#+title: S01|02 - my ai print on demand business 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=036b22dd5af1cc52f98e9418a6fadb08&serverId=99488804638e465693eed17924c57b60][video]] * Transcript #+begin_ex00:00 Hey, everyone, and welcome back to another video in this 00:02 course. In this video, I am gonna be explaining 00:05 what exactly my AI print on demand business is, how 00:09 it makes money, and how it utilizes AI tools from 00:12 start to finish. I'm going to explain how I use 00:15 AI to make the products I sell and how I 00:17 use AI to drive free traffic to them. Because these 00:20 days, because of the new AI era we're living in, 00:23 you don't actually need to pay for advertisements 00:25 if you don't want to. Plus, in addition, I'll also 00:28 explain how I'm using AI tools to run this as 00:30 a solo 1 person business 00:33 requiring 00:34 0 employees. 00:35 And my hope is that by explaining my business in 00:37 a nutshell, that it will make other video lessons in 00:40 this course make more sense. So let's get started. And 00:44 basically, in a nutshell, what I do is I use 00:47 AI tools to generate art for me and I also 00:49 use AI tools to turn it into high definition digital 00:53 art files that can then be printed onto clothes in 00:56 high definition, 00:57 which is actually kind of crazy for me if I 00:59 think about it. Because before AI, I used to have 01:02 to hire graphic designers and artists to draw specific pictures 01:05 for me if I couldn't find any clip art myself 01:08 to use for it. But now I can literally get 01:11 exactly the image I wanted within seconds. But of course, 01:15 having these digital files isn't enough. To actually sell them 01:17 onto clothes, I come to print on demand tools. And 01:20 of them all, Printify is the biggest and most popular. 01:23 And by the way, if you aren't quite sure what 01:26 print on demand is, it's basically a product fulfillment method. 01:29 So you take t shirts for example, the most popular 01:32 print on demand product with customers by far. Well, there 01:35 are 2 ways you could make and sell t shirts. 01:37 1 way is you could literally get a bunch of 01:39 t shirts printed in advance by a printing company from, 01:43 say, China and store them in, say, your garage and 01:46 then list them for sale online. And if somebody went 01:49 and bought a t shirt from you, then you in 01:51 your house would package it up and then ship it 01:54 out with the postal service manually. 01:56 So that is 1 way. The other way, of course, 01:58 is that you could use a print on demand service 02:01 like Printify. What these services do is they let you 02:04 upload your t shirt prints to the website. They'll then 02:06 give you a product mock up photo of what the 02:08 t shirt will look like printed. You can then advertise 02:11 online your t shirt for sale and if somebody buys 02:13 it, Printify's print shop will see the order. They'll then 02:16 print the design onto the t shirt, package it up, 02:19 and ship it out to the customer for you. So 02:21 for me, since I'm running a 1 person business, print 02:24 on demand is a great way to do it because 02:27 to scale, I don't have to hire any employees to 02:29 be running a print shop for me or managing a 02:32 warehouse for me. The print on demand app is the 02:34 1 managing that. And the way that you profit with 02:36 this is that you have a markup price on your 02:39 products. So you take t shirts. Right now on Printify 02:42 with a premium account, they cost about 6 to 10 02:44 dollars to buy and sell. And then most sellers, myself 02:48 included, will charge the customer the shipping price as a 02:51 separate charge. Well, most t shirts online sell for about 02:54 17 to 23 dollars with a medium price being around 02:57 20 dollars So that's how print on demand stores like 03:00 mine make money. We add a markup to our products. 03:03 And most print on demand stores these days that I 03:05 know are usually after transaction fees and printing fees left 03:09 with a profit margin of, on average, around 20 to 03:13 50 percent. And for me, my profit margin these days 03:16 is generally sitting around 30 percent on average. And for 03:20 me, as I show in step 3 of this course, 03:22 I've chosen to sell my products on 2 platforms. 03:24 Firstly, I set up Shopify stores and I list my 03:27 products for sale myself online. If you've never heard of 03:30 Shopify, it's basically an AI powered online store builder. You 03:33 can build your own online store that you host on 03:36 your own domain name that you own and it has 03:39 a great integration with Printify. 03:41 And then secondly, I list and sell my products on 03:43 Etsy. Now, Etsy, if you've never heard about it before, 03:46 is 1 of the biggest online marketplaces in the world. 