553: Amazon & TikTok Join Forces! How Google’s Legal Woes Could Change E-Commerce Forever

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife, Quit or Drop podcast, the show where I cover all the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. And today, Tony and I are going to talk about the implications of the Google Monopoly ruling on e-commerce specifically and the latest with TikTok, Amazon and Pinterest. But before we begin, if you haven’t picked up my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, The Family First Entrepreneur yet, it’s available on Amazon right now at 38 % off. My book will teach you how to achieve financial freedom by starting a business that doesn’t require you to work yourself to death.

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Plus you can still grab my free bonus workshop on how to sell print on demand and how to make passive income with blogging, YouTube and podcasting when you grab the book over at mywifequitterjob.com slash book. So go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash book, fill out the form and I’ll send you the bonuses right away. Now onto the show.

00:51
Welcome to the My Wife, Quit Her Job podcast. I go on vacation for just two weeks, two weeks and a whole bunch of stuff happens while I’m gone. What we’re going to do today is we’re going to talk about some major announcements from some really large companies that will affect the entire e-commerce landscape and blogging as well. Yeah. I mean, you can’t leave anymore. I know. I was thinking it’d be uneventful. I don’t know which piece of news do you want to start with?

01:19
I have, I have, we pre-talked, but I have more news too. So we can start with the Google one. Cause that’s pretty big. You know, was funny. was, so school is back in session for, I only have one kid actually still in grade school. And so I have to drive her to school this year. Cause all my other drivers have graduated and she does not have her license yet. So I’m back on the car line train, which I immediately started shopping for a different car.

01:49
Why are you your your daughter can’t go to school by herself? We are not zoned for the school. We moved and I’m not making her move schools. So got it. Yeah. So we’re driving, which is funny because the school we’re zoned for is literally the same distance away, just a different direction. So it’s not like, you know, the only difference would be like the bus transportation. So I’ve been listening to podcasts on the way. was like, well, how could I? I’m trying to.

02:17
You know, I moved most of my life and the move is still very chaotic. In fact, my office got completely ripped apart after I just put it back together. You can’t see in this video, but like to my left is literally everything that was in the closet behind me, because that’s where the electric panel is. And they redid all that, which meant everything from the attic, because, you know, fell down on like thousands of dollars worth of electric. So I am like losing my mind on Thursday night and Friday because I had to literally clean.

02:46
every piece of equipment that I had anyway, not a good, not a good, there was about a news story about me committing some sort of felony last week. But anyway, I’m like, how can I be more productive? Like I have to spend more time in the car normally. You know, I don’t like to leave the house like during the day I want to be planted. And so I was like, you know what, I’m going to start doing podcasts. So I figured Monday morning, start out with Shaleen, you know, get some positive energy going, listen to her podcast. Well, what I didn’t realize is that whatever my

03:15
podcast app is set to, it just goes to another podcast I subscribed to. So Shalene’s podcast ends and I start getting this podcast about the Google lawsuit. And somehow I think I’m now listening to the radio and I’m like, this is huge news. They’ve broken into the radio play to talk about this. So it took me about four minutes into the podcast to realize that it was not, it was just the next.

03:44
podcast and I’m trying to get this is actually a really good podcast on it. So I’ll give you guys the name, but you can talk about it a little bit. I had no idea this was even happening. This was the first I’d ever even heard of it. Actually, Kevin is the one who told me about it during the first office hours when I got back. I was like, so nothing eventful happened while I was gone, right? He was like, actually, Google got broken up. Let’s talk about this for just a little bit, because everyone has their own opinion, and it’s actually been covered in various news outlets. But

04:11
What hasn’t been covered really is the implication on e-commerce and blogging specifically. just like a quick overview, Google has ruled a monopoly. Google is going to appeal the decision, which is something that’s probably going to take like two years. So nothing’s probably really going to change dramatically for another couple of years. And Tony and I are both old enough to remember what happened to Microsoft way back in the day.

04:40
And they got ruled a monopoly for their Internet Explorer practices. Basically, back in the day, Microsoft was forcing everyone to use IE if they had Windows and preventing other people and paying off other people to not allow anything, to make their browser the best. And that was the heyday of Internet Explorer, I remember. Yeah, you know, it’s funny is that I loved like, so the podcast I was listening to is called Hardfork. I don’t know if you ever listened to them. I never.

05:09
It’s like a tech and marketing podcast. If you want to listen, the first part of the podcast is about the lawsuit. It would be the week of, what are we in? July. It would be last week. The week of July, or sorry, August, August 9th. Anyway, it’s a good overview if you want to just give yourself a lesson in it. What I thought was funny is like Google’s defenses, but everybody does it.

