Podcast: Download (Duration: 43:59 — 50.6MB)

You absolutely can manufacture textile products in the USA profitably, and you do not need to be Nike to do it. The trick is picking the right kind of product (something with a custom element or a premium buyer), keeping minimum order quantities small, and running a labor-cost math that a US-based sewing contractor can actually meet. On this episode I invited my friend Annette DeLancey of She Makes Products back on to walk through her exact prototyping and production process, since I am literally one of her customers for the aprons and handkerchiefs I sell at Bumblebee Linens.

Annette runs CastCovers.com, where she manufactures more than 2,000 SKUs of orthopedic soft goods in the USA, and she now helps other product entrepreneurs do the same through She Makes Products. She dropped real numbers most people never publish: current US sewing labor of about $8 to $12 per unit for a standard t-shirt with a pocket, the 5x cost-of-goods rule she uses for retail pricing, and the state and county programs that will cover 50 to 90 percent of a new hire’s payroll while you train them.

This post covers what she said, what US textile manufacturing actually costs today, and the exact steps to take an idea from a paper mock-up to a production run in the States.

Key takeaways

• US sewing labor for a standard garment runs about $8 to $12 per unit, before fabric.
• Small US contractors will run 100 to 500 units per SKU, versus the 1,000+ MOQs common in China.
• Made in the USA still moves the needle. In a split test Annette ran on cast covers, the “Made in USA” page outsold the plain page 6 to 1.
• Custom or premium-positioned products are the ones that pencil out domestically, not commodity tees.
• Chambers of commerce and local Economic Development Councils will subsidize 50 to 90 percent of payroll for 6 to 12 months if you are hiring and training.
• Price at 5x your fully loaded cost of goods, or you are running a hobby and not a business.
• Mexico counts as near shore. It is worth quoting alongside US contractors for larger runs.

Can you manufacture textiles in the USA profitably?

Yes, you can manufacture textiles in the USA profitably, provided the product carries either a custom element or a premium price. A commodity blank t-shirt where the winning price is $6 will not survive US labor. A branded shirt with a signature pocket, a specialty fabric, or a custom label sold at a mid-to-high price point absolutely will.

Annette’s own business is proof. CastCovers.com sells more than 2,000 SKUs of orthopedic soft goods (cast covers, boot covers, arm sleeves) all made in the USA, and it survived what she calls “the Chinese invasion” on Amazon two years ago by leaning harder on quality and the “Made in USA” story instead of chasing the price.

The other proof is her customer roster at She Makes Products, which is now full of small brands who could not hit China’s MOQs, needed to launch fast, or wanted to keep production close so they could actually walk the floor.

What does US textile manufacturing actually cost?

US textile labor is roughly $8 to $12 per unit for a standard garment (a t-shirt with a pocket, properly sized), not including fabric. Fabric is quoted separately because it swings wildly, and the more custom the fabric (bamboo, technical knits, specialty blends), the more the labor cost climbs on top.

Two adjustments most first-time founders miss:

• Size matters. An XXL costs more to sew than a small, so contractors quote a range, not a flat number.
• Complexity matters more than size. A pocket with darts, a specialty seam, or a stretchy fabric can bump labor 20 to 40 percent.

If you are used to $0.50 per unit from a Chinese contract sewing factory, $10 per unit sounds insane. It only pencils if the retail price supports it. Which is why Annette anchors everything on a pricing rule.

The 5x cost-of-goods rule for pricing US-made products

Price your product at 5x your fully loaded cost of goods, or the numbers will not work. If labor and materials cost you $10, the retail price needs to be $50. Anything less, and by the time you cover payroll, ad spend, returns, platform fees, and your own paycheck, you are running a hobby and the IRS may eventually classify it as one (they consider a business unprofitable for three consecutive years to be a hobby).

That 5x multiple is not a markup goal, it is a survival threshold. Ecommerce founders routinely price at 2x or 3x cost of goods, feel great about revenue, and then wonder why they crossed $100k in sales while only bringing $6,000 home to the family. Annette hit that exact wall on cast covers before she rebuilt her pricing.

