577: An Inside Look at Our Content & Ecommerce Masterplan For 2025

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Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all of the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. This episode was supposed to be published at the beginning of the year, but there’s been so much happening that we never got the chance. In this episode, Tony and I talk about our strategies for both content and e-commerce for 2025. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that tickets are now on sale for Seller Summit 2025 over at sellersummit.com. The Seller Summit,

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is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. Unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level advice, mine is a curriculum-based conference 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 e-commerce business, entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods, and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet.

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I personally hate large events, so the Seller’s Summit is always small and intimate. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast, and we’ve sold out every single year for the past 8 years. If you are an ecommerce entrepreneur making more than $250,000 or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller’s Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 6th to May 8th.

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Right now, this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be. So head on over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show.

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Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Today, we’re to talk about what’s going to happen in 2025 and what our strategies are going to be on both the content side and the e-commerce side. I’m excited. You sound really excited. I know. Both of us were chatting right before this about neither of us really quite have nailed down what we’re doing in except for 2025 is like four weeks away. There’s just going to be so much uncertainty.

02:09
We got a new president who’s going to change a lot of things, increase tariffs. China is changing too their policies as a trade war. Even Amazon is copying places like T-Mobile. Lots of stuff going on and a lot to digest here. I would say, I think the uncertainty with everything, I actually see that impacting a lot of different things. I see a lot of people in the blogger space

02:37
wanting to sell their blogs. I don’t know if you’ve seen this as much. I’m in a lot of the lifestyle type blogger groups. A lot of people are like, this is it, I’m done. It’s been several years of Google issues, low traffic, ad revenue going down, getting screwed by affiliates. It’s like a variety of things. People are like, they’ve already either moved on to another

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thing, right? So they’ve kept their blog, but they’re doing something else or they’re like, I just can’t do this anymore. I’ve got to go get a W-2, right? Which I think is, okay, so it’s funny, right? As someone who has been like a serial entrepreneur, I feel sad, right? I feel sad. Cause some of these people, like, I feel like I grew up with, like a lot of these people started blogging shortly after I did. So they’ve been at this for 15 years. To see them just shut down is

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hard, right? But the other part of me is like, ooh, should I buy up some blogs? I don’t know if I would do that. Well, I know. If it’s like to me, it’s like, should I buy up the content? Right. Because my biggest thing, like when I think about 2025 and of course, like I’m in the middle of like a massive home renovation, which has thrown a lot of wrenches into some stuff that I wanted to do this year just because that’s pretty much

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Not only has it taken up all of my extra time, but I don’t have places to make videos, right? My office is still under construction. My house is under construction. I wanna start making these videos, but I’ve realized that I actually need to have, I’m not like you who can make a video with a backdrop. Yeah, yours is harder. Yeah, and most of my videos that I’ve realized, after doing a lot of video last year and putting stuff out and seeing what hits,

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My videos do well when I’m showing people how to do things, right? So I need to have a space like inside my house, primarily the kitchen where I can film and my kitchen is still, it’s done-ish, right? So that’s my first hurdle that I had this year, which will be fixed, right? The kitchen will be finished. It’s not like it’s not gonna happen. But the other thing is like I need content, right? I need content to film. And obviously I have Happy Housewife, which has a ton of content, but to me it’s like you can never have enough.

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You can never have too much content to make videos about. And I was like, well, if I bought some of these properties, I would own the content. And not that I would necessarily use them for blog content, but I could use them as like video content, right? Whether it’s recipes or DIY or things like that, I could just make the video about it. anyway, just seeing all that happening right now has got me, has got the wheels spinning. You know what? So blogging, I think Google’s gonna die in the next two or three years. The traditional search method.

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But I still think the blog is valuable. I don’t know if I would start one as a business today, but ranking, like if you’ve used search GPT or perplexity, there’s gonna be links to popular blog posts and just all the stuff that you’ve done for Google so far will help for AI search going forward. So I don’t think there’s, if you have a blog, mean, selling would be, I think kind of dumb unless you’re just gonna drop it because you’re just gonna put pennies on the dollar. When in fact it is valuable.

