Lex's Digital/Physical Product Group Accountability Thread

[Lex DeVille]

See this thread for more information on the what/how part of what we're creating in this thread.

Accountability
I decided to hold myself accountable for one year on my latest idea. I'm doing it in this thread in case you'd like to join in for group accountability.

Goals:
1. To create and focus on a digital and/or physical product for one year.
2. To automate as much of the systems and sales processes as possible to free up time.
3. To create a passive income system to support yourself or that you can sell as an operational business to someone else.

Tools
I purchased the perpetual calendar below to countdown days for fun.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074SJHSYJ/?tag=tff-amazonparser-20

Why one year?
I think it's a reasonable timeframe to know if an idea/approach is a success, failure, or if a pivot is needed.

Current Progress
- Came up with a digital/physical product idea
- Bought a domain
- Made a simple logo in Canva (like 5 minutes total)
- Set up a basic wordpress site

To-Do
- Create an MVP
- Set up WooCommerce and remaining site pages
- Set up a Google Ads account & analytics/conversion tracking

Anybody want to join in? Doesn't matter when you start. Just get a calendar and start counting down from 365.

 

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[Lex DeVille]

Okay, I've committed to a decision. I'm quitting the 9-5 tomorrow morning.

After that, I'll focus all of my efforts on Udemy courses rather than freelancing because the goal is freedom.

To do that, I'll start a new Udemy account from scratch, and I'll set it up as a business rather than as a solo instructor so I can make videos without the expectation of my face being on screen, that way I can cover basically any topic.

From there, I'll use a combination of Udemy and Google research to determine good topics that haven't already been covered on Udemy. I'll use ChatGPT to outline the courses and maybe even to provide the script. I'll use Canva and Google Slides to create presentations.

I'll aim to produce at least two courses per month (more if I can make my courses good enough without sacrificing quality) with a goal of adding an additional $500 to $1,000 in revenue each month.

Repo is still on the table, because I still need a Fastlane business.

So that's that. Here we go!

 

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[John Clancy]

@Lex DeVille I was going to send this as a DM, but then realised:

1. Your DMs are closed
2. This isn't something that needs to be shared privately

I've been following along with this thread, and wanted to reach out after I saw your most recent post.

I'm sorry you're having a tough time right now.

I'm not the first one to say this, but it's still worth saying:

Thank you for all the value you've provided over the years.

From one person to another, thank you.

Your OG Upwork content is what helped me get started back in 2016 when I was a confused college kid with no skills, no money, and no clue what I wanted to do.

Rather than following the Ascended Guru™ Playbook, you played it straight.

No BS. No fluff. No hiding behind mounds of theoretical frameworks or abstract nonsense that sounded good, but had clearly never seen the light of day.

You called it like you saw it. And shared simple, to-the-point strategies that worked.

Sure, you had existing skills to leverage. Intelligence, work ethic, and a world-class ability to jump in and get started (something 98% of people lack).

But you didn't dress it up like it was anything other than what it was. And that was a breath of fresh air.

--

There's a lot of water under the bridge since then. For you, for me, for everyone.

But as time has passed, think of all the people along the way that you've impacted positively. Side hustles, mindset, writing, positioning, branding, funnels, spotting gurus in the wild, self-belief, taking action. I can't even estimate how many people your presence must have impacted over time.

That's not to just say "look on the bright side!!". Issues are issues - they don't disappear just because we ignore them.

What I'm getting at here is that, while you might feel you're at a low point in your journey now, that doesn't mean you'll stay there. That things can't come back around, or be even better than they used to be.

(They might be different. But different doesn't mean bad.)

--

So, again:

Thank you.

And as a parting thought, three "how might you" questions that could be helpful to consider:

• How might you change how you think/relate to your job such that it doesn't exhaust you, leave you numb, and drain you of your cognitive energy?
• How might you "return" to copywriting - and do it in a way that doesn't take up so much time and brainpower?
• How might you find the mental energy and clarity to get your passive income ideas working as they should?

They're open-ended questions - and not necessarily easy to answer. But in sitting with them, you might see a path forward that's been hiding in plain sight this whole time.

Bottom line:

If there's something you need, ask.

Even if you never share question with another person, it's still worth asking.

Because it's only in asking that we can find an answer.

 

[Lex DeVille]

What’s going to make your t shirts better than all the other people using AI drop shipped t shirts?