05:37
Like that was basically there. know that, but yeah. I mean, they’re saying like, this is just common practice, right? Like we’re not doing anything that anybody else isn’t trying to do. Which I was like, I mean, what other defense are you going to have? I guess makes sense that that would be their defense. But that part made me chuckle a little bit. I mean, it’s obviously it’s a monopoly. Google pays Apple, think, 20 billion dollars a year so that Apple’s default search engine is Google.

06:07
And then they have their Android phones and most of the traffic is mobile anyways. Most people use the Chrome browser now. So definitely a monopoly. I’m even, so some people are thinking that Google is going to get broken up. I think that is highly unlikely. But I will say this. I noticed that my Google ads, I’ve been running Google ads for, I don’t know, like 15 years now. And usually

06:35
It’s rock solid. the search, like the search volumes don’t really change that much. And the conversion rate is pretty stable compared to other ad platforms like Facebook. Yeah. What I’ve noticed in just like the past three, three to four years is that there’s certain weeks where the performance is just horrific. And keep in mind, I’ve got 15 years worth of the, worth of a search data for all this stuff. And I’m thinking to myself now Google ads, a lot of it is like a black box.

07:05
Like exact match isn’t really exact match. They can bid on whatever keywords. So this is just speculation on my part, but I think when it comes time to make earnings, they start spending your money and their new performance max is kind of like a black box. So you really have no idea where anything is being spent and you waste a lot of money. They blow out earnings, which they just did. And there’s not a whole lot of transparency in the whole process. Yeah. Anyways, I got off topic. Sorry.

07:33
It’ll be interesting to see what happens because we’re looking at like probably three to four years before anything is resolved. And I will tell you what happened with Microsoft. I don’t know if you remember back that far because it was quite a long time ago, but Microsoft had to immediately, pretty much in like the first year or a year later, they had to give you the choice of browsers. Like it wasn’t just the default and you know,

08:02
They made it really hard to change the default. All of a sudden that had changed. You have the opportunity to choose whatever browser that you want. And that actually had a huge effect, which opened up the competition for Firefox, if you remember. And that’s actually when Chrome took over. That’s what I was just thinking when you were talking about that. if you said, you remember, I’m older than you. But after, I think that there was dial-up internet when I was in my early 20s.

08:33
you know, browsing the Internet was not fun. was like basically you got on to check your email. You did the bare minimum, right? Because it was just so painful. But by the time the Internet was like a positive experience, right? Like you could actually search and, you know, get more information. I was a Mac user. And so I don’t remember ever having it like it didn’t work well with Internet Explorer. So we always had I think it was Firefox initially and then Safari or maybe vice versa. But it’s funny because I remember like

09:03
having friends that would have PCs and they only used Internet Explorer and I had no idea why. I didn’t realize that it was a monopoly. I just was like, oh, well, I guess that’s what works on their computer because Internet Explorer never worked well on Macs early on. Internet Explorer was the worst browser in the history of And the only reason why I say this is I was making websites back in the day. Yeah. And you had to special case each version of my Internet Explorer.

09:32
because each one had one set of bugs. Yeah. Yeah. I do remember that part of it. So given what’s happened and it actually changed Microsoft a lot. Yeah. This ruling, it just took some time, but I would say within one year, you know, things that already started changing and within like the next decade, you know, they couldn’t make any of shady deals. I think there was a lot of scrutiny on any deal that they made. Yeah.

10:00
First thing I think that’s gonna happen really is like that Google Apple deal is gonna be scrutinized and maybe Google won’t be allowed to pay Apple for that anymore. Yeah. And who knows, maybe Apple will come up with their own search engine. Well, they have Safari. mean, well, it’s a browser, right? It’s a browser. Yeah, that’s true. I don’t know. I can’t see Apple doing that, but you never know. Well, here’s the thing. I think two weeks ago or right before I left on vacation,

10:30
Search GPT got announced by OpenAI. Okay, yes. Right? And so there’s a new search engine coming out and OpenAI actually has Cloud. It’s not like Perplexity. We’ve talked about Perplexity before on the podcast. That’s just this tiny little company. But imagine someone like Microsoft and OpenAI, they’ve announced this new search engine. I don’t know if you’ve been using ChatGPT a lot lately. Now when I ask it a question, it’ll actually give citations.

10:57
Yes. I will, you know, I was locked out of my account for like two months. Oh, were you? Okay. Yes. I finally, I had to appeal. Like I’m like, you’re still charging me. I haven’t done anything. Um, so I just got back on it like a week and a half or two weeks ago because I was locked out. Yeah. We’re I’m on the list to try search GPT because it’s not out to the general public. think they’re only allowing like 10,000 people to use it right now. Yeah. But the output of it, and they gave some sample outputs from the search engine. It’s kind of like.

