632: The $7 Billion App Nobody’s Talking About (But You’re Already Addicted To)

00:00
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. In this episode, we are diving into the $7 billion micro drama industry that’s already taken over China and is quietly making its way into American TikTok feeds. We break down the sneaky micro payment business model that gets viewers spending 30 to 40 bucks without even realizing it and why the same psychology works just as well for selling e-commerce products as it does for cheesy kung fu movies.

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But before we begin, I want to let you know that tickets for Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. And if you sell physical products online, this is the event that you should be at. Unlike most events that are filled with high level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit is all about tactical step-by-step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is in the trenches, people who are running their own e-commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers, and scaling real businesses. No corporate execs and no consultants.

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Also, I hate large events, so I intentionally keep it small and intimate. We cap attendance at around 200 people, so you can actually have real conversations and connect with everyone in the room. We’ve sold out every single year for the past nine years, and I expect this year to be no different. It’s happening April 21st to 23rd in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and if you’re doing over 250K or $1 million in revenue, we also offer a private mastermind for high-level sellers. Right now, tickets are the cheapest they’re ever gonna be.

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So if you want in, go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now on to the show.

01:36
Welcome back to the My Wife, Quit Her Job podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about something that has been coming up in my TikTok feed very often, and I’ve kind of gotten sucked in. And so I dug a little bit deeper and it turns out that there’s an industry behind this that is huge and it has ties to e-commerce as well. And so we’re going to be talking about micro dramas today. I actually thought you were joking when you said you wanted to talk about this. Okay. So first off, uh

02:05
for everyone listening, a micro drama. don’t know if you guys know this, if you’re on TikTok, you’ve probably gotten these already, but they’re these like little miniature movies filmed vertically where they’re like 60 episodes long and each episode is like three minutes. And the idea is it’s really cheesy stuff and it’s really meant, I think for women over the age of 35 or 40, but you watch and they give you like 10 episodes, but then they all end on a cliffhanger.

02:33
order to watch the next one, have to download this app where there’s all these little micro payments. Yes. And I feel like all the cliffhangers are the same where it’s like, she’s not the maid. She’s a princess and she’s your sister. I feel like that’s the cliffhanger. And then they’re like, did it insert a coin? OK, first of all, those aren’t the ones I’m watching. OK, that’s one of the ones that’s the ones that are my feed. You’re going to laugh at me, but OK.

02:59
I got sucked in in this kung fu movie. It is so bad. It is so bad because they like the words it’s like film like a traditional kung fu movie like the lips don’t match like the words and that’s what I grew up with right. And it’s like the series of battles like there’s this guy who who has no inner power or whatever and like and there’s a bunch of fights but like it always ends when he’s like in trouble or something. Yes. And then you need to watch the next one to see if he actually beats the guy.

03:29
So you know what these remind me of? And I didn’t, so I have these in my feed, but I didn’t realize until we just chatted that there was actually a whole uh economic ecosystem behind them. I just thought, so these, what these reminded me of, and I don’t know if you remember this, but you remember when like Kindles first came out and you could basically read.

03:51
like chapters of suspense or romance. then in order to like get the entire story, you had to buy the rest of the book, you know, or or or they would drip out like you get chapter one and chapter two, chapter three. And then eventually you had to pay to find out how it ends. So this is what since I’ve been seeing these, that’s what it reminds me of. It’s like the new version of these Kindle micro stories. But these are.

04:19
to me, so much more complex in the economics, right? Because the Kindle is pretty simple. Like if you wanna know the end, pay $1.99 and get the rest of the book, right? And then it’s like the transaction’s done. This is a lot more complicated. Well, let’s talk about the economics real quick before we talk about the Kung Fu movie that I’m… Yeah, that you’re currently binge watching. So this drama app revenue exceeded $7 billion last year in China. All this stuff always starts in China and it’s making its way into the United States.

04:49
And people say that it costs about a couple hundred thousand dollars to make, but like viewers end up spending 30 to 40 bucks because the payments come very gradually. It’s like, hey, 50 cents to watch the next episode or a quarter to watch the next episode. And before you know it, you know, by episode 60, you spent a whole bunch of money.