05:54
You know, what I think is interesting because I know we’ve talked, we’ve done a lot of episodes on Google and just sort of getting into the search issues really quickly. One thing I have noticed is that, so I’m going on a trip next week and I’ve been doing a lot of Googling. And like I said, we’ve talked about this before, I don’t Google a lot of things. I usually look on Pinterest or I just ask ChatGBT. But I have been Googling, like for example, yesterday, where can I go on a reindeer ride? Right?

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And what I’ve noticed is when it comes to that travel space, like what ferry should I take from this place to this place? It’s all blogs coming up in search. There’s no Reddit threads. There’s no Quora. There’s very little AI. know, normally now you get the AI at the top of the search. You get that a little bit, but it’s pretty much like Visit Finland, whatever, like all these blogs that are coming up at the top of search. So that got me thinking too, like, hmm.

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Is certain stuff making a comeback, like certain topics? Or did these topics never disappear? I hadn’t been searching them previously. Well, there was a November update. I actually haven’t read up on what the November update, the effects of it so far. The trend right now is to start your search on AI and then clarify with Google. Something like travel, I don’t want to start on AI because I want to know these places.

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Do they still exist? Are they open? Do they have a phone number kind of thing? Yes, for businesses and business search, maybe Google become like the old yellow pages. Oh, I would like that. Google is still well regarded as having accurate information, especially for businesses. That’s why I still think it’s probably worthwhile to blog for an e-commerce store or if you have a place of business. Yes.

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So you can show up higher in the search results there. don’t think, so Google’s not gonna die, but like I think their search business is gonna take a big hit, especially when the DOJ kind of, they were talking about breaking apart Chrome from Google. And I think if they do that, that’ll hurt. Like if Google is not the default search engine for Chrome, that’s gonna change things. Yeah. So just piggybacking on what you said.

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That is where I see there’s probably still a big opportunity for businesses. So if you have a local business, and I’m thinking about actually someone in our course that sells the wooden flowers, where her flowers are in retail stores. Now she doesn’t own that store, right? But like those local businesses I think can really still win with Google search because like when I was looking for stuff like in local areas, there’s not a lot of competition, right? The people that have even a basic website

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with a link to book or a phone number and pictures really were dominating, right? And it was a very minimal effort as far as like, it wasn’t this complex website put together, you know, it was pretty simplistic. And so I think if you do own a business, that’s still a really viable option for you to get traffic. Yeah. And just because Google might lose market share, that

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market share is going to get picked up by someone else and chances are they’re going to use similar metrics to rank or show up. but someone like me who does not have a local business, one trend that I’ve noticed that I feel like, okay, what should I do with this is that there are people on TikTok right now who are literally putting their entire Thanksgiving dinner recipes on TikTok.

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They’re literally doing like, okay, this is what I’m making for Thanksgiving. And then each recipe has its own video. Like here’s how I’m making the turkey. Here’s how I make the mac and cheese. Here’s how I make, just this morning, my daughter and I were watching this like scallop potato recipe where she’s like, please, please, please, will you please make this please? And my, literally my entire phone is text messages between me and my girls sending back TikToks of like, well, no, let’s make it this way. Let’s do this. So I’m wondering, because I have like a whole Thanksgiving, like I have that on my blog, right?

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So is the trend for 2025 or is the next logical move to put those recipes in like basically lists, right? On TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, whatever. is absolutely the right move. Yeah. I am doing that too as we speak. Actually, know, video is my primary platform now. Yeah. And so that bumblebee linen strategy for next year, it’s going to happen. Yeah.

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You heard it here first for the 15th time. You know why? I decided to de-emphasize TikTok for my wife, Quit, and just create them out of my YouTube videos and then only focus my efforts on TikTok for Bumblebee. Chinese guy is going to be a face of a hanky company. It’s okay. It’s way it’s got to be. It’s been fascinating though to watch the shift as someone who’s been putting up recipes before you even used photos.

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I probably still have recipes on my site without photos. I think I’ve updated them all, but it’s very possible. I have 700 recipes, so there’s definitely one or two that snuck through. That’s a really interesting strategy with any topic. Obviously, I’m in the recipe space, but if you’re redecorating a room, make an overview video. It’s like the old school, that’s your pillar post and then you can-

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branch off and do individual posts based on, well, this is how we redid the fireplace mantle or whatever. I definitely think that is the strategy I need to have moving forward. Those videos are hard to make. Cooking videos are hard. I know, but I see that as a good thing. Less people are going to do it. Yes. I’ve seen all levels of edits.

