business-ecomm_clubhouse/_subsections/05-traffic_buyers/S05|L01 - my product first traffic strategy.org

#+title: S05|L01 - my product first traffic strategy
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* Notes

* Tutorial Notes

* Review

** Core Idea
- Traffic strategy = Product strategy
- Focus:
  - Creating unique products
  - Not relying on ads

** Strategy Comparison

*** Advertising-First Strategy
- Product:
  - Generic / popular items
- Example:
  - Custom dog mugs
- Problem:
  - Heavy competition
  - Requires paid ads
  - No guarantee of ROI
- Focus:
  - Ads do the selling

*** Product-First Strategy
- Product:
  - Unique / niche / differentiated
- Advantage:
  - Stands out immediately
  - Less competition
  - Can generate free traffic
- Focus:
  - Product does the selling

** Core Concept: Market Gap
- Find:
  - Products people want
  - But do not exist yet
- Or:
  - Improve existing concepts

** Method: Cross-Niche Formula
- Combine:
  - Popular format
  - With new/trending niche

*** Example
- Format:
  - AI selfie-style images
- Niche:
  - Cryptids (e.g., Mothman)
- Result:
  - Unique product with demand but low competition

** Tools Used
- [Perplexity AI](chatgpt://generic-entity?number=0)
  - Find trending topics
- [Google](chatgpt://generic-entity?number=1) AI image tools
  - Generate images
- [Canva](chatgpt://generic-entity?number=2)
  - Edit designs

** Traffic Sources

*** 1. Search Engines
- Platforms:
  - Etsy search
  - Google search
- Benefit:
  - Easier ranking due to low competition

*** 2. AI Recommendations
- Platforms:
  - Etsy recommendation system
  - [ChatGPT](chatgpt://generic-entity?number=3) integrations
- Behavior:
  - Recommends unique, personalized products

** AI Advantage
- AI prefers:
  - Unique
  - Niche
  - Personalized items
- Outcome:
  - Matches product to ideal customer automatically

** Key Concepts
- SEO:
  - Search Engine Optimization
- GEO:
  - Generative Engine Optimization

** Conclusion
- Best traffic strategy:
  - Create better, more unique products
- Result:
  - Free traffic
  - Less competition
  - Higher visibility


* Transcript
#+begin_example
00:00
Hey, everyone, and welcome back. You have reached module 5,

00:03
which is dedicated to me sharing my tips and strategies

00:06
and workflows that I use to get traffic to my

00:09
products and stores. And it's honestly

00:11
1 of the most asked questions that I get on

00:13
my YouTube channel. So many people go, okay, Sarah. I

00:17
see that you love to talk about researching, creating, and

00:21
designing products, and that's great. But can you now actually

00:24
talk about how you drive traffic and sales to the

00:27
products that you're selling? It's a fair question, and so

00:30
I really, really feel like I have to address this

00:33
question directly. Because you see, the reason why I talk

00:37
so much about researching, creating, and designing products is because,

00:43
spoiler alert, my products are my traffic strategy.

00:47
Yep. Most people assume that to make money online, you

00:50
need to go for an advertising first strategy, but that's

00:53
not what I do. Instead, I take the opposite approach.

00:56
I go for a product first strategy. So what's the

01:00
difference, right? And it's a great question. Well, with an

01:03
advertising first strategy, your product is not actually the most

01:06
important part of the strategy.

01:09
Nope. It's the ad because with an advertising first strategy,

01:13
it is the ad that is really the 1 selling

01:16
the product, which means then that the most advertising first

01:20
strategies I see out there rely on targeting big, broad,

01:23
already popular products. So a good example of a print

01:26
on demand product that works well as an advertising first

01:29
product would be a custom dog portrait mug. These are

01:32
very popular and sell well both on Etsy and in

01:35
private Shopify stores. But here's the thing. Because they're so

01:38
popular, as you can see, everyone is trying to sell

01:41
them, and they're all selling the same popular styles too,

01:44
such as the classic photo portraits

01:46
and the new trendy stripe mugs. So if you make

01:49
your own version of 1 of these popular custom dog

01:52
mugs, guess what? No 1 will even notice because there

01:56
are 1000

01:58
others already online to choose from. So why would anyone

02:01
notice yours, right? Well, that's of course where ads come

02:04
in, doesn't it? Because if you're advertising on Facebook, Instagram,

02:08
or TikTok,

02:09
you can force people to see your mug by paying

02:12
money to advertise it to them. So that is indeed

02:16
a valid strategy.

02:18
However, there are 2 things about it that I don't

02:21
like personally.