There are 8 billion people on the planet and most of them need clothes. Clothes wear out regularly, so the demand for clothes is endless.

Even though AI makes cool designs, you need a creative entrepreneur to drive those designs and put in the time and effort to build this into something more.

People buy clothes that highlight who they see themselves as and what they want others to appreciate about them, but depending on the style, it may be underserved or even doesn't exist.

Nobody knows the shirts are PoD, and mine won't be PoD forever because I'll want more quality control (QC). Through my website, there is nothing that says, "These are PoD shirts."

Past experience selling Printify shirts tells me people are generally happy with the quality of their shirts. It starts by choosing the right shirt material (I like Gildan shirts). Then you create your design, order a sample for QC, and if it's good enough, list it up for sale.

The other main factors are branding, social media, and advertising. For instance, TikTok brings millions of targeted views to new brands every day.

Lastly, (and probably most important of all) I'll sell shirts, but this isn't a "shirt" business. It's a digital brand where shirts are a way to shout who you are while demonstrating brand loyalty.

What's most important to me right now is that I can work on this a little each day and build it up into something over the course of a year. I no longer have huge pressure to get something off the ground.

 

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[Lex DeVille]

A couple more thoughts on Udemy for those who might go the course route:

1. Title
When creating course titles, I almost always use the formula: Main Search Term + Core Benefit

For instance, one of my oldest courses: "Start a Freelance Business: Take Back Your Freedom Now"

• The main search term is "start a freelance business."
• The reason people want to start a freelance business is because they want freedom.
• The word "now" highlights the action they can take in the present moment (also the action I want them to take lol)

I do this because of something I'm pretty sure I learned from @Andy Black which is that the landing page/Google Ad should sync up. If someone searches for "Start a Freelance Business" and Udemy is running ads to my course, then I want them to target that search term. When the person clicks the ad, I want the first thing they see to be the exact search term.

2. Subtitle
My subtitles usually follow some variation of the formula Call to Action + Benefits + Overcome Objections

From the Start a Freelance Business Course:
"Earn a full-time income from home with no degree, no experience, and no portfolio."

Goes straight into a CTA (Earn a full-time income) adds a secondary benefit (from home) overcomes objections (degree, portfolio, experience)

3. Selecting Course Ideas
One thing I forgot to mention about course selection. It's a good idea to avoid one-off topics. A good topic should be able to carry the student naturally from one course into another so they have more reason to buy your future courses.

 

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[Lex DeVille]

I'm curious why you always tend to gravitate toward these "gray area" niches that cause you so much trouble.

Is it deliberate because it's harder to operate in them?

Or are you just a true real world villain with an evil laugh and an evil empire to build?

Man, there's no good way to answer that. My honest answer is pretty grim.

I don't care about wealth, or about success or building an empire anymore.

It's all pointless, so I do what seems fun.

But I can't just do what's fun, because I have mouths to feed and bills to pay.

So, I try to leverage my eccentricities into ideas other people who are like me will be drawn to.


Progress:
My ads are live and running. Traffic is reaching my site. I'm only advertising to the United States, but I've had users from all over the globe today. I don't know how they're finding me. I don't think my site should rank on Google yet, but haven't checked. I've had people reach both the cart and checkout pages today, but haven't landed that first sale yet.

I recorded 15 videos today. So far, I've added five of them to the site. Hopefully, those will add a personal touch. I'm on the fence about purchasing ActiveCampaign, Memberium, and FOMO again. I think they're all really useful, but all of these damn SaaS companies have shitty policies when it comes to pricing, and customer loyalty. I'll probably still invest in them again, but maybe not until I earn my first sale.

 

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[Lex DeVille]

Congrats on your decision. I am looking forward to reading about your process.

I'm currently looking for possible course topics for Udemy as well to generate some additional income for Fastlane ideas but I haven't found any real winners yet. So I was wondering if you could elaborate more on your process for finding/choosing course topics for Udemy.

Thanks.

On Udemy, I use the Marketing Insights page (must have an Instructor account) to determine basic search volume for my ideas.




On this page you search for a topic, and if there are courses on that topic, Udemy will pull up data on those courses.




If there are a lot of courses and if the median monthly revenue is low, then it's probably not a good topic because it's saturated. If there is low demand and low top monthly revenue, then maybe some courses are available but nobody is buying them. I generally want to see medium or high demand, low number of courses, and better median monthly revenue. Top monthly revenue can be a weird metric because sometimes that course is made by an influencer with a huge audience like Seth Godin, so it skews the data.