11:27
a Google that gives you the answer and gives citations and links to blogs or wherever it’s getting its data from. Nice. So it’s kind of like Proplexity in a way. And it follows Google’s model also in a way without the 10 links, obviously. Yeah. Without the ads, at least in their demo. Yeah. And I haven’t used it yet, obviously, but it looks very promising for bloggers as well because it means that, you know,

11:57
bloggers still might get traffic. Maybe all the bloggers will stop crying. Well, here’s the thing about this way. If Google doesn’t pay Apple and Apple switches to a different search engine, whether it be their own or search or whatever, a lot of people have iPhones and Google instantly lose a huge percentage of their market share. Yeah. Right. And Google has already been laying off people. Actually, you’re not in the Silicon Valley here, but

12:26
Mass layoffs again. I think the latest victim was Intel. They slashed 15,000 people here. Over here, there’s a lot of people looking for jobs. It might not have hit Florida yet, but here, at least in the tech sector, No, because we’re a tourism-driven economy down here. Nobody’s losing jobs. I can’t remember which podcast I was listening to, but I listened to it and something like if Google were to just lose like

12:55
three percentage points of their search, that would have a profound effect on the overall business and what they would have to do. I bet. Well, you know what’s interesting? Speaking of all this search and you know, we’ve had we’ve done several podcasts about Google search and the being in the toilet as far as like the results and things like that. But then I saw an article this week about how, you know, obviously Reddit is usually the top one of the top results, although I’ve been seeing it less and less in my search results.

13:23
which I can only imagine is because I’ve never clicked on it in protest. I just immediately scroll down to things. One article that cited several other articles talking about the people that are using Reddit to drive traffic to their sites are actually having a ton of success due to the amount of traffic Reddit’s now getting. I don’t know if that’s a strategy because I just

13:51
I feel in my gut this isn’t gonna last with Reddit appearing number one, number two all the time. I don’t think that’s sustainable because the results are so cruddy.

14:03
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just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show.

14:44
So there’s a special deal with Google and Reddit where Reddit is not allowing other search engines to crawl their site except for Google now. Oh, I didn’t hear about that one. exclusive deal now. And who knows, maybe there’s something there that might get changed too. That might get struck down in the monopoly. It might. All I’m saying is Google’s already under pressure because ChatGPT, we mentioned in previous episodes that the search is pretty bad. Yeah.

15:11
This could be the final nail in the coffin for just Google search in general. Well, and what’s really interesting with Google search is that all of the statistics and data for our Gen Zers is pointing to them using Pinterest and TikTok as their search engines. They don’t search Google. It’s interesting because I actually had a talk with a family member who was looking into maybe working with Pinterest and

15:39
that Pinterest is completely focusing on Gen Z. That is their target. Whenever she and I talked, I was like, that’s so weird. To me, Pinterest is like a middle-aged woman platform, right? Because it’s me. You’re a user, yes. But then the more we talked, I actually called my, at that time, 18, 19-year-old daughter in and she was like, oh, I only use Pinterest to search. She never uses Google to search for anything, right?

16:09
And I was like, are you serious? I mean, I was floored, right? I had no idea. And then when I’ve talked to my other kids who are all in that Gen Z, the females, not the guys, the guys don’t search anything. my 15 year old almost exclusively uses TikTok to search. If she wants a recipe, she searches TikTok. If she wants to know how to do something, she searches TikTok. and I mean, TikTok has a huge amount of information. It also has a huge amount of terrible information.

16:39
which is what concerns me. Please do not make it. She made a of terrible information too. Well, yes, they’ve gotten so much. But she made a cleaning solution once she saw on TikTok and almost killed everybody in the house. I was like, never again. You cannot mix those two chemicals. But yes, in the article I read basically was talking about how Pinterest and TikTok, they know that’s the case. They obviously have zeroed in on this and it’s really becoming their focus. Yes. I think

17:08
Apple is the biggest thing because really, are you going to change your default search engine for something you already own to something that’s not Google? Google already has a household name. The biggest thing is what Apple decides to do because they control such a large user base. Well, if Apple switches, so many people who use Apple products love the seamlessness of it. Everything connects and everything.

17:35
I you can now, I don’t do this, but you can now copy and paste from your phone to your computer. There’s a way to do that. I don’t know how to do it. You can Google that for now. You’ll have to use a different search engine in two years. Everything’s so seamless. It wouldn’t surprise me as if Apple just put something else up, people would use it due to the fact that they like the low friction. From a blogging perspective, the way I’m thinking about it is great.

18:05
Now I’m have to optimize for something else. A whole bunch of other platforms, right? Yeah. And who knows, maybe this search GPT will be the next thing. It’s definitely going to open it up to other players that aren’t going to get it squeezed out artificially. So I see this as like another Chrome browser, Internet Explorer, Firefox type of thing. Yeah, for sure. Within the next five years, nothing’s going to happen in the next couple of years. And I don’t think they’re going to get broken up.

