watch for free from there and then be eligible for these giveaways. Okay? Um, so keep your keep your eyes on your email to see if you’re the winner. I will announce the winner kind of towards the end of

Sorry, I’m distracted by this one that actually worked pretty well actually. That’s crazy. Sorry. Uh, yes. Yes. Anything you make with the models um is yours to use. Again, we’re not generating anything with a, you know, model that is ours. You can very clearly see which model it is. we are kind of just a conduit for using those models. So, what I always say if we’re ever talking about copyright or if we’re talking about where to use them, you you really just want to do your research to make sure that you know, wherever you’re posting is okay with AI stuff. You know, I know certain certain sellers like uh you know, I think Creative Market, for example, I am also a seller on it always wants to know if you used AI. So, we’re just use we’re just kind of integrating all of the AI for you to use. But essentially, yeah, what you make is yours to to post. Mhm. Um, this kind of goes along with what Kelly asked. Do you have to disclose if you are using AI avatars where Yeah. So, I think that’s kind of Yeah, it kind of depends on where you’re using it, right? It depends kind of on the sales channel you’re using. Um, I know it depends on state. So New York, right, recently had passed a law, I think that you have to disclose AI. Um, I believe if it’s AI humans specifically. Um, so you kind of need to research your specific sales channel where you’re selling. Also, you have to know your audience, right? Some people, buyers, they do not mind AI models or they like it. Others will might be totally against it. So there’s not really a black and white answer here, right? you have to do a little bit more research on your specific audience, your product, your sales channel. Um, exactly right. That’s the best advice is to just always check it out, you know, where where it’s okay. I mean, some of these apps are getting better at spotting it. I’m pretty sure Instagram would pretty much know. And it has the little made with AI above it. So, yeah, always do your research. Um, Martina Acriman has a question. Oh my gosh, it just disappeared. Wait, she’s asking what happens. Oh, you guys are typing too fast. It just keeps popping up as I’m trying to scroll to it. Oh no, now I lost. I think she asked, “What happens if you use up all of your tokens too fast? Do you have to wait till the next month or Yeah, so they top up monthly. That’s how the the tokens work. Um, you know, there are other options at getting more tokens. You know, you can share and refer people to KD to get more tokens. You can join some of our uh community events. We have community events almost weekly uh where we are giving giving away I don’t remember how many but quite quite quite a large amount. Um Christina does a great job our our community manager. So definitely join those. There are ways to get more but yes if you’re on one of the paid plans you’ll see that it um it tops up every month. Okay. Um Susan Dixstein has a good question. I have had trouble getting the AI to get the animal on the t-shirt design to jump off in the 4 secondond video. It often changes what the animal looks like to a cartoon. Then it doesn’t look right. Any suggestions? It sounds like it’s getting cartoonized somehow. Yeah, this is a little hard without seeing it. I don’t know if it I don’t know if they’re speaking of KD specifically. I’ I’d have to I’d have to look at it. Um I have never had any. It sounds like maybe they’re trying to make an animation. I’m not really sure. I I’ve never had any issues with having the design static on the shirt and then using AI to create the video. I actually never had it change on me uh because I’m not asking it to do. Now, if you’re prompting that you want the design to come alive, that’s that’s like a level of animation that I’m not sure AI is ready for. I have no idea. So, sorry. I would kind of have to check it out and look at it visually. Um, Jim and Nancy Cook are asking who who owns copyrights to your designs? Is it Printify or KD? And how do you establish the rights?

Um, interesting. I mean, in terms of the designs of what you’re making in KD, uh, yeah, they are you they are yours to sell and use freely. We have a whole licensing page that you can go and check out. I’ve done a whole licensing video explaining it. Um, but I mean, if you’re using it’s kind of like if you use any of these other creative sites like Invato or Shuttertock or anything, you’re you’re you’re basically sublicicing the rights to use all of these things, fonts, illustrations. When it comes to AI, whatever you’ve generated is like fully purely yours anyway because you used AI to generate it. But yeah, we in yeah, we’ve never had any issues with with with Right. We try to keep it extremely simple. There isn’t a certain set of assets that can only be used on t-shirts and then another set of assets that can only be used on whatever. It’s just Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to go into too deep of it because it’s actually very simple. I we we don’t have any issues with licensing. Yeah. Now, on the Printify side, I have no idea. In general, your designs are yours that you create. Now, when it comes to copyrightiting your own designs, again, I’m not like a total legal expert here or anything. When it comes to copyrighting your designs, and you used all AI to do that, you probably have to do a little bit more research on that. Yeah. Um, yeah. And most of the time fonts like are you really can’t like copyright um like if you’re just using a specific font that the font is owned by whatever made it, whether it’s monotype or Google fonts or us or whatever. Um, yeah. So, that’s that’s probably a whole another session on on what copyrights are, right? Um, Glennon Bar has a good question, too. Can the demographics of the models be changed in I’m guessing like either in mock-ups or videos? So, you had some avatars there, but what if there’s like they want a different demographic that’s not there? Yeah, I would use that custom upload um to to change it. So, let’s say we were on this one. Yeah, I would just customize it. um like upload a custom one. Now, if you’re in like uh if you’re using mockups, for example, on the mockup generator or like if we come back over into KD and let’s say we want to add a mockup and we say it’s this lady with the tote bag. Um, one way I would do that quite easily is I would add and we have tons of videos on YouTube. I don’t want to try to stress anybody out. You can just watch the deep dive on YouTube. I would add what’s called an AI image board. And then here I could describe what I would like I would like to do. Change the age, change the, you know, whatever. You can pretty much change what you would like to do about this mockup uh using using AI and it will do it. Can we see an experiment? Can you make it like an old lady? Yeah, I would say something like change the I would e say change the subject or character uh in the photo to be an older lady. Keep the let’s say change the background to be daytime. Have her smiling. Keep the tote bag the same. We’ll actually do two tests. I’m going to copy this over. Uh, let’s go with Yeah, we’ll just go with Nana Banana 2. Why not go ahead and click generate? And then I’m also going to do the same thing in Agentic just to see uh what happens. Again, I I just I really like Agentic. It It has yet to really fail me uh in terms of like taking what I want uh with the with the prompt and like really making it a lot better. Um, so yeah. Okay, there you go. Yeah, it can do it. Definitely nice. Yeah, I don’t know if that’s what you were looking for, but you know, yeah, you could you could do anything. Change the change the clothes to be a dress, change the, you know, jean color to be red, change the night to daytime, whatever you want, you know. It’s really kind of up to your prompting imagination. We had another good question. Um, oh, wait, I just saw it. Where’d it go? Here we go. Uh Michelle Ray is asking, “Do your unused coins,” I’m guessing your unused tokens go over in the next month. I think I saw someone else asked like, “Do they roll over if you have unused?” Yeah, this has been a neverending discussion. Uh right now, oh, this look, this one’s even closer to this. Sorry, I’m going to get distracted all the time, but this one’s quite nice, right? It’s even closer mockups. It’s just really, really good. So, anyway, you guys should go go use this. So, uh, the rollover question, uh, it will probably be argued until the end of time, they do not currently roll over. Now, additional credits that you get from things like community events or referring or, you know, winning a challenge or something, those do roll over. But in terms of uh what you get, whether it’s the 600 a month or the 800 a month or the 3,000 a month or whatever it is that you get, I mean, you have to understand if you didn’t use any of them, you would end up with like 100, 300, 300,000 tokens, which is a lot of a lot of tokens. So, no, they don’t currently roll over. You get your monthly aotment on the day that your subscription renews each month. Okay. All right. We have time for one more question. We have about two minutes. Ireie Blue is asking is saying, “I’m having trouble finding consistency with my product mock-ups using models. I often want the same products but different angles and settings with the same model. Can KD produce that?” Yes. Uh, let’s maybe walk through it a little slower. What are we trying to do? I’m sorry. That was fast. Sorry, I read that really fast. Um, she wants the same products but different angles and settings, but also with the same model. So I guess having model consistency throughout like as in a person like I think so. Uh change the camera angle to be from farther away. Let’s see how fast it’ll do this. And then we’ll do change the camera angle to be from the left side in the distance. Let’s do change the camera angle to be I don’t know why you’d want to do this, but from the other side of the pillar via train. I don’t know if this is what this person is trying to do, but um we have tons of people doing this with with KD where they basically use a gentic to say, you know, create five variations of different angles of this whatever. Or they may have the one flat lay and they say create three variations. Change the floor color to be wooden, then grass, then opaque, then whatever, you know. And we actually have an MCP. This is maybe a little advanced, but you can connect KD to claw or chatt and actually just ask it to do everything you just said, and it should do it pretty well. I just did a video on it. Um, but okay. So, here’s one from farther away. The model look, I mean, look, it’s pretty pretty good. I mean, that’s pretty I don’t know if that’s what that person is trying to accomplish. I may be interpreting it wrong. I would say it’s something you have to play around with. Um, but I’m so sorry, Drew. We’re already over time. I have to cut you off. Real quick. Yeah. So, real quick, remember KD is offering 50% off their annual plans. You can find all the information on that inside Amplified Arena. Um, go check out their page. And our merch winner is Janelle McCann. Congratulations. you get $50 coupon to the official Amplified merch store. Let us know in the chat what you’re going to buy with that. Thank you so much, Drew. I’m sorry. I feel like we could talk for like another three hours about all this stuff, but thank you so much for being with us today. Absolutely. Next up, you are going to see the full video on how to use our new Etsy personalization tool, both inside Printify all the way through Etsy, and how you can offer your buyers a live preview before they commit to buying. And then we’re going to be talking all about Printify, Popup, and Shopify, and doing live store reviews with Crystal Lee. See you soon. What you’re looking at is a buyer personalizing a sweatshirt on Etsy and seeing exactly what they’ll receive before they ever click add to cart. No redirects, no messages back and forth, no, can you send me your photo after the order comes in. And right now, this experience is only possible with Printify. I’m going to show you exactly how this works, how to set it up, and why this is an absolute gamecher for anyone selling personalized products on Etsy. Personalized products are already among the highest converting listings on Etsy. A buyer searching for a custom item with a name, a photo, or a specific message already knows what they want. They have strong purchase intent, and they pay more for it. 30 million people bought a personalized item on Etsy within the last year. Not just any product, something made for them. Their name, their photo, their dog’s face on a sweatshirt. One in three purchases on the entire platform was personalized. The demand is already there and still growing. The problem, sellers still had to do personalization the hard way. And the hard way costs real time and money. Until recently, you’d get one text field for personalization information. Buyers had to type their instructions into a single box when placing an order. Not a ton of structure or clarity. Sellers had to interpret what came in, chase buyers for missing details, and piece together the order themselves. On desktop, that was already clunky. On mobile, where more than 60% of Etsy traffic comes from, it was close to impossible. But we’re coming back better than ever before. A whole new approach. Right now, Printify is the only print on demand provider who’s fully integrated with Etsy’s new take on personalization. Image uploads and structured drop downs built directly into your listing page. And for Printify merchants, you’re getting something that goes a step further. live previews that show buyers a real mockup of their personalized product before they add it to their cart. Before we get into the setup, let’s walk through what the new fields actually are. There are three types of personalization fields you can now add directly to your Etsy listings through Printify. Image upload. Your buyer uploads their photo, logo, or file directly on the listing page at checkout. JPEG, PNG, or SVG files up to 10 photos. No email, no link, no post-purchase message asking for their dog’s picture. It shows up with the order. Text inputs. Your buyer types in a name, a date, a monogram, quote, whatever, up to 1,024 characters. This is where something like a pet’s name goes. You’ll see exactly how in a moment. Finally, dropdowns. Instead of asking a buyer to type, I want it in black itallic, you give them a list to choose the font and or color. Up to 30 options per drop- down field. Clean, structured, no room for misinterpretation. Etsy currently supports up to five personalized fields in total. Any combination of the three types. For example, a listing where the buyer can add personalized text, choose the font, and change the color would count as three of the five fields. Some other combinations could be photo plus two text inputs plus one color drop down plus one font drop down or photos plus two text inputs plus one color drop down. Three text inputs and two font drop downs. And all of this is 100% free. No third party apps, no subscriptions. It’s built right into Printify. One more thing worth saying before we get into the setup. Etsy’s data shows that when buyers see exactly what they’re creating before they buy, there are fewer disputes, reprints, and fewer unhappy customers. And of course, the number one thing we all want, higher conversion rates. Let’s see all of this in action. Now, I’m going to use a custom pet portrait sweatshirt as our example. The buyer will be able to type in their text, choose a font and color, and upload a photo of their pet. All three field types, one listing. Open the Printify catalog. Any of our thousand plus products can be personalized. I’m going to choose a sweatshirt. In the product creator, you’ll see the option to add personalized text and images in the left toolbar. I’ll add the image first. Next, let’s add our personalized text. Add in your placeholder text. Then, you’ll see a button to add text options. This is where we can create the drop- down menu for text color and or font. You’ll get a popup to edit your font list and add your font options. You can choose up to 30, but remember, analysis paralysis is real. Give someone too many options and they might give up. Set a font as the default by clicking the check mark next to it. This will be what gets printed if a buyer doesn’t make a choice. Save the list and let’s now give some color options. So in my example, I’ve used five out of the five personalized fields Etsy allows the photo, two text inputs, font style, and font color. You can see how many fields you’ve created at the bottom next to the save product button. One last note about creating your product. You’ll see a field to label your design layer. The labels here in the product creator will not be seen in Etsy by your buyer. All labels in your listing need to be edited and created in the Printify listing details page. I’ll show you in just a moment. Preview the sweatshirt to see how your design will look on different colors. And when you’re happy, save product. In the mockup library, choose which photos to add to your listing from the Printify options or upload your own. Save your selection and now add your listing details, title, description, and tags. Under the Etsy personalization section, you can turn on or off live previews and edit your fields, including the title, instructions, and character limit. You can also label color and font options if those were added. Or you can leave the default labels we created. These are buyer friendly labels we automatically create based on the position of the design layer. Remember your buyer is seeing all this right before they commit. Make sure labels are simple and clear. Set your shipping prices and publishing settings. Save this listing as a draft in Printify if you want to come back later to it or hit the green publish button and let’s see how it looks on Etsy. Find the listing in your shop manager. It’s business as usual, but now under item options, you’ll see the personalized fields we created in Printify. A very important note, do not edit or rename anything related to personalization fields. Do not reorder, delete, or add any field options here. Doing so may break the automated personalization flow into Printify and result in live previews getting disabled. If edits are needed, go to Printify and edit everything in the listing details page under the personalization section I showed earlier. And let’s look at what our buyer actually sees now, because this is where the new experience becomes something genuinely different. When a buyer clicks on your listing, they’ll choose the shirt color and size as usual, and then they’ll see the personalization fields. This is where the new drop- down menus and the live preview live. They’ll type in the name, choose the color and font, and upload their own image. After filling in all the required fields, they can click on preview your item. The shirt mockup updates to show exactly what they’ll get, their name in the font and color they chose with their pet’s photo, all before they’ve added anything to their cart. Note that the preview your item button will only become clickable once product color, size, and all the required personalization fields have been filled in. That is live previews. A real time rendered mockup directly on your Etsy listing page on both desktop and mobile. The last reason a buyer hesitates before purchasing a personalized product, I don’t know what it’ll actually look like, is gone. For sellers who’ve been offering personalization for years, this removes the friction that was costing you orders. For sellers who have never offered personalization before, the complexity that made it feel out of reach is no longer there. No more manual labor downloading and re-uploading customers images. No more typing in names before submitting an order. Your buyer does it all themselves. Automated personalization means higher conversions and more focus on creating and selling. A few things worth knowing about where this is headed. Live previews are available for DTG and DTF apparel right now. That covers the highest converting personalization categories on Etsy. Sweatshirts, hoodies, and teas. Live previews will be expanding across the full Printify catalog. Mugs, home decor, accessories, all of it soon. Which means if you sell stuff other than apparel or apparel with different print techniques like embroidery or puff print, now is a good time to set up your personalization fields. The new fields work across all products today in Printify. And when live previews do expand to those categories on Etsy, you’ll have a head start over every other seller in your niche. The setup only takes a few minutes and everything you need is in the Printify product creator today. A little bit of time now means less time spent resolving problems after the sale.

