532: Simple Strategies To Grow Your TikTok To 6.1M Subs And Instant Sales With Eugenia Chen

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You’re listening to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into what strategies are working and what strategies are not with their businesses. Today I have my friend Eugenia Chen on the show and Eugenia runs pandaloon.com where she sells cute costumes for dogs and the way she makes sales is very interesting. She uses a combination of TikTok and TikTok shop to drive traffic from her account that has over 6.1 million subscribers. So if you want to learn how to market via TikTok, then listen on.

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But before we begin, I want to let you know that this is the last call for tickets for the 2024 Seller Summit over at SellersSummit.com. The Seller Summit is an e-conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. And unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS, is a curriculum-based event where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their business. Entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods

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and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. Now, I personally hate large events, so the Seller Summit is always small and intimate. Every year, we cut off ticket sales in around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast, and we’ve sold out every single year for the past eight years. Now, if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making over 250k or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller Summit’s gonna be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 14th to May 16th.

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And right now, this is the last chance to get your ticket. Also, if you haven’t picked up my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, The Family First Entrepreneur yet, it’s actually available on Amazon at 38 % off right now. My book will teach you how to achieve financial freedom by starting a business that doesn’t require you to work yourself to death. 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.

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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.

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Welcome to the My Wife, Quitter, Job podcast. Today, I’m thrilled to have Eugenia Chen on the show. Now, Eugenia is someone who I met through Kim Meckwood. She sells click and carry. And I interviewed Kim a while back and she introduced me to Eugenia, who’s the founder of Pandaloon, which is a store that sells these super cute costumes for dogs. She’s been on Shark Tank, where she got a deal with Damon John. And she has a gigantic TikTok channel with over 6.1 million followers.

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And she uses this TikTok channel to drive traffic to her e-commerce store with one of her very first videos hitting over 140 million views, which is nuts. So in this episode, Eugenia is going to teach us how she applies her TikTok channel and her social media strategy to drive sales. And with that, welcome to the show. How are doing? Thank you. Wow. What a well-spoken intro. So I’m going to just say this right off. It’s actually pretty rare.

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that I have an Asian on the show because just percentage wise, there aren’t that many of us that start e-commerce businesses for some reason. I’ve heard that it seems so one kind of strange because you think Asians like, you know, being like conservative with money or making money. And then but also kind of sad that it seems like maybe culturally Asians are like less likely to venture out there and and try to create a business.

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Well, see, that leaves me my first question, which was, was starting Pandaloon like the original plan or when you were you going to be like an engineer, lawyer, doctor, original? Just curious. Yeah. Yeah. Well, of course, you you have to have a survival job, I guess. So my first, I guess, career was a math professor. a college math professor. it. So I was an applied mathematician in my previous life. I like to study in the

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applied maths, I like to study in neuroscience. So I studied like how networks of neurons optimize in a mathematical model. That’s cool. Yeah. So So how did that lead to Pandaloon? And why did you start it in the first place? Yeah, it was, it was interesting, because like you go into your career, thinking that it’s going to be one thing. And so the economy of being a professor changed a lot for me at the time, like when I came out of

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grad school, it was like, it was a perfectly fine like job, I guess, like income wise, and then I hope to also do other ventures alongside it. But the economics just got super bad. Like I started getting my pay cut, but then having like twice the workload. And it just got worse and worse to where I like did the math one day. And I was like, I’m getting paid about $12 an hour for teaching one of my classes. Wow. Okay, I’ve been seen. Yeah, it was horrible. So I just thought I have to do something for myself. So I thought, Okay, I’m gonna

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try to create a website. And so I taught myself to like code a website and I created this little online store in the theme of pandas. And that was Panda Loon. And so the version of it where I have these like funny dog costumes came just a little bit by accident. I put my dog Huxley in a little panda costume and just took a video of him running through the park. And that’s what went crazy viral and people started emailing me asking me, can you