18:35
No, not totally. Google’s hurting and I hope that doesn’t affect the real estate prices in our area. All right. Got anything else to say about Google or should we move on to the next piece of news? We can move on. Why don’t you announce this one because you told me about this, I had no idea. Yes, this is pretty exciting and unfortunately, there’s not a ton of information out about this yet if you are a Amazon seller.

19:05
Amazon has just basically inked a deal with TikTok and Pinterest to basically allow users while they are on TikTok. So you’re on TikTok, you’re scrolling. Amazon products will now be seen in your for you feed. So you’re scrolling, all of a sudden you see a video with an Amazon product. You can click and buy that product directly on TikTok without ever leaving the TikTok platform.

19:34
Now, as a customer, you do have to enable that setting in TikTok, right? Like you have to allow them to connect the accounts kind of like if you ever shop at Zappos, they have an Amazon integration. A lot of e-commerce stores have the Amazon integration. So you have to allow that as the shopper. But I think this is going to be huge. One, mean, Amazon, you know, Amazon just as big of a monopoly as Google at this. Like they’re just taking over everything, it feels like. But I think

20:03
as, so if you are a creator, right, on TikTok, or you’re an Amazon influencer, this is huge because Amazon on the other side, on the influencer side, and if you’re in office hours, you’ll hear all about this today. Basically, you can opt in to all of your video content being shown on TikTok, Pinterest, ads on CNN, wherever Amazon places ads, you can opt in to your videos that you make for products being shown.

20:32
on those platforms, which is a huge earning potential. For people listening, can you just kind of explain the whole Amazon influencer video thing first? Yes. So if you are an Amazon influencer, it’s different than being an affiliate. They call those associates with Amazon. So if you’re an influencer, you actually post content that lives directly on Amazon. So you have to apply to the program. They have to accept you.

20:58
And then you basically take products that you find and buy on Amazon or that you have in your house that are available for sale on Amazon. You make a video basically reviewing the product, talking about the pros, cons. If someone watches your video and then makes a purchase for that product or a related product. So let’s just say I’m talking about this Stanley Cup that I have. Someone sees the video about how great it is. They buy a smaller version of that Stanley Cup.

21:25
I still get a commission. And it’s actually usually a larger commission than you get if you’re just using your affiliate link. So that’s what the program is. Amazon has done this basically to help conversion rates on pages for products. So all the research shows that once people watch a video about a product that’s a user-generated video, so not like the brand created video, they’re almost like 80 % more likely to buy that product, right? Because it’s that social proof.

21:55
And so it’s a really effective way to talk about like, you know, the pain points of a product or how to assemble it. If it’s a product that you’re not sure how to put together, things like that as the content creator, you do those things. All those things encourage people to buy the product. So now those videos that you create and they live on Amazon listings can live all over the internet. You do have to opt into it. So you do have to give Amazon permission to use your video content and it will only be the video content that you create that is vertical.

22:26
So no horizontal content that you’ve created. So once you opt in, is it automatic? Like Amazon will just start showing these videos on TikTok. Yeah. Let me ask you this then. So you own the videos when you create them for this Amazon influencer program. Why not just find the product since it’s all connected anyways and then just post the videos yourself? You can do that too. There’s nothing stopping you.

22:52
Okay, so we encourage that we we encourage content creators to, you know, leverage that video in a variety of places if it fits with your brand. The nice thing about being an Amazon influencer is even though my brand is like home ec DIY, I could review car parts on Amazon because it’s not linked. They’re not going to go back to the happy housewife and be like, why are you talking about car parts? Right. So anything that you do that is related to your brand, I always encourage people make it an Instagram reel, put it on TikTok.

23:22
make it a YouTube short, however it works. You gotta make sure those properties are linked in your Amazon account. You have to put all your properties where you’ll be using an Amazon affiliate link. That’s really important. But to me, it’s an awesome opportunity. And I’m sure what Amazon is doing is those top performing videos, right? Those user generated videos by influencers that are driving the best conversions, because they see all that. We can’t see that. We see views and we see sales, but we don’t know like how many views another video is getting.

23:49
that’s on the listing because multiple videos can live on a listing. So Amazon knows all that and they’re probably going if you have a really high performing, you know, listing based on your video, that video will probably be shown other places, right? Because Amazon knows that that’s going to drive a conversion, which, of course, makes Amazon more money. So I think this is pretty exciting for content creators because it’s just one more way to boost your revenue. So as a tick tock affiliate right now,

24:18
I can go through and look at a bunch of products being offered by brands. I going to be able to do that for any arbitrary Amazon product now? Well, you will be able to do it for Amazon products, but that’s totally different than the ads being placed because basically Amazon is going to run ads on TikTok with your content. No, no, I understand that. But is Amazon allowing people to just promote anything on Amazon directly and have the payment done through TikTok? It’s my understanding that that will be the case eventually.