And we are back. Hello. Hello. For those of you joining for the first time, my name is Leah and I am the Printify person and your host for today. I’m going to be asking Crystal here some questions all about Shopify and Popup and then we’re going to critique some of your stores live. Now Crystal, you have a very impressive resume. Real quick, tell our viewers a bit more about you. So I have a brand called Girl Plus God. So I sell t-shirts and hoodies and lots of things like that primarily for women. I also am a teacher, so I teach other people how to do this. I’ve taught like thousands of people how to start their brands with no money and I love it because it’s possible and I want other people to do this. And you teach people. You have a YouTube channel right over there. Okay. So you’re a teacher. You create your own stores. All this. What doesn’t she do? I do a lot. Do you sleep? Sometimes. Sometimes you sleep. Okay. So we she’s got a lot of good advice for you today. You definitely want to take out your pen and paper. Take notes because we are going to start with a quick lightning round question about how to drive traffic to your popup store or to your shop Shopify store before we get into the store reviews. All right, so first of all, we’re going to talk about kind of just the building blocks you need for a successful store for someone moving from Etsy over to Shopify. What is the biggest mindset shift that you need to make? I would say you want to look at Etsy as like your parents house, right? When you go to Shopify, it is your own place. So you don’t have the support of your parents to like do anything for you. Shopify is truly about you driving your customers there. So in your mind, you need to think that you are about to make millions. You need to know I am serious about my brand. I am serious about marketing and I am serious about taking this all the way. And Shopify is a platform that will support you in that. I love the analogy like like you’re moving out of your parents house, right? You’re leaving the nest and again it’s you are now in charge of bringing everything over whereas Etsy has like the people and yes um so as I said Etsy has like the built-in traffic on Shopify you don’t get that or on popup stores you don’t get that. What are the core building blocks that your store needs to have before you even think about bringing in traffic? Well, I would say first, you know, just because you’re moving over to Shopify, I would not get rid of your Etsy, right? You can absolutely have both of them. And I would say make sure to get your customers information because you’re going to need it to get them over to Shopify. So, that means making sure that you have an email list. That means making sure that you have some type of text list, right? Thinking about some things that you can do for your customers now that you’re on your own. So that means maybe doing a drop schedule, right? Thinking about I can drop new items to customers every Friday or every two weeks or every month. So you’re going to want to really think like a marketer. And I would suggest for you to uh find maybe three to five other brands that you admire. Get on their email list and see how they’re marketing to you. And then take some of those things. Don’t copy it exactly. Okay? I’m not telling you to go copy, but I am telling you that success leaves clues. So, look at the other like heavy hitters that are on Shopify. I know this is controversial, but I’ve been saying it all day. Like the Kardashians, they’re all on Shopify, right? Look at how they’re marketing to you. So, just take some some notes from other places and implement that into your Shopify. I just want to say to you have a fan here in the chat says I think Oh, I just lost it again. You guys are typing too fast for me. Uh, oh, Cat Aesthetic B says, “Yay, Crystal. Crystal’s YouTube is amazing.” So, you have a fan here. Hi, Cat. Okay, next question quickly. What are the musthave pages or elements that a beginner store might miss? All right, so the first thing that you want to think about is we talked about Etsies, Etsy’s SEO. That is hard to say back to back, but you still want to think about SEO even when you’re on Shopify, right? So, even your homepage, you want a really good banner image, right? The first thing that people see, you want to capture their attention and then you want to have a shop now button. Now, hear me when I say that we are living in the age of AI. So, Shopify will help you with that. Use AI in your Shopify to build out a really strong SEO on like your main homepage. I want to see collections that people can easily click. I want to see like your products and I really want to see like the like personality of your brand. I want to see what it’s all about because that’s what’s going to get people to click. Remember that we’re selling a feeling. We’re selling something that people want to be a part of. So, think about that when you create your Shopify. And like I just said about the other brands, think about what makes you buy. Yeah. What makes you go to a store and say like, “I need that.” And implement that into your store. Right. Right. But make it as easy as possible for people to pay you. Yeah. I like that you mentioned AI in there. And I know some people are really just either anti- AI or no, they don’t want to do it. But truly, it can be so helpful if you are just starting out, especially if you aren’t sure how Shopify works or how Printify pop-up works. I showed you earlier we have the AI store builder. It’ll at least give you an idea of what a goodlooking store should look like from the start. And now it doesn’t mean you have to keep it. You should be changing your store all the time. you know, kind of learning what people are liking and what they’re clicking on. So, if you’re just starting out, it can be a really good learning tool and like a step forward. Yeah. Um, okay. So, how polished though does your store actually need to be before you start bringing people to it? Like, does it need to be completely finished, 100% done before driving traffic? I would say done is better than perfect, right? A lot of us are holding on to this idea that it’s going to be perfect and we never want anybody to see it before it’s perfect and no, I have to have all these things because that’s what the other brands have, right? And what you need to do is get people to buy from you. That is what’s most important. So, I would say get your products on your page. Make sure that people know what your Shopify is about, what your brand is about, and then allow people to start seeing it. And then take feedback. If somebody says like, “Oh, I wish I could find this here.” then take that feedback and say, “Can I add that into my store?” If you’re not good with this, because I know some people just are like, “I don’t have the time for it.” There’s always like Fiverr. There’s always like places you can outsource that and it’s literally inside of Printify. Okay. Okay. You get a coupon and everything inside of Printify. And you can have somebody do it for you. If you feel like, you know what, I just I don’t have the time for this. Do that. If not, use AI. If you’re not an AI person, get your niece or somebody else to do it right. Find a way to get the store up and running. Yes. Rosie Pototts in the chat is saying, “Done is better than perfect. Thank you. I was just telling myself this, but next is getting sales.” So much pro advice. Yes, I might need a nap. Me too. Same. Um, but yeah, I also can really relate to that cuz like being a perfectionist, I want everything to be perfect, but it’s never going to be perfect. And as you kind of mentioned too, people will tell you like, “Hey, fix this.” Or, “Hey, I want this.” like take that feedback. Um, all right, let’s talk about a little bit getting traffic, running ads. When your store is ready, where should a beginner be focusing on? Is it more organic traffic with SEO or content or should we just start blasting ads? Definitely go to social media. It’s free, right? You have the opportunity to reach your customer just by creating a video. But find what works for you. Everybody is not a Tik Tocker, right? So, don’t force yourself to have to be on there and then you’re like, you don’t have to do that. For some people, you just sitting down talking to the camera on YouTube is great, right? It might be Pinterest for you. It might be uh Twitter or X or whatever it’s called now. It can be something for everybody. Just find your lane. But I want to free a lot of you and say you’re going to make mistakes and that’s okay. Just try like try different things. have fun with this. And if you’re selling something that you really, really, really care about, then that should motivate you to like, I got to get this to people. So, how am I going to tell them that it’s available? I find that a lot of people are just afraid to tell people what they’re doing. And you can’t sell if you are ashamed of what you’re selling. So, you got to tell somebody, right? Right. You mentioned all these like social media platforms, too. You don’t have to start on all of them right away. Don’t think you have to make five, six accounts a year. Start on one that you’re already using, that you’re comfortable with, or maybe you know like your type of buyers specifically on Instagram or Pinterest. So, I mean, there’s a little bit of research prior to it, but you don’t need to be overwhelmed with 10 social media platform. And ask your friends and family, the people you trust, right? Not the haters that always got something to say, the people you absolutely trust. Ask them like, where could you see me at? You know, what what do you see me kind of doing? And then take that feedback. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. Let’s say someone does want to spend a little bit of money. They’re ready for ads. What ad platform should a beginner start with and why? You know what? I really feel like it depends on the platform that you choose to do your content on, right? Because you kind of know that platform a little bit. I think if you are really killing it on Tik Tok, then you may want to try to start running ads on Tik Tok. And that could be something as small as like $25 to see it. Can I boost this the shirt post that I’m talking about? Um, maybe you did something and you’re talking about uh who you are. People love authenticity right now. Please let people know like, “Hey, I’m starting a new brand. It’s about this. I I just I’m new and I don’t know what to do.” People want to see who you really are. So, I would say if you’re on TikTok, try to run some ads there. If you are on Instagram, then Meet will probably be better for you. Um, I would definitely say try maybe boosting a post first before you invest a whole lot of money. Um, I know there are so many options that it really is like I want you to make sure that you have the product that people want before you run an ad to it. A lot of people make the mistake of let me just jump in and run an ad for a product that I like, but you’re not your customer. So, make sure they like it first and then go run an ad. That’s the hard to swallow pill. Like, you may love one of your products and nobody likes it and just kind of like, well, dang. Yeah. And now you spend all this money on ads anything. Um, can you give us a rough number? How much money do you need to spend on ads? Like should I be dropping $100 on an ad or can I spend like two bucks to boost a post? How much does it cost about? It depends honestly. I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads. So, it’s you know what you’re doing. Like you have good designs obviously. Well, yeah. But that took like that took me really testing it and then that took me learning myself and knowing I can’t do this by myself. Like I would boost some posts and then I just said I need to go hire somebody, right? But I would run by myself maybe like an $100 ad, but I didn’t really know what I was doing. Which is why I’m like for some people they’re great at that. They can they can figure it out. They can get on Meta and do it. I would say if you are good and familiar with Facebook ads, um, then maybe try like a $100 budget. But again, what I want more than anything is for you to know that this is your winning product. Like that is what’s important. Not just the ad spend, but that people actually want this product. And I don’t run an ad unless I know that people are like, I got to have that. Mhm. Uh, Cat Aesthetic Beach, your fan here, just says, “Yes, promote products that are already selling.” And that’s very true. If you have a product that’s already making sales or a product on your Instagram, whatever, that is getting a lot of likes or comments, engagement, that might be one to test. That’s a really good place to start. Yeah. Um, all right. Time is flying by here. Theor theory is one thing, but let’s look at some real stores now and kind of their setup. Um, we’re going to pull up a few here. Now, the first one on my screen, I’m using the wrong mouse. Here we go. Uh, this store was submitted by Brenda Clber. This is a Printify popup store. So, this is the homepage. What we see here. All right. My first thought, I’m a little bit overwhelmed here. Yeah, there’s a lot going on. Well, I would say the fact that this is here is a win. So, shout out to you, Brenda. You got it out right. What you do have though is a lot. So, I would say this is a lot for somebody to land on as their first impression of your store. And I’m not really sure who this is for. Like, I’m not sure like who your target customer is for this store. As we scroll down, I’m seeing a little bit more. So, now I see what the name of your brand is. I would like this to be moved up. Yes. Right. So, I would want to see Pizza Imagination moved up to the top of the page. Yeah. So, it looks like this actually might just be like, so you used our store builder, the Printify store builder here, and you would just have to move this up to the top because like you said at the very beginning, you need to know who it’s for. You want to see an image, not just be have Exactly. products here. And this is a lot of products, right? And just because we’re using print on demand, we don’t have to let everybody know that we have that much. Yeah. Right. Because you want to create some type of scarcity. Like look at things like the Jordan brand, right? is successful because they don’t have enough of it or they’ve sold you that they never have enough of it. Make people feel the FOMO. Exactly. You You want people to feel like they’re going to miss out. If I see 500 products, I’m going to come back later, right? I’m going to go somewhere where they may be about to run out and then I’ll come back to this later. But I do think that this is very um it’s overwhelming because it is a lot. Yeah. I would say too, like not just a lot of products, but if you go up back up here, you do have some nice categories and your designs themselves are very nice. Um, but I don’t know what I’d want here cuz you’ve got like Thanksgiving themed things, but then we’ve got it looks like a religious like kind of niche journals and we’ve got bedding. So, I would choose one of these lanes to start with and get really good at that. Yeah. Um, let’s click into one of these categories. Um, all right. All right. Are you a Thanksgiving, Halloween, or Christmas person? I’m a Halloween girl. Halloween person. All right, let’s go. Let’s go with Halloween. So, okay. So, I This is another thing. I click on the category and it’s actually bringing me back to the top of your page. We want it to go right into Yeah. the product, right? So, it actually happens to be they end up at the bottom here. Yeah. So, again, these products, the designs, I think, are great. They’re great. They are great. I really love that. Uh where you can like color on the man right there. I love that. I think that that’s a good product. Yeah. So that right there go that right there. We got to fix that, Brenda. We got to fix that one. I love this product though. I think that this could be like your only product and it be great. I think first of all, this is genius. I have never thought about this. I mean, I’ve never tested it. I don’t know if it would work. I feel like with fabric markers or felt markers, like, yeah, color your own t-shirt for kids or something. This would be great. I would run with this because this is such a cool concept. I do love this. The idea is great. The product itself is nice. I actually I I said this earlier, but this is an underrated product in the Printify catalog. I’ve ordered samples for myself. The print is absolutely amazing. It is so soft on the inside and so warm. Um anyway, yes, this is a fantastic product. I do love overall choose what you want to sell here. Pick start with one of these niches and then get really good at that. Fix the layout here a little bit. Um and I think you really are on to something, Brenda. Yes. Okay, let’s move on to the next store. Okay, we have Dogma House submitted by Sue Brown. Yes, Sue. Very clear on our niche right away. Right. This is a really big niche, okay? People love their dogs and this one is all about the dogs and I love that. Praise be the dog. I love this is like two really popular niches cross niche which is we tell people to do this all the time because it is hard to find a very specific niche. So you’ve got kind of like this religion for dogs or like in the dog religion or something. Um the idea is fantastic. You have a good banner here, nice menu. The picture to me looks very AI, but again, you know, your audience, if they’re fine with that, you know, it’s okay. I do like the concept that the dog is carrying a shirt. I think it’s very cute. This might work well, too, if there was a sliding banner. Maybe if this is one of the banners and then the other one is an actual person with a dog, that could work, too. Um, just for the people who may not love AI. There are still some people that are like, uh-uh. But I do think that you know immediately when you click on this who this is for exactly right here for people who believe in dog it makes a lot of sense. Um okay let’s test your buttons here. So this is another thing when you are ready to launch your store test all of your buttons and make sure they bring you to where they should share your shop with a friend and say hey click through this make sure everything’s working. So and do it on mobile. Mobile is the most important right now. I literally build my store for mobile. know that everybody’s coming from social media. So, I put desktop secondary to mobile. Especially if you are targeting younger audiences, Gen Z. They’re all They’re all on their phones. Yeah. So, all right. Your shop the collection button worked. It brought us to the collection. Yes. I love these shirts. I think again, your designs are fantastic. The I think the mock-ups are really nice. They’re clean. They’re cute. You know, they’re not too much. The design is front and center. Mhm. The SEO maybe not the best. Yeah, I would add a little bit more in there about like the shirt because all of these have dog is real, dog is real, dog is real, and just different colors. I will also because there are many variations of the same shirt with just a different type of dog on it. Um, it may be good to mix that up with adding people, adding an element with that particular dog, even having your customers like them with their dogs, with that dog in there. And then yes, for the SEO, you definitely want to add a little bit more to the title other than dog is real. That could be like dog mom shirt, unisex shirt. Like even saying dog mom will help you a little bit more with the SEO. But I love the satisfaction guarantee with the little dog. The help rescue dogs made just for you. So cute. Almost like they’re selling to the dog themselves. I know. These are This is almost like these are those tiny details that maybe don’t make a huge difference, but people notice them. Like you don’t want to have these just bulleted lists in your description that is like a novel, right? emoji stand out. Oh, okay. And if I don’t, it sounds like you’ve made a promise that okay, we’ll fix it. Um, your description is very clear. Also, like easy to read. You have your FAQs here. Yes. Let’s scroll around a little bit here. Yeah. So, I do I love this. I will say that because everything looks alike. I definitely want to see some more uh some more pictures. Even if it’s of a dog, right? with just some more pictures so that everything is not the exact same picture. Even though I love this picture. I think it’s great. You got the bones on there. You got the postcard. Like this was very well thought out and just a really great niche. Yeah. Yeah. So, we scroll down. Okay. We have some more information. Soft enough to sleep in. This This is a really nice picture. This one I think you ordered samples and you actually you took your own image and this is beautiful. Yeah. Um, I actually almost would want to see something like this. If we go back to the homepage here, you did have Okay, right away you have your best sellers, which is that’s a really great spot to put them is right under that hero image, this banner. Um, but it almost for me it kind of it gets a little bit overwhelming. All of a sudden, I’m bombarded with a lot of products. Yep. With a lot of colors. Yes. Mhm. I would almost want to see what we saw on the previous page, maybe kind of under three or four of your best sellers, maybe with a human wearing the shirt and saying a little bit more about your store with some collections on the homepage. I would definitely do that. And then maybe this brand would really benefit from some drops. Like this would be great for like a bi-weekly or a monthly drop so that again you don’t have everything here. You could do like a dog of the month and then that month you have like oh we’re having a special I don’t know Bernie’s mountain dog collection dropping. There’s a lot of really good potential here and you have so you do have all your kind of like categories here and by by breed. Yeah. I would I would almost want to see some of these maybe pull it down down here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You gave a really good idea though. Like I I hope they’re listening. Dog of the month. I I hope you’re watching. Say hi in the chat if you are because I I want to see this. It’s It’s an awesome idea. That is Please do that. I also want to say one little teeny tiny detail that I that I love is the bark at us. Love that. If you have a store, you definitely want a way for your customers to contact you, right? Um bark at us. It speaks very clearly. It’s hilarious. It’s cute. the little story right here about Yeah, I love this. I think I feel like I’m being sold the shirts by a dog. Like the dogs are selling the shirts. Yeah, it would it works on me, you know? I love it. And I This looks like a very real picture of I imagine your dog Lo Lobo. Yeah. Un alive. And if his little his laptop got messed up. This is so cute. And you’ve added up so much personality into the store. I really think you’re on to something really good here. Yes. Um, clean it up a little bit, take some feedback. You’ve got awesome stuff. This is great. Dog of the month is is is going to take it to the next level. You could even have people like I hope you are on social media. We didn’t check. Okay, you’re on Instagram and Facebook. I hope you ask your followers on social media like, “Hey, what’s the next dog of the month?” And have them vote and get them engaged there. Oh, so many ideas. Okay, we have about 10 minutes left. Let’s look at another store. All right, this next one is submitted by Jess Shop. So immediately I think Okay, we know it’s car doctor’s apparel. So I read doctors. Okay, but I’m guessing it has I think I saw when I was looking at this earlier, it’s something related to cars, right? So we don’t know if it’s DRS or doctors. Yeah. Is it doctors or DRS? Either way, who knows about cars? Either way, I this kind of sleek look is great for this niche. I would say I don’t like the slash. I think that that reads a little less like put together for a store. So, you can do like the and sign. You can spell out and or a plus sign. I would maybe even add a car or um it’s me and a car like the or a model and a car, something like that, just so you have some personality. Yeah, I would say overall it’s a very clean landing page. I I like it. Like I think it looks really good. Small things. I would almost make this B. So it’s really good to have a banner too. Members get exclusive discounts. I think I saw free worldwide shipping on all orders. That is awesome. People love free shipping, especially if they can order it from from I don’t know from Europe, the United States, etc. They love free shipping. Mhm. I would almost make this little banner louder like a bright green or bright something cuz it’s kind of a darker green. It kind of blends in with the the black here a little bit. Yeah. But other than that, good impression. Okay. Scroll down. We’ve got the women’s collection. We’ve got a men’s collection. Good use of the space. Yes. Um, I would say the menu you you see it a little bit, but it it is tucked away over there on the side. I see drive the brand about. What are those? I don’t want to see those. Which ones? These. Yeah, let’s go. Okay. Okay. So, we got a car there. So, your story. It’s good to have your story. I like it. I don’t know where to look first. Do I read this story? Do I read this story? Um, okay. My name is Jess. I’ve always been one of the boys. Okay. And you knew it was time for women to have more custom car gear. Okay. So, now here you’re saying very clearly that it’s car stuff for women, which that’s an awesome target. That’s a huge That’s a huge niche. Like, I would go and lean more into that. like immediately when you come on this page, you know, this is all about the car enthusiasts, the women car enthusiasts. I would really lean into that more. Yes. Bring that on to the homepage here. Let’s actually go look into Well, what’s drive the brand? Yeah, what is drive the brand? Ah, this must be for the We have members get exclusive discounts. Oh, okay. Okay. I like that. You have an ambassador program. That is also very smart. Okay. So, you’re already doing the right things when it comes to marketing. You’ve got social media here. Um, I think I did notice earlier. So, you’re on Tik Tok, which is really great. Okay. But the Tik Tok link is sending us a 404 error. So, that’s one of those small things. It’s not the end of the world by any means, but again, making sure all of your links work here for sure. Um, let’s go into I actually want to see one of the product pages. Let’s go to the best sellers here. Okay, so best sellers, some jerseys, t-shirts, got miniature Hot Wheels. Oh, those are earring. You know what? Wow, that’s smart. That is cute. Okay. I think I saw somewhere that like crop tops were signature. Signature, right? Okay. Okay. Okay. I like the landing page or the product page here. I would say again this green here. It’s good that when you hover over it does get a bit brighter, but it still is kind of hidden. Yeah. Yeah. I would almost want this add to cart. Like you want people to add to cart right away. Absolutely. It does. This buy with shop does stand out very well.