The marketing insights page provides other metrics including top search terms and related topics. The data here is particularly useful, but if there are no courses around your topic idea then there won't be any data to show.




On my oldest account there is an "Insights" page in the instructor dashboard with business insights. This page doesn't show up on my new account, so I'm not sure if you have to have one or more courses published to see it.



This page shows ideas that are trending, specialized, and or offer a first-mover advantage. Depending on what you want to teach, this page can be useful.




The last page I use is the main search page for the website. Sometimes the marketplace insights don't show any data for courses, but there are courses available on the site. Other times, the marketplace insights show data, but there really aren't any courses on your exact topic. So I search the main page to see what actually shows up on the website.




If there are a lot of results, then I scroll through the first couple of pages to see how many of those results are relevant. If most of the courses on the first page are relevant, then I'm not going to make a course around that exact topic because it probably won't do very well. But a related or sub-topic could still do well.

Google Ads
The only other tool I use is the keyword search tool in the Google Ads console. That's just to see how many people are searching for my topic regularly. Udemy spends a lot on Google Ads, so if a topic has a lot of searches and low bids on the main term, then Udemy will probably promote my course more since it won't cost them much to generate sales. At least, that's my theory.

 

[Andy Black]

Wow, that's insane. Why do you think he's doing so well vs other people trying to sell POD t-shirts?

1) He doesn't listen to news it's oversaturated.

2) He runs ads to find out what people want to buy, then runs ads to sell it.

 

[kr8nt]

I just got my first ever sale online this morning. I can't believe it.

It took me about a month to develop my product until I was able to publish it on Etsy. Nothing was happening for a week or so and then today I checked my email and found out that someone purchased it. The best part is that I spent less on Etsy Ads, than the product is selling for, which means that it's profitable. This feels unbelievable.

Thank you a lot for your posts, Lex! Without your posts I don't think I could've done it.

What could I do now, to speed up the process of getting sales?

 

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[NervesOfSteel]

"If you build it, they will come!
If they don't, you'll need to run Google and FB ads!"


Goal:

1. A. To create a digital product that fits into a certain niche in such a way that it is compatible with a larger chunk of the audience of the particular niche.

1. B. To sell my product via partially aggressive digital marketing and along with that collect all the data of the results of this enterprise. The data will be very useful in the future for the next product.

Start date: 21 Dec 2023

Time: 6 months.


Progress as of 21st Dec 2023:

1. Market research is in progress. Various products are under scrutiny. The First Niche is finalized though.
2. I decided to go with Shopify's $5/mo plan, to begin with. This will be my landing page. I intend to test this out on as little budget as possible.

Hurdles:

1. Etsy and eBay are unwilling to register any shop from my country. Etsy has some issues with my country's payment gateway, I suppose. With these two websites down, I will have to rely only on digital marketing - targeting the customers directly to my landing page.
2. None of the major e-commerce platforms are accepting shops/ listings from my country to sell globally due to their internal issues with my country's digital payment partner. So no platform to sell globally at the moment.

Challenges:

1. Only theoretical know-how of digital marketing. No real-time experience.
2. Time. With my main business consuming most of the time, I can only devote 1 hour a day, 2 tops!
3. It's the 22nd of December, and Xmas this year is a missed opportunity, and so is New Year's Eve. Launching this project in November would have given me a boost during this festive season.

Motivation:

1. A new skill to learn which I was procrastinating for quite a long time.
2. To develop a business model that can and probably will help me a ton in future endeavors.
3. A passive income sounds pretty good to me!
4. Gut Instinct.

Update as of 25th Dec 2023:

1. Took a test drive of both Shopify and WordPress. The latter seems more impressive, easy, and economical as compared to the first.
2. The product is finalized. Brainstorming for redesign starts today.
3. Started learning digital marketing.

 

[MTF]

Identity Verification: This process is important to defeat chargebacks where the user claims someone stole their identity and made a fraudulent purchase. Third-party verification services are expensive. One wanted nearly $200 per month plus $1.75 per verification. I settled on Stripe's identity verification option. It's $1.50 per verification. Stripe requires the user to take a selfie and upload a clear image of the front/back of their Government-issued photo ID.