24:47
which is another huge thing. It’s actually interesting because I was on TikTok this morning. I was hoping to see if it was even, if I could just randomly kind of stumble upon it, right? To get some idea of what it’s going to look like. And I came across a creator who was obviously an affiliate promoting this dress. And I was like, I’ve seen that dress on Amazon, right? So, but I don’t, it’s not, isn’t, TikTok has not rolled this out. Pinterest has not rolled it out, at least not into my account, right? So I,

25:16
I look at the dress, I click on it, right? It brings me to the listing. listing? The TikTok listing? The TikTok listing, yes. I was trying to see if it would take me to the Amazon listing. So it doesn’t yet. It’s still the TikTok listing. it wouldn’t take you to the Amazon listing, right? Ever. I don’t think so. No, yes. But what I was wondering is if I put it in my cart on TikTok, would it show up in my cart on Amazon?

25:43
Oh, I see. That’s what I was trying to see. Like if it’s if it’s connected, you should buy it. And if it comes in an Amazon box, then you know something, right? Well, I’m going to. I just want I want to find a less expensive product to test with. This is like a $50 dress. And I’m like, I don’t know if I like it that much. But anyway, what I thought was so I started digging a little bit, right? Because then I was like, OK, I wonder how this is going to work. Like, you know, I don’t think it’s not available. So wait probably another month or two before we see anything.

26:12
coming out fully, because they just announced it for the creator side as well. So if you’re an Amazon influencer, they just rolled this out within the last two to three weeks of having to opt in. However, so I look at this dress, it’s $45.95, right, on TikTok. And I’m like, that’s actually, it’s not a bad price, right? But I was also like, I’m also little wary because it doesn’t seem like it’s Amazon. So I’m like, if it doesn’t fit or I don’t like it, how easy is it to return? I’ve never returned anything from TikTok shop, blah, blah, blah.

26:42
So then I’m like, well, I wonder if it’s on Amazon. So I go to Amazon, I find the exact same dress, same brand, same sell, know, like the brand that it’s not like a knockoff, it’s the exact same dress. Sold out every color, every size on Amazon. Also on Amazon, $75. Really? Yes. Which makes sense based on, and I don’t think we’ve done like a full podcast on TikTok Shop, but

27:11
We have some seller summit videos on TikTok shop where if you sell on TikTok shop, you typically have to offer a steep discount, right? Or some sort of like more discount than you would probably have normally as well as a higher affiliate payout, right? So you’re definitely not gonna make as much money on TikTok, but the volume is gonna be insane. But what made me think about this is if you have a product that you think would perform on TikTok for TikTok shop, not only will you do well on TikTok, you’ll sell out everywhere else.

27:41
Right? I mean, this dress was gone and actually I was going to pull, want to pull it up on Jungle Scout. I want to look at the sales volume of this dress because like literally they had extra small, small to like triple X large, every color, every size, completely out of stock, which means people are like seeing it on Tik Tok and then they’re searching for it on Amazon. Right. And like, you’re just going to sell out everywhere. So if you can, if you can get the right products and you know, the right people talking about them from Tik Tok shop,

28:10
It’s going to be huge for your Amazon business as well. From a seller’s perspective, I think differently. I think this is really negative as a seller. Interesting. Why? Mainly because Amazon has this low inventory fee now that’s pretty hefty. If you can’t predict, those sales come in waves, right? Yes. You might be out of inventory and you’re getting charged this low inventory fee.

28:36
And then all of a sudden the wave subsides and all of a sudden you have a higher threshold for the amount of units you need to have in stock. Just the fees will overwhelm you because of the unpredictability of the platform. Unless Amazon does something about it. That’s a fair. And only that, I’m just trying to think of the fees. So you got to pay the Amazon fee and you got to pay the TikTok premium. Right. You still have to pay FBA fees because it’s getting fulfilled by Amazon. Right. And you have to discount on TikTok to get the sales.

29:06
The Amazon fees, they just introduced a couple of new fees actually. They’re going to take effect. I don’t see how this is sustainable for an Amazon seller. That’s just my first gut. It’s not even that sustainable for a regular e-commerce business actually where you own the brand unless your margins are ridiculously high. To me, I see it as more of a getting to the top of something.

29:35
This is not probably a long-term strategy for your products, right? But it’s like, if you’re launching a product, I might consider launching it on TikTok, right? Getting the sales velocity and then putting it on Amazon just to get that ranking, right? To move up. But you’re right. And also to me, it’s like, well, 75 bucks on Amazon, 45 on TikTok. I’m not buying it on Amazon.