05:13
So how how’s the chew budget doing with this? How much have you spent? I have not spent any because if you wait long enough, OK, they’ll come out. But oh, so that’s another another feature. If you wait, then it’s kind of like if you want to watch something on demand, you have to pay for like the Hulu subscription. But if you want to wait till the next episode or whatever, you can watch it on regular TV. Well, that’s that’s some of them. Unfortunately, my Kung Fu one does not fall under that.

05:41
The Kung Fu one, you have to download an app where they bill you in order to watch it. I mean, they’re really addictive. Have you watched any? I’ve not watched any. I’ve not watched any to completion because I refuse to Well, not to completion, but have you gotten sucked in and watched like five episodes of Yes, yes. But mine are always the same thing where they’re treating the one girl really badly. And it’s like, you know.

06:07
It’s like, but you don’t really know who I am. And, you know, it’s all that stuff, which I’m like, we’re going to tell her she’s actually a princess of some country that they’ve made up and, know, that stuff. But yeah, so I but I never get to the end and then I get really angry and I was like, just wasted like 12 minutes, you know, clicking through to try to find the next episode. And then sometimes when I’m really desperate, I will search to see if someone’s like pirated an episode and put it on TikTok.

06:35
Like if I think there’s a twist or a cliffhanger. So anyway, yes. But you know what’s interesting is that I think here’s why this works. Well, it works for a lot of reasons. But one of the reasons why I think it works is I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but a lot of like regular shows that you can get on TV like Grey’s Anatomy or there’s another hospital one, Chicago Med or something like that. Right.

07:00
Like they play clips of the, like people pirate, I guess they pirate them, I don’t know, because it’s not like the Chicago Med channel, right? There are clips of Chicago Med of like scenes, right? So the pregnant lady comes in and she’s actually not pregnant, she’s having like a fake pregnancy, right? And so that part of the show is maybe 15 minutes of the storyline. So you can watch that part of the show in 60 to second to like two minute increments.

07:28
And then if you click through to that person’s profile, you can watch the next one and the next one and the next one. And then all of a sudden, you don’t get it anymore. Right. And that’s been happening for a lot of mainstream shows. So I think people are starting to view things this way. Right. Like I’ve never seen an episode of Chicago Med on TV, but I’ve probably seen 50 episodes of Chicago Med on my phone. You know, so.

07:52
I think it works in part because people are starting to view things this way. It’s like very normal to watch things in these little increments, which is so weird to me because it feels very choppy and disjointed. mean, there’s at least five movies that I actually decided to watch in full because I saw a whole bunch of clips on TikTok. Yeah. Oh, It’s like the new movie marketing. Yeah. Yeah. So it definitely works. But this is so interesting because the entire

08:17
It’s not like these, maybe it is, but it sounds like this Kung Fu movie. You can’t just go on Netflix and watch it if you wanted to. The only way to watch it is to pay for this app. Okay, so just to be clear, and just in case you guys are listening and you don’t know how it works, the ones that I’m talking about actually is you see this clip, but it’s really just an ad for an app, right? And so you download this app, and then you have the option of doing these micro payments to get all the episodes. Yeah.

08:47
So it’s really just an app ad on TikTok. But the is the movie. The ad is the movie. It is the clip of the movie. right. Because you can’t take micropayments obviously on TikTok itself. Right. And then every episode ends in a cliffhanger. Sometimes it ends, and this is pisses me off, sometimes it ends like mid-sentence. Oh, okay. My wife’s a sucker for this too. She’s a sucker for the ones where the woman is really ugly.

09:17
But she’s like one haircut and one grooming away from being beautiful. Yes. It’s the, what is it, Princess Diaries or whatever? Right. And the cliffhanger is always her getting a makeover, but you don’t get to see what she actually looks like. Yes. And she’s always wearing clothes that are six sizes too big and it’s always frumpy. then she goes, yeah, it’s the same thing. But okay, so do we have a number of how many people are downloading these apps?

09:44
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10:12
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10:42
will make a huge difference. You’ll learn what you need to fix right now so you’re not scrambling later. And if you’re interested, go over to quietlight.com. Well, I mean, this is big in China right now, and so I only have numbers for China, but 7 billion is a lot, and everything in the US usually lags China by like a year or two. And the fact that even me getting sucked into this stupid kung fu movie, maybe it’s because I grew up with kung fu movies.