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I’ve seen some people who have really great editing and they’re using a really, you can just tell. They’ve got a full professional setup. But I also see people that don’t have that level. In fact, there was one girl that I watched this video where she was making, I think it was the mac and cheese recipe we’re gonna make. And she’s like, I bought this, I can never think of what it’s called. It’s like the boot that hangs your camera so it can film from the top. Oh yeah, yeah. Bill always has to tell me what the swing arm.

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or whatever, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, every time we do this on our course, Bill’s like, it’s called this. And I’m like, I will never remember that. Anyway, so she’s like, I got this new tool so I can show you from the top. And she films like four steps using that. And she’s like, I don’t like this at all. And then she put her camera back to where she’s like in the video. So even in her own video, she’s trying out things and being very transparent about it, right? And the video’s got like a million plus views. It’s not like it’s hurting her. So anyway, I think that

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I don’t think that for people listening, the quality doesn’t have to be absolute professional editing level. think just making sure that it’s the same things we always talk about, clear, good sound, easy to follow kind of thing. mean, these Bumblebee TikToks are not gonna be professional. It’s gonna be me at the office just talking about what’s going on and hopefully I won’t drive my wife crazy too much. Which I think brings up a point, because you were like, I’m all in on video. I need to be all in on video.

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I do think, and we get on our friend Kevin about this, right? Because he makes videos for YouTube and he does a ridiculous level of editing, hours and hours worth. And we were always like, Kevin, you don’t need to do all that. But I will say that like, if you can do cool edits, that’s actually a way to grow your channel. I don’t know if you, see we are in such different TikTok algorithms, every time I say something, I’m like, he’s not gonna know what I’m talking about.

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Have you seen Lady in the Bathroom on TikTok? She basically lip syncs to just like absolute any genre of music in her bathroom. They tried to cancel her for dumb reasons and whatever. She went through a little controversy, but because she went through this controversy, everybody’s talking about her.

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everyone’s like, well, she got popular because of her awesome edits. And she always appears on my feed. so I watch like four or five of her videos, like just for the purpose of like research and her edits are really good. Like, and it’s just how she’s cutting the clips. It’s real, like she doesn’t have any text overlay, doesn’t have anything. It’s just how she’s literally editing the movement. And it’s really good. So I’m like, either one, if you do have editing skills or two,

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if you want to hire someone overseas, it’ll be very easy for someone overseas to do this for you. And you’re looking for like the angle, that could be the angle for you. Bottom line, if you just put out stuff that’s interesting or if you’re interesting, it’s going to do okay. Yeah. So I just hope I don’t tarnish the Bumble Bee Linens brand as Jen sees it. That’s why you will 100 % guarantee. Because I want to say some stupid stuff, know, you know, just

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Whatever comes to mind, I always stick my foot in my mouth. With the Bumble, I’m curious about this because I feel like we’ve been talking about this for years. It hasn’t been years. I have a bunch stored. I don’t know if you this. have 15 to 20 videos stored, but I’m not sure if I like them, so I’ve never published them. Interesting. What are they? We had our employees film three videos a day just on what they’re doing.

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I just had MJ compile them into videos. But they feel like sales videos in a way. Yeah, I think that’s what you’ve got to fix. And they’re just showing the merchandise and whatever. I can’t see that drawing any interest. So that’s why I’ve never published them. Yeah. So one cool to that same footage and just kind of narrate what’s going on. Like, oh, man, for some reason it’s slow this year or wow, we just got, I don’t know, just make it.

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a behind-the-scenes look at actually running the business. I think one that you could easily do and do it once a week is pack a box with me. Yes, we have one of those actually. That’s one of the ones that are keepers. People love seeing that and also another fun thing you can do is as you’re packing the box, add in something extra.

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and being like, Anna in Massachusetts, you’re getting a little surprise, you know, and like, because people. No, but like, you know what I’m saying? Like, I think that like for the cost that it takes for what it costs you, right, to do something like that is very minimal. But the excitement of like people are like, oh, I’m going to watch this. want to hear my name called out. Right. I want to see. Like, I think those are actually really effective. Yeah. And.