The multiple is easier to hit on US-made goods than on imports, because the “Made in USA” story lets you sell at the top of the category’s price band without apologizing for it.

How much does “Made in USA” actually help sales?

“Made in USA” measurably lifts sales, and the effect is not subtle. Annette ran a split test on one of her best-selling arm cuff covers where she published two product pages, identical except that one said “Made in USA” and the other did not. The Made in USA page outsold the plain page 6 to 1.

She also gets unsolicited notes from customers thanking her for producing domestically. One woman recently emailed to “bless” the business for being American made. Those notes are anecdotal, and they line up with the 6-to-1 data and with what shows up in her Amazon reviews.

The lift will not save a product with weak quality or a broken supply chain. It does, however, give you the pricing power to run US labor math without losing the sale.

How do MOQs compare between US contractors and China?

US sewing contractors will happily run 100 to 500 units per SKU, versus the 500 to 1,000+ unit MOQs most Chinese factories require to quote you a decent price. That single difference is why She Makes Products exists: a founder with $3,000 and an idea can start in the USA, and cannot start in China.

The tradeoff is per-unit cost. You will pay 10x to 20x the Chinese labor rate for those small runs, so the product needs to either be genuinely custom or aimed at a buyer who does not comparison shop on price. Annette specifically recommends starting domestic to test the market, then re-quoting China (or Mexico) only once you have proven demand and can hit their MOQs.

That test-first-domestic workflow also protects you from the classic import mistake: ordering 1,000 units of a design that turns out not to sell, and sitting on the inventory for two years.

Do you need a tech pack to manufacture in the USA?

You do not need a tech pack to start a small US production run. A US sewing contractor can work directly from a physical sample (even a paper-taped mock-up) and produce prototypes in whatever base fabric is on hand, usually black. What you do need is uniformity: consistent sizing, consistent stitch, and consistent finish from the first unit of a run to the last.

Tech packs matter when you scale. Once a client of Annette’s is running 1,000+ units per SKU or moving to a higher-volume contractor, she pulls in her marker and grader, produces a full tech pack, and the client keeps that pack “forever” to use with any future factory. It becomes portable production documentation.

The trap founders fall into is spending $2,000+ on a full tech pack before they have proven the product sells. Prototype first, test the market, and buy the tech pack when your numbers say you need it.

What is the process for taking a textile product from idea to production?

The typical prototype-to-production process for a US textile product runs through six stages. Annette walks every She Makes Products client through the same sequence.

1. Vet the idea. Can you articulate the target customer, the price point, and what problem the product solves? If not, you are not ready.
2. Bring a mock-up. A drawing, a paper-taped model, or a competitor product you want to improve on all count.
3. Prototype in base fabric. The sewist produces a first sample in a plain black or white fabric so you can react to shape, fit, and construction without the color muddying your judgment.
4. Iterate on materials. Once shape is right, swap in the real fabric, thread color, and trim. This is where most changes happen.
5. Approve a production sample. Get a sew-off from the actual production run (not the prototype) and hold onto it. Never send it back. It is your reference if quality drifts.
6. Run 100 to 500 units. Sell through, refine the product, then re-quote larger runs domestically, near shore in Mexico, or overseas.

The first prototype cycle usually takes two to six weeks, depending on the sewist’s queue and how many revisions you need. A full first production run typically ships four to eight weeks after prototype approval.

Near shore vs offshore: when Mexico beats both the USA and China

Mexico is the near-shore compromise for textile production that most US brands never seriously quote. It sits between US pricing (high per-unit cost, low MOQs, easy factory visits) and Chinese pricing (low per-unit cost, high MOQs, hard factory visits) on almost every axis.

Annette has a client with roughly 12 SKUs and 1,000 units per SKU (a children’s clothing brand) who is actively evaluating Mexico alongside China. The maths work out because at 1,000 units per SKU, Mexican labor is competitive with China once you factor in shipping, tariffs, and the ability to fly down and walk the floor in a day.