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create a costume for my dog too. Did you make that costume? Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. Okay, I cut up like teddy bear fabric and then like, figure it out what would make it work on a dog to give it that like magical running teddy bear look. Okay, so that takes skills. Is that just something you do for fun? You say, Okay, I’m not like a technical seamstress. But I have like, I don’t know, I have a love for like design and like,

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the way and I kind of approach it from a mathematical perspective actually, of like there’s certain ratios that make something look very cute and like aesthetically pleasing. And so I just kind of rigged it to where it would have that right appearance and then took it from there. Interesting. So you you hand sewed that first costume? Yes. And then you just decide to throw it up on tik tok? Or did you just put it on? Like, where did you post it? It was actually Facebook, Facebook video.

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that where it popped off just through I think a lot of shares and I don’t know to this day like if it hit like someone big on Facebook that who shared it but I know that like some celebrities tweeted it on Twitter to Wow, it just kind of had that virality by accident. then they found you was this before Penelun or was this after it already started? So at this time, Penelun was just like this little niche gift website.

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Okay, online. And then I was also selling on Amazon, just like, anything I could get my hands on that I could sell for a profit. was trying to figure out how do I sell online, both on Amazon and my own website. And like, just learning as I went of just like, how do you create a page? How do you play the game of like, Amazon rankings and all of that? And then it was in the theme of pandas on my website, but a lot of general goods to on Amazon.

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So there was no listing for this though when the video came out, obviously. Correct. Yeah, I had put it through a watermark that said, Pandaloon on the video, just thinking like, oh, well, I’ll put a little something on here. Maybe the theme of pandas will, you know, promote my site in some way. And that’s how they found me. And so they started emailing me. And then what? Obviously, you couldn’t make a whole bunch of costumes yourself, right? That would take right? Yeah, that would be

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incredibly unpleasant. I’d probably go back to earning $12 an hour. So I figured, okay, like I wanted, was trying to get my way towards making my own products, but I just didn’t know what it would be at that point. So when I accidentally created this demand, I thought, oh gosh, like I wasn’t expecting this, but let me explore it. So I wanted to try to move fast because like people were excited about it. There was this video still circulating.

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So I went to a local seamstress in San Diego and I asked if she could help me with making a pattern. And so like I paid the seamstress and she helped me kind of make a, approximate sort of pattern. And I explored trying to see if I can manufacture a batch in the U S just to get, you know, increased speed and to test this out. But it turns out that you can’t really, or it’s very difficult. I couldn’t find it at the time to manufacture something with furry fabric.

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over here. Because I just be importing fabric and buying it from a middleman for one to get that type of fabric. And then the second thing was, the sewing company that was working with me said, actually, we don’t want this project. Yeah, they said that you needed a laser cutting machine in order to cut this type of furry fabric. Otherwise, they have to shut down all production, because there would just be fur flying everywhere. I guess that makes sense.

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How much did it cost to make that initial pattern? Just curious. They charged me about $350 for it’s not much at all. Yeah, not too much for stateside. At the time it was like a little painful for it to, you know, to let go of the purse strings. But yeah, it kind of got approximately there. And then I realized, based on the prices that they were quoting me, I would have to sell these things for like $200 a piece. Oh, my goodness. Okay. It was like, it was pretty crazy. And so

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I reached out to some people that I knew from like an Amazon seller network in San Diego. And they, you know, introduced me to a friend of a friend who had experience with plush. So through him, I found my current manufacturer who manufactures these overseas with the proper laser cutting machine. Right. Yeah. So that first batch, how long did it take you? Um, it took probably, like,

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four months, I think, finish. Yeah. It was kind of a race to the finish line too, because I made this little prototype and I had always been a fan of Shark Tank. So I thought like, I’m just gonna stand in line and go, it’ll be interesting, I guess. And then I ended up getting called back for Shark Tank. So I went from, you know, being able to take my sweet time to, oh, I got to get this out because I’m going to film on Shark Tank.