03:49 The only ones that are bigger as far as I'm 03:51 aware are Amazon and eBay. And honestly, if you want 03:54 to sell your products on those marketplaces too, you can 03:57 as all 3 of the big marketplaces 04:00 have integrations with Printify. For me though, I've picked Etsy 04:03 to focus on over those 2 because I prefer the 04:06 customer base. Because unlike Amazon and eBay, Etsy doesn't allow 04:10 most mass produced products on the platform. 04:12 All products require some form of human creativity, 04:15 and print on demand products, including designs made with AI, 04:19 fall under the design section of their allowed product categories, 04:23 which is why, of course, Etsy has a direct integration 04:26 and close relationship with Printify. 04:28 But basically, by not allowing most mass produced products on 04:32 your platform, it means that the customer base that Etsy 04:34 attracts is usually happier to pay higher prices 04:37 because they know the products they're buying are individually made 04:40 to order, which also means that Etsy has become popular 04:43 as a place to buy gifts on. People like the 04:45 fact that the items you find on there are unique 04:47 and not mass produced in China. So every month, Etsy 04:51 attracts hundreds of millions of visitors, and every year, Etsy 04:54 brings in billions of dollars in sales and products sold 04:57 through their marketplace. For example, in 20 24, 05:00 Etsy sellers like me sold over 12600000000.0 05:03 dollars of products on there combined. 05:06 But because mass produced products are not allowed, it means 05:09 then that there is a lot less competition 05:12 for these sales, which is a big reason why a 05:15 lot of print on demand sellers such as myself, like 05:18 to use Etsy. But, of course, the question a lot 05:20 of people often have at this point is this. Okay, 05:23 Sarah. I see what you're doing. You're using AI to 05:27 create InDesign products that you then list for sale online 05:31 in your own stores. 05:32 That's great and all. But having products, whether they're AI 05:36 generated products or not, is not a guarantee for success. 05:40 For example, if I set up a lemonade stand, that's 05:43 great. But if no 1 buys my lemonade, I won't 05:46 make money. Right? You actually need to convince people to 05:50 buy your lemonade. 05:52 Now most people assume that to sell lemonade, you would 05:55 need to spend a lot of money to advertise it. 05:57 But let me ask you a question. What if you 05:59 opened your lemonade stand on the side of a busy 06:01 street on a hot day with lots of people walking 06:04 past it already? 06:06 And even better, what if those people couldn't get access 06:09 to water so their only good easy option that they 06:11 could see to quench their thirst was to buy your 06:14 lemonade? 06:15 Chances are people would just buy it from you. No 06:18 advertising required. That is my approach. You see, many people 06:22 don't take this approach. They open their lemonade stand on 06:25 a cold, empty street and they try to brute force 06:27 their way to success with advertisements. 06:30 For me, I call this the advertisement first strategy whereas 06:34 I instead, of course, try to open my lemonade stand 06:36 on a hot, busy street so that it can sell 06:39 itself. 06:40 And I like to call this the product first strategy. 06:44 And the way that I do this, the way that 06:46 I open on a hot busy street is I focus 06:48 on finding this, a gap in the market. A gap 06:51 in the market is a phrase in the business world 06:53 that means that you identify a product or service that 06:56 people would like to buy that doesn't yet exist or 06:59 that it does exist, but that people would like more 07:02 of or better options for. For example, in 1 video 07:05 tutorial I made, I identified that a popular style of 07:08 t shirt was 1 where you have a retro style 07:11 anime painting of, say, cats eating ramen and that this 07:14 was very popular. So what I did was I created 07:17 the same style of t shirt that is popular on 07:19 Etsy and Amazon. But this time, I had it feature 07:22 a cocky dog eating the ramen and I used AI 07:24 tools to create this. And so this is an example 07:27 of how I look for gaps in the market that 07:29 I can fill. I call this the cross niche formula. 