11:09
that I started watching them. But there’s a lot of implications here and it actually gave me a bunch of ideas. Like you don’t need to spend 100K. Like there’s creators that I’ve watched that do put together these series, you know, that I always just kind of binge watch. And they could get on this app. I’m trying to figure out what the app is called. I think it’s called like Real Shorts or something like that. I should look it up and put it in the show notes. But the theory here is you could create your own.

11:38
and then monetize these little series as well. And they don’t have to be, like the production value doesn’t have to be that great, right? You just need to be really good at storytelling. So this sort of seems like what YouTube did for musicians and Spotify did for musicians, right? Like it used to be that you had to get with a record label, sign a contract, be beholden for the rest of your life, you know, to be able to make music. But now people can just make

12:07
content online playing an instrument or singing or whatever. And they can, it sounds like the same thing. Like you don’t have to get a big movie studio to pick up your idea or TV. You can just create it yourself and start charging people as long as it’s a good enough story. But honestly, I don’t think the stories are that good. The story is compelling because he’s got to this guy. He’s like, and there’s like 10, 10, uh,

12:34
10 Kung Fu experts on this ladder that he must be to prove to his family that he is deserving. Okay, but do think that’s a great storyline? Seriously? No, but it reminds me of my childhood. Yeah, so it’s nostalgia. Yeah. Okay. Well, okay, so there’s this guy I follow and I’m sure you’ve watched some of his stuff. His name is Ray William Johnson. He always tells like stories of crime, know, real stories of crime. he’s like a really good storyteller. I was thinking like, if he told us like really long 30 minute story,

13:03
And he broke it up into clips and then gave like the first ten out for free and then charged for the rest He could make a killing doing this no pun intended Now the only problem I have with this is that like it’s so empty I guess meaning like it’s just like a colossal waste of time. But then again, I guess so is Netflix, right? Yeah, I mean it’s the same. It’s just entertainment Yeah, exactly

13:33
Well, okay, so here’s what actually got me interested in this. uh There’s a lot of implications here for marketing as well. So uh this is still in its infancy, but there’s some micro movies, micro dramas, which I actually started watching for research just for the record. of course. Where they’ll somehow there’s this like product that they keep using. Oh, yes. Or drinking. so once you get big in a drama, it’s

14:01
kind of like has the same economics as a movie or television show where you can actually charge people to include your product in the micro drama. So there’s two revenue streams. Two revenue streams, but right. if you it’s the same as having like a YouTube channel, except it’s like a storytelling one where you’re getting money instead of going to the Hollywood studios, you’re making your own little one, like your own little movie. Okay. Right. And you’re getting people to incrementally, you’re chopping it up and making people incrementally pay.

14:31
and you’re charging for advertising as well. So as an advertiser, right? So let’s just say we’re watching the micro drama where the ugly girl becomes beautiful, right? I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in e-commerce that you should all check out.

15:00
It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be attained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free. 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. Is Bumble Bee Linens going to have a hanky placement and like what?

15:28
Like what’s the economics of Bumblebee? For that example, the makeover could be like, I’m using Chanel number five, whatever. Or I’m using this Korean beauty cream. This is why my wife likes it. She’s really into Korean beauty right now. So she’ll be watching one of she’ll be like, hey, wait, what was that cream that they’re using? And then you could probably have uh maybe even a buy button or something. So that was my next question.

15:55
I haven’t seen, I’ve seen all the microdermis. I haven’t really either seen or noticed the product placement. Maybe it’s already there and I just haven’t been paying enough attention. But how do people buy, right? So they’re doing the makeover. There’s the skin cream. Jen’s like, oh, I need to try this because look how beautiful it made her, right? Is there a way to buy it right there? Like on TikTok shop where you kind of click through and buy? So that’s the problem right now.

16:22
In theory, you could do that, but the goal of all these micro dramas right now is to get you to download their special app in order to drip out the content. As far as I can tell, there is no buy buttons on the app itself. So I think maybe, here’s what’s weird. In that Kung Fu movie series, it’s the one I’m actively watching, different episodes have different ads. So for example, one will go straight to the app click.