What do you have? You have a very full description here. Yes, that’s a lot of reading for some people. Um, so I would think about that. I really, and this is just me, if if I was kind of sharing my own story and I was thinking about how I felt left out for so long, I would make this all about women, right? I’m not saying you have to get rid of the men, but I am saying I would really, really, really lean into like this is for the girls. For the girls also, I mean, I’m I’m guessing just too, you obviously know your audience and over on social media, maybe you are getting a lot of male buyers as well. So obviously, you know, look into that more and yeah, adjust how you need to. But either way, um I definitely agree with you like thinking about your actual branding, your colors, how things are standing out. Even with the apparel, I want to see the cars, right? Like so even if there’s a picture of you in the shirt in the car or with the car, there is a lot of attitude with the models, which I like. Um, I think this can go for all the brands is that car of the month, right? Like, think about ways to get your customers, your people, your tribe excited about what you’re selling. And don’t just give it all to them up front. Give them something to look forward to. Yeah. Yeah. Um, quickly, again, I love these models. These are great. Like, the attitude is there. You got models. Um, what do you think of the titles SEO here? I love a good title. So that I I love all of that. I would still think about though just adding the SEO in. So that may be maybe even adding the color in or maybe even adding a car collector boxy tea, right? You want to start adding some language that is going to get people to see you if they’re googling something because this is a brand that somebody would be googling because car shirts for women. Car shirts for Yeah. Exactly. Yes. Um, how important is it having like So, obviously Etsy SEO and Shopify SEO are different. How important is it have it having the keywords in the title here versus having it in the description down here? Like what’s more important? I would say both. You want to make sure that you maximize as much as possible. And there is the AI built in. So, utilize that as you can if you don’t know. or go to your AI bestie and say, “Uh, Chad, help me optimize this uh this title and this description.” You want as many keywords as possible, women car collectors, uh, anything like that so that the people who are googling, they will find your product. Yeah. I’m guessing too, there’s stuff about like like racing terms, car racing and all that. You know, I don’t know nothing about cars or racing, but you could probably work that in for sure. Um, also important, I think you do a good job with this here, but making sure that you’re working in your keywords and descriptions in your audience’s language, in your brand’s language. You know, you don’t want to just be stuffing in random words like car, shirt, fast car, Sunday. Stay true to yourself, but still think about, you know, you are a business owner, so you have to add in things so that people can find you easily. And again, your AI bestie can help you with that. like keep my personality but add in more SEO. One final comment and this is such a like teeny tiny thing. Again, we’re like perfectionist. We’re going to nitpick here. Um you have to have a footer. This is great. Privacy policy refund. I feel like it’s almost taking up unnecessary space. I would almost like small make it a bit smaller or maybe like one smaller line. But again, that’s such a or give me a car down there. maximize the space if you’re gonna have Yeah, get like a put a little car down there or something. But other than that, I think this is a really cool one. And I mean, all three of these shops today from Brenda, Sue, Jess, like all of you have a lot of potential and you have really good ideas. So, I would definitely Yeah. And congratulations on these getting this far because some people don’t make it here. So, I’m so proud of all of you guys. Yes. Okay. So, thank you again, Brenda, Sue, Jess. That was awesome that you guys submitted these. Um, fantastic advice from Crystal. Any final words of wisdom, inspiration for our audience? Man, I would say know that you can do this. I’ve had the greatest time here at Amplify. So many different people, personalities that we’ve all come together and said, “Wow, you did that.” Right? Be willing to try. Be willing to pivot. Uh, know you’re going to mess up. So, just enjoy messing up and having fun doing this. But I’m really excited for all of you who are about to change your life with print on demand because I did it. So you can do it. Exactly. If we can do it, you can absolutely do it. Okay. Thank you again so much, Crystal, for being here. Stay tuned for the next session because I’m going to be putting Stara Moore into the lightning round spotlight and then we’re going to take a look at some of your Etsy stores live. We will see you in a few minutes. Every seller wants to grow, but figuring out how to do it, that’s usually the hard part. There’s endless advice out there, and before you know it, you’re spending more time learning about all the different ways to expand a business than actually doing it. That’s why we created mentorship by Printify. We went to sellers who are already at the top with the sales, systems, and results to prove it and ask, “What actually works?” We turn these strategies into blueprints with a mentor to guide you that’ll take you where you want to be, whether you’re chasing your first sale or ready to scale. We’re even offering the chance to get a scholarship for these programs. More on that later. But first, let’s show you what mentorship actually looks like. Starting with two dedicated programs for Etsy and Tik Tok. On the Etsy path, you’ll learn directly from mentors like Sarah Caps, a top 1% Etsy business owner with gold star seller status who started exactly where you’re at right now. She’ll walk you through everything it takes to grow your POD business with weekly live sessions with mentors, roundts, open Q&As’s, one-on-one coaching calls, and listing reviews with real detailed feedback. Every live session gets recorded so you never miss out. And you won’t be doing this alone. You’ll be learning alongside a community of other sellers in the same spot as you celebrating wins together. And if Tik Tok shop is where you want to win, you’ll be learning from sellers actually running six-figure Tik Tok shop businesses right now, not sideline commentators who don’t know the ins and outs of the platform. This program goes indepth on how Tik Tok rewards content, not catalog size, what to post, how to hook, and how to turn views into orders so you can grow your POD business. You’ll join weekly sessions and roundts and receive real feedback on your products and ads before you post. You bring the effort and dedication. We’ll help you turn it into orders fast. Here’s the best part. Mentorship is valued at over $2,300 a year, but for amplified attendees, that cost could be fully covered with a scholarship. Only a 100 scholarships are available, and once they’re claimed, they’re gone. If mentorship has been on your radar, this is the moment to move. And we’ve already seen what this can do for people who show up and put in the work. Real sellers, real results. Here’s what Riley had to say. I’ve used the Tik Tok mentorship program by Printify, and the tips were actually actionable. I scaled my new store to $25,000 in revenue in a single month. My mentors were there whenever I had an urgent situation and needed help. They’re all so knowledgeable and I’m grateful to have access to some of the top experts in the field. You’ll find the scholarship application link in the chat right now. Click it and apply for the program that’s right for you. And don’t wait. Spots are limited. If you’ve been waiting for the right time to take your business seriously, this is it. All we ask is that you show up. Your path to success starts with mentorship. We look forward to seeing you there. Printify presents badass ways to quit your job.

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Heat. Heat.