The rule she gives clients: visit your production floor at least once a year, no matter where it lives. If you cannot afford to do that in China, you probably cannot afford to catch the problems that show up (thinner fabric, substituted trim, missed spec) before a full container lands on your dock.

How to get 50 to 90 percent of your payroll subsidized

Your local chamber of commerce or Economic Development Council will often subsidize 50 to 90 percent of a new hire’s payroll for 6 to 12 months if you are hiring and training. Annette is using exactly this to open a new sewing shop in San Diego County, one of the most expensive labor markets in the country (California’s fast-food minimum wage sits at $20 an hour).

These programs are almost never advertised, so most product entrepreneurs never think to ask. The lever is that the county wants to keep skilled manufacturing jobs local and is willing to underwrite the training cost to make that happen.

If you are considering hiring a sewist, cutter, or shop assistant, a single phone call to your county’s economic development office can materially change the labor math. It also opens the door to shared training facilities and pre-vetted candidates.

What kinds of textile products actually work for US manufacturing?

The textile products that work best for US manufacturing share three traits: a custom element, a mid-to-high price point, and a buyer who cares about origin. Everything else is fighting Chinese labor arithmetic on a battlefield where China wins.

Products where domestic manufacturing routinely pencils out:

• Branded apparel with signature construction (specialty pockets, custom trims, unique labeling)
• Specialty performance or medical soft goods (like Annette’s cast covers)
• Kids’ clothing where safety, materials, and story matter to parents
• Sustainable or ethically produced lines, where the origin is the whole pitch
• Home textiles sold as gifts (aprons, handkerchiefs, tea towels, custom napkins)
• Small-batch fashion drops where speed to market beats price

Products where US manufacturing typically will not work:

• Commodity blank t-shirts and basics competing on price
• Fast-fashion styles with a 6-week shelf life
• Anything sold at a hard sub-$20 retail with heavy discounting

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to manufacture a t-shirt in the USA?

Sewing labor for a standard US-made t-shirt with a pocket runs about $8 to $12 per unit, before fabric. Add fabric, trim, labeling, and a small profit for the sewist, and you are typically at $15 to $22 all-in on a modest run of 100 to 500 units. That is why US-made shirts almost always retail at $35 or higher.

What is the minimum order quantity for US textile manufacturing?

Most independent US sewing contractors will run 100 to 500 units per SKU as an MOQ, which is 5 to 10 times lower than typical Chinese MOQs of 1,000 units or more. Some very small shops (including many one- or two-sewist operations) will do 25 to 50 units for a prototype or test run, especially if the design is straightforward.

Do I need a tech pack to manufacture apparel in the USA?

You do not need a tech pack for small US production runs. A physical sample and clear direction are enough for most independent sewing contractors. You will want a tech pack once you scale past a few hundred units per SKU or move to a higher-volume factory, because it documents your specs in a form any future factory can execute.

Is Made in USA really worth the higher cost?

Yes, if you sell to a buyer segment that values it. In a controlled split test Annette ran on cast covers (same product, two pages, one labeled Made in USA), the Made in USA page outsold the plain page 6 to 1. The lift lets you price at the top of the category and still convert.

How do I find a US textile manufacturer?

Start with the Makers Coalition, the American Apparel Producers Network, and your state’s manufacturing extension partnership office, all of which maintain vetted lists of independent sewing contractors. Local fashion incubators and Fashion Institute-affiliated programs in New York and Los Angeles also publish contractor directories. If you want a done-with-you option specific to textiles, Annette’s She Makes Products is built for exactly this problem.

How long does US textile production take?

A prototype cycle typically takes two to six weeks, and a full production run of 100 to 500 units usually ships four to eight weeks after prototype approval. That is 2 to 3 times faster than the equivalent China run (which adds 30 to 45 days of ocean freight on top of production), which is another reason “US-made” often wins on total time to market.

Can I mix US and overseas manufacturing?