30:00
I’m only buying it on Amazon if I really want it and they don’t have my size in the TikTok shop or they didn’t have the color or something like that. I mean, I’m I’m price sensitive enough to where I’m going to take a $30 discount. But how can you? Yeah, I guess maybe for a launch. Well, it’s just just to give you an idea. We’re at ECF and I think Paul talked about TikTok shop and how is making him millions of dollars a month or something like that. A twenty six dollar

30:29
brush that he was selling was going on TikTok for six bucks. Yeah. And that’s how he was able to move everything. Now the difference with his businesses is that brush is like a gateway drug to all of his other products. Yes. Yeah. So it ends up working out. But on Amazon, I just, unless Amazon has some sort of fee reduction for TikTok. Yeah. I don’t see how the numbers will work out. Like

30:54
Going from 75 bucks to, what was it, 40 something dollars? 45, yeah, 30 $30. Almost in half. a huge, huge difference. Yeah. Plus the Amazon fees that you’d have to pay off. Oh, for sure, yeah. But the $45 is on the TikTok side right now. Right now, so we’ll see. But regardless of the seller side, I think this is just more incentive if you have not bit the bullet and started the short form video, right? Started making content.

31:24
Oh yeah, from a content creator’s perspective, this is gold. This is, and you know, it’s funny because we talked about the Google stuff earlier and it’s kind of depressing. We’ve kind of had nothing but bad news for content creators and bloggers for the past year, right? With Google search and all the problems and everything that’s been going on. This is a huge win for content creators and the content creators that are willing to go out and make video. I was just talking to Andrea about this yesterday.

31:54
You know, I don’t like making videos, but I like making money. You know, like if I had my choice, I would not be making videos all the time. Right. Like I don’t make them all the time right now. I’m barely hanging on to life right now. But like in general, like I don’t like setting everything up. I don’t like getting ready. I don’t want to like write the script out. Like none of that is fun for me. I’d rather just talk. Right. Like get me on camera. That’s fine.

32:20
But when you’re doing product reviews and talking about, trying to sell something, you need to be more organized with your thoughts and your content. And I don’t find that fun, but when I was checking my Prime Day with the influencer program, I was like, well, I do like this. I do like selling 30 Wolfgang Puck griddles on Prime Day, right? That part where you’re just like, you know what, it’s worth it. It’s worth it to do these things. And these opportunities just keep opening themselves up.

32:47
for content creators. And I’m going to talk about a bunch today on office hours that Amazon is basically, I don’t know what, I feel like not all of it’s going to last. I think they’re testing a lot of stuff, but like while it’s available, take it, take it and do it. I nothing lasts, right? So we might have like a five year timeframe for this, however long you think it’s going to last until things get saturated, right? Yeah. But I mean, honestly, the fact that Google as a traffic source is being, is going down.

33:17
has really opened up all these other traffic sources for content creation. So whenever something goes down, there’s something new that pops up, you just need to find out what it is. And it sounds like this is a great opportunity to make money on both TikTok. TikTok shop is growing like gangbusters. And with this Amazon connection, I’m sure that there’ll be more partnerships coming as far as ease of use and ease of purchasing.

33:46
So who knows what it’s gonna look like even in one year. And I also think, you we’ve talked a lot about TikTok, but like Pinterest is still strong. It’s still a very effective platform. How’s it gonna work on Pinterest? I think the same thing, where you’ll see video content, because Pinterest has tons of video content on it now, right? And so you’ll see video content, but it will be like totally product based as opposed to, you know, you’ll basically see those ads, the vertical shorts with influencers talking about products.

34:17
So right now, are you submitting your Amazon videos to Pinterest also? I have not submitted them to Pinterest. I’ve done one or two to TikTok. I don’t think my Pinterest is actually connected to my Amazon account, so I need to add that as a… Oh, it’s already available? Yes, it’s already available. You’ve been able to use Amazon links on Pinterest forever. Oh, no, that’s not what I meant. I meant this seamless integration.

34:43
With Seamless Interrogation, I’ve already told Amazon, use my stuff wherever you want to use it. So I don’t get to pick how it shows up, but I’ve uploaded, I have uploaded product. No, I have done it to Pinterest. I did connect it. I did upload stuff to Pinterest with my products on that I’ve done the videos for Amazon. I’ve double dipped. And those, the people have to click on the link though and make the purchase on Amazon. They to go to Amazon. Yeah. So the difference is Amazon will now be putting our content on Pinterest for us.

35:13
And so if someone sees it and watches the video and buys, we’re going to get that influencer commission. And then you mentioned something else, like you’ll be able to check out on Pinterest itself. And that’s coming. Same thing. That’s not available yet. They I think they just signed the deal with Amazon in the last like 10 days, according to the article I just read. I am just very curious the implications on the Amazon side. Is Amazon is just going to wrap this into the advertising portion?