16:48
and then a different one will go to some other page that tries to sell you on other stuff. So different clips that they’re releasing for free can have different calls to action. So I feel like it’s probably a matter of time before there is just sort of a click to buy because I’m seeing it more and more. So I think you have YouTube TV too, right? I do. To watch regular TV. Have you noticed that like when commercials come on, there’s almost always a button to.

17:17
It’s usually on drugs, like pharmaceuticals. I don’t know. I feel even get me started on that. You should see the ads I get now that I talk you. All the ads I ever get on YouTube TV are like, I didn’t know you could have this many diseases. Well, mine is like hair loss and erectile dysfunction.

17:37
Because I’m at that age now, right? So I get I get a lot of eczema ads, which I think is funny because I’m like, I’ve never really had any skin issues, but apparently they think differently. um So I feel like it’s probably a matter of time before that becomes something that’s very normalized, even within the micro dramas. So as I just am so interested in this as a as a seller. Right. Because I think, you know, we were just chatting about meta ads before we started recording and how, you know, a lot of people are

18:05
are struggling right now with ads. So people are looking for new ways to showcase their products, talk about their products, pay to promote their products. Is this going to be a viable option? I mean, it’s working for Jen, but does it work for is this overall working or is it going to work? I guess it hasn’t really started yet. Well, I don’t think about this in terms of meta ads. I guess you could. I because people don’t really watch these short films, at least

18:35
I don’t on like Meta or Instagram, right? As far as I can tell, this is only a TikTok thing right now. No, no, no, I’m saying for for Bumblebee, let’s just say your ads went in the toilet and you’re like, I need to find other sources, right? I need to find other channels. Is this going to be something where it is as impactful as Meta ads have been for businesses, right? Where like having your product in a micro drama is going to actually drive sales and not just

19:04
I think like traditional TV advertising where it’s like, know, Coca-Cola doesn’t really need to advertise ever again, neither does Nike, right? But they do because they want to constantly stay top of mind. They want to showcase new products, talk about brand values, all those things, right? So is this going to be something where advertisers kind of, it becomes another just accepted channel, right? Where it’s like, well, we do, we run this ad and we do Google ads and we do this and we have our stuff in micro dramas kind of thing.

19:32
I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised. Yeah, it’s still early. So actually, here’s some other numbers. uh Drama Box is a platform that reportedly did over 120 million in its recent quarter, and it’s profitable. OK. Real Shorts, think is the one I was talking about. They sell virtual coins that you can use for transactions and pay for episodes inside the app. That one’s more digital product commerce as opposed to physical.

20:03
But again, this is all kind of new. We’re always like a year or two behind China. So the fact that this working in China implies that it’s coming over here. Because you can sponsor like the entire episode of a mini drama, right? Yeah. It’s kind of like how influencers work today. Like people can pay me to do like a dedicated TikTok, right? Or a short. I could create a dedicated one, but instead I’ll be holding up, you know, hair cream. I don’t know. Something like that.

20:32
Yeah. So I wonder. So another thing I think about is and I don’t know, do you are you an NFL? Do you watch the NFL? Of course. OK. Well, I know you got the 49ers. um But one of the things that I’ve seen all year with the NFL is that people are really getting irritated that you have to have like 20 subscriptions to watch football now. Right. It used to be that you buy bought Sunday ticket. Right. Which is it was expensive. Several hundred dollars. Right. um And you could get all the games.

21:01
But now it’s like, well, Thursday night games are on Prime, this game’s on Peacock, this game’s, you And so it’s like, people were frustrated that they couldn’t just watch football, right? And there was like a lot, like people are on Twitter complaining, they’re on all the other social platform, or X, platforms. um So I wonder if people are going to start getting irritated that it’s like, well, here’s just one more thing that I have to pay for to watch.

21:28
what I’m interested in watching, right? Because I mean, I can’t even tell you like how many things I’m probably have subscriptions for, because like my kids want to watch a certain, just like you’ve got Apple TV and Hulu and Peacock and Netflix and Amazon Prime. you know, it’s just, it’s never ending. All right, so let me tell you why this works. Once you have that app, and let’s say they give you like $5 in credits or something. Yes. Let’s say each episode is only like a nickel. Okay. Right?