Why are you so obsessed about avoiding chargebacks? I would NEVER do identity verification for any purchase, let alone a $100 digital product. You're not a financial institution and that requirement will sound to every customer like a scam to steal their identity.

If even 1% of people finish your checkout process after seeing that a private business requires freaking identity verification like a bank, then I'll be very surprised.

 

[MTF]

To put it in perspective, OnlyFans (with 500,000 new users per day) requires identity verification for a digital product that is generally $7 - $9 per month. Unless they've changed processors, OnlyFans uses Stripe.

Holy F*ck people are actually sending their selfies with government IDs to get naked pictures?



I just can't with this world anymore.

 

[Timmy C]

Ok so I was just fiddling around and I have just randomly started executing so here's my progress so far:

Checked the Keyword planner for google searches related to my niche:
Several in the 100 - 1000 searches PCM range, this is just an estimate.

I Had a look at the competition on etsy and other third party seller sites. What is available right now is not very good, you can tell people are just lazy when they do this, and I think that will be my biggest edge here.

Once I create at least 20 designs I will launch a shop on etsy and list them all at once, the reason for this is that etsy gives all of the new sellers a temporary boost when they first start selling, so i want to take advantage of this as best I can.

My own website will be made also, and I am assessing other potential marketing channels.

Youtube might help, facebook might help, as well as Pinterest could be a way to go.

I have just finished making my first design and I have a process in place for how to do this that scaled the image and also made it 300 DPI.

Before I go forward with anymore designs I am going to take what I created to a print shop in town and get them to print it for me at various sizes so I can see if this process should be continued and if i see any diference in quality based on the sizing.

That's it so far, I will update more later.

 

[Lex DeVille]

Here's my first update of the new year.

Products
I consolidated three digital product concepts into one site. I created a new site that fits all three. The primary product will pull people to the site. The secondary product will serve as an upsell. The tertiary product will target the most loyal customers, but may become a primary product driving sales later on.

Security
I beefed up my anti-fraud protections in WooCommerce and added 2-factor authentication. I'm still working through additional measures to track users to create the strongest case possible to defeat any disputes that arise.

Payment
I'm testing WooPayments and will probably add Stripe and PayPal shortly. I also added Klarna (what Etsy uses for split payments). Klarna allows users to pay across 4 separate payments.

Google
Analytics is installed. I'll set up my ads account tomorrow.

Website
I have a Home, About, Shop, FAQ, and Contact page. Secondary pages include a Refund Policy, Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and Disclaimer.

Products
The first product is live, but the website is not live yet. I intend to go live by Monday. Sooner if possible.

---

After Going Live Steps

1. Begin running Google Ads
2. Launch a FB likes campaign to the FB Page
3. Create initial YouTube & TikTok videos
4. Add more products
5. Set up baseline email systems

 

[Lex DeVille]

Sales
I turned off ads a few days ago for the main site in this thread. I was about to shut the site down. But then it happened. Nearly $150 in sales across three orders overnight. Two through WooCommerce and one through ThriveCart.




Guess I'll keep the site open and tinker with it some more. I'll still focus most of my efforts on Udemy, but I'll keep going with this site since it's up and running on its own at this point.

 

[Lex DeVille]

Well that's that. March's numbers are in. Thought I'd have my first $1,000 month and I came damn close, but fell shy by a single sale. Oh well. Even with the added expenses, profits were up a lot over last month ($395.03 in Feb). Looking forward to April.

March Sales: $989.26
- Thrivecart: $409.59
- WooCommerce: $579.67

March Expenses: $310.68
- Google Ads: $96.15
- FOMO: $25.00
- ActiveCampaign: $70.00
- Physical Inventory: $119.53

March Profit: $678.58

From the charts below, we're starting to get the bouncing airplane, gaining momentum as sales try to take off. We're achieving multiple days of sales in a row, and higher totals overall. It's taking a bit longer than my previous store, but still getting there.





Major Changes from March That Paid Off
The biggest change was the addition of niche physical products. As soon as I listed items, they started selling. I only list the items as 1 in stock (because I only bought 1 of each item lol). This probably motivates sales due to scarcity. All of these items that sold were purchased for under $2 ea.

- 3 Rings for $50 ea
- 1 Necklace for $150 ea

Some of the physical inventory expenses from March will play a major role in April's sales. I'm still waiting on two shipments of that inventory to arrive. One shipment should be here today or within the next few days. The other one should follow close behind.