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Oh, wait, so back up. So sorry, your video goes viral, then you look for suppliers. And then before you have any product you decide to apply for Shark Tank. Yeah, I just had my one little prototype. So yeah, I stood in line at 4am at this like Indian casino out in Southern California. And just stood in line with all the people some some crazy some who had been auditioning many times for Shark Tank. And then you go in and you do a 60 second pitch.

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for the casting directors of Shark Tank. And so I went in with just my one singular prototype and did it. And the response seemed pretty positive. They took a photo of my dog in costume. So I thought like, oh yeah, like I got their eye. And then just like a few days later, I got the call that I was heading towards actually filming. So during that time, I actually thought, oh gosh, I’m only gonna go on the show with one.

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prototype, feel like I should probably have more to show for this. So I quickly created like five other styles and had my factory airship them. And those arrived like four days before I filmed. And so now I had a whole line of little pet costumes to show on the show. What were the minimum order quantities of this factory? Unfortunately, like

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The feedback I was getting from multiple factories was they wanted 2000, a moQ of 2000. Wow. Yeah. it was like per size, not per style. Per size. Per size. like it got very, I needed Shark Tank at that point because it got so expensive to try to like consider making like multiple sizes. Yeah. So it was, was a bit of a stretch. Like I was able to fund my, my first panda costume run with the money I’d saved up just being an Amazon seller.

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But in order to create all those other styles, I really did need like an investment from someone. Wow. Okay, so I actually did watch your clip. So all those costumes you only had one of pretty much. Yeah, like one of one. So after I filmed Lori, she’s the one with like blonde hair. She took my unicorn costume. And so we had to chase after her to get it back because it was my only prototype for that costume.

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And you ended up signing with Damon, right? Yeah. Is that still going on? Yeah, yeah, he has, you know, he has equity in Panda land. So yeah, like, he really, like, lets me take the lead. So he’s not really up in my, you know, decision making, unless I want him to be like fast for his advisor input. But yeah, yeah, I last time I saw him was

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think a few months ago, like when it comes to San Diego comes to California, we try to get together and have dinner or something. That’s cool. Yeah, I’ve had varying. I’ve had other shark tank people on the show before. Sometimes the shark is like, completely absent. And but it sounds like you and Damon, you know, you keep in touch and you actually see each other physically. Yeah, I have a hard time being like, I don’t know, is this an Asian thing? I have a hard time being a needy, like a needy, of course, person as far as like asking someone for help all the time.

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So I probably should be more proactive in like pulling him in to like get his advice for things. But I can see how that can happen because at this point, I think each shark probably has a hundred plus companies. So it’s just too much. So I try to bring him in when I know that like, okay, this is an area where I definitely want his help. Like, yeah, like if there’s something like in a contract, can contact his team and get help with, you know, taking a look at something or licensing or things like that.

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Are you still using those first factories? I am actually, yeah. They’ve been really good to me. Like they’re not the best with speed, but their quality has been like just such a huge thing to not have to worry about. The defect rate was been like near zero. it’s really great. that’s incredible. Yeah. Yeah. They really concentrate on like quality. rate is around 3%. And we’re just selling pieces of fabric. Yours is much more complicated.

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Oh man, yeah, that’s true. That’s amazing. All right, well, let’s switch gears and talk about TikTok because your channel is ridiculous. So you started out on Facebook and you had that one video go viral. At that point, did you choose or did you just start posting on all the social media platforms? I was definitely trying to cross post. So I actually enjoyed Instagram more because it seemed like there was a sort of a pet community there where people

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have a reciprocal relationship and they, you you can engage with each other. But it was, at the time Instagram didn’t have reels and it was a lot harder to build up an audience just organically. And then Facebook also went through a transition where it was also harder to get organic reach. And then this little app of TikTok just rose up there and really changed the social media, like video game for everyone.