21:55
And so you get your whole first series and you pay like a couple bucks. Yeah. But it’s not really your money, but you get in this habit of like throwing a nickel here, throwing a nickel there. Yeah. And then you end up finding this Kung Fu series that, ah, you know, I’ve already done this, you know, I really wanted to see what, you know, how it ends. So you just throw a couple of nickels and, before you know it, you spent like 10 bucks.

22:22
It reminds me of um when my kids were little and m what was the roadblocks, roadblocks. I don’t know how to say it came out and it was like it was free. You could play it right. It was the kids building game. But then like in order to get special building things right for your little city that you made, you had to pay money. Right. And so like all of a sudden one day I got like an iTunes bill for.

22:48
you know, like $72, right? Or something like that, where one of my kids had just like click, click, click, click. is before, like this is before they had to put all these safeguards on it, right? Because when it was early, they were just like, oh yeah, it hooks into your iTunes account. And like when your iTunes account is set with a credit card and you can just buy whatever you want. It’s the same thing, right? You download the app, there’s a payment, you know, processor in there, right? So just clicking, it doesn’t feel real. Like doesn’t feel like real money. It’s why people pay 99 cents in Candy Crush to get

23:18
you know, a power up or whatever. So, I mean, I can see it working because, you know, I’m sure when my kid did it, like they were like, oh, I didn’t like they didn’t have really any idea that it was like real money. Right. Because they were little. um But I can see people thinking like, oh, it’s just a nickel. It’s just 10 cents. I’m, you know, and then the next thing, you know, especially at like three minute increments, it’s like a slot machine. You’ve spent two hundred dollars.

23:44
So my buddy, he always balks when it comes to buying games, like an $80 game or something. He’s like, oh, no, I’m not gonna pay 80 bucks for that. But he got hooked on Pokemon Go. I don’t know if you remember that game. People are still yes, my son still plays it. But he spent over a couple hundred bucks on that game alone on these little add-ons, right? Yes. That you can sprinkle here and there that are just like 99 cents here, 99 cents there. Same principle, and it’s pretty ingenious. Yeah, well the good thing for whoever

24:13
brings us to the States is that you’re training kids from a very young age to behave in this way, Click pay, ad, click pay, ad. I know for some of my kids, when they were younger, wanted, what were they, is it Steam gift cards, right? Which gives you money into your Microsoft account to game. um It’s a very ingrained behavior right now, especially for younger people.

24:40
Right, because that’s what they’ve been doing their whole lives. They don’t know any different. So this is the real reason that got me excited about all this. It’s not like the Kung Fu movies and the empty whatever. I think that all the content that you put out, let’s say you do teaching content like what I do. And I’m not suggesting that I’m gonna try. I don’t know, maybe I’ll try this as an experiment just for fun, just for the content, right? But let’s say you give like a really in-depth tutorial on how to launch a product, let’s say, right?

25:11
And so you give like a lesson, you give like a couple lessons for free, and then the rest of them, you kind of just end right when I’m about to tell you how to do it. And then I put all this whole tutorial on a platform like real short or maybe not the other one, because that one’s strictly for dramas. But then, you know, it’s much easier to sell that than it is like a couple thousand dollar course.

25:39
Right? And so you’re basically nickel and diming your way to a lot of money. Okay, so this got you excited and yet your signature statement in every webinar you’ve ever done is, I’ll never nickel and dime you. Yeah, This business model fascinates me. uh Okay. And then here’s the good part. So once you have this audience of people that throwing you nickels, uh then I bet all of the e-commerce companies

26:07
will come to me and say, can I sponsor one episode of one of your lessons? Yeah. Right. I’ll be like, OK, yeah, that’ll be $500 or $1,000 or whatever. Right. And it’s just like an easier way to sell stuff. So when are we doing it? Are you serious? You want to try it? I don’t know. I kind of do. And I see this right now, especially because

26:32
people don’t have that much money right now. They don’t have a huge chunk of money, but they do have 50 cents here, 99 cents there. And they don’t wanna commit to some large purchase. And this is why this is so ingenious. It’s annoying too though, I we can talk about that. Yeah, so I guess that’s the question is, so it is very easy for people to spend, it’s like why Starbucks is still packed, right? Even though the economy’s kinda crappy right now.