35:41
like PPC and whatnot, where you’re paying pay-per-click. Well, that’s, yeah, I’m wondering too, can you specify that you want your stuff shown on Pinterest or TikTok versus just in like the Amazon search? Yeah, I think that’s the most obvious way for Amazon to monetize this, right? Yeah. Whenever someone watches something on TikTok, you pay a fee. Yeah. Right? And it just becomes another checkbox on the Amazon PPC platform.

36:07
except for the fact that Amazon advertises products all the time all over the web and people don’t pay for that. Well, think you’re like if I shut down my Amazon PPC, I’m pretty sure that my Google ads for my products probably would stop showing up, right? Well, so like if I’m on CNN.com and they have ads in the sidebar, one of them is always an Amazon product.

36:36
usually that I’ve looked at at some point. But I’m sure people are like, if I just stop paying for Amazon ads, I’m pretty sure my reach on those platforms will go down. Absolutely. But right now you can’t say, hey, show me on CNN. That’s correct. Show me on TikTok. I mean, oh my gosh, please show me on TikTok. I would check that box all day long, right? Because we know people buy from TikTok. But yeah, so I think if you’re running PPC, obviously you’re going to be shown a lot.

37:04
for sure other places. It’s also retargeting too, right? Because the majority of the stuff that I see when I’m browsing the web from Amazon is stuff that I have looked at or very similar. Like right now I’m trying to get a sync for my laundry room. I was on Home Depot, was on Amazon. I’m seeing sync ads for both Home Depot and Amazon on every website that I’m on. They’re retargeting me on both ways. Does the seller at the end of day pay that? Sure, they do.

37:33
How it’s paid out, do we know? Probably not. It’s probably wrapped into all the millions of fees that Amazon charges you. Yeah. I’m just very curious what’s going to happen on the seller side. So I guess I’ll keep my eyes peeled for news because I can’t… TikTok traffic for Amazon just isn’t a good thing. Like you’re either going to go out of stock, which hurts your listing, or you’re not going to have enough stock and you pay the extra fees. So unless Amazon changes something in that department,

38:03
Being featured on TikTok could just kill your rankings. It could. could. It can also really hurt you on TikTok to go out of stock. If you have something viral on TikTok and you go out of stock, you just tank. Oh, yes. Yes. There’s the pros and cons to all of it. I want to talk about one more thing before I forget because I think this is we get these questions all the time in the course and I just realized that there’s a really easy solution.

38:30
We get questions from people like, hey, I wanna do a quiz or hey, I wanna do this on my store, my website, right? Where they want people to take a certain action. If you’re using Klaviyo, and this costs money, so this is not like a free cheap hack. If you are on Klaviyo, go to their integrations page. They integrate with 350 tools, right? So.

38:52
So many times when people ask us this, we’re like, well, you could use this or you could use that. If you’re on Klaviyo, before you do anything else, go to the integration page and see if it integrates. Because if it integrates, it’s going to be the easiest solution for you. And they just announced a bunch more integrations that they, know, companies that they’ve worked deals with. I think, you know, some actually pretty big ones.

39:14
And like if you want to run a quiz, if we were talking about a rewards program the other day, right? Like if you want to run a rewards program, all that stuff needs to integrate with your email service provider. And rather than spend a million hours in the Shopify app store or the big, you know, or like looking or Googling this, just go to the integrations page in Klaviyo and look.

39:34
I was on it the other day and I was kicking myself. Why is this not the first place I go when I want to add something new? Actually, I don’t understand though because if it integrates with Klaviyo, chances are it’s a Shopify app also, right? Most of the time. But what I’m saying is people want a quiz, right? They want to add a quiz to their site. And there’s all these programs that do quizzes. But to me, rather than narrow it down that way by searching for want to do a quiz for my store, just go to the Klaviyo app or the integrations page.

40:04
and look first because you don’t want it to not integrate. If it doesn’t integrate, then you can’t use it at all. I think that’s a special case because the quiz data goes directly to your email stuff, likewise, the loyalty program does too because you want the points to integrate over to your central database, right? But I believe they just announced an integration with Canva. Really?

40:28
Yes. You can design the emails with Canva and have it on Mac over. There’s some integration with it. That was one of the big announcements for it. Things like that, I think they do matter. Yes. I think anything that needs to pass data to your email base, which is almost everything actually if you think of it, then yes. Clavio is further strengthening their hold. Yes, for sure. They’re going to be a monopoly now too. I wasn’t going that far.