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I’ve also seen things like that where people are like tagging their friends named Anna. Like Anna, did you order from this company? You know what I mean? Like it has a really nice virality to it. And like we’ve talked before about like sales and discounts, it’s a way to build a brand and like get engagement without paying, right? I mean, you’re paying like two bucks, whatever, three bucks, maybe tops for something like that. Less than that actually. Yeah, but I didn’t want to give away your secrets. So. Yeah, that’s why the personalization like

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Highlighting personalized merchandise is actually really important. And we’ll just like announce their first name and maybe on off chance, someone will see it or pick the funniest ones. I already have a collection of those actually. So I have all the raw materials. It just needs to get to something that I’d be happy with and something that I can sustain with very little energy. That’s the key here, very little energy. Okay, so that’s my question for you is how are you going to do this with as little energy as you have?

18:06
Well, no, I just hop into work and I film myself talking about what’s going on. Then I already have all these clips, which I’m still going to have the employees film and then just mash it all together. What’s your goal for how many a week do you want to put out? I’m going to start by doing three a week with the goal of going five a week. I need to get into a flow. That’s the hardest part about all this. Once I’m in the flow, going to five should not be a problem.

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So when you think when you go down there to film, are you going to film like a week’s worth of content? I’m going to do, yes, a week’s worth of content or if I’m just inspired by all the hankies and linens around, I’ll just get it all over with. Because in theory, it should be a lot easier than filming a long form YouTube video for me. It’s hours of prep for me on a YouTube video. Yeah. Right.

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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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I have an idea for you. Just throw some hankies on the floor and lay down and make a snow angel and have your employees be throwing hankies on you and you could have White Christmas playing in the background. That’s a winner. That’s a winner. I like that one. I got all sorts of ideas for you. That one’s funny. Also, if you’re ever at a Warriors game, you should have one to dry your tears of happiness.

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about happiness last night with that. All right, let’s switch gears and talk about the new president that’s coming in and its effect on e-commerce because I’ve been getting a lot of questions about this. The number one thing I just have to say about all this is we’ve been here before. Yeah. Like when Trump was president in 2016, he announced 45 % tariffs across the board. But that was not the case. That’s not what ended up happening. Most of the tariffs were at seven and half percent all the way up to 25%.

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Most of our stuff fell into the seven and a half percent. Like most of the staples and everyday goods fell into like the lower bracket. But here’s the other thing. I don’t remember us raising prices that much to account for the tariffs. Because if you think about it, the tariffs aren’t that big of a deal. Like let’s say you have a 25 % tariff. Let’s say you sell something for a buck. There’s a 25 % tariff. And typically you sell that stuff for four bucks, right? So 25 % tariff.

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So that means it’s going to cost you a buck 25. So if you were to even pass that cost to the consumer, you would charge $4.25. Right. Right. You wouldn’t charge 4x that amount. And so I don’t think from a from a vendor point of view, it’s going to be that big of a deal, even if he raises it to 60%, which I don’t think he will. But even if you do decide to get suppliers outside China, all the

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All the Chinese factories are actually moving to Mexico. So I’m not sure how it’s going to work. They’re moving to Vietnam and they’re owned by the same owners in China. They’re just physically located somewhere else. So I’m not terribly worried about the tariffs. Okay. Who should be worried? Anybody? Who should be worried? I guess if you’re a Chinese supplier or if your supplier doesn’t

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doesn’t do that and you have to pay the tariffs. I don’t know. See, there’s a lot of things that China can do also. They can devalue their currency and make it more attractive. I don’t know how this is all going to play out, but I guess the consumer is the one who’s going to pay. Yes. That’s the issue, right? I would say if you have your own store, you’re selling on Shopify, BigCommerce, whatever,

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you’re in a much better position than if you sell on Amazon. Yes. I think the Amazon sellers are the ones that need to really be paying attention because I feel like I think about some of my clients and what they charge and adding an extra 25 cents to something is negligible. Even if you do have to, maybe you sell something for $10, now you sell it for 11. That’s really not a huge price jump.

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when you’re on Amazon and you’re already fighting those margins, I mean, we know a lot of people on Amazon that their margins are like 10, 15%, right? When it’s all said and done. And to me, that’s where I would start to get worried about some of these extra, because it’s just another fee that you’re going to be paying. And on Amazon, you can’t always pass that along to the customer because you’re constantly in a price war. That is the problem. Amazon’s prices aren’t that elastic.