27:02
People think like, oh, I can’t give up on my $4 coffee, right? It’s just part of, it’s ingrained in their behavior. People are still spending money here and there on things. So I feel like, yeah, it would be really easy to get somebody hooked and then, oh, well, if you want the next lesson, it’s 50 cents. Who isn’t doing that? Just because, well, for 50 cents, I might as well see what it is.

27:31
Right? Yeah, and in the teaching space, it would just be like one tip. Yeah. Or one nugget. Yeah. So it’s so funny that we’re having this conversation because a couple weeks ago in office hours, there was a talk about this course and it was like, was it AI in YouTube or something with AI? And it was only $97. And in the course world, that’s really cheap. Yes.

27:58
And so it got brought into my mastermind group, like, hey, I’m thinking about signing up for this course, has anyone heard of it, blah, blah. And everyone’s commenting the same thing, 97 bucks, is it anything, right? And so at $97, it gives you a little more pause, right? So my thought is though, if it’s 50 cents, are people gonna be like, oh, 50 cents, it’s probably garbage? Or is it because it’s 50 cents, it’s like, well, who cares if it’s garbage, it’s 50 cents.

28:26
And then if it’s not garbage, it’s like you’re just perpetuating the… Well, you wouldn’t sell, you would give away like five lessons for free. Right. And then they’d all be in a logical progression. And the sixth one, it’d be 50 cents. Yeah. And it’d just be like a series of little micro tips. Yeah. Right. I don’t know. I think it would work really well. So is the only way to do this that em the app that you mentioned? Well, I mean, you could write your own with vibe coding.

28:54
It’s actually not a whole lot. But for regular people, what could they do? It’s not it’s not mainstream yet. So I don’t think there’s any real app that that does this. Yeah. Outside of the drama, like you can pay for more. Which I guess is the same thing here. Right. Like you would just lock the tips. Yeah, I guess you could use the problem is people are going to those sites to watch dramas right now. But I mean, there’s no reason why this wouldn’t work. Yeah. One of those platforms.

29:24
Well, because but the drama starts on TikTok, like the ad is on TikTok to get people to do it. So like the first visual is not for people already inside the app. It’s for people not using the app have no idea what it is. Probably they’re seeing it on TikTok. They watch the first one. So let’s just say let’s just say TikTok will use that. So the first e-commerce tip is on TikTok, right? Like so you make a TikTok, you give an e-commerce tip, then you make you cliff hang it right.

29:53
Then you make a second TikTok. Once again, tip, cliff hang, right? Like you don’t give the full, maybe you give, you finish tip one, you get into tip two, don’t give tip two. Third video, same thing. Give tip two, go into tip three, don’t give it. Fourth video, same thing. Fourth video, you don’t get the tip, right? Like, and then it’s like download, pay, and I’ll give you tip four.

30:17
Yeah, I think an easier way to do this would just be to just take them to a website where you can watch them like you don’t need an app. Like getting someone to install an app is really difficult. But if it automatically takes you to this video where it’s blacked out, for example, and you click a button and then out comes the credit card thing, buy like 100 tokens. Actually, that’s the other genius thing, right? You’re buying these little yes, you’re buying tokens. It’s not real money. Yes. And so you can only buy tokens in increments of five bucks.

30:46
So you buy five bucks and then you just spend it on what lessons that you want and you’re out of there. does that technology already exist for like regular people today? Well, all it is is a payment thing. It’s just an e-commerce store. part though, like so I’m trying to I’m like actually because I know we have people that listen will they will want to set this up tomorrow. Right. So

31:07
The first part is yes, obviously we have payment processors, we can do that, but how do you turn the payment into tokens? That’s possible because everybody does it with AI stuff is all in tokens, Okay, think about this. This is just a Shopify store with gift cards. Okay, okay. Except- We’re calling it tokens. You’re calling it tokens instead of dollars, right? And so you spend your gift card on whatever’s in the portfolio. Like each Shopify product could just be an episode.