Updates for April

Funnels: In April I'll build out new funnels. I'll get products added as upsells for the digital purchases (which are still my top seller in terms of quantity).

Inventory: I'll add more physical products and intend to extend my product lineup to test some other items I think will do well. Once I have a good idea of what people will/won't buy, I'll start to narrow my inventory purchases and increase volume on specific products.

Google Ads: This week I'll launch a new campaign targeting the physical products to see if I can draw interest from new markets. I'll probably run those at $5/day to start.

Email: I intend to send more emails this month. Those emails will mostly run to blog posts that will funnel people back to specific products.

Blog: I'll increase the number of blogs to 2 to 3 per week. I wrote a blog last month that funneled people to a specific necklace, and that necklace sold for $150 within a day of publishing the blog post. ChatGPT will assist with writing.

 

[Andy Black]

See this thread for more information on the what/how part of what we're creating in this thread.

Accountability
I decided to hold myself accountable for one year on my latest idea. I'm doing it in this thread in case you'd like to join in for group accountability.

Goals:
1. To create and focus on a digital and/or physical product for one year.
2. To automate as much of the systems and sales processes as possible to free up time.
3. To create a passive income system to support yourself or that you can sell as an operational business to someone else.

Tools
I purchased the perpetual calendar below to countdown days for fun.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074SJHSYJ/?tag=tff-amazonparser-20

Why one year?
I think it's a reasonable timeframe to know if an idea/approach is a success, failure, or if a pivot is needed.

Current Progress
- Came up with a digital/physical product idea
- Bought a domain
- Made a simple logo in Canva (like 5 minutes total)
- Set up a basic wordpress site

To-Do
- Create an MVP
- Set up WooCommerce and remaining site pages
- Set up a Google Ads account & analytics/conversion tracking

Anybody want to join in? Doesn't matter when you start. Just get a calendar and start counting down from 365.

Love it. Let's go folks. Grab hold of Lex's coat-tails and hang on.

 

[Lex DeVille]

Going Live
I turned off the "Coming Soon" page. The site is now live. It has no traffic because I'm not running ads yet. That's my big goal for tomorrow morning. Gotta get those first ads live so I can try to earn that first sale.

Main Product
The main product is completely digital. It's not fully automated yet, but it will be 90% automated in a week or two.

Pricing
I've set two price points across the nine products. They are $99.97 on the low end and $197.97 on the high end.

Questions I need to answer for myself:

1. How Will I set up an affiliate program?
2. How will I turn this into an automated membership?
3. How will I go from 90% automated to 100% automated?

 

[MTF]

Google Ads
Set up and launched the first ad campaign this morning. Immediately hit with strong restriction. Appealed. Won. First ads are live.

I'm curious why you always tend to gravitate toward these "gray area" niches that cause you so much trouble.

Is it deliberate because it's harder to operate in them?

Or are you just a true real world villain with an evil laugh and an evil empire to build?

 

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[Lex DeVille]

Update
So far, my idea is telling me the market isn't on board. I haven't switched to the high-ticket version because I don't think I have time to make it work. I adjusted the low-ticket version to be more aligned with what people are searching for. They do use the low-ticket product, but they don't make a purchase. I'm going to give this another week, and then I'm going to shut it down and move on. I'll explain why in the next section.

Work
Carrying a 9-5 is one of the most awful, depressing things I've done in the last decade. Three days a week I sit in a room with a gray glow, no windows, and mostly in silence. My mind is atrophying. By the end of the day, I'm physically and mentally exhausted to the point I can't even look at a computer screen to work on my own projects. The benefits are good. The pay is good. The people are friendly. But what it's doing to my head...every fiber of my existence is screaming to quit and go back to freelancing immediately.

I'd rather not return to copywriting as the landscape has changed a lot over the past year. I'd need a new approach. But in the 9-5, I feel like I'm just passing time until I die. Everyone is on about their retirement... "How do I set up my benefits so 40 years from now I can afford a nice casket??" It has an upside, of course. It pays bills consistently, and the longer I stay, the more money I build to invest in business ideas, but the way my mind feels after 8 hours of mind-numbing work is like I'm on antidepressants. I'm emotionally numb, tired, and lack the cognitive energy to even think of new ideas or to map out a plan for escape.