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Let’s say you raised it to like $4.25, that might put you over some guy who’s selling it at four bucks. Then because branding isn’t that big a deal on Amazon, they’re going to probably pay for the $4 one, buy the $4 one. Yes. In fact, just speaking of branding on Amazon, I went to buy a turkey roaster this weekend because I need one for Thanksgiving. I was shocked.

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I was looking for, and I don’t wanna say it’s a US brand because they’re probably all manufactured overseas, right? So I’m not pretending that I think that if you buy a Black & Decker or something that’s manufactured in Ohio. But I was surprised that I could only find two brands that I had heard of before. And in the kitchen space, I’ve heard of a lot of brands, right? So it’s like, I could only find two turkey roasters that were like, Hamilton Beach was one and I can’t remember the other one.

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and every other brand was clearly a brand that you’d never, those brands that are like, is zing zong zong. Alphabet soup is what they’re. Yeah, alphabet soup, yeah, it was 100%. And I was like, so are brands like, know, Oster or KitchenAid, right? I mean, they still sell KitchenAid mixtures on Amazon, things like that, but are they moving stuff off? You know what I mean? Are they just relying on their retail presence and- This is what’s going on. You know?

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These Chinese companies are actually opening up multiple, multiple accounts and selling the same stuff under different brands. So they flood all the listings of the same stuff, pushing everyone else down. And I don’t know how to really police that. don’t know how Amazon, they clearly haven’t done a good job. But this flood method from the same company works. So maybe that’s why you’re not seeing it. And that’s the other crazy thing is like, you know,

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There were roasters that were like $109, right? But then there were like multiple ones that were 35. The exact same roaster, right? Or basically, like there was no additional features or anything like that. So it’s kind of like, not only are they opening multiple brands and flooding, they’re also dropping the price so drastically. Like how can you compete? Like, especially when you think of something like a roaster, right? It’s a real, like the box is huge, showed up yesterday. You’re just pushing people out and then they can raise the price.

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when they’re the only sellers. Anyway, that’ll be interesting to see what, but all that leads to people just don’t have the same play with pricing as you do if you have your own brand. I mean, you try to buy a pair of Uggs on Amazon, good luck. I’ve never tried. Can you get Uggs on Amazon? You can, but you’re paying Uggs pricing or more because someone’s arbitraging it.

26:26
No one’s out, because Uggs is a known brand, same with Nike tennis shoes or anything that is an actual known brand. That’s where I think that becomes so important as we continue moving forward. brought up Uggs and do we have this conversation? We actually just bought my wife a pair of Uggs for her birthday. Okay. And Uggs are expensive. Yes, they are. And so I was looking at

26:53
I was just going to shoe stores. There’s a lot of Uggs knockoffs, but we ended up getting the Uggs because she wanted the Uggs, right? Yeah. And so that just demonstrates the power of the brand. This is a great segue, by the way, to what my strategy, I think I probably announced it on this podcast before, but we’re going straight into digital printing for our products. So anything we can personalize with the printer is super easy because it’s all done in Photoshop. We’re also doing

27:20
We’ve done custom embroidery for many years now, but we’re also going to do handwriting embroidery going forward. I didn’t even know this was a thing, but you sign something and you want that in a handwritten form for your wedding. And that couple with digital printing, I think it was in Office Hours that I said this, but basically every special occasion under the sun, we’re going to have images and personalized stuff for.

27:46
That way we don’t actually have to carry a variety of that much inventory because we’re printing on the same substrates. That’s going to be, think, our strategy going forward in the long run. I think that’s a genius strategy because you’re basically providing something where there’s a huge barrier to entry. You have to have one of these printers or some kind of printer, which you have said many times, it’s a very big pain in the butt to It is a pain in the ass, yes. Or my cussing.

28:16
I feel like just the average Joe isn’t going to go buy one of these printers and start a linen embroidery business or digital printing business. I think that’s a way to tariff proof, regime change proof, whatever you want to call it, your business because you’re providing something that is very difficult for people to get anywhere else.