Yes, and many established brands do exactly this. Run the custom, premium, or short-lead SKUs in the USA, and reserve overseas production (China or near-shore Mexico) for the high-volume, price-sensitive SKUs. The split lets you protect margin on the winners while keeping your best-selling basics competitive.

Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?

If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.

In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!

Podcast: Download (Duration: 40:29 — 74.4MB)

Google search is still up and running, and the game has changed so radically that treating it like the reliable traffic source it used to be is a good way to go out of business. Since Google’s March 2024 core update (and the ongoing monthly updates that followed), user-generated sites like Reddit, Quora, and LinkedIn have jumped to the top of most search results, real content sites have watched their traffic get sliced in half, and small publishers are quietly giving up on SEO for the first time in a decade. On this episode my co-host Toni Herrbach and I unpack what actually happened, why it happened, and what content creators and ecommerce brands should do about it.

We pull no punches on Google. We also cover the $60 million Reddit-Google training data deal, Sundar Pichai’s recent public statements about the “future of websites,” how AI answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity are quietly eating the fact-based query segment, and why my traffic on MyWifeQuitHerJob dropped by half overnight and then recovered three days later.

Here is what is actually happening with Google search in 2024, why the old SEO playbook stopped working, and what to do next.

Key takeaways

• Google has shipped a major algorithm update almost every month since late 2023, and each one has pushed Reddit, Quora, and LinkedIn higher at the expense of independent sites.
• Reddit jumped from the 80th-biggest SEO site on Google to the 6th biggest in the span of about a year, after Google signed a reported $60 million deal to license Reddit’s data for AI training.
• ChatGPT and Perplexity are absorbing the “fact lookup” query segment (unit conversions, definitions, trivia) that used to belong to Google.
• The old EEAT ranking signals (Expertise, Authority, Trust) have effectively been overridden by Google’s tilt toward user-generated content.
• The winning response is diversification: email, YouTube, short-form video, direct brand traffic, and building the kind of brand authority that survives an algorithm change.
• SEO strategy has not changed. Answer real questions people ask. What changed is what Google chooses to rank on top of those answers.

Is Google search really dying?

Google search is losing its dominance over how people find information for the first time in 20 years, even though it is nowhere close to shutting down. Search behavior is splintering across ChatGPT for facts and definitions, Perplexity for cited answers, TikTok and YouTube for how-to, and Reddit for opinions, and Google itself is now serving up so much Reddit and Quora content that the “10 blue links” era is effectively over.

The parallel Toni draws on the episode is Yahoo, which went from the default search engine to irrelevance inside about 18 months once Google shipped in the late 1990s. Google is far more entrenched than Yahoo was (Android, Chrome, the Apple search deal), but “entrenched” is not the same as “safe.” Every previous king of a tech category eventually loses it.

The specific mechanism killing Google’s usefulness right now is the trade-off it made between quality and licensing revenue: it is filling the top of the results page with UGC platforms it has deals with, at the cost of the independent sites that used to answer the query directly.

What did Google’s 2024 core updates actually do?

Google’s March 2024 core update and the follow-on updates through April did two things: they pushed user-generated content platforms (Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn) to the top of search results for a huge share of queries, and they manually penalized thousands of independent sites for what Google called “scaled content abuse,” largely aimed at AI-generated content. The combined effect is that many established, human-written blogs lost 30 to 70 percent of their organic traffic in a matter of weeks.

Here is the pattern I have watched playing out across my own network. Mastermind friends who have been running six- and seven-figure blogs for a decade are seeing their best-performing posts drop from page one to page five in a single update. My BumblebeeLinens ecommerce blog has stayed relatively stable, but MyWifeQuitHerJob got shaken up, and I have seen 50 percent traffic drops recover in 72 hours (and vice versa) with no explanation from Google.

The pain is not evenly distributed. Sites in personal finance, coupons, health, and small-business advice have been hit hardest, because those are the exact categories where Reddit and Quora have the most user threads to promote in.

Why is Reddit ranking so high on Google right now?