Escaping
I have a tenant in my rental home. That's roughly $400 per month in passive income. I also still have dwindling income from both YouTube and Udemy to the tune of between $300 - $500 per month. The minimum I need to live on is $3000 per month which doesn't seem like much, but I struggled to come up with it before I had this job.

- Copywriting: Can probably still work, but I may need to change my approach. Also, takes up a lot of time and brain power.

- Passive Income Ideas: These were originally my plan for escape, but so far haven't gone how I envisioned. There are at least three products that I am 95% sure could bridge the gap *given enough time* to get them up and running. I've sold all three in the past. The hard part now is I don't have the mental energy or clarity to work on them.

- Service Business: This seems like it could be the fastest way to claw my way out of this hellscape and maybe even create a Fastlane business. My biggest concern is I'll invest a bunch of money in equipment and then lose interest or motivation in a month. Since this has already happened in the past, I have no reason to think it wouldn't happen again.

Three Advantages
Since I live in a much larger city, more opportunity exists around me than before. Since I moved here with my ex, I'm not carrying the full weight of parenting while providing any longer. Since she just accepted a federal position that pays as much as mine, there is a buffer if I leave my 9-5. I don't want to rely on her income, but it might help in making an escape as soon as I figure out which direction to go.

 

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[Lex DeVille]

@Lex DeVille I was going to send this as a DM, but then realised:

1. Your DMs are closed
2. This isn't something that needs to be shared privately

I've been following along with this thread, and wanted to reach out after I saw your most recent post.

I'm sorry you're having a tough time right now.

I'm not the first one to say this, but it's still worth saying:

Thank you for all the value you've provided over the years.

From one person to another, thank you.

Your OG Upwork content is what helped me get started back in 2016 when I was a confused college kid with no skills, no money, and no clue what I wanted to do.

Rather than following the Ascended Guru™ Playbook, you played it straight.

No BS. No fluff. No hiding behind mounds of theoretical frameworks or abstract nonsense that sounded good, but had clearly never seen the light of day.

You called it like you saw it. And shared simple, to-the-point strategies that worked.

Sure, you had existing skills to leverage. Intelligence, work ethic, and a world-class ability to jump in and get started (something 98% of people lack).

But you didn't dress it up like it was anything other than what it was. And that was a breath of fresh air.

--

There's a lot of water under the bridge since then. For you, for me, for everyone.

But as time has passed, think of all the people along the way that you've impacted positively. Side hustles, mindset, writing, positioning, branding, funnels, spotting gurus in the wild, self-belief, taking action. I can't even estimate how many people your presence must have impacted over time.

That's not to just say "look on the bright side!!". Issues are issues - they don't disappear just because we ignore them.

What I'm getting at here is that, while you might feel you're at a low point in your journey now, that doesn't mean you'll stay there. That things can't come back around, or be even better than they used to be.

(They might be different. But different doesn't mean bad.)

--

So, again:

Thank you.

And as a parting thought, three "how might you" questions that could be helpful to consider:

• How might you change how you think/relate to your job such that it doesn't exhaust you, leave you numb, and drain you of your cognitive energy?
• How might you "return" to copywriting - and do it in a way that doesn't take up so much time and brainpower?
• How might you find the mental energy and clarity to get your passive income ideas working as they should?

They're open-ended questions - and not necessarily easy to answer. But in sitting with them, you might see a path forward that's been hiding in plain sight this whole time.

Bottom line:

If there's something you need, ask.

Even if you never share question with another person, it's still worth asking.

Because it's only in asking that we can find an answer.

Thanks John, I appreciate reading that.

Your post means a lot. It reminded me of where I've been and who I am. I can't lose that person.

I'll turn this around or die trying.

 

[Lex DeVille]

Course I
Finished recording the 34 video lessons today. I'll start edits shortly. Even though I'm not doing this under my own name, I recorded talking head videos instead of using a script. Scripting takes way too long for me. I'll add bullet points during edits.

The main search term for this course has over 12,000 searches per month on Google. Nobody has made a course on the topic. There's a secondary search term in the course that has over 30k searches per month. As long as I do well on the promo and preview videos, the course should do okay.

I used ChatGPT to fill out all of the main text sections (landing page description, course objectives, etc.) and Canva to create the cover image. I'll use ChatGPT to create most of the content for PDF downloadable resources. I'm using OBS (free software) to record videos, and Microsoft Clipchamp (free version) for edits.