Welcome back for the fifth time today. For those joining for the first time on this stage, welcome. My name is Leah. I am the host and the Printify person. Now, we’re talking all about Etsy again in this session. And if you want your Etsy store to be the absolute best it can be, this is the session for you because I have the absolute best person with me here for everything and anything Etsy related. Yes, she’s already dancing. I’ve got Starla Moore here who’s going to share the best way to convert buyers and we’re going to be doing live store reviews. So, get ready to take notes. Stara, say hello and quickly tell us your Etsy experience. Well, you know what? If anybody has searched for Etsy SEO on YouTube at any point in their life, I’m probably the face that you’ve come across because I’ve been doing this for a really long time. I’ve been teaching for 10 years. I have been selling for 15 years. And I’m also a manager over at e-rank.com. So if you’ve ever done any Etsy SEO, there’s a chance that you’ve seen my face. And this is actually my fifth time speaking at Amplified. So that’s really fun. Awesome. Let us know in the chat if you’ve seen Stara here before. I’m sure we we have all sorts of Stara watchers here already. Um, okay. We’re going to start with a quick lightning round of questions on what makes a great Etsy listing, great Etsy shop, and then we’re going to get into the real fun, the store critique. So, for someone who just opened up their shop, what actually makes a listing convert versus just getting views? Yeah, there’s so many components when it comes to listing conversion, but I really think that the things that sellers tend to not consider when they’re starting, when they’re watching all the videos and they’re getting stareyed about the possibility is the utter saturation and the number of competitors that you’re going to be up against once you get that listing posted. Because of that, the thing that helps a listing to actually convert, it’s not having the best SEO in the world. It’s not even having the best quality product in the world. Because if you have the best quality product, but it’s surrounded by other people who also have great quality products, you still blend. It’s about having a defined niche that’s actually going to call to a very specific type of person. So, for example, I always use mama bear sweatshirts. We’ve all seen like the silhouette of the bear and it says mama in it. Okay, that’s cool. But there are so many other sellers who make that. So, even if you make a really nice one and your SEO is great and your photos are great, you are going to be buried in that sea of millions of other sellers who have that exact thing. But let’s say that you’re super passionate about mama bear sweatshirts and you still want to make that. What type of mama bear? Is it the sports mom? mama bear who all her kids are in sports, maybe they all play, you know, basketball. You could totally theme that mama bear around the basketball mom or the soccer mom or even, you know, maybe you do organic mama bear, whatever it is, whatever you’re passionate about, start with a niche because everything after that gets so much easier. Niches are what help listings to convert. when you’re competing in something that is so saturated like POD and maybe you go for mama duck instead of mama bear. Yes. What is the biggest mistake that you see beginners make with their listing? I think that there are so many little mistakes that newbies make, but I really do feel like they spend so much time on things like SEO. And I mean SEO is great. Like my whole thing is SEO and teaching people how to make SEO easy, but you could have the best SEO in the world on a search page if your photos aren’t compelling in the way that your competitors are compelling. It doesn’t matter if your product is great. It doesn’t matter if your SEO is good. It’s like the recipe for the perfect listing. It needs to start with having that defined niche. But then you also need to make sure that your photos in the context of search are something that someone is going to want to actually click on. Now, when you look at your storefront, you might say, “My photos look great. Like, looking at all of my listings together, they look so pretty.” But then you type in some keywords associated with your niche and that product, and you start looking at all of the other listings around it. Is your listing the one that people are going to want to click on? Because if not, it doesn’t matter if a million people see it. It doesn’t matter if you have the best keywords in the world. It doesn’t matter if you have, you know, the lowest prices or even the best niche. You have to be able to get that person who is already overwhelmed with the possibilities to click on your thing and be compelled enough to explore it further. Otherwise, the conversion is just going to be impossible. Mhm. So on a scale of one to 10, how really important is that first photo? Is it Oh, it’s a 10 or a 20 or like a 30. It is the most important. Like there is nothing more important to me than a great photo. And you know, great can mean different things for for different products, different industries. I’ve had sellers in the past who are who have told me, “Oh, my photos aren’t that great.” and I look at them and I say, “Yes, but you look like your photos were shot by like a grandma who’s selling products and it kind of fits.” Like I almost feel like a photo that’s too professional in the context of that specific shop wouldn’t perform as well. So, it takes a lot of experimenting as well. It takes taking different types of photo styles, running AB split tests, looking at your data. Data is the compass that is going to tell you what works for you based on your demographics, your target customers. That data is going to speak. So, in the beginning, when we’re talking about newbies who are getting their first listings out into the world, it is absolutely okay to, you know, I’m going to try an AI generated f photo and a mockup photo and I’m going to order a sample product and take a photo of myself wearing it and then I’m going to test and see which of those does well. As long as those are all contained within one shop, Etsy doesn’t care if you take, you know, three of the same product and list it three, you know, three times in your shop just to see the data and see what performs better. And then once you find that winning formula, you can kind of run with it and make sure that your other photos match up. I hear you say all the time that data is king. And I think you are so right with that. Um, all right. Beyond the photos though, what’s the one thing people might underestimate? Is it titles, tags, description? I think it’s really how those three things work together. Four things actually because attributes are also a big part of it. So, um, in the realm of Etsy SEO, a lot of people will come to me to ask, “What should I focus the most on? Do I spend more time on my title? Should I spend, you know, 12 hours researching my tags? should I make sure that I’m writing the best description, you know, and attributes. Obviously, they don’t take as much time because we’re just picking drop-own menus, but they’re still important. And I think that what sellers don’t realize is it’s not about any of these singular elements on their own. Think of it like a system of gears. If you had gears that were all like equidistant from each other, not touching, they’re they’re not going to spin. They’re not going to work together. What matters and what powers the Etsy machine is all of those gears coming together and combining and twisting and turning in unison because really that is what’s going to make the Etsy machine move. So yes, you should make sure that you’re finding the very best words to put in your title. And yes, you should make sure that you’re getting some great words in your tags to kind of back up your title. And obviously when you’re filling out your attributes, you should make sure that you’re filling them out as accurately as possible. And descriptions, they work a little bit differently. Um, a lot of people still do the age-old, you know, take your whole title and copy it and paste it down in the description just to make sure that you get all of your, you know, best keywords in there. It’s not really how the algorithm works anymore. like way back when, sure, that was the strategy like 10 plus years ago, but now what we’re really looking for with descriptions when it comes to Etsy is organic language that’s going to connect both to your shoppers so they better understand your product. They know how things are going to fit. They know what, you know, fabric you’re using, the important stuff that a buyer needs to know. But Etsy has disclosed in the past that descriptions are not used for query matching. So that is that keyword matching phase. Etsy has disclosed that they’re actually used more to gather context. So, the thing that, you know, we I think a lot of people don’t realize with our descriptions is that it’s a place where you can talk more about the specifics of how a person might come about that search. So, maybe they’re searching for a great birthday gift for grandpa’s 60th birthday, for example. Well, that’s a really clunky set of keywords that you might not necessarily be able to cleanly get into your title and tags, but it’s great context for Etsy to understand in those descriptions. So, I usually tell people when it comes to descriptions, while they are important for search, it’s better to just use them to educate your shoppers because if you’re doing that, you’re probably also fitting search needs. I guarantee that there’s going to be people with questions. Yes. So, we we do have a few questions here. Um, I’m going to pick one here from Craig. A lot of successful shops on Etsy have over a thousand plus listings. What are your thoughts on the volume play? I don’t think that it’s as important as people try to make it seem. I know that there’s a lot of people who say more listings equals more opportunities equals more chances to get found. But often when I look at shops like these and I critique them, I see shops that have thousands and thousands and thousands of listings and none of them are converting where what they’re doing is they’re listing and hoping and listing and hoping rather than really defining themselves, finding that niche, finding a passion, and creating something that people actually want to buy, which is hard. It’s easier to list and hope. It’s also expensive. Um, when you have a thousand listings at 20 cents every four months that aren’t selling, that does add up over time. I also see people that just pile money onto, you know, into ads into ads into ads. Get it seen, get it seen. But if you don’t have good SEO, there is an algorithm for ads. So, that’s probably not going to work either. It all kind of boils down to having that defined niche that both tells your customer what you want to be known for and tells Etsy what you want to be known for because that algorithm is also going to recognize topical consistency. It’s going to know that if you want to be known for, I don’t know, German Shepherd products because your whole shop is about German shepherds. the algorithm is gonna say, “Man, this lady over here is searching for German Shepherd t-shirts, and Bob over here only lists German Shepherd products.” Clearly, Bob is a specialist in German Shepherd products. So, we should show those products to this lady over here who’s looking for them. Okay. Uh, real quick, a couple more questions. Switch gears slightly from SEO. I want to talk about multi-product listings because we have an awesome new feature in Printify where you can make multi-product listings. Is it real quick explain what that means and also is it a good idea or a bad idea for beginners? Yeah, so a a good multi-product listing to me because I know that you can add a lot. Um I actually just checked the numbers in Printify today to see how many you could add and it is a lot of variants, a lot of products that you can bundle. But I think that the goal should be to make sure that for one, you’re not just doing it for the sake of doing it. Like I think that it’s probably very easy to get stareyed at the possibilities of putting as many products together as you can. Make it make sense, though. Make those bundles make sense. So in a nutshell, the feature is going to allow you to say make a maybe you want to sell a whole outfit. You’ve got the hoodie and you’ve got the matching t-shirt and you know, you want to make it really easy for a buyer to say, “Oh, I want I want the whole thing. I want the whole the whole fit. I want to match. I want to have the matching hat and the matching shirt and the matching hoodie.” It will make that so easy for a customer to see all the possibilities and be able to purchase it with one click rather than having to go search for all of those individual items, which I love. What I wouldn’t want to see sellers do is, for example, put their whole catalog into one listing to the point where it becomes fatiguing for your shoppers. There’s actually a fantastic book um that I recommend about buyer fatigue called The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwarz. Fantastic read for anybody who enjoys consumer psychology. But it talks about how our brains shut down when we’re faced with too many choices because we run the risk of making the wrong choice. And in our mind, oh no, like I spend all this because you know your bundle is probably going to be a little pricier, right? You’re off, if you’re offering a hoodie and a t-shirt and a matching hat, that’s a lot of money that customer is going to pay. And if you have 6,000 things for them to choose from, that might be fatiguing and that might scare them. So make it super simple. Make sure that your photos are showing everything. Make sure that all of your bundles make sense. Um, if you’re doing, you know, a German Shepherd shirt and a basketball hoodie and, I don’t know, a pickle ball hat, that’s a really weird combination of items. Maybe make sure that they’re all German Shepherd or they’re all pickle ball. But I personally, I think it is a great idea. And anytime someone asks me like, “Is this good? Is this a good idea for sellers to do?” I’m like, I think it’s a great idea for sellers to test it with their own industry because the data will tell you if it’s a good idea or not. Yeah. We have uh Cat Aesthetic Beach in the chat. She says, “Pro tip, make multi-product listings after you have a good performing product.” Yes. And I kind of have like an addition to that question. So, we say to double down on something that’s working. Why why wouldn’t I want to just make another new listing and have more listings rank for those same keywords at SEO versus putting it in one listing or should I do both? Um, I would honestly do both. So, you have to remember how the algorithm works when it’s when we’re talking about organic ranking. Um, every time you make a sale of a listing, you build up your listing quality score, which is unfortunately a secret score that we don’t get to see as sellers, but we can sense it. So, if you’ve ever made a sale in your shop and then conveniently, like the next day or even a couple hours later, that exact same item then sells again, that is evidence of our listing quality score kicking in because Etsy says, “Oh, people really like this thing. They bought it. we should show it to more people because we have evidence of demand. There’s buyer intent there. So, when you have one listing with everything compacted and that listing is able to be, you know, your flagship that sells over and over, then yeah, you’ve got more opportunities for that singular listing to rank higher in search. Whereas, if you split everything up, you’re going to be basically dividing that listing quality score up. However, I do think that there is some value in listing things individually as well because you can target more specific keywords. If you’re selling, let’s say that you’re selling sweatshirt and sweatpants. If I’m searching for a sweatshirt, I’m not typing in keywords for sweatpants, right? So, um I think that you can definitely narrow down on a specific type of product so that you are really telling Etsy like these are sweatpants. This is what this is. It is sweatpants. It’s categorized as sweatpants. it needs to be seen as sweatpants. Whereas this is hoodie. It needs to be seen as hoodie. A bundle, you’re going to have to kind of sacrifice um a little bit of that space to get terms in for both angles. This is where that ABsplit testing is going to be really, really important so that you can look at the data and see, do my bundles perform better? Do my listings individually perform better? Do they all perform well? And maybe I just need to keep them all. I need to have the bundle, but I need to list them separately because there’s going to be different type of buyers. Some buyers are going to be so in love with the idea of buying everything all together. But you’re also going to have buyers who see, you know, maybe the listing photo has the sweatshirt and the sweatpants together and they say, “Oh, I just want the shirt.” And you offer just the shirt, but in their mind they see picture of shirt and pants and they say to themselves, “That’s not what I’m looking for. I’m just looking for the shirt.” So again, data is king here. I would test both and see what works for you. Yeah, great advice. We actually do have a lot of questions. Unfortunately, we don’t have a ton of time. So, the theory is great, but let’s look at some real stores first, but first we have some gifts, right, Stara? We do. We do have some gifts. So, I am going to be giving away today three E-Rank expert plan, which is our highest uh subscription over at E-Rank. And I’m hoping that my husband is upstairs ready to post that on the live stream. Um, and if not, it will be available in the sellers club. Oh, yeah. He stomped on the floor, so he’s posting it now. So yeah, the way you can get this one, it’s going to work a little bit differently than what we’ve been doing. Um there will be a post inside the amplified lobby space um from Stara. Yes, from Stara. And she’ll give you instructions there on how you can be a winner of the E-rank expert plan giveaway. So you can go check that out after this session. Um go check it out. Okay, let’s get into the store critiques here. So Stara, you’re actually going to share some stores on your screen first, right? And the first store that we have here is submitted by Denise Taylor. Let’s take a look. Yes. So our first store is Cottonwood Cozy. Um, very cute banner. It was the first thing that I noticed when I arrived. I’m I’m a big stickler for branding. However, the more that I started to explore your shop, the more that I started feeling inongruencies and this lack of overall cohesion. And I think that during, you know, holidays, Halloween, we can get really excited about making our banner festive. But the I feel like making your banner festive can sometimes distract from the branding that you’re trying to establish. So, for example, if I held up a soda can to you and you saw red with white curly font, it doesn’t matter how far away I’m standing or if you can read it, you know, oh, that’s Coca-Cola, right? Like, we all know what that looks like. If I show you a baby blue box with a white ribbon wrapped around it, you’re like, “Oh, that’s Tiffany and Co.” Our branding should be a beacon to our shoppers and should tell them what to expect and how to recognize us. So, what I noticed was that you have a great logo down here. Um, some great fonts and that’s not translating to this very puffy fabric Halloween banner. I would really love to see you use this strong branding that you already have and in the style of that branding add some Halloween elements that match so that we can maintain that cohesion. I always tell people that branding is like a song. You have to sing the same words to the song over and over again if you want people to remember the words and sing along. If you listen to a song and every single time you heard it, the words changed, you would never be able to sing along to that song. And then as we scroll down into your products again, this is a cohesive style. Your photos are a cohesive style. I can immediately tell what your brand is all about. I’m seeing babies, kid-friendly, super cute, soft colors, neutrals. This branding doesn’t match. I would love to see you create this soft, very neutral tone, still fuzzy and warm um branding for your banner that also kind of emphasizes the strong brand elements that you have already created because your photos are beautiful. I absolutely love your your photos. It just feels a little uh inongruent. I’m popping open our e-rank extension right now. This is a feature that we have over at E-Rank where you can check out things right on uh E-Rank. And honestly, looking at your keywords, they’re fantastic. You have fantastic tags here. And you are doing very minimal repetition. So, we’ve got personalized swaddle, optional bundle, coming home outfit, photo props, name announcement. So, you’re not saying baby, baby, baby, baby, baby. You don’t have to do that in your tags or your title because Etsy is actually mi mixing and matching every word in your titles and every word in your tags in every possible combination through broad matching. So your keywords phenomenal. Really my only critique at this point is to go in and just make sure that when you’re creating seasonal banners they’re congruent. Um, I would also love when I’m buying something for like a baby, I would love to know who you are. Um, a faceless shop owner. When it comes to baby products, I want to know that the person that I’m buying baby products from is a face that’s friendly, someone I can trust, someone I’m excited to see, even if it’s just a little avatar or a character that you create for yourself. Um, I would love to see that. But overall, fantastic shop. Super cute. Okay, let’s go on. We have Sorry, St. We have about 10 minutes, so we got to we’re going to go fast here and we sell some really good questions. Uh the next store, Cababie Whisper, is by Sarah Grace. Yes, I love this one because I absolutely love guinea pigs. I used to breed guinea pigs. Um I would love to see some cohesion with your um logo and your branding because this kind of just feels like an Instagram handle. I would love to see, you know, a fun like curly cute font that kind of matches your logo here because I think all of the elements on their own are cute, but I want to see that glue that kind of holds them together. Now, I am going to pop into the extension because I did a little of scoping initially. I’m looking at this guinea pig umbrella. It looks like there’s fantastic keywords in the title, but you have some one-word tags here. you you could put travel accessories as one tag and get rid of the tag travel accessories because you’re already ranking for travel accessories by having them separate. Other, that’s a one-word tag, and I don’t know of anybody searching other. Umbrella, um, again, that’s a one-word tag. You’ve got guinea pig, guinea pig, guinea pig, guinea pig, guinea pig. That’s a lot of unnecessary repetition. So, definitely consider trying to get some other keywords in there. small pets, rodents, cavies. There’s a lot of different ways that you can say guinea pig, but I definitely feel like you have something here because there’s a fantastic niche. I I think that my biggest critique here is to expand your net of keywords. I see I have to point out in the chat, Barbara McI said, “I thought that said cavity whisperer.” And I think if you were in the dentist niche, that would be hilarious. I That’s really Yeah. Yeah, perfect. I didn’t know what cavies were when I first saw this. I had to Google it. I had no idea. I mean, I assumed it was about guinea pigs because the shop did a very clear job of expressing that, but I had no idea. Okay. Uh, our final store submitted by, let me see here, by Chelsea Juicy Threads. Thank you, Chelsea. Love it. I absolutely love this shop. I just got back from a huge EDM festival, which is why I sound so sick. And this is exactly the type of stuff that I would expect to see like at the festival. The first thing that I noticed, this is this is drawn. You didn’t AI generate this. This is not clip art. The style is cohesive. I can tell that you’re an artist and I absolutely love that. That is your thing. Where is your banner? You’ve got to get a beautiful banner because your style is amazing. I think a lot of people are under the impression that the banner is going to distract from the product when in reality you have less than 7 seconds to convince that person of the vibe, the emotions, the feelings of your brand. The same as when you walk into one of those cute little um shops, like if you go to like a small town and walk in a little shop and it just smells good and you think to yourself, I’m in the right place. That is the job of your banner and you’re an artist. So, draw something awesome for your banner. I know you can do it because your style is absolutely beautiful. Um, I also noticed first of all, fantastic photos. I love that you do the custom backgrounds. Even though everything is kind of different, it’s cohesive in an almost purposefully chaotic way, and I love that. However, looking at your title, Juicy is your brand name. Okay. Um, I see you’ve only got two sales. You’re trying to establish a brand name for yourself. I’m doing the same thing in my shop. So, that’s fine. But that only leaves us with two keyword opportunities. Ribb cage tea. That’s it. Um, you’ve got to get some more keywords in there. I would definitely recommend trying to expand out a little bit into maybe the types of people. I just gave you a great one. This stuff would do so well at raves and EDM festivals and music festivals and um you know I I just feel like there’s so much potential here especially since you’re handdrawing uh street wear colorful Y2K there’s almost like a Lisa Frankes like colorful thing and obviously don’t say like Lisa Frank inspired but you could absolutely run with that colorful Y2K vibe. Why? Because that’s I mean the kids are loving that right now. And not to sound old. Um let’s see. Bold graphic te like gift for her, gift for him. They’re very generic terms. I would definitely try to lean more into those specific niches like we discussed because there’s a market for this stuff for sure. I I saw so many people wearing similar things at the festival that I was just at. I saw so many booths selling similar things. I would absolutely love to see this brand go viral. And and honestly, if you’re not on TikTok like showing your process, maybe doing like um time lapses of you creating your artwork or or Instagram reels, that’s where you need to be. And thankfully, there’s been a lot of fantastic sessions about social media today. I I agree. I think the colors here just they pop. It’s beautiful. It’s clearly original. Um, a really cool idea. Yeah. Okay, we have a few minutes for some questions or did you have something else you want to say here? No, no, that’s it. I would love to do some questions. So, Mary Castro has a really good question here. Um, I’m a newbie and AI gives me suggestions for titles and tags, but then Etsy gives me a different title suggestion. What do you recommend? Okay, so AI generated titles and tags have no data behind them. There’s none. If you’re asking chat GPT to generate your title, it’s taking a good guess, but there’s no data or evidence behind it. Um, and Etsy is kind of doing the same thing. Etsy, when they are recommending a title, what they’re recommending is a clean looking title that is userfriendly that isn’t necessarily backed by search volumes. That’s where tools like E-Rank come in because what we’re providing you with is the actual number of searches and the competition levels, the clicks and the click-through rate. And even if you’re not using a tool like E-Rank, you’re going to see significantly better results even looking at your Etsy marketplace insights rather than just generating through ChatGpt, uh, Grock, COD, whatever your chosen tool is. It’s not backed by data. It’s just giving you a suggestion. So, I would really I’m I’m a data nut and I’m not even a data nut that’s going to tell you you have to use E-rank. Etsy themselves provides those marketplace insights. They’re not great in my opinion, but it’s better than nothing because at least you know the search volumes is for keywords that maybe you didn’t think of and then you go and validate those, double check those yourself. Um, that was a really Yeah, that was a really good question. Uh, next question is from Cat Aesthetic Beach. What do you think of using a loss leader, one lower item on Etsy to get people to click or be more visible due to price? Okay, so we’ve run this test um multiple times and I have had I mean Leah, you know this, some of you in the chat know this. My live streams are big and we have done polls and we have asked thousands of people. The majority consensus is that if you’re seeing a price that is like $5.99 for a onesie, but what the photo is is a $40 hoodie, shoppers tend to be turned off. Um, so I think that there is a way to do it where prices are similar, you know, in the same ballpark. But I think that if the intention is to make the price look as low low low as possible when the objective is to sell the higher price item, shoppers tend to know when they click. And from the data that we’ve collected, shoppers tend to not like it. So I would try to make sure that when grouping products in singular listings, the price ranges aren’t like the price of a sticker or the price of a hoodie because that just gets confusing and might turn shoppers off. I personally don’t care for it either. If I want to buy a t-shirt and it says it’s $5 or something and then it’s actually a baby onesie in small white that’s $5 and t-shirts the standard. Yeah. Yeah. Um Annie Keller doesn’t have a question but she just wants to tell you that Stara’s nails are so pretty. My my my amplified nails. Aren’t they cute? I love you Annie. I had to say that. Sorry. Uh next question is from Bobby Eome. What was the name of that book again that you mentioned? Oh. Uh, The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwarz. The cover is yellow and it has eggs on it. Okay. It has eggs on it by Fantastic. Okay. Or the paradox of choice. Yes. Paradox of Choice. Okay. Uh, Kristen Mcu Mcuan, if you have a collection like a series of paintings that you have put onto cups. So, there are six different cups. Can you put that together into one listing at a different price than the sixth individual would be? Uh, sure. Uh, yeah. I think that because what people are buying is the artwork itself. I like to use like Thomas King Kaid as a fantastic example because he’s passed away, but you can still buy his, you know, art on POD. I think that at that point, as long as you’re a notable artist and you’re selling your art and just giving people to select the option for the art, it’s a little bit different because you’re advertising as the artisan. Um, I I dare say that as long as it’s very clear what they’re getting and you have everything labeled really well, I don’t see a problem with it at all. Mhm. Mhm. Okay. Let’s see. I think we have Okay, we have two minutes left. If I can find another question here real quick. Give me a good one. Uhhuh. Uhhuh. Oh, okay. So, this isn’t a question, but it’s a good point. Lynn says, “For keywords, definitely avoid using any technical terms that your buyer won’t know about or search for.” Yes. No. Yeah. Yeah. So, I even see that a lot. I’ll see people use like terms like sublimation or AOP and I’m like shoppers don’t know what AOP means. You know what I mean? Like those are terms that we as vendors know because we’re used to them. But we need to make sure like we’re using the language that those shoppers are using. And that might be a great use if you want to use AI for something. maybe say like, uh, what are keywords that a real human would use to describe an AOP shirt with eyeballs all over it? Like something like that. Yeah. Okay, that was a really good question. Great questions overall. Thank you so much, Stara, for the advice. Um, thank you to everybody who submitted their stores today. That’s a very brave thing to do. I hope you got some great advice from Stara. So, one more shout out to Denise, Sarah, and Chelsea. Thank you. Now, I’m going to announce our winners real quick for the E-rank giveaway. Our winners are Cat Aesthetic Beach, Melody Sanford, and Rosie Pots Jr., congratulations. You guys got what is it? E-rank expert plan. Congratulations. Um, Stara, real quick, 30 seconds. Any last advice, words of inspiration? Don’t spend six hours doing SEO. No expert sends spends that long doing SEO. When you have a niche, you already know what keywords to use. I mean, really, that’s it. Define a niche and use the keywords that your target audience perfect will recognize you for. Perfect. Thank you so much for being here with us today, Stara. We have talked about Etsy, Shopify, Popup. We cannot leave out Tik Tok shop. Right. For the final session, I will be chatting with the number one pod seller on Tik Tok shop, April Duplantis, and someone who is starting to make some serious moves on Tik Tok shop, Riley Richardson. But first, all of that good stuff you can do in Printify with Printify that we have mentioned so far can also be done all in the Printify mobile app on your phone on the go. Check it out. Setting up your Printify store, it’s quick and easy, done in minutes. Running it on the go, that’s a different story. And it’s exactly what the Printify app is built for. So, what can it actually do for you? It all starts from the dashboard. Keep an eye on your wallet right from here. Top it up in a few taps so your incoming orders get fulfilled the second they land. No delays waiting on funds. One store, sure, but also two, three, or 10. Switch between them with a tap and run your business across every platform you sell on. Printify Popup, Tik Tok Shop, Etsy, Shopify, and more. All from the same app. Naturally, looking after your orders, sort through what’s waiting for review so nothing falls behind. Check your incoming orders, edit anything that needs changing, and submit to production with one tap. Especially handy if your orders need approval before printing. go through every detail, especially personalization, right from your phone, so nothing gets sent to print without your Okay, just a heads up, your approval settings themselves are set up on desktop, not in the app. My products is where you’ll spend most of your time growing your business. When you create products from the catalog, they land here. Tap any product and handle everything. Edit the design, adjust varants, set up shipping and pricing, and most importantly, publish straight to your store. What’s great is that you don’t have to finish it all on your phone. Save a draft on the go, then pick up right where you left off once you’re back on your laptop. My products also come with two new features we’re really excited about. AI mockups and sharing. With AI mockups, pick your print area, choose a model or an isolated product shot, add a background, tweak the prompt, and voila, a professional mockup ready for your shop. No photo shoot required. Once your product’s done, share it with friends, family, or on social media using the share feature. It’s the fastest way to get it out there. And the link lets people buy right on the spot. When inspiration hits, because let’s be honest, it never waits until you’re back at your desk. The catalog’s got you. Pick a blank, drop in a design, and list a brand new product in just a few taps. From idea to live listing before your coffee is even done brewing. Or if you’re on the move, start a draft and pick it back up once you’re at your computer. With one in three Etsy sales being personalized, this is the feature you’ll want in your back pocket. When designing your product from the catalog, this is where you add the Etsy personalization tool, letting buyers enter custom text or upload their own images. Manual orders are the fastest way to get your hands on samples and test what you’re actually selling. Create them right on the spot. Head to the cart section, pick your design products, and add them straight to your cart. Just like shopping on any online store. Adjust anything you need, then check out in just a few taps, even with Apple Pay or Google Pay for a fast, easy purchase. That’s your entire business in your hands. And we’re just getting started. Download the Printify app on the App Store or Google Play and start running your shop right here, right now. Since I’ve joined Tik Tok, the revenue at the very least quadrupled. In the beginning, I would go live and I would have like the $1,000 live. This was early on, not my first lives now. So, if you’re starting out, like my first lives were like not even $200. My last mega live, we did $32,000 in one single live. And very quickly, May of this year was my oneyear anniversary on Tik Tok.