02:22
Firstly, it's a strategy that I find quite limiting and

02:25
quite boring since, well, as your strategy is to try

02:28
to do mass marketing,

02:30
you have to usually focus on broad products like custom

02:33
dog mugs because you have to try to appeal to

02:36
as many people as possible. And secondly, it is by

02:39
its very nature

02:41
competitive,

02:41
and you also need to spend money to compete and

02:44
you have no guarantees you'll make your money back. It's

02:47
an expensive game to be playing and competing in, which

02:50
is why personally I have shifted to my product first

02:54
strategy instead. I find it so much more fun, simple,

02:57
and passive. Plus I also think it's a great fit

02:59
with our new AI era where AI chat bots are

03:02
all about giving everyone, including shoppers, the best, most personalized

03:06
product recommendations possible. Basically, you've heard me harp on and

03:10
on, I'm sure, plenty of times about this, filling a

03:13
gap in the market. This is the concept of identifying

03:15
product designs that people would like to buy that doesn't

03:18
yet exist

03:19
or creating designs that do exist but that people would

03:22
like even more variations of. So for example, on the

03:26
YouTube channel, I showed an example product. I showed how

03:29
online on both Amazon and Etsy, funny, absurd, AI photos

03:33
were popular on t shirts. And I noticed how there

03:36
was 1 particular trend that was very popular where people

03:39
would create AI photos showing cats taking selfies in front

03:43
of crazy characters like UFOs,

03:45
Santa, or Bigfoot. And well, all of these have a

03:48
name. They are cryptids, which are characters or creatures that

03:52
it's disputed whether they are real or not. So what

03:55
I did was I got an AI powered search engine,

03:57
Perplexity,

03:58
to search the internet for chatter on other cryptids like

04:02
this that people were currently chatting about and were trendy.

04:06
And it identified that currently,

04:08
a lot of people were talking about 1 in particular,

04:11
Mothman. If you never heard about Mothman, it is encrypted

04:14
that dates back to the 19 sixties.

04:16
So you know what I did? I did a search

04:19
on both Etsy and Amazon to see if anyone had

04:21
created a selfie photo t shirt in the same style

04:24
by using the trending Mothman cryptid.

04:27
And despite the fact that Mothman t shirts were popular

04:30
on both websites since it was trendy right now, no

04:33
1 had made 1 of these photo selfie T shirts

04:36
yet. So I went ahead and used Google's AI image

04:39
generator, Nano Banana Pro, to make 1 for me. I

04:42
then edited the image with Canva's AI and turned it

04:45
into a T shirt design.

04:47
Easy. I call this the cross niche formula. It's where

04:49
I take a popular design format

04:52
such as these cryptid selfie photos and then combine them

04:56
with a new niche or a popular idea

04:59
such as mothman

05:00
to create something new. It's the quickest way that I

05:03
create designs that can fill a gap in the market.

05:06
And so yes, creating new products like this

05:10
is my main traffic strategy,

05:12
not running ads. Because you think about it, right? When

05:15
you release a custom dog mug, what happens? Your mug

05:18
gets lost in the crowd because there are so many,

05:22
but when you release a unique product with few or

05:24
no competitors,

05:26
the opposite happens. Your product immediately stands out because you've

05:30
got basically few, if any, competitors.

05:33
It's great. And so here's the thing. Because I focused

05:36
on this, I now get free traffic

05:39
from 2 main sources. The first is search engines, such

05:42
as Etsy search engine and Google search engine. My products

05:46
just tend to naturally rank well in search results for

05:49
related keywords because, of course, I don't have a lot

05:53
of competitors who I'm competing with because my products are

05:57
unique. And so it's not like I'm out there having

05:59
to fight with a lot of competitors

06:01
to reach the top of the search results.

06:03
And the second way is through AI. So 1 is

06:06
Etsy's AI powered recommendation

06:07
features like their homepage or app product recommendations.

06:11
People see my products recommended to them on here, and

06:13
they click on them and buy them. But another way

06:16
is that these days, AI tools like ChatTpT themselves are

06:18
increasingly becoming the way people are increasingly becoming the way

06:20
people are finding niche products to buy. Etsy even has

06:23
a deal with ChatGPT

06:25
where potential customers can buy items from sellers like me

06:29
within their app. Kind of crazy, right? And these AI

06:32
recommendations

06:33
are crazy powerful. The thing about AI is that it's

06:37
designed to anticipate what you want

06:39
before you even know what you want, so AI tools

06:42
love unique niche products that fill gaps because when someone

06:46
asks AI to help them buy a gift, they don't

06:49
just want the most popular generic product. They want the

06:52
very best unique, personalized product to them. The new AI

06:55
era is all about this. It's hyper personalization

06:58
and so as long as my product design and concept

07:01
is good enough that someone would actually want to buy

07:03
it, the cool thing is that I don't actually need

07:05
to try to convince an AI recommendation algorithm

07:09
to sell someone my product. It will automatically know what

07:12
my product is, who it is for, and match it

07:15
to them based on everything it knows about their user.

07:18
It's crazy powerful,

07:20
but yeah. It still, of course, helps to optimize your

07:22
product listings to make it easier for AI and search

07:25
engines to find your products. So I'll be talking more

07:28
about doing this, search engine optimization,

07:30
otherwise SEO, and generative engine optimization,

07:34
otherwise known as GEO, later on in this course. But

07:38
yeah, that is my genuine answer that I give someone

07:41
when they ask me why I don't talk more about

07:45
advertising

07:46
and direct marketing and why I spend so much time

07:49
on product creation. It's because I have a product first

07:52
strategy

07:53
and creating great products is literally

07:56
my main traffic strategy.

07:58
So then, as I said, I will be delving deeper

08:01
and explaining more what exactly SEO is and what exactly

08:05
geo is. So go ahead, watch my next video, and

08:10
I will see you in the next lesson.
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