Course II
I have audios recorded for about half of a second course. I may re-do those since I'll probably do talking head videos from now on. I didn't like the scripted process, and I come across more naturally confident and knowledgeable when it's unscripted .

 

[Lex DeVille]

How do you find out whether that specific niche you want to make a variation of the product for will actually need it?

If people buy the product on Etsy, then the *need* part is already determined. What you have to figure out is if the niche is large enough to not only earn sales, but to sustain and grow them.

You have to research each niche. There's no one right way to determine the size of a niche. Use online tools. Use Google. Use Facebook. Use forums. Eventually, you learn to know a good niche intuitively.

At some point, you just pull the trigger. You'll never have as much info as you want about a niche. You'll never know for certain until you create the product, list it for sale, and find out if anyone buys.

 

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[Lex DeVille]

The latest changes seem to be making a difference, at least for ThriveCart sales. $100 in sales just today. I had 5 total TC sales last month. I'm up to 8 TC sales this month, and almost $100 over last month's TC revenue. I'm still waiting on the physical products to arrive. I believe those will increase sales as physical products will help legitimize the site as a whole and give people more things to spend money on.

 

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[Lex DeVille]

Yesterday I got the first 10 products from Temu listed. I spent less than $2 per product and only $31 on the entire order. Overnight, I saw my first two sales from this order for a total of $100. Now that I know this is a viable product option, I'll add more Temu items from my niche.

I've seen some arguments that Temu is a marked up version of Ali Express. That may be the case, but I've never had scam UPS orders shipped under my name with Temu (so far) and I've had that frequently with Alibaba and Ali Express.

I'll place my next Temu order shortly.

 

[Lex DeVille]

Four days in.

I'm already almost to $600, which means I've surpassed all of February's revenue in just four days, and I'm only a couple hundred away from surpassing all of March too.

Product Shipments
None of my shipments have arrived. One supposedly was delivered today. The delivery even had photo confirmation. Unfortunately, UPS delivered to the wrong address...

So I filed a claim with UPS, and contacted Temu support. Temu immediately reshipped the items for free. Who knows what UPS will do. The other shipment is set for delivery in a few days. I really wish they would hurry up. I'm certain I'll sell more as soon as I have more inventory...

Digital/Physical Split
My sales for the month are almost split, but physical products have an edge by maybe $30 or so. I removed one digital product that was the source of multiple refunds and a dispute. I'll replace it with something better.

 

[Lex DeVille]

Sales
Good news for April. As we approach mid-month, I've surpassed last month's total sales. Currently sitting at $1,035.81. I really hope to reach $2,000 this month.

Repeat Business
For physical products, I'm noticing that those who have purchased in the past are quick to return when I list new products. Those who purchased digital products were among the first to give my physical products a try.

Returns/Refunds/Chargebacks
I haven't had to deal with many of these so far. I think part of the reason is that physical products now make up the majority of my sales. Physical products offer something tangible, so the desire to refund is probably lower. Tracking numbers likely reduce the volume of people who would attempt to claim fraudulent purchases or that their item wasn't received. Requiring the customer to pay for return shipping for any returns likely plays a role in the decision to return an item or not. Hopefully, it stays this way.

 

[Lex DeVille]

Days Remaining for Me: 362
The desktop calendar finally arrived and I started tracking days. My D-Day is set for how long I intend to work for the government while building up my next brand. Ideally, the brand will be profitable within a month or so. Currently, I'm short on time and struggling as an employee. I simply don't fit in, and it's rough pretending to be a mindless drone.

Product
I had a product in mind, but switched it last second after seeing what DALL-E can do. If you're not familiar, the paid version of ChatGPT grants access to DALL-E which generates images. So I asked it generate some images in a specific style, and to my surprise, they were pretty good. I refined my request by uploading examples in similar styles and providing more direction. The designs went from good to holy shit I'd buy ALL of these right now if they were for sale. It was like the AI was in my head and knew exactly what I wanted. So what product will I focus on?

T-shirts.

Why T-Shirts?
Because there are endless proven niches, and endless customers. T-shirts can be designed, printed, and shipped without inventory (until some later point). T-shirts can be branded. There are already a lot of proven slogans with poor designs that can be improved on. The process can be outsourced later.

Challenges
DALL-E can create shirt designs, but they're not ready-to-go out of the box. By that, I mean, DALL-E struggles with text and frequently misspells words. Also, the designs may need to be extracted by a freelancer and turned into an appropriately formatted graphic so its ready for upload to PoD websites. Either way, I'd say the designs are 90% ready within seconds.