I am a work from home mom. I have two daughters named Prim Rose and Poppy. And so that’s how I came up with Poppy Rose Print Company. I started the business on Etsy before I moved over to Tik Tok. I was already a print on demand seller with Printify through Etsy. Um and then I was talked into going on Tik Tok. My brand is basically like very girly um coette bows is kind of where it started for me, the Coette trend. And it really just took off with that. Like one of my first like big big designs was just like a coette football bow. And so now that’s kind of still I do a lot of holiday work, you know, t-shirts, sweatshirts, that those are my like really the bread and butter of the business is t-shirts and sweatshirts.

I think the biggest like a thing that has changed is really the social aspect of it because now when I was on Etsy, um it’s kind of like my face is never behind it. Like it’s very kind of secretive and and stuff like that the who who the person is selling. But now that we’re on Tik Tok, it’s really so much more fun because you get to be the face of the business and you get to like know all of your customers and you get to talk to them personally and you get to sell to them personally and there’s just much more of like a social media presence and aspect of it. But that’s also what helps the business grow so much and and why I’ve been able to sell so much is by posting all the videos and going live and stuff like that. So I think the social aspect of it has been the biggest change for me from starting.

People kept talking about the potential and I kept seeing you know other sellers and how much they were doing in the lives and stuff like that. And so I wanted to sell more. I want to sell more too. There’s a lot of other avenues that I can take print on demand too. I know of those avenues. I’m just trying to get the time for it. I feel like right now like my heart and soul is with Tik Tok though because it’s just so good. But there are some other places that I would like to keep expanding to. Like I I would like for this to be a much bigger business for me than it is already.

When I started, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was nervous and I was scared and I was like I didn’t have a professional setup. Um, I was literally in my dining room and I was hanging clothes like on curtain rod behind me um on my window and it was a Friday evening and I remember I did like $2400 in the live which truly now if I did like $2,400 in the live I would be like that was awful. But I did $2,400 in that in that live and I just remember we were like oh my gosh like at that point we could see the potential of how much you could do in a live. That was probably my second month going live. So, it really did pick up pretty quickly for me. And then I knew that people were doing like much bigger lines. I was like, that’s gonna I’m gonna do that.

As far as like big turning points for Tik Tok shop, I had some really good also um affiliate um moments as well from from sending out samples to affiliates and stuff like that. This affiliate bought the sample from me. I never knew that she bought it and we’re friends now. Like I reached out to her after that and I was like, “Oh my god, this is so amazing.” She’s like, “I know.” The amount of money that we made from that was crazy. Her video um took off and she sold 10,000 of this red, white, and blue shirt. Now, I’ve had several affiliate posts that have taken off. And then also some of my own posts that have taken off for Mother’s Day. I had a post that I did. I laid the blanket on my bed and did a video of it and posted it. So, nothing extravagant. You know, you don’t have to have all this like fireworks and stuff to do these videos. I just laid it across my bed. I did a video of it. I posted that video. A month later, that video popped off on Tik Tok. I sold 5,000 blankets in one week. It was crazy. So, it’s not just the lives that you can make crazy money from, like videos, affiliate posts, all of the things. There’s so many different ways to make a lot of money on TikTok.

Lots of different things, like several different things really motivate me to keep going. Um, I am wildly competitive, like almost offensively, so that also that always motivates me to keep going. I want to be the best at things, but also I have two daughters and in a family, and they my daughters get to see how well I do, you know, they get to see me go to these events and and do this stuff, and that’s so great for them to be able to see me as their mom doing so good with my business. It’s a lot of financial freedom. after um I started selling on Tik Tok shop, I I paid off all of my debt. We just bought a house. That’s such great motivation, you know. I I can take my children and family on vacations. Last year, we went to Disney, you know, and so that motivation of just being able to do, you know, do all the things that I want to do for my kids and and all of that stuff. That’s definitely my main motivation

because I owned two stores before this. When I saw print on demand and I and like I learned the logistics of it, I’m like, “This is brilliant.” I’ve had overhead. I’ve had employees. I’ve had all the things. I’ve had to purchase inventory and then try to sell off all that inventory. I think that everyone is eventually going to move to print on demand. You can test literally anything. Just throw it out. They’re like, “You know what? I’ll try a mug. I’ll try a blanket.” I tried a blanket and sold 5,000 blankets. It’s like I have a million dollar factory and I have millions of dollars worth of inventory, but I’m not paying for any of it. So, I mean, print on diminish is genius.

There’s not a limit on on how much you can sell. You can sell as much as you want. Whereas, when I a lifetime ago was making my own shirts, I would have to stop. If I reach like 50 shirts, I need to stop because then I need to take two days to make those 50 shirts in my living room with my heat press. You know what I mean? But like I could sell 5,000 blankets in a weekend and and then just go out and like I can do whatever I want because someone else is making all the blankets. The inventory is pretty much endless. I don’t think that I’ve ever had Prrenify run out of anything and we couldn’t fulfill it um ever. So I mean the inventory is basically endless. Even with like the Tik Tok guys, they’re like, you know, how’s your inventory? I’m like, the inventory is is endless.

If you’re considering POD, if you’re considering starting this type of business, POD is just a,000% the way to go. I mean, save yourself all of the heartache and all of the headache and all of the wasted money that you’re going to spend on inventory, on overhead, on employees, on your stress level. feel like you literally have millions of dollars of of inventory of merchandise at your fingertip for the low cost of I don’t know what is printify a month like $19.99 or something like that. All you have to do is list it. All you have to do is is get started and list your product. Someone else is making it and someone else is is buying all of the inventory. So, I mean, if you’re considering starting a business, it’s at this point it’s literally the only way to go is print on demand.

I’m a

Well, it is the very last session. How sad are we? I mean, sad. I’m a little bit sad. I’m having so much fun with everyone here today. Um, but we are going to finish Amplified super strong with Tik Tok Shop. It is absolutely the place to be selling these days. I don’t care if you have never sold a thing in your life or if you already have bestsellers all over Etsy or Shopify, you are going to be inspired by this conversation because I have probably two of the best people for it. Sitting next to me is Riley, who I’m going to let you share for yourself a little bit about who are you? Yeah, my name’s Riley first. I sell on Etsy primarily. I’ve been selling on Etsy for almost four years. It’ll be four years next month. I started as a broke college kid. Now it’s my full-time job. I went full-time in January of this year. I started teaching through um Printify Sellers Club two years ago. Yeah, two years ago now that it’s September. Um I love teaching design and research specifically. And then in April of this year, I went to a Printify conference about Tik Tok where I said I’ll never sell on Tik Tok. And now I sell on Tik Tok about as much as I sell on Etsy. I’d say my time is split pretty evenly between the two of them. So about six months on Tik Tok now. And I’m really excited to share a little bit more about that journey with you guys today. I’m sure a lot of people are saying right now like, “No, I’m never going to touch TikTok, whatever.” Yeah, me too. That’s where I was. Exactly. Um, but you’re going to come in hot with a giveaway, right? We are going to do store credit giveaway number three. So, five of you, five more of you are going to win $20 in Printify store credit. Riley, would you like to ask them the question? Yes. Okay, guys, drop this in the chat. I’m curious. What is your experience with Tik Tok Chop? Are you a scroller? Are you an active poster? Are you lurking? Are you creating? Are you shopping? Where are you at? Do are you even on Tik Tok? Do you use the Tik Tok app? Put it in the comments and we’re going to do a giveaway. Thank you so much. And remember, if you’re watching in YouTube, you can still join Amplified Arena Sellers Club. It is not too late. It is free from there and you can be eligible to win these