28:43
I wouldn’t say it’s difficult, but there’s certain barriers to it, right? Like one, the price, the cost of the printer. You still have to import stuff to get the cheapest stuff. then, yeah, just maintaining that thing. Like people listening to this don’t know, but I got a DTF printer last year and it has broken down multiple times just because of user error, actually. I didn’t know what I was getting into. Yeah. Cause the thing worked great for like the first.

29:11
six months and then I started having clog problems and cleaning. I’ve taken apart that machine almost bare bones. I feel like it’s monthly you have to take it apart. Well, now I’m just trying to figure out the system to do it and I think I’ve finally got it. Thank God. Anyway, people aren’t going to want to go through that. In that, think there’s, yes, people can get these things, but it’s hard for someone else to start this business.

29:40
You’re not just going to go outlay all this capital to buy the printer and the inventory and train somebody how to do it. There’s the other issue of how do you actually use this thing. That’s a whole barrier to entry. It reminds me of, so why did these… Obviously, we’re talking about huge brands. Uggs is a giant brand.

30:01
There’s something about Uggs where your wife didn’t want the knockoff. I actually have a pair of Uggs. Well, my daughter, of course I don’t. My daughter does. Just like I’m more an Old Navy and she’s wearing Lululemon. She’s got a pair of Uggs and a pair of knockoff Uggs from Imelou’s Boutique. Probably made in the exact same factory. I’ve put both of them on my feet. Now, she has a smaller foot than I do, so I can’t fully wear them. They feel exactly the same. Exactly the same. Yeah.

30:31
Very little difference. Small differences in like the actual appearance, right? The stitching is a little bit different kind of thing. But like as far as like comfort, no difference at all. Are they called eggs by any chance? They’re called eggs. No, no, I’m not even joking. I know this brand called eggs. Yes, there’s a couple of knockoffs that basically are like this almost the same as Uggs. But like Jen still wanted Uggs, which I totally understand. I actually just bought a pair of slippers.

31:00
So I had a pair of Land’s End slippers that I bought like 20 plus years ago. Last year, they were literally 20 years old and they’re moccasin slippers. So you can wear them outside, you know, and stuff like that. And they were literally disgusting. Like they were so gross. The whole bottom, like I’m pretty sure there was like gum and dog poop and like, and Brian was like, those need to go. Like you cannot keep wearing them. They’re absolutely disgusting. And so I threw them out. Worst decision of my life. I’ve missed them all year, right?

31:28
And so I have bought probably six pairs of slippers to like replace this pair and I keep returning them cause they’re not, they don’t make this kind, they don’t make the kind that I threw out. So anyway, like you create that brand where it’s like, I need the Uggs, right? I need this experience. I need the stitching, the comfort, the whatever they use on the inside material. It’s the same thing. Like once again, you don’t see this on TikTok, but there’s like the Hermes.

31:51
lady who people bring in their purses and she like, you oh, this is a palladium, blah, blah, blah. And this color is, and it’s like, Hermes has created this thing where like they don’t even let you buy their stuff. Right. Like there it’s like, it’s like you have to wait till March of 2026 to come in our store and buy a bag. Right. So like, but I think that creating a brand that does something similar. Right.

32:17
where you create this experience, this difficulty, whatever it is to, like Uggs sells out, right? The Tasman, I’ve been trying to get Tasman’s for like two years for Cora. Can’t find them anywhere. They get in stock, they sell out in like 10 minutes. And it’s like, if you can do that with your brand, right? So you figured out how to do that with Bumblebee, where you’re putting, they can get a Mother’s Day or they can get a Valentine’s Day or they can get someone’s name handwritten. That’s pretty cool. Like I think if you had like someone special pass away,

32:45
like having their signature on a handkerchief would be really cool, right? Gift to give somebody. the point of all this is these are things that are hard for someone, know, thousands of miles away to replicate. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And so that’s what you have to think about because there’s services like Tmoo, Shein just announced earnings. had a 68 % increase. Shein is this knockoff clothing place. Like they literally take high end brands and create the same thing and sell it for like 10 % the cost.

33:15
Yes, they’re so cheap. It’s ridiculous. kid shop there? Oh, yes. I hate that they shop there. Yes, but the stuff is fast fashion. It’s cheap. Yes. But it looks pretty similar to the real thing. Yes, very much so. Then you have knockoff like Tmoo. Amazon just announced their Tmoo clone Amazon All. It’s terrible, by the way. Did you try it yet? No, no. Okay. Here’s the problem.