Reddit is ranking so high on Google because Google reportedly signed a $60 million deal to license Reddit’s data for AI training, and (whether by design or by silent side agreement) has since started surfacing Reddit threads at the top of huge swaths of search results. Reddit went from being the 80th-biggest SEO site on Google to the 6th biggest inside roughly 12 months, which is a bigger organic climb than any single site has made in Google’s history.

The content quality argument makes this even more frustrating. The Reddit threads Google is serving up are frequently three to four years old, often wrong, and increasingly gamed by paid posters and marketers who now understand the traffic prize on the other side. Users type “best budget mattress 2024” and get a Reddit thread from 2021 that recommends a discontinued product.

Quora and LinkedIn have benefited from the same tilt, though at a smaller scale. Quora tends to surface for definitional queries, LinkedIn for professional or B2B queries. Any query that used to be answered by a real blog now competes with those three UGC giants for the top four to six slots.

How Sundar Pichai’s “future of websites” comment lands with content creators

Sundar Pichai recently gave a talk claiming the “role of websites remains crucial” for the “richness and diversity of content,” and that Google search is not going to be replaced by AI. The reaction across the blogging community was some variation of “then why are you actively killing websites by surfacing Reddit above them?”

The kinder read on his comment is that AI needs a source layer to pull from, and that layer has to be independent websites, so Google has an interest in keeping publishers alive. The less kind read is that the message was PR designed to slow the bleeding of publishers who are already talking openly about giving up. Both reads can be true simultaneously.

What Pichai did not address, and what publishers actually want an answer to, is whether Google’s SGE (Search Generative Experience) will keep sending clicks to source websites or capture the click for itself. Every early data point suggests SGE captures the click. If that trend holds, “the role of websites remains crucial” becomes a compliment paid at a funeral.

Are AI search engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity replacing Google?

AI search engines are already replacing Google for the fact-lookup segment (unit conversions, definitions, “who won the 1994 Heisman”), and are eating into the research and comparison segment. Toni and I both now default to ChatGPT for anything factual and only use Google to double-check. That behavior shift, multiplied across hundreds of millions of users, is exactly what pulls the floor out from under search advertising revenue.

Perplexity is the interesting middle option. It answers with an AI-generated response but cites its sources with clickable links, which means publishers can still catch a citation click on queries that used to send traffic. Perplexity’s citation rate is about 13 percent of relevant queries, versus roughly 0.6 percent for ChatGPT, which makes it far friendlier to sites that want to be found inside AI answers.

Google has been widely reported to be considering charging for its AI-powered search experience, because AI queries cost an order of magnitude more to serve than traditional searches. Bing meanwhile has quietly integrated AI answers for free and is picking up market share for the first time in years.

What should content creators and ecommerce brands do now?

The one-line answer is diversify away from Google search and invest in brand authority that survives an algorithm change. Every single one of my friends who has built a durable business over the last decade did it by leveraging one traffic source into another, not by depending on a single channel.

The concrete moves that are working right now for people I know:

1. Own a direct audience. Email and SMS are the only two channels a platform cannot take away from you overnight. If you do not have a growing email list, that is your top priority.
2. Publish on YouTube. Video results now show up above blog posts for a large share of queries. If your blog post ranked and your video did not, the video may still be pulling traffic in the top of the SERP.
3. Diversify to short-form video. TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels are cheap to test and reach audiences Google cannot.
4. Build brand authority. Sites like NerdWallet get direct visits because people trust the brand. When a searcher types your brand into Google instead of a keyword, you are effectively immune to core updates.
5. Optimize for Bing and AI answers. Set up Bing Webmaster Tools. Get your content into Perplexity’s citation pool. Add schema markup so AI engines can extract your facts cleanly.
6. Keep publishing on the blog. The strategy has not changed. Answer real questions clearly. What changed is which sites Google chooses to rank on top of those answers, and that will keep swinging.

The single biggest mistake right now would be to panic and abandon the blog. The strategies that ranked in 2020 still rank when they get promoted. The problem is that they are getting demoted for Reddit, and Reddit will not stay on top forever.