07:32 By doing this, I had taken a proven popular design 07:34 concept of cat seeding ramen but now made it available 07:38 to an entirely new customer base, corgi owners. And so 07:42 this is what I do. I spend most of my 07:44 time looking for these gaps in the market and then 07:46 trying to create a good product to fill that gap 07:49 rather than spending my time creating ads and testing ads. 07:52 Because from my experience, 07:53 creating great products is a traffic strategy in of itself 07:57 thanks to AI. You see, this is a slide from 08:00 1 of Etsy's investor meetings and this slide is very 08:03 interesting. It shows how previously Etsy's recommendation 08:06 algorithm, 08:07 which would recommend products to customers, 08:09 used to heavily favor products that were already popular. And 08:13 this is how most people seem to assume, 08:15 in my experience, 08:17 how these algorithms work. They assume that these algorithms are 08:20 designed to keep popular things, well, popular, 08:24 and so they often actually get quite defeatist. 08:27 They say, if I open up a new store, Sarah, 08:30 no 1 will know who I am, so I will 08:33 have no sales and I will have no reviews. 08:35 Because I am a nobody, surely the algorithm is just 08:39 going to ignore me. And that used to be largely 08:42 true, to be fair, but there was a big problem. 08:45 When algorithms only favor things that are already popular, people 08:49 get bored, And for Etsy, this was bad. People saw 08:52 the same items over and over again and they got 08:55 bored and they stopped buying new things. And so what 08:58 the slide was showing was that Etsy was announcing a 09:00 change in direction. 09:02 Rather than favoring items that were already popular, they were 09:05 now going to be shifting gears to try and identify 09:08 new products that, while were not widely popular, were potentially 09:13 more specific 09:14 to an individual's own wants. And this all happened around 09:17 the same time as the TikTok algorithm revolution. 09:20 This pretty much changed the game for the Internet. The 09:23 TikTok algorithm was the first to do this concept. TikTok 09:26 is famous for the fact that random people with no 09:28 followers 09:29 can become viral hit sensations overnight, and it's because TikTok 09:32 figured out that rather than just showing the most popular 09:35 videos over and over again, it's much better to take 09:38 all videos that get posted to the platform and give 09:41 them all a small amount of views as a test. 09:44 And if that test goes well, the algorithm will keep 09:47 showing the video to more and more people. Well, this 09:50 is exactly what Etsy's algorithm is designed to do too. 09:53 It now gives all new products what is often called 09:56 test impressions. 09:58 So for example, do you see this homepage here? You 10:00 can see that Etsy has showcased a bunch of products 10:02 to me as part of its recommendations. 10:05 Well, Etsy can now pop new products in its recommendation 10:07 slots like these to test if anyone will click on 10:10 a new product or even better, if they'll actually go 10:13 and click and buy it. And so if people do 10:15 click on your new product that they test with these 10:17 test impressions, 10:18 the algorithm will keep showing it to more and more 10:21 potential customers. And here's the thing. The AI is getting 10:24 better and better at choosing who to recommend your products 10:28 to as part of its test. Etsy has announced that 10:31 they have integrated AI machine learning into the algorithm, and 10:34 it is now even better at anticipating 10:36 what unique, interesting product 10:38 might be best suited to specific individuals 10:41 to recommend and promote on their Etsy home feed and 10:45 their search results. 10:47 Basically, AI is incredibly good at figuring out just by 10:50 looking at your product listing which customers in its database 10:54 based on their data that they should match it to. 10:57 They figure out basically who they should show your products 11:00 to. Not only this, but increasingly, more and more people 11:03 are finding products to buy through AI chatbots themselves such 11:06 as ChatchePT 11:07 by asking it to recommend products to them too. So 11:11 with all this in mind, this is why I believe 11:13 that in our new AI era that a product first 11:16 strategy is a fantastic way to get traffic because with 11:19 AI algorithms, 11:20 the goal isn't for them to find the most popular 11:23 product. Instead, their goal is to find and identify the 11:26 most specific product that can meet their users' individual needs. 11:30 It is hyper personalization. 11:33 So when I was talking earlier about opening your lemonade 11:36 stand on a hot busy street, this is what I 11:38 mean by taking a product first approach and designing niche 11:41 products that fill gaps. I'm creating exactly 11:44 what the AI recommendation 11:46 algorithms want and what they're looking for. So the AI 11:49 recommendation 11:49 algorithms, 11:50 they are the busy street with hundreds of millions of 11:53 users who are utilizing them, looking for unique gifts to 11:57 buy, and my niche products are the lemonade. 