31:36
But priced in tokens and not money. Priced in tokens and not money. That’s the other key. Yeah, tokens is key. Yeah. I like it. So this is all very doable. It’d be kind of fun to, because then, okay, here’s the question I always get asked about my class. Like, I don’t need all the modules. Can you sell them to me piecemeal? Yeah. Well, how about I nickel and dime you?

32:03
uh I mean, I don’t know. um I’m kind of liking it, go on. Well, okay, so let’s say you don’t want to do that and you don’t teach or whatever. Instead of just putting out free content on TikTok, why not just do this? You’re still giving value. It’s kind of like my six day mini course, right? I give out a lot of value. You get those 10 videos and then you decide whether you want to get the class or not or participate.

32:32
This is the same thing, really on a different, like I couldn’t throw out that six day mini course on TikTok because they’re too long. But instead, if I broke it up into very small 60 second nuggets and just put them out there and in like maybe one or two of the best nuggets, I have a direct over, like I’ll pay for ads, TikTok ads or something like that, direct it over to a landing page where they can pick and choose which tips they want to learn.

33:02
I don’t know. I think it would work. Yeah, I think I think what. So I think two keys to making it work better are the token aspect of it. Right. So not not attaching it to real money um as well as the cliffhanger coming in. Right. Where it’s like, I’m going to give you a reason to because like why else in the world when I am like always trying to like maximize my efficiency and like be super productive, am I hunting all over TikTok for like the next

33:31
the next segment of a show that actually exists already like like Chicago med, right? It’s not even like I couldn’t just watch that Chicago med episode probably on Netflix or something But no, I’m I’m going through 20 profiles on tik-tok trying to find the next one I like how you’re using Chicago med as your example when I know you really watch like real housewives or whatever. You’re really hunting for the next

33:54
I’m actually really into the medical dramas on TikTok right now. I don’t know why. I used to watch them like 30 years ago, like when ER, George Clooney ER was out. um yeah, I don’t I kind of like the I kind of. OK, so taking a hard left turn here, how can we do this? OK, OK. I’m getting excited. OK, we don’t have much longer.

34:23
How do we do this as a test? How do we create this, how do we set this up and do it as a test to sell people, but also sell people in the test? What do mean sell people physical products? No, like how do we do info products, which is what we already do, right? We sell info products. So how do we set this up to do it? How do we make, how do we turn our six day mini course into 60 second nuggets with cliffhangers, then,

34:49
push people into buying more 60 to three minute, let’s just say, segments, right, where we literally teach one thing, right? Where they come in, but then we also sell how we did it. This would be really easy to set up, honestly. You know what I’m saying, though? I think it’s fascinating. You’re just breaking up individual tips, and then you just have to make sure you tag them really well, and then you just throw them up on a

35:18
I wouldn’t use Shopify, but like you could throw it up on a Shopify site, right? Or a membership site. Any membership site will work membership plugin on WordPress. And you just give out really good tips for free on TikTok and then just steer them over to this whole array could be categorized where you just pay a buck to learn this, pay a buck to learn that. Very easy with tokens. Very easy to do. Okay. So, um, before we get off in the weeds, uh, I just kind of wanted to talk about like,

35:47
Did you listen to that Joe Rogan episode with Ben Affleck and uh Matt Damon? I’ve only seen clips of it, but once again, I’ve seen clips. Okay, so they were complaining that Hollywood is doing it all wrong now. Like back in the day, you could tell stories and whatnot, but now everyone has such short attention spans that you need to hit them quick. So the whole model is changing. It’s basically what the gist of that episode was.

36:17
Like in the old days, the instinct was to overspend on a big production, market it like crazy and then make a ton of money. Now it’s kind of like flipped, right? Because everyone wants like quick dopamine hits, right? And so you want to put together these quick little clips that are actionable with frequent payoffs. So it’s like the opposite of the way it was before. And that’s where things are going, unfortunately. uh Bedaflic and

36:46
What they were complaining about is they just released this Netflix episode. Yes. Netflix movie, right? Yeah, they’re everywhere right now. And the director was like, you need like hard hitting action from the start and throughout, you know, to keep someone’s attention span. Whereas before you could spend some time building up the characters and everything before. Yeah. These days, I don’t know if you do this, but sometimes when I’m watching Netflix, I’ll have my phone out and I’m like checking email or something during the movie. That’s the problem now.