But we’re going to share a link for that again. Basically, if you are totally new to Etsy, Shopify, POD in general, you can join this program for one-on-one mentorship, uh, Q&A sessions, community, everything. And we have kind of another mentorship program. and we’ll share all the links for you if you specifically want more about Tik Tok shop or Etsy. Okay, so that’ll be if you’re a little bit more advanced already and really ready to kind of dedicate the time for this, but we’ll talk more about that a little bit later. Real quick, how about we announce those store credit winners? Would you like to do the honors? Yes, absolutely. Okay, so we have five store credit winners. These are going to be Jeannie Denning. I hope I’m saying your name right. I’m probably butchering it. I’m so sorry. Uh Tracy Stewart is our second winner. Lily Eric, Jim Miller, and Annie Lee Keller. Congratulations, guys. How fun. Let us know uh in the chat what what samples you’re going to order with that store credit. Um all right, moving on. In this call, we also have April Duplanthis, who started exactly where you are right now. And now she is the top selling number one print on demand merchant on Tik Tok Shop US with millions of dollars in sales. Absolutely insane. But April, say hi. Tell us about yourself, where you started. Yeah. Hi. My name is April. Um, I am a work from home mom, you guys. um 40 years old. I started this business um about three years ago starting on Etsy. Um really I was just looking for like this job that I could I could stay home with my children. I had just had another baby. She was three months old and I wanted to stay home with her. Her name is Poppy. Um and so I was like researching like jobs that I could do online and I came across POD. I’m sure like a lot of us did. And I just was like very interested, like very intrigued because I I owned a storefront already. And so I started my journey on Etsy. Um because I was watching some Cassie Johnson videos, of course. And so I started on Etsy and I I started on Etsy in an extremely saturated niche, you guys. I went only teacher. So when people tell you it’s too saturated, I’m here to shut down that immediately. Um I I started in the teacher niche. Um, and I started personalizing teacher shirts and I very quickly in within the same year um, became a top seller on Etsy. And so after that, Printify kind of reached out to me and they were like, um, we would like for you to try to start selling on TikTok. And I was like, yeah, that’s not going to happen. I’m absolutely will not be doing that. I’m like, I’m I’m 40. I’m that’s for the kids. Like, I’m not doing it. Um, and so after they actually like asked me like three to four times and even had Tik Tok contact me, I was like, “Fine, I will try it. I will try it.” Like I had to start from step one. Like I had to open a Tik Tok. Like I I didn’t even have a Tik Tok account. So I started from zero followers with actually zero knowledge of Tik Tok at all. So like if you think you could start in a worse spot than me, you actually cannot. Um, and so I just started there and I, you know, I I posted content and I I did what my research told me to do and I started going live and stuff like that. And within I’m in my my I’m in my third year on Tik Tok right now and I’ve sold over $5 million on on Tik Tok in three in two and a half years now. Oh wow. Absolutely insane. Uh, I need to say, April, that you have a name bestie in the chat, April Ford, and she she’s commented, “April, you’re my inspiration to keep growing. I can’t believe May was your start. Means I need to pick it up before my one year next January.” So, you have a name, bestie, there. And you are her inspiration. What a great name. I know. It’s a pretty good month, too. I don’t know. It’s a It’s a great month. It is. Um, okay. So, again, you took us back to the banning. What were you What was the exact moment? And do you remember where you’re just like, “Oh my gosh, this works.” Yeah. And I I really do like attribute a bunch of that to owning a brick-and-mortar store initially. Um and so I think when a lot of people go live and they compare themselves to other people going live and they’re like, “But they had, you know, 100 people in the room and I only had live was like my big like moment I think when I was like, you know, there were I think in my first live there may have been like 20 people in in the room with me and I just was like, “Oh my god.” like, you know, there’s 20 people in this live right now that I get a chance to sell to. And like when I had my brickandmortar store, if 20 people would have walked into that store, like I feel like at dinner that night, I would have told my husband like, I had 20 customers today. Like, you know, that’s so many people to get the opportunity to sell to in such, you know, in in a short amount of time. And then you get 20 more people and you get 20 more people. So, like just the lives for me, like being able to sell to that many people, having the opportunity to sell to that many people at once. When I used to like sit in my brick and mortar store and maybe see two customers all day long. So, when I when I realized how that worked and how many people were coming through, I was like, I can I can really make this work, having the opportunity to sell to that many people at once. I I can already tell people like you’re you’re talking all about lives and people like, oh my gosh, I will never go live in front of camera. We’re going to dive more into like live selling a bit later and you will get to that point. I promise you’re going to do it. Um, okay. Tell us a little bit more what the actual first month, the first 30 days looked like, kind of the work you put in before any results showed up and when did those numbers start to like really turn for you? Was it like just a viral moment or was it kind of a slow buildup? Um, it was it was actually pretty quick if you compare it to Etsy because Etsy is just so slow. you know, you you post a design and then three months later maybe you get start getting some sales from it. But like with Tik Tok, it was actually very quick for me. I you know, I opened my account, I immediately started adding um just as many items as I could get on backed by research. And so like you know, within the first month, I probably had a hundred items on my Tik Tok shop. So once you start like you got to bust down the doors like put all of your best sellers on there, you know, backed by research and then I started posting content. So I would just and bad content like it wasn’t great content. I wasn’t like you know getting dressed up. I wasn’t even in the content. I would just throw a shirt on my bed, film a video of it, post it. Like all the content was was not great, but it was still working and I was consistently putting out content. Um and so I started seeing within a couple of days I would see like a couple of sales coming in. Um, and so then one morning about a month in, um, I think it, no, no, I think it was like about a month in, I was making some pretty consistent sales. Like I think by month two, I had actually just from posting content, I was at like $23,000 in sales by by month two. Um, month three was when uh, a creator had purchased one of my shirts. I didn’t even know about this. This is how Tik Tok can just make you money in the background. Um, a creator had had bought one of my shirts and she did a vid a video of it and so I woke up one morning and like just I I check my sales first thing every morning. So like I wake up and I check my sales and I can’t even it was hundreds of sales and I about fell out of my bed. I thought something was wrong. I didn’t know what was happening and her video had gone viral and she had just sold hundreds and hundreds like in the end it was like $10,000 worth of this one July 4th t-shirt. Um, and so that was my first viral moment three months in and like at that point I was like, “Yes, like let’s let’s do this. Let’s get some more products out there. Let’s get some eyes on the products. Like this can be incredible.” And then it was I’m already like I’m so inspired. I’m ready to just run away and start my TikTok shop. But okay, you y’all still need to hang out a little bit more because we got really good info still coming up. Uh, I want to hear a little bit now from both Riley and April because we’re going to talk about kind of Etsy versus Tik Tok Shop. Let us know in the chat, too, who here right now is already selling on Etsy and is kind of like thinking about the jump. Um, while you’re doing that, how much overlap though is there really between Etsy and Tik Tok shop? Like what can you transfer over from Etsy and what needs to just be completely forgotten about? I think the processes and systems are very similar. So, in both of them, you have to have good designs. Design is what sells your product. You have to know how to create a product. You have to know that it needs good product photos. You have to create mockups. You have to have a pricing strategy behind it, a shipping strategy. The that’s the same regardless of if you’re selling on Etsy or if you’re selling on Tik Tok shop. What’s different is that on Etsy, you have to create listing after listing. Number one, your designs get better, right? The more you design, the better your designs become. On Tik Tok, you have to create video after video. So, they’re both a volume play in different ways, and they’re both research that you have to do. On Etsy, you’re doing research on the products and on the designs to know, and you do that same thing on Tik Tok, but you have to do a lot more of it for Etsy because you’re creating so many more designs. On Tik Tok, you’re researching the video part of it to learn how to create those really good videos and what makes a product really sell. Yeah, I think um you know, 10,000% the research is number one. So, if you you need to do the same research as well on Tik Tok and you know, use Tik Tok as your research tool. That’s the way that I do my research as well. I use Tik Tok and I use Etsy as well. But I will go into the Tik Tok shop and I will see what is selling, what’s in a thousand carts, what are people buying, what do they love, what niches are selling, you know, what what items are selling. Are we selling sweatshirts? Are we selling hoodies? Like what what is everyone focused on buying right now? And then make those products. The best thing about Tik Tok compared to Etsy, though, is that it is in real time. Y’all know if you’re selling on Etsy, it’s so slow. And I feel like there is also some luck involved in Etsy. You’re like, will this h you know, you you I feel like sometimes we can use the best SEO and the best keywords and everything and your design is researchbased and sometimes it still doesn’t even sell. And I know that to be true because on Etsy, I do an AB test on mine. And so I’ll do the exact same design. One of them, like I had a ghost shirt that last year that sold 25,000 in one of them. The other one did not have one single sale on it. So, like I feel like there is a little bit of luck on on Etsy, whereas on Tik Tok, you actually have a lot more control. I can I can find a a a product that I that is backed by research that I think is going to be incredible. I can either one post it that day and make like three posts of it and by tomorrow it could start gaining some traction, but my favorite part is the live. I can find it that morning and sell a hundred of it that night. Um, and so it’s just it can be so much faster for you. You don’t play that waiting game. You also have a little bit of control when it comes to content as well because like you know with Etsy there is no content. Well, I’m going to post 10 times a day. Not everyone’s going to do that. I’ve posted six times already today. Not everyone is going to do that. So if you have that drive and you have that motivation and you’re willing to put the work in, you’re going to see better results than those people that are not posting at all. And I think that’s a really really good point, April, because as business owners, you have to have that grit in you. Like you said, you posted six times today and those are videos that you’re filming that you’re putting together and you’re not done. It’s a lot of people say, “Well, I tried it and it didn’t work.” Okay. How many videos did you create? Because if it was less than a hundred, no, you didn’t. You have to try a little harder sometimes. And that’s and it needs to be for months. And sorry, that’s a a kick in the butt. But if you really if you want to make the money that’s possible with Tik Tok, you have to put that work in to see that success. And it’s not it’s simple. It’s a repeatable strategy. Once you do it, you do it over over and over. But you have to do it and you have to do a lot of it. And the content doesn’t have to be anything like super complicated. It doesn’t have to be hard. We’re going to talk about creating content just in a few more minutes. Um but yeah, it doesn’t have to be hard, right? Back to Etsy real quick though. Um, how much can you trust your data on Etsy for Tik Tok? So, if I already do have a bestseller on Etsy, is it a good candidate to be a bestseller on Tik Tok or No, I think absolutely. As long as the difference is people are coming on Etsy searching for a specific item. People on when they’re on Tik Tok, the item is discovering them through the algorithm, either through the creators that they follow or whatever Tik Tok decides they are, right? whatever the Tik Tok algorithm decides to feed them. So, as long as your product has that emotional hook that converts them and convinces them to buy, absolutely. Now, if it’s a little bit more specific, it might be harder for Tik Tok to find that target customer, especially by the time you start sending it out to affiliates and things. But if you have a design that’s based on research that has a slightly wider target audience because Tik Tok’s a little there’s a lot more customers than Etsy has and it can convert with that emotional hook because with Tik Tok people are scrolling to be entertained. They’re not necessarily scrolling to buy like they are on Etsy. So as long as you can make that sale with that emotional connection. Absolutely. Yeah, I agree as well. Um and that’s why I kind of do my my research twofold for Tik Tok. Like I will start in Tik Tok and find like see what people are buying, what everyone is liking, you know, what niche we’re in right now and stuff like that, what just what’s popular. And then I’ll go look for a design in Etsy. Um, and then I’ll find the design in Etsy that’s already in 300 cart. So I know what I was looking for. I know what niche I was looking for. I just need the best design in that niche. So then I go to that’s when I go to Etsy and I look for the most because you know on Etsy like there’s going to be a hundred different variations of the same design. Well, which one is is the best one? And so that’s what I look for. And that’s not like some Sorry, April. That’s not some magic skill April has, right? She’s good at it. But it’s a skill that you can hone in from researching and from identifying patterns. And that’s not like, oh well, you did it for six hours, now you’re an expert. That is time that you’re spending every day on those platforms looking at bestsellers and trying to identify those patterns. And yeah, April’s great at it because she’s done it so so much. So, that’s something you guys can learn, too. I do it every single night, though, as well. Like, that’s my nighttime scroll is is designs and Etsy. I look every single night. I have a friend that’s like constantly sending me designs. I’m like, I already have it because I’m already Look, I’m always looking for designs. Yeah. Well, this is a competitor research that you have to do. No matter where you’re selling, you have to look at other people’s shops, other people’s videos, products, what they’re doing. Um, one habit or assumption from Etsy that you totally just have to unlearn, forget about