12:01 And if you think about it, right, before AI generation 12:04 tools, making all of these products would have been very 12:08 expensive. 12:09 Because you think about that Caughey Ramen t shirt, to 12:12 make it previously, it could have cost you hundreds of 12:15 dollars because someone would have had to have drawn it 12:18 by scratch. 12:19 And, well, that is slow, and you would have had 12:21 to have potentially waited a week for them to draw 12:23 it and then to send it to you. But now 12:25 I can literally come up with a product idea, make 12:28 it, and then list it for sale in less than 12:30 10 minutes because the AI generates the art and it 12:32 upscales it for print and then it even generates the 12:35 listing text for me. And by using AI, I've been 12:38 able to grow a large selection of niche products that 12:41 I've been able to use to grow and scale my 12:44 sales. And of course, because I'm choosing to use print 12:47 on demand apps to print and ship my products, it 12:50 also means that adding new products to my store is 12:53 very quick too because I can skip the traditional slow 12:56 process of having to produce t shirts in bulk and 12:59 then ship them all the way over from China. It 13:02 is this incredible combination 13:03 of AI combined with autonomous 13:06 print on demand stores, which has just been absolutely game 13:10 changing for 13:11 me. However, where people go wrong, in my personal opinion, 13:15 is that when they see an AI powered business, they 13:17 go, ah, it should just be run entirely 13:20 with AI and with no human ideas, 13:23 no human creativity, 13:25 nothing like that. But I tell you what, at least 13:27 for now, I am not approaching my AI powered business 13:32 like that at all. Nope. And that's because there's actually 13:35 a very important human part to a successful business, and 13:39 it's this part here, finding a gap in the market. 13:42 Right now, the truth is is that AI is not 13:45 very good at identifying these. If you ask Chat GPT 13:48 to find gaps in the market for you, it is 13:51 unlikely to do a good job. And that's because 13:54 identifying a gap is all about spotting what is missing, 13:58 whereas AI is all about looking at information that exists 14:02 and noting patterns within existing data. But us humans, well, 14:06 we're actually pretty good at spotting gaps because our brains 14:09 don't just analyze data. Our brains let us experience things 14:14 like wants and desires. 14:17 And so honestly, the easiest way for me to spot 14:20 gaps in the market is to create and sell products 14:23 in a niche in which I am a customer in. 14:26 Because that way, I can identify product gaps by looking 14:29 at what is for sale already in the niche and 14:32 thinking, 14:33 what product would I like to buy that doesn't yet 14:35 already exist? And then I can use AI to help 14:38 me create that product. I tap into my own wants 14:42 and my own desires. 14:43 And so because I think that this is really important, 14:46 I've decided to make step 1 all about how I 14:49 choose a new niche for a store. Because by choosing 14:53 a store niche, it lets me do 2 things. 1 14:55 of those, of course, being the opportunity 14:58 to build a store around something of which I'm passionate 15:01 about, which then, of course, makes it easier for me 15:03 to come up with product ideas because I can think 15:05 to myself, okay, 15:07 well, what product or design would I like to buy? 15:10 But that I can't because it doesn't currently exist. But 15:13 secondly, as I'll explain in another video in this module, 15:16 by starting a new store focused on a niche customer 15:19 base, it makes it easier for algorithms to figure out 15:22 who to recommend my products to. So yes, that is 15:25 my AI powered print on demand business in a nutshell. 15:29 And remember, 15:30 this is just an overall look at how my business 15:33 works. All of these ideas that I've talked about, picking 15:36 a niche, coming up with product ideas, optimizing them for 15:40 AI recommendations, 15:41 These are all topics which I talk about more inside 15:45 of the course. So don't worry if there is an 15:47 idea that you thought to yourself that sounds really interesting, 15:49 but I don't fully understand it yet because 15:52 I will be going more in-depth into these ideas in 15:56 dedicated videos. 15:57 And speaking of other videos, now that this video is 16:00 over, it is time to go and watch the next 16:03 video. So go ahead, open up my next video, and 16:06 I will see you in the next lesson.ample #+end_example