40:58
I do think that there’s a lot like before you get down a rabbit hole of things, just check their integrations first and see if there’s a tool that you’re interested in using to solve your problem. We’re not sponsored by Klaviyo, so it’s not like a… Yeah, or if you’re like me, you write the application. Yes, yes. Which actually, I’m just going to say like my own two cents here. I’m actually writing a loyalty program right now. And with ChatGPT doing like 70 % of the coding,

41:28
It’s been super quick. Like I’m almost done and it’s only been three days with a very complicated loyalty program that matches the ones that are out there. In loyalty programs are expensive. Yes. And you must they must integrate with your email to make them really profitable. Because Steve and I were actually looking at numbers the other day and trying to see like what features were really important. And I said, you know, one of the things that we do is we really push the loyalty program through email.

41:59
through a variety of different ways. You want to make sure that that all connects to each other, but it is very expensive. To get the really cool features, it’s stupid expensive. I actually wanted to pay and I was like, if it’s only like 20, 50 bucks. No, 200 bucks, isn’t it? Oh, yes, it’s 200 bucks plus it could get higher than that depending on. I’m like, crap, I can pump this out in probably a week.

42:28
Which is worth it. Yeah. Yeah, if you have the ability. Most people don’t have the ability to do that. that’s what I’m saying. With Chad GPT now, you can probably code something up with much less ability, Yeah, but you said 70%. What about the other 30 % for the rest? Well, see, that’s the part. That other 30 The 30 % is where we get caught. Is where you need to think about how you want to organize the data. That’s where I think. You could actually have Chad GPT do that too. I don’t know.

42:57
I just started doing this. This should be a case study that you do where you basically have chat GPT do the whole thing. Not for this program. Well, that would never ever work. You can’t have it do the entire thing unless you’re so detail oriented with your spec and you, cause I’ll ask you GPT to write something and then like, Oh crap, I forgot to tell you to do this. Right. Oh, I forgot to do this. Well, then a regular person can’t do this. Well, no, no, no, no. But the stuff that I forget.

43:24
It’s just common language of what the features I want. It’s not like it’s a coding question I’m asking it to do. You understand what saying? Yeah, I do. What you do need to understand is what it spits out. You kind of have to be able to read that. Yes, eliminates… So that’s the 30 % part. Yeah, eliminates way more than 30 % of the pop… Or 70 % of the pop. I don’t know. I can’t tell you how much of the population it eliminates. As many listeners’ favorite Steve statement, it’s just a little bit of code.

43:55
I stopped saying that now that you make fun of me every time I say Last year at FinCon, I went to the AI talk and that one guy who I can never remember what his blog is wrote a whole app with AI, did not know how to make an app and he did make an app using ChatGBT or one of the other tools. I will say though, just on the loyalty program thing, I had never pulled the numbers. I just knew it did well.

44:20
because that’s not really my department is evaluating those things. But when Steve and I started talking, I was like, yeah, let me pull the numbers for a minute. And then when I saw what the loyalty app was driving, I was like, oh, totally worth it. So even if you can’t code it yourself, getting one of the loyalty programs with even at the basic level is going to be a benefit to your business. it gives you an excuse to email a heck of a lot more often. Yes. That’s the big thing.

44:45
Actually, you know what we should do? Our next podcast on loyalty programs and all the ways you can talk to people about it. Sure. Let me finish the project first. Yes. I would like to have some of own data too, but yeah, we can talk about it. We can talk about it. Because there’s so many different things you can do with loyalty programs to one, email people and then to incentivize people without. It’s one of those like don’t discount, right? You can just do it through the loyalty program. Actually, I just got an email from you about the loyalty program. You had two X points yesterday or something like that. That’s right.

45:16
Yes, was double points day. It’s one of our- No, but you stacked four things that went together and made it sound really appealing. Yes, and none of which cost us really any money. Exactly, that’s the beauty of it. That’s the beauty of it. It’s funny because totally sidetracked, but I’m a Marriott person, you’re a Marriott person. It pains me to not stay in a Marriott. I just won’t do it, I won’t go.

45:44
In fact, FinCon is at a Hyatt and I’m like, I don’t think I’m going to stay there. I’m staying at the Marriott because it’s like I’m to pay for three nights at a hotel where I don’t get any. I get Hyatt points, but I’m not a Hyatt. I never stay at Hyatt’s and I’m like, or I can stay three nights at the Marriott and hit emerald status or whatever the next level is. people feel that way about loyalty programs even with small e-commerce businesses. They stay loyal. They want to get the points. They want to get the rewards credits. However, it’s

46:13
being offered and Amazon is actually another topic for office hours today. Amazon is a starter loyalty program for their creators. That’s topic for another episode. That’s right. Which just goes to show you that it works, right? If Amazon’s doing it, there’s got to be some working component to it.

46:33
Hope you enjoyed this episode. I feel like Google is screwing up left and right, but meanwhile, TikTok is making all the right moves with e-comm. We’ll have to see how all this plays out. But for more information and resources, go over to mywifequaterjob.com slash episode 553. And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to mywifequaterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.