um I think mine was profit margins. Like in Etsy, you know, you you get better profit margins than you do in Tik Tok. Tik Tok is a quantity game. like you are you’re selling a lot more um than you are at Etsy. Like you know it’s funny my husband runs my Etsy now um because I just do not have time. And so he runs the Etsy now. And so at the end of the day at dinner like we we play a fun game for me. Um and and he’s like how many sales? I’m like how many did sales did you get today? And he’s like 37. And I’m like oh okay. He’s like you. And I’m like 400. Um because you know I mean just today I I think I’m at like 125 on TikTok. I it’s it’s a quantity. You’re selling a lot more on Tik Tok. There’s 50 million buyers on Tik Tok every single day scrolling, you know, and so stop pricing for profit margins so high, especially when you’re live. And I’m sure we’ll talk about that later, but like the profit lives are about quickly converting. So like let’s leave those profit margins lower. You know, sometimes I’m live and I I get five dollars a sale, but like once that live ends, I’m really not doing any more work, you know? So, if I get $5 a sale and I sell 400 items, like it’s I’m okay to make $2,000 in a couple hours, you know, it’s fine. I think for me, it’s my design strategy. So, on Etsy, because you have to have more listings on Etsy, it’s kind of like which one’s going to take off. I can have because I sell a lot of bachelorette items, I can have a specific phrase for the bachelorette niche with a specific color scheme, and I’m making 10 that have that exact same main photo. They have that exact same phrase. They have that exact same color scheme. They look different because I’m targeting different trends and different layouts. On Tik Tok, you have less designs because you need to invest a little bit more in them, either ordering samples or sending them to affiliates. Not every design you create on Tik Tok is going to take off, but it’s going to be a lot higher percentage than those on Etsy. So, you’re not making a whole bunch of listings. You’re making fewer listings that are more intentional, and they have to be good. We have a really definitely Yeah, we have a really good question here from Karen Long. Can you open a Tik Tok shop without followers? Did you guys already have followers and account or I opened a brand new account? Right now, even six months in, I have 500. Yeah, I started from zero as well. Okay. So, yeah, don’t need followers, just need to be on the platform. You need followers to go live. So, I think you must have a certain amount of followers before you’re allowed to go live for the first time. I don’t know what that number is. That was a long time ago for me. Um, but it’s not a super high number. Okay, let’s uh shift gears into the actual content creation now because we’ve been getting a lot of questions and comments saying like, “I don’t know how to create content. I’m camera shy.” This and that. Walk us through your content process from like how you find an idea to actually posting the video and also has it changed from your very first video to now. I think it’s a lot of scrolling on TikTok. This is I feel like when you start selling on Tik Tok, you have to kiss Tik Tok goodbye for entertainment. If I want entertainment in the form of short form videos, call me a grandma. I’m on Facebook reals, right? My Facebook knows I like to sew. I like to cook. I like to bake. My Tik Tok thinks I’m a Tik Tok affiliate, which is someone who sells Tik Tok products because I get on the Tik Tok app and I’m looking at how best can I sell my product. So, I’m looking at affiliate videos of them promoting other products and I’m studying that. I’m looking at what kind of hooks are doing well. That’s how you get someone engaged. In the first couple seconds, I’m looking at what kind of call to actions. So, you got their engagement. How do you sell them? And I’m really studying that content to kind of learn what can I take from this. Just like when I’m looking at Etsy, I’m looking at what design elements are going into this, what kind of mockup are they using, and how can I use that to convert. So, looking at that kind of content, save as many as you can, send them to yourself. What is it? And then learn from it. And then in put those little different factors in your own videos and make a lot of them. So, it’s a similar idea like you said with Etsy like okay in Etsy you’re looking at um what is this person in their design SEO so you’re not looking at that but you’re looking at the video break down the other person’s video not their design and see what’s working exactly so there’s a ton of different styles that can work even if you want to do faceless content before I came here I’m here for a week I grabbed my four favorite shirts the four ones that I think have the most potential and it took me half an hour to just film the raw content for I did a bunch of flatlay ones I did a couple that were talking and I did the voiceovers while I was here, maybe in the morning before I was getting ready, that kind of thing. So, it doesn’t have to be, you don’t have to be a a machine to do it. You just have to dedicate some time and dedicate even more time to learning how to do it. What’s your process like? Um, yeah. So, first of all, I want to second what Riley said, and I think that that you y’all should realize that it’s not coincidental that both mine and Riley’s um Tik Toks look exactly the same. Like I bet when she scrolls through her Tik Tok it looks like mine where it’s like here’s five hooks that are working. Like here’s five of the like it it my Tik Tok thinks that I’m an affiliate as well because I am constantly researching what is working on Tik Tok. Um so you guys have if you want to be a top seller you need to put in the time and research to to but it’s not hard but just to figure out what is working. And like Riley said you know when you are scrolling through you know type in women’s t-shirts if that’s what you’re selling. If you’re selling hoodies, type in hoodies. Whatever you’re selling, type it in in the shop. And then scroll through and stop when you see a video that has hundreds of thousands of views on it. Um because something in that video is getting the views. Analyze what it is. Is it their hook? Is it did they have a physical hook at the beginning? Like what is it their caption? Is it the hashtags? Is it a a combination of it all? Um and that stuff it, you know, it sounds like it’s hard, but it’s not. And you can use their hook. They don’t care. It’s just a hook. Whether it says like POV, you just found the cutest fall sweatshirt. They’re they’re not mad if you use that hook. Like, steal their hook. Um, but you know, don’t steal their design, but you can definitely take their hook. Um, but you know, my content, people are always like, “Oh, I can’t make the content. Content’s so hard.” Like, it’s so easy. Stop thinking it’s so hard. Please go to my TikTok after this. Don’t leave. Uh, and then look at the six videos that I’ve posted today. I took all of those vid videos in roughly 20 minutes on my dining room table and then posted them all at the same time. You can rapidfire videos. You can post all your content. It does not matter what time your content can be repetitive. The same people are not seeing it. No one is going to be like, “Gosh, she’s so boring. She’s always posting the same thing.” Different people are seeing your content. So, repeat it. I will do today I’ll do the same shirts again. Um, and that will work. I will get sales off of those videos. They are easy. Content is so easy to make. People over complicate it and it’s not it’s not complicated at all. If you need some examples of content, just go to my Tik Tok and look at my content. You can do them just like that. I do not care if you steal my ideas. Just not her designs. Just not her designs. Yes. But the ideas go for it. Can you quickly share what your Tik Tok handle is for our audience? Uh Poppy Rose Print Co. Poppy Rose Print Co. So check it out. Not right now because we’re busy here, but afterwards note it down. you can go look at her Tik Tok. Um, so yeah, there’s a lot of options obviously for faceless stuff, whatever. But face showing your face can make a difference too. Uh, a lot of people are saying they are camera shy or I’m too old to be doing TikTok or oh, I don’t look good, whatever, whatever. Were you one of those people at first and like how did you get over it? What do you say to someone who’s just terrified of the camera? When I did my first, this is a little bit different, but when I did my first class for the sellers club, it was a design class because I just love design. And I sat in my office at work because I was not full-time yet. And I literally baldled my eyes out, which is great before you have to go on camera, right? To have a red puffy face with tears streaming down. But even though anxiety tears, yeah, just like, man, I’m going to look bad on this video. Man, I’m going to say something stupid. Man, like why am I even doing this? And it was like probably a good cry sesh for like half an hour of am I capable of this? Like what if I look bad? And now I’ve been teaching for two years. I’ve been selling for four. And even at the time I knew I had good ideas to share. And like that’s still something that people watch and that’s great. Now I’m like I make better content. But you’re going to be scared and you’re going to have to do it anyways. Now that being said, you don’t have to put your face on it. The best video that’s been done for my shop by an affiliate was faceless content. So it definitely has potential. But also, Tik Tok, April literally said that she sold millions of dollars in a couple years. Imagine, imagine someone comes up to you and they says they say, “Hey, I’m going to give you a million dollars in three years, but you have to be on camera for a little while to do it.” You’re not going to be like, “Actually, I don’t think I could be on camera for millions of dollars. Come on.” That’s a really Yeah, you get over it real quick. Like, you do you get over it real quick. Um but you know I also think I do think face is important as well because um I think a lot of my success is also attributed to the to the fact that there’s a real person behind my business. Um and so I do share a lot about me on there as well. I mean not like a lot about me but people know who I am. They know that I’m a work from home mom. You know I I share those kinds of things as well. I don’t share my children on on TikTok. Um but you know I I do share a some about me. I am in some of the posts, but more often than not, like when it’s content, it’s just like a faceless content. Um, if you are going live, Tik Tok gives you the best clips of your lives that you can just like they actually make it into a post for you. And so then you can just post the clips from your live and that gives you like content with your face in it as well. Um, so I do think some, you know, some with your face in it. Don’t overthink it though because the moment you get on there like full makeup and everything and just looking your best, it almost becomes unrelatable. Like people want it to be more relatable. Um and so, you know, some of my best uh faceless content is like like the the lip syncing ones and stuff like funny ones. Um in my car, I don’t know why is always good and that’s normally just like me ponytail, no makeup, like stuff like that. I think the more genuine it is, the more people relate to it. You don’t want to be up there like, “Look at this shirt, guys.” Like, you know, that’s weird. Be if you’re going to be in it, be relatable and be genuine. And I think that that’s going to um do better as far as that type of content. Or maybe just like, I don’t know, steal your sibling or make one of your best friends do it. Some people love being on the camera. Get your I don’t know if your torture your younger brother into like being your model or something. My 17-year-old sister films so much content for her. I’m like, “Hey, come over. I’ll cook you lunch. We can hang out, play some cards. You’re filming some Tik Toks.” And some people just have that that creative energy. She loves it. She loves being on camera. I’ll give her some tips because she’s not a pro, but she is 17 and she’s cute and she’s relatable. And so, she’ll get on there and she’ll say what I tell her to say, but she’ll make it her own. So, absolutely get your friends to do it with you. Do be really really um careful though with underage because I know that there is and you know it be careful like you’re saying like little brother and stuff like that like um you cannot have anyone helping you sell that’s under the age of 18. I have a friend that got a violation for that. Um so do be very careful with that age group bringing anyone in under the age of 18. That’s a really good note. Thank you for pointing that out. Yes. Um we have a comment from Lorissa Coburn. I do have an idea about Tik Tok. I want to use my own music and just so happen to feature my designs that are going to be sold in Etsy shop. And I think that’s a really good idea. You were saying being unique and genuine to yourself. If you make music, by all means, show that off. I would say, Lissa, it’s going to be a little bit harder to get that buyer to go from Tik Tok to Etsy to buy it. You could just put that product on Tik Tok and then people buy it from Tik Tok. I think that would have a lot higher conversion rate for you. Mhm. Um, have you both had a video that just completely blew up out of nowhere, like that surprised you? You never would have guessed it. Like what did it teach you? I’d love to hear from April first on this one. Um, I have had several um, viral videos and they have all been what it taught me was like to stop trying so hard because every viral video that I’ve ever had has just been like this. it just like on a table or just like me. I like I had a blanket laying on my couch and I videoed the blanket laying on my couch. Um and and they were just easy videos that I made very quickly. Um and so that did teach me like to stop overthinking the content. Um and and really what that also taught me was that you just never know when it comes to content. I like to think of content like I was telling you guys, I like to think of it as like buying a lottery ticket every day. Like how many lottery tickets do you want to buy? and a lottery ticket that like you know the drawing’s not on Tuesday, right? It’s on any day of the week. In the next couple of years, you could win this lottery ticket. Or think of it like roulette as well. Like each piece of content you get is like you putting your chip on a number, right? And so you’ve got better chances of winning because you’re putting out this many. If I put 10 posts out a day, three weeks from now, I’ve got a very good chance of one of those 10 posts going viral than I would if I put two post up today. So that’s what content is. It doesn’t need to be great. It doesn’t need to be bad, but it needs to be consistent and it needs to be a lot. You like you need to put a lot out. If you want to win, if you want to if you want to hit big, put several out so that you you’ve got good chances of hitting big. So, how do you though, you’re saying 10 videos a day? To me, that sounds terrifying. How do you keep producing this content every single day without kind of burning out though? I think having those systems in place is what’s really important. So, what I do, I’ve been doing it about six months now, but for a while it was before I even get out of bed in the morning because I work from home. I’m very grateful to have that. Now, before I get out of bed in the morning, I film my content once a week, obviously, out of bed. And then in the morning, I’m doing my voiceovers. I’m doing my captions, my hashtags, and all of that. And I’m scheduling those posts. Now, that system has changed a little bit into me getting on my walking pad in the morning because I’m like, maybe, you know, if I’m doing this anyways, I might as well get a little exercise out of it. So, I’m on my walking pad and I’m recording my voiceovers and I’m doing that content because I batched it out for the week. I have maybe 50 raw video files that all I need to do is put them together. Those can be AI videos that I’ve done or those can be videos that I have actually filmed. But the first step, the hardest part is done. All I need to do is finish it together and I have that time dedicated that I I’m doing it. I know that I’m doing it filming once a week. I’m recording the voiceovers either Monday morning for like one or two hours or 15 minutes a day in the morning. Batching it. Yeah. I mean, I don’t I don’t want to say that I do 10 every day. I would say five to 10 every single day. Um, on my good days it’s 10. On on my slow days it’s five. And sometimes like I I use my easier posts. Like carousel posts are a thing now on TikTok. So like sometimes it’s a couple of carousel posts. They work. Carousel post also work. Um sometimes it’s just me reposting some of my lives um clips as some of mine. Um you know so it’s it’s sometimes it’s AI. I I love the AI videos as well. So like I’ll do a couple AI couple of video clips a carousel and then do some videos. A lot of times I have stored videos on my phone because I take so many and sometimes I just don’t feel like filming anything that day. So I use what’s stored up. It’s not very organized like Riley’s is. I wish that it was, but you know, it’s typically in the morning I’m drinking my coffee and I’ll post some videos and then by midday I’m like, “Well, I’m not doing anything right now. Let me post some more videos.” You know, so mine’s just kind of scattered. I just make sure it gets done every day, you know? I think I think people put too much pressure on posting and too much thought into it. It’s like exercising, you know, when you think about it and think about it, you’re like, I’m going to start tomorrow. I’m going to start tomorrow. Like that’s it’s just it becomes too much pressure and your brain just starts like mentally blocking out that task. Like you just have to do it and and it’s it’s so much easier than people think to get it done. Amanda Taylor here has a really good question. She says 10 videos a day or five to 10 videos a day. So is that on the same things or just you living your life and posting about it? That’s a good question. No, I don’t I I don’t really like post. Almost 98% of my post is is pertaining to the store and and the clothing and and the work. Um it’s it’s yeah, a lot of it is the same. So, typically when I do um my shirt, so like this morning I came up here and I picked like I’m in my office now and I picked like six shirts. I’m like, it’s Halloween. I’m going to go post some Halloween um content today. And so I picked like six shirts. I laid it one of one at a time. I I put it on my table. And so on the first shirt, I like kind of like unfolded it. Um that’s like my physical hook that works for me a lot. And so as I’m like fold I’m I have cinematic mode on and then I kind of unfold it. Um and then I’m you know I put a hook on there and I talk about I’m like y’all look how cute this Halloween shirt is. This is direct to garment printed. It’s so cute for Halloween. You know these are made right here inside the United States. They have fast shipping. Like you know just all of my normal stuff. Then I post that one. Um, and then well, first I’ll do the second video and then I just kind of on cinematic mode just kind of scroll over the shirt and then maybe sometimes I’ll get like a few different videos and and you know stick those three together and typically I just let Tik Tok pick the music for it. They they usually do a pretty good job of picking the audio. I’ve also heard that if you let them pick the audio audio it does better. I’m not sure, but I’m willing to test that theory. So I let them pick the audio if it works. And that’s two posts for me. And I will post both of those in the same day. Not the same people will see both of those posts. Okay? So don’t don’t think that your following is going to be like, gosh, he’s posting two things like of the same shirt. They don’t care and they don’t see them both. Um it’s going to hit two different groups anyway. So yeah. So that’s two. And so I did six shirts today. So that’s 12 pieces of content for me. So I won’t even use that all today. And that doesn’t include like my carousel post and everything else. So yeah, I I post pretty much the same things. I mean, if you guys go look at my TikTok, like you’re gonna see a series of a lot of the same posts and and those work for me. This was a big misconception for me in the beginning because like whenever I follow people on social media, I follow people like for the person that they are, right? I’m like, “Oh, your content’s really interesting. I like the things that you do.” Especially being in the creative spaces. I’m like, “Oh, how’s that girl in her quilt? Did she finish it?” So looking for those kinds of things. Most on Tik Tok, the content that you’re creating is surrounding your product, right? You might like this is behind the scenes of the business, but that’s rare. The content that blows up is the product focused content. Same with the followers. It doesn’t have to be April’s obviously built this amazing amazing brand. But a lot of your customers are going to be people who don’t necessarily follow you. They just find your product. Oh, that’s cute. They buy and they scroll on. So, you don’t need all these followers. And when you get a video that blows up with views, it’s going to have a lot more sales. But you don’t need a million views on every video. Most people are going to have like three to 500 views on most of their videos and they’re still going to consistently get sales. Okay. Yeah. And really important as well when you’re doing the content real quick because I feel like no one ever mentions this, but like once you have your content on TikTok, like I I film it outside of Tik Tok. I don’t think that that matters either, but I film it on my camera in cinema mode outside of Tik Tok because you get that really nice kind of portrait looking, right? It’s very crisp. Um, and so I fill it on cinnamon uh cinema mode outside of Tik Tok. But once you put it into Tik Tok, go over to the adjustments, brighten it, turn up the contrast, turn up the saturation, you know, do any adjustments that you need over there. That’s why my content looks better than other people’s because they’re not making those little just fine-tuning adjustments inside of Tik Tok. Okay? Make sure you work with the adjustments in there. Um, we have another really good question and it kind of brings us into the next topic I wanted to cover. Melissa Emerson, how does one go about attracting affiliates that are not related to you? So, before we get to this specific question, it’s a very good question, Melissa. Um, first give us a quick rundown of what affiliates are, what does that mean, and then tell us a bit about your strategies. Affiliates are just people who know how to sell on Tik Tok. A lot of them it’s their full-time job of they get sent free products from brands, not necessarily POD brands, but yes, POD brands, and then they make the content. But there are people that you can send your product to to promote for you. The good ones, there are probably more bad ones than good ones, you guys. So, be careful. Okay, so not all of them are good. How do you go find affiliates and what makes a good affiliate? What makes a bad one? Like, what are you looking for here? um just you know just really pay attention when you look at the um affiliate center. It does a great job of giving you um the affiliates analytics and stuff like that. Um but you do need to know that you cannot just look at their following count. You cannot just look at their views because those are skewed as well. If they have one viral video, it’s going to tell you that they have thousands of views and that’s not true. So do not just look at their followers. Followers actually do not matter when it comes to affiliates at all. So, don’t just look at their followers. Do not just look at their views. Um, do look at their GMV because that is important. But number one is go to their actual Tik Tok and look at their Tik Tok. Does that look like the aesthetic that you want? Um, does that look like the type of person that you want um promoting your brand? You know, so I think that that’s very important. Don’t just do it from the affiliate center. Look for people. And one of my biggest things when I look for um affiliates as well is are they posting more than one video of the same item because that first video is never going to go viral. It’s never the first I mean it listen it may but like it’s very unlikely to um they need to be posting a good affiliate will post at least three videos of the same product. So if you see them on there and they’re just one and done they’re not it’s it they’re not trying as as hard as you need them to for your brand. Mhm. We have a good question from Peggy Smith. Do you have to pay the affiliates? You send them a free sample. Typically, they can request, they can purchase a sample and get a refund once it sells, but typically you send them a free sample. Um, and then you pay them a commission of the sales. So, I have mine set at 14 and a half%. Some when I hire targeted, like better creators, I say better creators, but creators with more GMV or more sales, it’ll be maybe closer to 17%, especially if it’s a higher margin item rather than just t-shirts. But you pay them a commission of the sales and Tik Tok handles all of that. Yes. And it’s great. Like affiliates is one of my absolute favorite parts of Tik Tok. It’s such a great system. Like I I would pay them gladly all day long. So, should I be going sending out samples to every affiliate here? And I mean, I know you have a a good story here, but yeah, this was my mistake number one, guys. And there are some people asking my TikTok. I don’t mind sharing it. It’s buddy buddy y collective co. And I have 500 followers. It’s nothing. You’ll hear my voice on all my videos. You’ll see my sister on all my videos. But buddy collective co on that. But yeah, she’s calling me out because I sent out way too many free samples. And not everyone needs a free sample. I felt like Oprah that week. That was like three weeks before I blow up of you get a free sample and you get a free sample and you get a free sample. But no. And you need you need to get some sales under your belt. So, like April said, she went live to get her or she went live. I Someone said a thousand followers. I have 500 and I do lives. I don’t do them as often as April, but you don’t need a bunch to go live. Less than 500 for sure. I think it’s like less than 200 honestly because I’ve been going live. So, once you get a few samples under or a few orders under your belt, you’ll get higher quality affiliates. But, you do need to be a little bit more intentional with them. Like April said, are they posting the same product multiple times for you? And then looking at their GMBB. So, their GMV is just how much they’ve sold. Now that I have a,000 sales under my belt, I’m targeting affiliates that have sold $60,000 or more in the last 30 days. And there’s a ton of them. There’s so many of them that have sold 6,000 or six figures worth of products in the last 30 days because this is their full-time job. Tik Tok has this network of creators that are available to us that all you have to do is tap into them. But no, not everyone needs a free sample. And I’m guilty today. I had a creator who posts for me consistently and she’s great. love her content, but she has like 3,000 GMBB in like the last 30 days, and she keeps requesting new products. And I’m like, “No, she already has 15 of my products. She doesn’t need more and more and more of them.” So, take the emotion out of it. Send the products intentionally to people who you really believe can sell your items, and you don’t need to do 600 of them like I did. I mean, you can if you want, but yeah. Um, we had a good question here. I’m sorry I lost who asked it, but someone asked, “Do you need to order samples of every single one of your designs?” I do, but it’s because I like to go live. I like to go live. I’m not great at it. My best live was 25 sales, and I was ecstatic about it. How long were you live for? Two hours. I mean, 25 sales in two hours. Pretty good in my book. I went through the roof with it. I was so excited. But because I do a lot of I film a lot of my own content, I’m ordering a sample of it. So that’s why your designs have to be better because for me it’s a $15 investment as soon as I make the design because I’m ordering a sample of it. So once I have that sample, I can turn that sample into a hundred pieces of content because it’s there and it’s in my closet and I can film it all the time. Now sometimes maybe hopefully some of you will will relate to this. Sometimes I’ll wear my samples because