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Um, because now everyone, every platform is, is moving towards sort of this short form discovery algorithm. Um, so I started posting on, on all of them, but TikTok was a place where you could grow very quickly. Um, so it was rewarding to, you know, keep going and to join in, um, the structure of TikTok where, know, people would create trends, um, which would lend to creating a video format was very easy to jump in on. So was a lot easier at that time to create a lot of.

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content at volume. Yeah. then did your early videos have success just like the one on Facebook? Um, there was a good amount of success. Yeah, I’ve had I tried to count it up recently. And it’s approximately a billion views on tech talk. So it’s like, it’s a lot of videos with, you know, millions of views or more. But then there’s like ups and downs. So you’ll have like one video with a million or

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million, 20 million, and then you’ll have the next one, you know, much lower than that by far. Which is kind of an interesting thing with this whole movement towards a discovery algorithm where, you know, there’s no guarantee that you’ll reach the audience that you’ve reached before. It’s always like you’re trying to earn that view. Like it’s a brand new account or something. you correlate

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those views to actual sales? Like do actually people go to your bio and click the link or do they just kind of go off and Google and search for it? There’s a lot of Googling. The behavior is changing over time. It’s really interesting. More recently, I saw one of my videos, I think it was like a million and a half views or something on my Pandaloon account. People did click on my website, actually even more than using TikTok shop, surprisingly. And then and more than out.

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Amazon, I really expected them to be a demographic that would love Amazon. But to my surprise, pleasantly, they went to my website, which is nice. But yeah, I can correlate sales. But for to correlate it, it’s a lot easier to correlate it closer to like my peak season. When it’s in the off season. It’s it’s really hard to, to tell. There’s a lot of Yeah, there’s a lot of peak season Halloween and Christmas probably. Yeah.

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Yeah, mostly Halloween, like September, October, which is a challenge to have a seasonal business for sure. Because that’s such a short timeframe to really hit it hard. So that can be a little challenging to create videos that pop off at that right time. So do you just kind of relax and then all of sudden Halloween coming up and you just pump out like multiple videos a day or? I wish okay, so because like there’s so much stuff to do just to like keep

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the orders moving and customers happy during the peak season, I struggle to create videos at the same frequency that I would like to. So it’s a tough challenge. I’m just trying to keep things alive and running during the peak season. And then throughout the rest of year, I do a lot of video creation that I try to just continue to give the audience things that they find interesting or fun or storytelling. And then also

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I sort of have a secondary business of creating video for social media with my dog Huxley. So like, we’ve done like brand deals with with companies and have monetization on like just as a social media creator as well. Right. Nice. Yeah. Are using a 3PL to deliver your stuff for I am Yeah, it’s I have a really great like family owned warehouse out in the Midwest. And yeah, they’re great. I have

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you know, something I learned the hard way. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a nightmare 3PL. Everyone has had a nightmare. Yeah, they held my inventory hostage. They just stopped fulfilling one day. And like, for two months, they wouldn’t let me remove my inventory. I was like going crazy. It was a terrible experience. And so ever since then, I’ve been very cautious to like, have back it plans.

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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 ecommerce that you should all check out. 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.

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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.

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Yeah, I had a friend where their 3PL just decided to go bankrupt. And he had to rent a U haul drive over, look for all of his stuff in the warehouse, pack it up and leave. So everyone has a 3PL store. This is why we bought our own warehouse. The downside is we have to fill everything ourselves, which is another set of headaches. But yeah, I think about that all the time is like, do I want to

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like head towards the direction of having my own warehouse, but then I don’t want to be running a warehouse company. You don’t want to, don’t. Okay. We do customization. So it kind of requires it for a lot of us. Okay. All right. So I am curious what it takes to go viral on TikTok. I’ve watched a number of your videos and they’re all very cute. I don’t think they can be mass produced because they’re very creative. A lot of them. They’re funny. Thank you.

