#+title: S05|L01 - my product first traffic strategy #+HTML_HEAD: #+OPTIONS: H:6 * Links #+attr_html: :class links - [[../../toc.org][TOC - ecomm clubhouse]] - [[https://jellyfin.ronnyabraham.com/web/index.html#/details?id=eae8b2eebb35f95dfb26b2caa2061a36&serverId=99488804638e465693eed17924c57b60][video]] * 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. #+end_example