Saturation
Some will worry about market saturation with t-shirts. I don't think it's saturated at all because you can get so specific when it comes to t-shirt designs. Besides, anything a customer asks for, you can turn into a design in seconds.

Sales Channels
I'll have someone create a new Etsy account and link it to a neutral bank account to sell on Etsy. I'll also set up to run Facebook and Google ads to a private website. This product should sell well through Google's shop feature, and maybe through Facebook Marketplace.

Social Marketing
I'll probably focus on TikTok for this one. Instagram may prove useful. Facebook may prove useful. That said, short videos seem to work well for clothes. People like to see other people wearing the clothes.

 

[Andy Black]

Days Remaining for Me: 362
The desktop calendar finally arrived and I started tracking days. My D-Day is set for how long I intend to work for the government while building up my next brand. Ideally, the brand will be profitable within a month or so. Currently, I'm short on time and struggling as an employee. I simply don't fit in, and it's rough pretending to be a mindless drone.

Product
I had a product in mind, but switched it last second after seeing what DALL-E can do. If you're not familiar, the paid version of ChatGPT grants access to DALL-E which generates images. So I asked it generate some images in a specific style, and to my surprise, they were pretty good. I refined my request by uploading examples in similar styles and providing more direction. The designs went from good to holy shit I'd buy ALL of these right now if they were for sale. It was like the AI was in my head and knew exactly what I wanted. So what product will I focus on?

T-shirts.

Why T-Shirts?
Because there are endless proven niches, and endless customers. T-shirts can be designed, printed, and shipped without inventory (until some later point). T-shirts can be branded. There are already a lot of proven slogans with poor designs that can be improved on. The process can be outsourced later.

Challenges
DALL-E can create shirt designs, but they're not ready-to-go out of the box. By that, I mean, DALL-E struggles with text and frequently misspells words. Also, the designs may need to be extracted by a freelancer and turned into an appropriately formatted graphic so its ready for upload to PoD websites. Either way, I'd say the designs are 90% ready within seconds.

Saturation
Some will worry about market saturation with t-shirts. I don't think it's saturated at all because you can get so specific when it comes to t-shirt designs. Besides, anything a customer asks for, you can turn into a design in seconds.

Sales Channels
I'll have someone create a new Etsy account and link it to a neutral bank account to sell on Etsy. I'll also set up to run Facebook and Google ads to a private website. This product should sell well through Google's shop feature, and maybe through Facebook Marketplace.

Social Marketing
I'll probably focus on TikTok for this one. Instagram may prove useful. Facebook may prove useful. That said, short videos seem to work well for clothes. People like to see other people wearing the clothes.

I know a guy spending about $100k/mth on Facebook Ads selling POD t-shirts. He has printers in his warehouse. I presume that means it's not saturated.

 

[NervesOfSteel]

I ran into this issue with my shirts. Even though I liked the designs, DALL-E wouldn't remove the background, and ignored my requests to fix text. Further, when I went to Canva to remove the background, their background removal tool couldn't do it either. I think DALL-E used shading that made it difficult to determine the actual background color.

As a workaround, I ended up re-creating the design in Canva as best as I could. It turned out well, but I'll need to adjust my process a bit going forward. It took several hours to get 1 shirt live on my site.

I have been using Photoshop for a long time and it is pretty easy to remove the background, add text, or change hue/colors with a few steps to generate pro-level results. I guess GIMP is equally powerful but a bit messy.

You can also use some help from fiver or alike for a few bucks.

UPDATE :

Progress as of 26-12-23:

1. Created a trial (free) website on WordPress, a sample product page on FB, created quick but intriguing 2 photo ads and learned how to run Facebook ads by running live ads for a day by targeting the selected audience.
2. 35 people landed on my page with $1.2 worth of FB ads. It is just a trial run and I am not trusting the visitors per dollar ratio at the moment as reality is often different from experimentation. No sale yet, as the page still says .."coming shortly"

Goals for this week:

1. Create a test page on Instagram.
2. Same on Twitter.
3. Run and test ads on both platforms.
4. Decide between WordPress and Shopify.
5. Plan and execute final website design.
6. Plan the ads.
7. Redesign the logo.

Let's see how much can be done!

 

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