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So do you have like a process? yeah, definitely. I there’s, there’s things that you can do on TikTok that will, you know, increase your success rate for sure. So on TikTok, the biggest thing that people need to wrap their heads around is that you’re consuming content that just fed to you. It’s not like when you go on YouTube, and you have this intent of like,

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oh, how do I open a Shopify store where you Google a question and you evaluate the thumbnails and I see, oh, I see Steve Chu’s thumbnail. It looks pretty great. Like think I trust that guy. I’m gonna click on his video. So by then you’re committed to hearing what that video has to say. Whereas on TikTok or YouTube shorts or Reels now too, you’re just scrolling through a feed of videos that this algorithm has decided that you might wanna see. So within like,

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one to two seconds, people are making these split second decisions on whether it’s worth sticking around. And they’re very much ready to scroll as a default. So you have to figure out a way to stop their scroll to give you a chance to let your video be seen. So in that first few seconds, you have to get something, you have to get a hook out. So something that gives the audience context so that they have some idea of what you’re talking about. Something that’s grabby.

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So it could be something like a visual hook where, you you’ll see videos where people are sometimes holding the camera and they’re walking and then they pan the camera up. It’s just giving us a little bit of anticipation of like, oh, there’s something coming. There’s something I want to see here just around the corner. And then often something that has like a little bit of like shininess or like emotion, something where people have a little bit of an elevated reason.

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to stick around. Like, you know, oh, this is, you what happened when I accidentally, you know, married some, like crazy pathological liar, like it’s very like juicy, right? Yeah, makes you want to stick around. So obviously, in e commerce, you may not be talking about pathological liars as much, but you want to create something where there’s a reason for the audience to watch because the two things that make that signal to tick tock that your video is worth pushing out more.

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Um, or most strongly the watch time or people watching it further into the video or all the way through, or even more than once. And then, um, also the shares and saves. So tick tock loves and all these social platforms. They really love it. If your video is something that people want to spread around, I guess that’s the sort of the base definition of virality is like, you know, does this, you know, have an exponential multiplier on it. So if you’re selling a physical product though,

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what works? Like I know for you, you have a very cute dog in a costume and that by itself is kind of like a hook, right? Yeah, it definitely helps. But it’s really not enough these days. You have to like continue to work harder and harder. Okay. So my my product in some ways, it’s it’s challenging to create videos because it’s it’s something that’s fun. But it’s not like actually solving a problem. It’s not like I woke up one day and I like needed to solve something with a dog costume.

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But most of the time like creating like expressing the problem and then solving it with your product tends to be like the most effective way to create videos short from videos on tech talk that You know show off a product I’m just thinking like I do watch some channels where the content really has nothing to do with the product But then they’ll mention that they have a product every now and then and I think it does very well for them. Yeah, so

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you recommend for an ecommerce store to just kind of attract the type of people that buy or do you do product focus kind of tic tocs? I tend to advise people to lean into product focused tic tocs because usually they’re advising a lot of small businesses. Sure. And they want to see some kind of like signal that they’re headed in the right direction. You know, there’s have you heard of bloom? Bloom? Yeah, it’s like this greens powder.

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They’re big on TikTok and they, they do what you’re describing as they, they inject their product placement, you know, with tons and tons of videos with tons and tons of influencers and gifted campaigns. So they’re able to like create that brand awareness that way. But I think for most entrepreneurs, they may not have that kind of ability to wait that long or to invest that much in influencers. So I would go straight to demonstrating your product as much as you can. Yeah.

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I know you’ve helped several companies in addition to blowing up your own TikTok channel. Do you feel comfortable just using a product? don’t have to say the brand or anything just as an example on what’s Yeah, yeah, there’s a product that like solves a problem where if you like had a, if you had a bug bite and so like if you show the problem like the bug bite, you know, like a swelling or something like that.