I’m like I’ll get some videos out and about and then I’ll drop like cheese sauce on them or something and I’m like crap now like now I got to get the state out or something. So don’t do that. But I do order a sample of mine, but I believe in my designs enough because they’re well researched to spend that $15 on it. And the same reason I’m sending them to affiliates. If you don’t believe in your designs enough that much, then start working on your designs better. To be fair, I feel like a cheese sauce thing could be like a pretty good hook, but maybe that’s just me and my algorithm. I don’t know. Um, no, I I do not order all of my samples. Um, but I will say I’m I’m like sitting in a room with a thousand church. Um, I I will say though that like because I have such high volume of sales right now, um, I I get a decent amount of returns and I use my returns like as like samples and and you know, for content stuff. I do order some samples. Yes. Um, just not all of them because I have a lot of t-shirts. But, you know, when it comes to like the samples, like when I first started going live, I studied this girl that was going live. And while when she was live, she wore the shirt that she had on, which was one of her shirts, and never showed a single shirt, and she was killing it. She was like the the person that I studied and I was like, “Okay, I can do this.” Like, um, and so, you know, I do think that it’s nice to be able to show some of your samples. Definitely. But like you know when you think of even like the big brands like Glow you know like when they started like it was just the one like hoodie every single video on their page was of that one hoodie. So, if you can only order five samples, make a hundred videos with those five. Like, make so many videos with those five samples in different ways. And and those five items will start getting you sales and then once you get some more income going, order some more samples and make more more videos. So, I mean, you can start with a small amount and lots of videos with that small amount of t-shirts. And you don’t have to go live yet. I do think as far as Riley, I think there’s a trade-off with GMV and um people. So, I think Riley has probably like surpassed the GMV to go live and not the followers. Ah, maybe that’s it. Yeah, that makes sense, April. And guys, there’s so many questions going through this chat here. We’re going to get to some of them towards the end. We can’t answer all of them, but I will say this is your blanket answer for all of them. Everyone’s asking, “How do I go live?” You watch people go live. April goes live all the time. She invites you. Hopefully, she invites you. Like, how do I create short form content? You watch affiliate content, people who’ve posted t-shirts. You literally look up women’s t-shirts. What kind of videos are they making? what’s selling? How do I find affiliates? You look up affiliates on Tik Tok. Like all of this stuff is something that is so easily learnable. And I’m not saying like these are bad questions. They’re not. These are questions that I had six months ago. But if you spend some time on the platform and you spend some time on the seller center, because once you create your account, Tik Tok gives you the seller center. So once you spend some time on that seller center, there’s a big button that says affiliates and then it says here’s how to set up free samples. There you go. It’s it’s it’s so intuitive that you have to spend a little bit of time learning it, but I wish we could go through each one of these and answer all of them. Sadly, we can’t, but you can definitely learn. I think I am doing a a Printify Q&A coming up soon that we’ve talked about. So, maybe that will help later on. And I think with affiliates, too, you don’t have to wait at a certain point to open up these collaborations. You can open up your shop and start affiliates right away, right, if they are interested. Um, Amanda Johnson in the chat has a good comment. I went live once. It was terrible. I felt like when I was teaching during COVID and just talking to myself. I think we’ve all been there a lot. I know. April, you have a good story of your first live. I’d be curious to hear about your very first live, too. Yeah. Amanda, I also went live once and it was terrible. It was It was I actually went live quite a few times and it was terrible. It did not start like this for me. Like my lives did not My TikTok didn’t start like this. My lives did not start with this. My lives started messy and I didn’t know what I was doing. And I was um in my bedroom and I was hanging hangers on my flat screen TV like on my dresser and like that was my display. It was awful. There was no one. I mean there was barely anyone in the live. I remember at one point being like th Well, at first you know I was just trying to you know I’m like I’m new here. Um you know this is my first live. I I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’m you know and like at I don’t know even how long I was in and somebody was like ma’am there’s nothing in your cart and so like I didn’t even have anything to sell. I thought they could just magically see my items from my store. I didn’t even know you had to put things in the cart. And then at one point in the same live in the same beginning live I was like oh I’m not seeing my comments must be like frozen or something. And someone actually commented and they were like um I I just don’t think anyone’s commenting. So like I mean it was and I you know I just laughed. You have to just laugh because like you don’t know what you’re doing. I did back when I started going live, like I said, I did watch some other live sellers to see what they were doing. I obviously didn’t pick up on that cart trick. Um, but, you know, there wasn’t a lot of research to be done back then. And so, I I went at it blindly and just got in there. My account manager was like, “You just got to get in there and make some mistakes.” And I made all the mistakes for sure. You guys are welcome into my lives. You can ask questions in my lives. Like people come in all the time. I’m an open book because at the end of the day, like we have this saying in Texas like you can lead a horse to water um but you can’t make them drink, right? I’m an open book. I’ll tell you all my tricks, but you guys got to work as hard as I’m working. You got to do the research and everything to to be the top seller. And it’s not hard. It’s just, you know, it’s just steady work. But that’s great. I love it because I work from home. I’m with my kids. We go on vacations. like you know if is if you work hard this can be duplicated. Yeah. What was your first live like? Well, I scheduled my first live because I saw April. She was talking about how great it is. I’m like oh I can do this too. So I was like okay I’ll go live Friday at 7 p.m. And then I was because I work from home. I’m like it’s Thursday at 2. I’m like I’m not doing anything. I could just try it. And so it was exactly like she said of during COVID talking to no one. And I’m like for an hour I’m just sitting there and I’m like I’m selling this t-shirt. Here we go. Oh, do you want to buy this t-shirt? Someone buy this t-shirt. And it wasn’t great, but I think my clips for my first live are on my TikTok if you scroll down far enough. But I literally in my office put four little nails in the wall. Just hammered four little nails and put my shirts on. And my husband’s like, you know, we rent, right? Like we have a security deposit. I’m like, no. Yeah, it’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. But my second live was the next night. I’m like, should I even do this? I didn’t get any sales that first time. It sucked. Like April said, shoot for a goal of 10. I didn’t have 10 people in there, let alone 10 sales. But the second live, I got four sales that first night and I went live for like an hour. It was the Friday night, so it worked well for me. But four people came in and each time it was so it’s like a like a dopamine boost of like, “Oh my god, someone purchased it. Oh, they purchased this one. I really like this one.” And then you can call it out. But truly it comes from researching. And for me, my research is, “Oh, April’s live.” And so just Okay. Okay. Well, she said, “Okay, comfort colors is a premium shirt. That’s a I I should premium. I sell comfort colors. It’s premium.” And just wasn’t my live last night then because that was my hook last night. No, not last night. You have a different time zone than me right now. I was asleep when you were live. That’s right. That’s right. But just paying attention to those things and and truly doing it. So my second one I got a couple sales and then I’ve had a few since then where I haven’t gotten sales, but I had one really good one where I got 25 sales and I couldn’t sleep after. I was just sitting there. I’m like, “Oh my god, I could do this every day. There’s so much potential. This is so exciting.” 25 people bought from me. every five minutes. My brand is my cat, my my little cat logo on there. I have a little cat bell. Every 20 like five minutes, it’s like, “Oh my god, someone got it. Thank you so much. Look at this shirt.” And it’s just you just have to do it. You just have to have to do it and do it wrong and do it wrong a few times until you do it enough and you’re getting sales. It’s really one of those things. Yeah. Practice makes perfect. And yes, be consistent in the Well, be consistent the whole time, but definitely in the in the beginning, too, because TikTok loves consistency. So, if they see you consistently going live all the time, like you’re going to start getting more traffic from being consistent. I say like you got really excited with the sales and like even if you do that in the live and you get a sale and you get really excited during the live, people love that too. And like then you call them out. You said you have a bell. April, I know you have a bell every time someone makes a sale. Um, tell us a little bit more. So, you said your lives are about an hour, but April, your lives are like three to four hours sometimes. What the heck do you talk about for three hours? Ah, it goes so fast though. It really does. Um, so it’s typically about three hours, but since we’re in Q4, I’m trying to push them to four hours now. Um, but you know, I mean, really now for me, the conversation just kind of flows so easily and starts itself. It didn’t used to be like that. I have so many tricks that I use now that I have learned um that work. And if you’re in my lives watching my lives, I honestly would say that there’s probably like not like to like toot my own horn or anything, but like I don’t think that there’s a lot of people better to research than me because I’m constantly doing the research and I I I was live last night and I tested a new hook. Like I test new things all the time and the hook last night worked as well. Um so, you know, there’s all kinds of tricks that I will do to pull conversation like out of people, questions that I’ll ask to get the comments going. Um, you know, so it just once you get all of these little tricks down and all and and you know, you’re repeating your same hooks and stuff. That’s the big thing about lives, you guys. Like, you know, people don’t really understand the people in the room for live. So, like, say that you have, say that you look up and there’s 30 people in your room for your live, right? And you are selling, you’re doing your hooks, and then two minutes later you look up and there are 25 people. You did not just lose five people. That’s 25 new people. Then those 30 people are gone. Most of them. You may have a few like stragglers hanging around. Um but the those 30 people are gone and that’s a whole new group of people in your turnover. I have a super high watch rate and I think it’s a minute and a half. So that means that every minute and a half the people are leaving and new people are coming in. That’s why that number is always moving. So don’t get caught up on like there’s only 30 people here. Think there’s 30 people in my store right now. Can I convert one of them in two minutes? Well, actually quicker than that for you guys. In one minute, I’m gonna get another chance to convert. Maybe it changes to seven people. I’m going to get a chance to convert those seven people. And then a minute later, maybe it maybe you do a giveaway and it shoots up to 50 people. Now I have a chance to convert one of these 50 people. Okay? It’s different people all the time. So you are it is just constantly if you guys are in my live you’re just you’ll get sick of me repeating myself but I know that the people are moving through. So those those 200 people that have already left they didn’t get to hear my hook. I’ve got to say it again over and over and over again. And one more point to what April said her watch time’s high at a minute 30 seconds. Let’s say yours is a minute long. That means every minute you’re doing the same script because those are new people. So you have 60 seconds of talking of look how cute this comfort color shirt is guys. You know that favorite vintage band tee that you have at the bottom of your dresser? It’s probably a comfort color shirt. And those comfort color shirts, the more you wash them, the softer they get. And this graphic, look at this. It doesn’t peel away. It’s a direct to garment print. And guess what? That was 30 seconds. That’s half your script. You say two things like that every 60 seconds. Literally every 60 seconds. So you’re live for an hour like me cuz I I quit too early. That’s 60 times that you’re saying that exact same thing. And after you get off and you’re chugging water bottles, just crushing them and my voice is usually gone. I don’t know how April does it. She must have voice training or something. But if your watch time is 90 seconds, you have a 90 second script that you’re repeating over and over and over again because people are scrolling away. So get like two, three sentences ready and just go for an hour straight repeating it. I love it. We have so many really good questions here. We’re going to get to those. Um, but first I want to quickly talk to you Riley about some community aspect, the mentorship program. You guys did see a video a little bit earlier about it. We um, we talked about it at the very beginning of this one. Um, tell us about your journey in that mentorship program like the community aspect and how it helped you get to where you’re at in Tik Tok shop today. I think it’s so important to get plugged in. So even when I started selling on Etsy, from the very beginning of my POD journey, I’ve been involved in some sort of community. Now my first few months I was in Japan and I was not making any money from it. So I didn’t have anything to invest and it was Facebook. How many print on demand Facebook groups can I find? Like how many things can I get invested into where the content that I’m surrounding myself and the people that I’m surrounding myself with online are in the same business in the same industry that I’m in. But with that, when you’re involved in a mentorship community or a mentorship group like that, you have a mentor, right? That’s part of it. Surprise, surprise. And so having someone so often I see in this business someone say like, “Man, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.” Your mentor will tell you what you’re doing wrong. Like in in the sellers club, I do so many shop audits and I can say within 30 seconds, this is why you’re not getting sales. And so having that opportunity of at home when you’re by yourself, your wheels are turning and you feel like you’re putting so much work into it. But sometimes you’re just working in the wrong direction a little bit. For me, especially with Tik Tok, I had all of this confidence going into it. I’ve been selling on Etsy for four years. I know what I’m doing. I can do it. Yeah. Then then you laugh, right? Because you have to learn some of these things the hard way. But for me, getting plugged into a mentorship so early meant that the questions that I had that I couldn’t figure out the answer to because there’s not a lot of Tik Tok content right now or being answered by someone who had already gone through them, someone who knew more than I do about these topics. and then regularly getting communication and inspired by people who know what they’re doing and are willing to share that. So I think if you’re in the business of being in a business, you have to be willing to commit to being a learner. You have to commit to studying content and you also have to commit to putting yourself out there a little bit in order to get that feedback and in order to improve. That’s exactly what this like newhip program is that Printify is doing. We’re finding these experienced sellers like Riley to be in there to give you kind of this more one-on-one mentorship coaching. You can meet other sellers who are in the same position. And we have two different programs for you. So depending on what level you’re at, if you are completely new to Etsy, Tik Tok shop, POD in general, we have one track. We’ll share separate links for each one. But if you are ready for this more advanced step, if you’re ready to learn and dedicate your time every week, do kind of what the mentors are telling you, put in the effort, then we have this more advanced track for specifically Etsy and Tik Tok shop sellers. So we’ll share links in the chat for that. And also we were we will share an application for a scholarship. So a few of you will get a scholarship for this program. You’ll be able to check it out. All the information is in the chat. Can I share one more thing on that? Yes. So something I keep keep hearing in this business is consistency beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beats intensity. Now that means a lot of things but consistently people who I see come to even Etsy classes. I know we’ve been talking a lot about Tik Tok. I teach Etsy. I teach design. People who are coming to those classes every week and people who are implementing it are seeing more sales and seeing more revenue than the people who are not because they are consistently learning and consistently attending classes. people who are consistently posting Tik Toks or consistently going live are making more money than those who aren’t. Because if you just let’s say you join this membership and you look at it and each week you say, “Man, I should really attend a class and I have ADHD. I do the same thing of there’s no concept of time.” But if you’re not doing it and you’re not putting the work in, you can’t say, “Well, I tried it.” You really can’t. You have to be there. You have to get your hands dirty and you have to consistently put in that action. And now is the time to do it, guys. We’re starting Q4 next week. This is the biggest time of the year for sales you can make in the last three months of the year what you made in the first nine months of the year, especially on Tik Tok because so many people are buying and so many people are gift giving and Halloween and Christmas are two of the biggest holidays there are. So do it and do it now because you’re setting yourself up for what could be the craziest next three months of your life. This is a place that’ll keep you accountable for all of this, too. Like Riley said, just do it. Okay, we are we have about 8 minutes left here. We have one more giveaway for everyone and then while we’re doing that, we will answer a few more questions here. Riley, would you like to do the honors of our very last giveaway? Okay. What is the first thing you’re doing right after we end after we end because you’ll get some good answers to some good questions to enhance your pod game. When I first went to my conference in April, I literally between sessions scanned my ID, opened my Tik Tok shop on the way home and guys, that was a long day. My friend drove me there, he crashed my car. So, we had to get my father-in-law to come up and drive us home. So, we’re all packed in this tiny truck. Long story. Ordered some samples cuz I’m like, if I’m going to be making videos, I need some samples. So, what are you doing today to further your business? Joining Tik Tok shop. I see it right here. Uh, by the way, this giveaway was for the $50 coupon for the official Amplified merch store. One of you will be winning that. We’ll announce that in a second. Let’s answer some questions here real quick. So, we have a question from Tracy. Do all of your products come from Printify that you sell on Tik Tok shop? Are they all Tik Tok eligible? That’s a good question. Yeah, so Printify has a section in their catalog. It’s much easier when you link it to your Tik Tok store, too. You can literally just click Tik Tok shop and then those are the products that you can sell on Tik Tok. And so I do want to clarify that we have 2,000 plus products in the catalog. Not all of them are eligible for Tik Tok because they have quite strict uh service level agreements. You have to get them out on time. So go to the Tik Tok eligible filter or catalog section in Printify and go with those products. Um, next question is from Kiwana. April, have you thought about putting together an ebook of tips and tricks of everything you have learned to help us newbies that we can use beyond our questions on your live? That’s a good question. I know I h like no because I don’t have the time. Remember, I have young kids as well and I like I want to be as helpful as I can. That’s why I always do these events. Um because you know at the end of the day, someone taught me inadvertently. She didn’t know she did, but she did. Um so I don’t know. I did talk to Ashley with Printify and like we’re going to do a question and answer soon. I’ve thought about maybe just doing some lives where I’m just like live answering questions on how to go live. I need to ask my account manager if that will have any effect on my lives because if I don’t have a G&V on the live, it may um it may have an effect on me, but I I would love to help more. I just need to figure out a way to do it in my my schedule. Pull up chat GBT. Tell it everything you know. say, “Write this into an ebook.” There you go. I really should. No, that is true. I really should. I’m a big chat fan. So, we had a couple questions about hooks. One person asked, um, first of all, what is a hook? That’s a good question. And then Scott Riffenberg is asking, “How do you verify testing a hook?” A hook is just grabbing someone’s attention. You’re hooking somebody into the video. The hook is you have one like one second to stop. The main goal is to stop the scroll, you guys. So, like you’ve got one second to stop that scroll. Um, and so listen, do not over This is my best advice for y’all on hooks. Riley’s maybe different, but like don’t overthink that hook. I I pull up chat GBT every time and I’m like, “Hey chat, I’m posting a a t-shirt with ghost reading on it. Can you give me a good hook?” And he’ll give me like eight choices and then I pick one of those choices that I think is he even tells me his favorite. Typically, it’s my favorite as well because I feel like he’s very smart. Um, and then I usually just use that hook. I don’t overthink the hook or I find a video that has thousands and thousands of views on it that I know is making sales and I use their hook because I know it worked for them. Yeah. Just like April said earlier, every time I log on TikTok, it says these five hooks are what’s going to take you from 10,000 to $10 million on Tik Tok. And then I’m like, “Oh, you know what? That’s a good point. I save that.” And then when I go make content, I’m like, “Oh, yeah. That guy said this $10 million.” So I’m like, “Okay.” He said, “Not only is this a cute shirt, but this is the cute shirt you need.” And I’m like, “That’s a good one.” So I just save a million videos on affiliates. You can almost take any hook, too, and like ask it, put it into chat GPT and say like, “Hey, make this related to my niche or like the design that I’m selling specifically and save all of them. That way whenever you start, you have a list of 100 hooks that you can go at.” We have a question from Norma Veila Get. In your t-shirts, do you offer font, text, color options, or is it just a design, period, buy it or not? No, because it’s harder. You’re trying to convert someone in 45 seconds. They see a video, they like that product, they check out. You don’t want them to see that video and oh, but do I like this one or this one better? And do I like that one or that one better? I have color options for my shirts. But most of the time, people are buying whatever they see in the video or whatever they see in the thumbnail of the product. So, it’s not this. You don’t want to make it harder for them to purchase. You want to make it as simple as possible. That means the video is clear, the product is clear, and customers think they want choices. They don’t actually want choices. Yeah. Keep each video should just have one job, you guys. Like one, keep every video simple. It should have one simple job. Look at this shirt. Do you like it? By the shirt. Like that’s that’s the process. You don’t want to put so many different options into your video and then people get confused. Okay, we have to unfortunately wrap things up. Um, final words of wisdom, advice from each of you for our viewers tonight. Do it. You’re not going to get sales if you don’t do it. You’re not even, okay, we’ve been saying learn, learn, learn. Let’s say for the next three months, you watch so much content. That’s not going to make you money, right? You’re not going to make that money unless you actually start practicing it. And experience really is the best teacher. So, watch that content, learn, research, study, but then go actually do it. create that Tik Tok shop. It takes two days. Two days of waiting time. It takes 30 seconds. You scan your ID, you enter your name, whatever. Go actually start it and and and learn what you’re doing wrong as soon as you can and just work on improving. You don’t have to try to make a viral video right now. You have to try to make a video and then next week after you’ve made maybe 10 videos, you say, “Okay, what can I do better now that I wasn’t doing then?” But you have to actually put the work in. And not in three weeks, in right now. Because getting into this time, guys, Q4 can truly truly be changing, but only if you take advantage of it and you actually start putting the work in. Mhm. Real quick, there’s one final question from Demostens Ice Peru. Sorry. Is there a Tik Tok class you ladies recommend? The mentorship program. We were just talking about it. We’ll drop the link again in the chat, but yes, there is specifically that we are Riley started in it. That’s how she got there. So, the mentorship program, check it out. Real quick, 10 seconds. April, what is your final words of inspiration? Um, just start. Yeah, just like Riley said, just start it. Mine started messy and and I didn’t start as a top seller. I started as a bottom seller. Like the absolute bottom was where I started at. Um, so just start and then perfect it along the way. It’s not a coincidence that Riley and I have talked so much about how we research and we’re two top sellers sitting here. We do a lot of research. Okay. So, do the research, put in the work, and and just get started and and get better as you go, but start today. Can’t can’t say it better myself. All right. Last final winner of the giveaway was Anita Edings. Congratulations, Anita. Congratulations. You got a $50 coupon to the official merch store. We got to wrap up. Thank you so much, April. It was amazing having you in the call. Thank you, Riley. It was an honor to have you next to me. Thank you, everyone. I think I speak for everyone when I do say that I am beyond inspired today. I am super excited about all this knowledge, the wisdom, and it is not too late to sign up for sellers club to keep this conversation going. You guys are all friends in the chat now. I’ve been watching you the whole time. Keep it going inside sellers club. I’m sad it’s all ending though. I know. I’m a little bit sad. I’m not going to lie. I’ve had a lot of fun today. Uh, do give a quick shout out in the chat if you’ve been with me for all six hours. So, because honestly, kudos to you if you have been. That’s a lot. Um, we can always hang out more over on the Printify YouTube channel. You can chat with me in the comments there. It is me behind almost every single comment. So, please be nice, but also give me your suggestions, your feedback, what you want to see in Printify, etc. And one more shout out to all of our guests, our speakers, and of course our sponsors, KD andstore Domains. And last but not least, a major huge shout out to all of the people, the moderators behind the scenes. We couldn’t do it without them. And I could sit here for 20 minutes listing all their names, but we’ve got an afterparty to get to. So with that, be kind, keep creating, stay inspired, and get those sales. Thank you everyone.