33:42
In the example I use in my YouTube video, I was in the market for jump rope. So I looked on Amazon, it was $7. The exact same thing was on haul for three bucks. Okay. And then the exact same thing was on Tmoo for 250. Okay. So where am going to buy from? Right? Amazon’s hurting themselves. Yeah. By having it. And I think they’re in a rock and a hard place because they can’t do too well on haul because it’ll eat into their main Amazon businesses, which is their bread and butter.

34:12
Right. The product selection sucks. It’s not going to be around, I’m pretty sure. Where did you buy it? Did you buy it on Tmoo or Haul? I ended up buying it on Amazon because I wanted it the next day. Whereas Haul and Tmoo, takes one to two weeks for stuff to arrive. I didn’t get the cheapest one either. I ended up getting one with the weight on it. You got one that jumps for you.

34:40
You just stand there. It comes with two people to turn it. My point is that if you’re just selling something that you can get anywhere, it’s probably going get knocked out. If it’s clothing, it’s probably going to knocked off on Shien. If it’s a regular everyday object, it’s probably going to knocked off on Tmoo. Really, you got to think of something that’s better.

35:08
or makes you stand out or you start a brand or you do content like we talked about earlier. Well, and I think the brands that are doing content like are the ones that are able to get that experience. Like I’m never buying an Hermes bag. Like, let’s just be real. I couldn’t I can’t spend that much money on a purse when I could have a car. Right. But like and I like purses. I was just going to say you have some pricey purses. I have some nice purses. No, they’re not. But like

35:39
they’ve created that experience, that exclusivity, and their content creation that they’re doing now is just skyrocketing their brand, right? It’s just pushing it to another level of exclusivity, and you’re seeing, so they’re doing a great job of taking what was something that was already, they’re probably doing just fine, to taking it to a whole nother level.

36:08
with social media and creating the content. We talked about this, I think, a couple of weeks ago. Chili’s, my daughter works at Chili’s. They were actually struggling financially as a business. And a TikToker posted their, they have this great deal. It’s like three chips, an entree and a Coke for like 10.99. And she posted how great, it’s been responsible for like a 40 % growth in their profits.

36:38
It’s insane. It worked. But I think if you are any kind of brand, but specifically in e-commerce, doing something that creates that value for the customer outside of just the buying experience, the content creation, it works. We joke about the old school commercials and things like that, but those worked too. It was just in a different medium. Back in the day, you only had television commercials to convey the message.

37:07
Now you can do it in so many different ways and what’s nice for smaller e-commerce brands is you don’t need a television budget. You can do this all on social media. In fact, one of the supplement companies that I buy from is now doing TV ads and I’m like, now I’m not going to buy from them anymore. They’re too successful. If you have TV money, I don’t want to buy from you. TV, they’re hurting. True, true. I’m like, I want the brands with podcast money.

37:37
That’s exciting as a brand because you can leverage this for so much less than you could 15 years ago when the only thing was to like, remember back in the day when someone would do a Super Bowl commercial and it would be like this huge deal, Like, like GoDaddy. I think GoDaddy did a Super Bowl commercial when you’re one of those type sites and everyone was like, what? They’ve arrived. Now anyone can do anything with social Get some more exposure. Yes.

38:07
Yeah, because you could get more exposure if your video goes viral. So I guess that’s the moral of the story here. So pick a product that isn’t easily replicated and do content. That’s pretty much the formula for 2025. think all these ad platforms are getting more more competitive also. like Google ads have just been on this decline for for actually ever since AI, they’ve kind of been on this decline and meta ads are

38:36
pretty competitive these days too. you know, social media is free. You can even use TikTok shop in the way where you’re just listing your products and you get affiliates to promote it. Affiliate, influencer marketing is still a pretty good thing, provided that your product is reasonably interesting. Yeah. And I think that’s the way going forward for 2025. Hope you enjoyed this episode. What’s your plan for 2025? Let me know in the comments.

39:05
For more information and resources, go to mywifequithejobs.com slash episode 577. Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2025 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. If you wanna 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. And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to mywifequithejobs.com and sign up for my free six-day mini course.

39:35
Just type in your email and I’ll send the course right away via email.