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The thing that’s been most effective has been just straight, you know, before and after type of structure video. So they show the problem, like, you know, sometimes there’s a kid crying or something like that. They show the, you know, the tool helping and then the after where it’s like a pretty good result. So that sort of problem solution, sort of like this is what you need. Creating that need is really seeming like the easiest way to get out there and get grabby.

27:18
I mean, it sounds like Facebook ads to a certain extent. What about apparel or stuff that doesn’t solve a problem? Yeah, I think it’s it’s harder in a way apparel on TikTok seems to be doing well in some cases because it has a broad appeal. So like if I’m selling cargo pants, like in theory, I can appeal to at least 50 % of you know, the general audience there. Yeah, so apparel, like

27:46
It is kind of nice when people are able to show it as like a online sort of dressing room sort of idea where, you know, a person can see and explain, oh, like it fits this way. Here’s what it looks like on a real body. Those types of things seem to be doing well on TikTok, but it is challenging because instead of, know, negative emotion is more grabbing than positive emotion. So when you’re doing something like apparel, it’s mostly just like you’re showing positive. You’re not really.

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creating like a negative hook where, you know, a problem solution, you grab someone with something that’s interesting because you need to solve it. Your highest converting TikTok, what was the content in terms of converting sales, not necessarily just views? I would, it’s probably related to my shark tank story. And just like, yeah, so the origin story, that’s something I’ve noticed on social.

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for a while now is that people don’t really care to hear from a brand. So, you know, like I love Sarah Blakely from Spanx, like, but I don’t really care to hear what Spanx has to say on a daily basis, but I will tune in to Sarah Blakely talking face to camera about, you know, some anecdote that she experienced. If you’re willing to be like a little bit self-deprecating or…

29:09
a little bit something that might be like a little bit embarrassing people really eat that up of you know, seeing what the real nitty gritty sort of experiences or stories that you have to tell as entrepreneur. Those things do really well on tech talk. if you were to just make it so here’s my dilemma. So we sell handkerchiefs and linens but my wife has no interest in doing any of the content for that. And we considered hiring someone to do it. And we actually had some employees do it for a while. But ultimately like

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I think I would do the best job. So if I just did a behind the scenes of the, you think that would do well on TikTok? Yeah, actually, I think you should definitely do it. I mean, you’re used to telling your story and like how you got started. I think people would really like seeing like your origin story and you hitting on that over and over again. Probably it’s going to feel like you’re telling your story ad nauseam. But also just about the handkerchiefs itself, like,

30:08
Although you may not seem like the, what is it, the avatar of like a handkerchief. It’s fun. I heard you say once that like, you could imagine yourself saying like, hi, I’m Steve Chu. I make microprocessors and you know, here’s how you choose a handkerchief. It’s like a little bit of a cognitive dissonance, it feels very authentic if you show up and you’re not someone who’s like,

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know, your typical influencer pushing something just to look pretty and make a buck. I think you come across very sincere and you’re going to be honest about what you’re showing. And I think you have a problem in your story, in your origin story of like your wife was trying to find handkerchiefs for her wedding. She couldn’t find one. She knew she was going to cry. So that’s why you sought out these handkerchiefs. I think that’s an interesting story to tell.

31:06
product is, I guess, the biggest thing I’d wonder. know? Yeah, I think it can. It may not be the easiest thing to see an immediate result because your audience is somewhat targeted, right? Like same with mine. You know, we’re not selling something that’s like, I guess, an impulse buy for like, you know, 50 % of the population. So I think that right now on TikTok, it feels like

31:33
it may not be the easiest thing to look at like, oh yeah, we sold a hundred thousand dollars this month or something like that. But I think that as far as like creating creative, that’s geared towards TikTok, but then taking advantage of it on other platforms too, on YouTube shorts, on your Instagram, I think that will move product. I think Instagram is probably the best removing product, just judging by my colleagues and whatnot. Yeah. Yeah.