37:13
So I noticed this because Brian is a movie guy, right? He loves going to the movies, right? We have the like AMC pass or whatever. It’s actually not a bad deal. But anyway, I’ve seen more movies in the last four years than I have in my entire life put together, right?

37:29
But what I’ve noticed is I don’t like action movies. not super into, I already have enough anxiety. I don’t like going to a movie where I have anxiety for two hours. So I wanna see stories, right? I wanna see love stories or even comedies, even documentaries. I don’t care. I just don’t want everyone dies, right? There are no movies where everyone doesn’t die. I was looking last week, I was like, oh, we should go see a movie this week, right? There was nothing. There was nothing to see that wasn’t,

37:59
like absolute action horror, you know, from from scene one to scene end of, you know, guns a blazing kind of thing. um So anyway, yeah, I mean, they’re totally right. Like no one’s making those movies, but they’re all on TikTok, right? They’re all on TikTok with the girl getting the makeover and the you know, she’s really a princess and she’s, you know, in love with her brother. Who knows what it is, right? But it’s like they’re all they’re all being made there now. Do you think people will get annoyed if we

38:29
if we did something like this. I know for the experiment be fun, but do you think people would get annoyed at this type of learning if it was broken up this way? I feel like do people get annoyed in casinos when they put their money in and don’t win? Like, yes, of course people are going to get annoyed, but do the casino people care? No. Yeah, but this is different because it also reflects on your reputation, right? So it’s one thing to put out a micro drama where there’s no human really attached to it, right? It’s all make believe, but it’s another to release lessons this way.

38:58
If you don’t like it, don’t watch it. mean, like, so who was it? John Ackup that said uh people, someone complained about like one of the webinars that he had and he’s like, I’m happy to refund your money for the free met. Right. So like if someone now, if someone’s if someone feels here’s the thing, if how many times do we hear this at Seller Summit where people will say this one thing that you said, right, this one thing that I learned, right?

39:25
I got this, I remember, I think it was Charles said, when I explained how to do like tag people in Klaviyo without having to send them to forms like automatically, like I think that was it. It might’ve been something different, but like I had a couple of people when I shared that tip that they were like, that was worth coming to the event, right? So people paid $800 to hear that one tip. How mad are they gonna be if they paid 10 cents to hear that same tip, right? Or a similar type tip.

39:54
You want me to refund your dime? They even make times. Sure. Are they getting obsolete too? it like just our dimes? Our dimes? Well, mean, in this method, like it’s tokens. It’s token. Refund your tokens. Big whoop. I feel like the the amount is so small that like, I don’t know. I mean, 99 cents. How often do you complain at your value meal? It’s true. I don’t know.

40:24
I mean, so I think it would be really interesting to do it and see, here’s the other thing, and this is where I think people will get, this is where people will struggle, is that yes, this is great, but it has to be interesting enough to get an audience to then have enough people watching it to wanna click through and learn more, right? And that’s where people are gonna have a hard time. Because- That’s where ads come in, right? Yeah, but I mean, I think, that’s-

40:51
Usually when people struggle it’s they can’t get enough eyeballs on what they’re doing. So I think if it’s good enough. Yeah, I mean if you already have, well okay, so here’s the key takeaway for this episode, right? Okay, that we’re gonna do this, you can join and watch us do it You don’t wanna make like just shorter videos, you wanna make them continuous. Yes. Right? And they can just be frequent.

41:20
continuous and unresolved, meaning everything ends on a cliffhanger. So you’ll actually go through and search for the next lesson, right? And then once you’ve established that, then maybe you can try some of these techniques that we’ve just talked about. For sure. And I think even if you take away one thing, you should be making your videos like that anyway, whether you’re going to attach any sort of monetary spend behind it or not. Yeah.

41:49
Hope you enjoyed this episode. Especially if you sell info products, this could be a great way to generate more sales. For more information and resources, go over to mywifequarterjob.com slash episode 632. And once again, tickets to Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. If you want to hang out in person, in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs, and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go to sellersummit.com.