32:03
I think the targeting is is definitely more mature over there. So that makes more sense. Yeah. So you mentioned TikTok shop and I have friends that are doing $200,000 a month on TikTok shop right now. And she says it’s just crazy. It’s like the wild wild west. Yeah. What do you have any tips for TikTok shop? Because I know you’re doing it also you have to go live to which takes some amount of courage as well. Yeah, I used to go live all the time. It’s just not

32:33
my personal thing, I know there’s some people who love to get on a live and talk if they’re, you know, one those like talkative people who, you know, enjoy an audience. I think you have to figure out like, what, what is it that you can tolerate doing? To what do you have capacity for? For me, like I’m more interested in short form video than I am in live. But also, I’m curious if you can say like, or hint, like what category? she’s, she’s apparel. Apparel, okay.

33:01
So I’m seeing that apparel and beauty are killing it on TikTok Shop. And I think from my conversations with certain people too is that right now the targeting is not super targeted towards your niches, like pets or perhaps people getting married in your category. So that’s going to be harder. But for TikTok Shop, if you have a product that can appeal to a lot of people,

33:30
Um, skincare, you know, the curling irons, have killed it. Um, apparel. Um, yeah, there’s like a whole live stream element to selling on a P with apparel where you can optimize by pushing out videos at volume. And they don’t have to be like, even like the greatest videos structurally. Um, but they push people towards your live stream and then they tend to convert.

33:57
either during the live stream or with the videos that they get served after the live stream because they were watching your live stream. Sorry, how do you push people towards the live stream? Is it just your subscribers that get the notification? No, so TikTok has been inserting live streams from people that you don’t follow a lot, like a disproportionate amount of lives have been coming across the free page. people, strangers are getting served the live stream just in their normal scrolling.

34:27
But then in addition to that, if you post before you go live, TikTok has announced it publicly that these things will get pushed out more so that they’re more likely to push your video that you posted approximately 24 to 48 hours before your live stream while you’re live so that people see your video, they see your profile has a little blue circle around it.

34:55
to indicate that you’re live right now. And what they’re doing is trying to attract people to go from that video to your live stream. Okay. And then once you’re there, you have products that you upload and they can just check out right on the spot, right? Right, right. So there you are on your live stream, you know, like showing the products, answering questions. I think for apparel, it’s nice because they can say like, oh, well, you know, this model weighs 150 pounds is five three, this is what it looks like on her.

35:23
Is it stretchy? Is, does it feel like? It kind of gives people that, that piece that they’re, they might be missing, like when they’re looking at, know, flat images on Amazon, you know, they can actually interact and figure out like, how would this fit on their body? You know, before we hit record, you mentioned to me that TikTok is favoring long videos now, not just one minute. Does that imply then that the sub one minute videos are getting less reach? Yes.

35:53
At least that’s my experience on my account and then accounts that I’ve seen from others is that it’s like there’s a lot of competition for the shorter videos. Um, and people are continuing to make the shorter videos so that it’s a little, it’s like disproportionately, um, geared towards one minute videos or longer, um, is what they’re trying to aim for. So I saw a statistic that said something like 70 % of.

36:21
50 to 70 % of videos consumed on TikTok are one minute or longer. So if can imagine like how, know, like if 90 % of people think that we should create short form videos just as a default because it’s TikTok, there’s so much more competition. So I’ve seen some of these longer videos and I can’t imagine people watching like a 15 minute video, for example, or even a five minute video, but maybe the overall watch time is just longer.

36:48
I feel the same way. Like I can’t imagine my content stretching out to 10 minutes. Like I don’t know. It would have to be like an epic movie at that point for the kind of that I make. Um, what I’m seeing is the longer videos, tend to be just like face to camera, FaceTime style talking, which is also kind of part of the culture of TikTok where people want to feel like they’re just hanging out with you on FaceTime. Um, it’s not such a like polished event sort of recording, like you might see on YouTube.

37:18
And that’s where the video tends to stretch to be longer and longer because for someone to kind of tell a story or to rant for three minutes, five minutes, it’s a lot more doable than these, you know, these videos that are very saturated or like very produced. know TikTok is going after YouTube directly, right? So before we got on, you mentioned, hey, yeah, just upload all of your horizontal long form videos. Yeah. Do they do they work? Do people watch them?

37:47
Yeah, yeah, they do. It’s a little bit too early to say what type of horizontal videos are getting a lot of traction on TikTok. There is a push towards it. They’ve sent notifications directly to users saying, hey, if you upload horizontal video, you will get pushed out. So right now, it’s one those areas where you get kind of like an extra boost from the platform if you do it. For your short form,

38:16
If you have an editor, because I know you’re busy, but like, if you have an editor who can create a little juicy moment from your long form video and put it to the front of the video, as kind of like, it’s like a quick teaser trailer hook. Right, I can see your videos being consumed for 10 minutes for sure. Hmm. Okay. Yeah, I guess it’s worth trying. And horizontal, I can’t watch horizontal video on TikTok.

38:44
I usually just swipe away. Yeah, I’d never want to turn my phone, but it actually serves it to you horizontal, but you are still holding your phone vertical. So you don’t have to turn your phone unless you want to. Right. But there’s the ugly big black bar. Yeah. Something I am curious about is I see like more movement towards videos on TikTok being rewarded for a very active comment section. And I’ve noticed that those videos, even though it’s kind of ugly that there’s so much black space,

39:14
it does allow you to see the video and the comments simultaneously. So I think it may lend to having a video that’s consumed but also discussed at the same time. Do you make an active effort to try to reply to all the comments? Maybe in like the first day or so? Yeah, I definitely try. When it gets, you know, to be too much, it’s, it’s a little bit hard to get everyone but I try I should do a better job. Ideally, if you have a video

39:44
you’re expecting that not all of them will go viral. So if you make 20 banger videos, you’re pretty lucky if you get one of them to go to the millions. And when that happens, that’s your of your moment to drop everything and continue pushing out videos. when you get, if you were to have your handkerchiefs, know, pop off, you tell your story and people watch it, they’re going to ask you questions about like your handkerchiefs. And so

40:11
if you were to get a video with a million views and you have all these comments, asking questions or, you know, replying to you, that’s your moment to also then reply to that comment with a video and continue that engagement. Yeah, it’s interesting. I know putting out viral videos is kind of like an art form. I know you mentioned, you know, the hook and whatnot, but it all just takes a lot of practice. Yeah, yeah, there’s a lot of structure and strategy and

40:39
Yeah, there’s a lot of optimization that I actually have been thinking about, you know, how much do you want to give someone, you know, as far as like the information about what can help their video versus not like feeling like they feel overloaded with information and they don’t get out there and try. I would say like, I think that the biggest thing that I see small businesses spin their wheels on is just not having a strong start to their video.

41:08
Um, a of times they’ll spend time trying to be funny or, um, you know, create some kind of concept, but all they need to do is concentrate on making like the first five seconds of their video really strong. And from there, you know, you can continue to incrementally improve. And it just takes practice. And you said one in 20, you’re lucky if one goes viral. So anyone listening to this, if you’re not getting a video that goes viral, just, you just gotta keep going and be consistent with it. Yeah. You learn with every iteration.

41:37
So, Eugene, where can people check out your cute costumes online and your TikTok channel, of course? Yeah, on pandaloon.com. That’s my company with the cute costumes for dogs and cats. And then also Huxley Media Group.com. I have some information there on a TikTok course that’s coming up. And yeah, feel free to hit me up there with any questions. Awesome. Well, thanks a lot for coming on the show, Eugene. I really appreciate it.

42:07
Yeah, thank you.

42:36
go to SellersSummit.com. And if you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to MyWifeQuarterJob.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.