Google search vs AI search: side-by-side

Signs a Google traffic drop is from the algorithm and not your site

If you were hit by the 2024 updates, here is how to tell whether the drop is algorithmic (which you cannot fix quickly) or something specific to your site (which you can). Check all four before spending a dollar on a technical audit.

• Your rankings did not drop for a specific keyword. They dropped across many keywords at once, on the same day.
• The URLs that replaced you at the top are Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn, or news sites, not competitor blogs.
• Your rankings for e-commerce or transactional pages held up better than your informational blog posts.
• Your Google Search Console shows no manual actions and no coverage errors.

If those four are true, this is Google reshuffling the deck, not a punishment. Do not rewrite everything, do not delete old content in a panic, and do not chase AI-detector tools. The best move is to keep publishing, diversify traffic, and wait for the next update to swing.

Frequently asked questions

Is Google search dying in 2024?

Google search is losing dominance, not dying. Search behavior is splintering to ChatGPT for facts, Perplexity for cited answers, TikTok and YouTube for how-to, and Reddit for opinions. Google will remain the largest search entry point for years, but its share of the query pie is shrinking for the first time in two decades.

Why is Reddit ranking so high on Google?

Reddit is ranking high on Google because Google signed a reported $60 million deal in early 2024 to license Reddit’s data for AI training, and Reddit has since climbed from the 80th-biggest SEO site to the 6th biggest. Whether by algorithm design or side agreement, Reddit threads now dominate the top of many search results.

What was the March 2024 Google core update?

The March 2024 core update was Google’s largest algorithm change in years. It pushed user-generated platforms (Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn) to the top of many results and manually penalized thousands of sites for “scaled content abuse,” largely aimed at AI-generated content. Independent blogs commonly saw 30 to 70 percent traffic drops.

Can I recover from a Google 2024 update traffic drop?

Recovery is possible but not guaranteed. Sites that build genuine brand authority, add original first-hand experience to their posts, and get cited by other trusted sites tend to recover faster. Sites hoping to be moved back purely on a future algorithm swing may or may not get lucky.

Should I still invest in SEO in 2024?

Yes, but not exclusively. SEO still delivers when Google promotes your content, and the fundamentals (real answers, structured content, authoritative sources) also carry over to AI citations and to YouTube search. Treat SEO as one of four to five traffic channels rather than the only one.

Is Bing worth optimizing for now?

Bing is worth minimal optimization effort in 2024, because its search results have not been reshuffled as aggressively as Google’s and its market share is slowly growing. Setting up Bing Webmaster Tools takes 30 minutes, and Bing sends its indexing signals to ChatGPT search, so the return on that half-hour is disproportionately high.

What is the best replacement for Google search?

There is no single replacement. Use Perplexity for anything you need with sources, ChatGPT for definitions and synthesis, YouTube for how-to and reviews, Reddit for opinions from real users, and Google (or Bing) for local and commercial queries. Serious researchers now stack these tools, one query at a time.

Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?

If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.

In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!

Podcast: Download (Duration: 15:19 — 17.8MB)

Buying from Alibaba can be safe and profitable, but only if you use verified suppliers, pay through trade assurance or credit card, and hire an inspector in China to check every bulk order before the supplier gets paid. Alibaba is a directory of Chinese factories, not a marketplace, so the platform itself does not stand behind product quality. Trade assurance protects you from outright fraud (never receiving the goods), but it will not save you when a supplier ships a lower-grade version of the sample you approved.

I recorded this solo episode of the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast to answer the Alibaba questions I get asked almost every day, including the ones most sourcing gurus gloss over. I have been sourcing from China for Bumblebee Linens for well over a decade, and this is the version of the answer I would give a friend, not the sanitized one.

Here is the full Alibaba sourcing playbook: how to vet suppliers, protect your IP, avoid counterfeit trouble, handle ethical concerns, and pick a payment method that actually protects you.

Key takeaways

• Alibaba is a directory of Chinese suppliers, not a marketplace. The platform connects you to factories; it does not stand behind product quality.
• Always filter for Verified Supplier + Trade Assurance before you search. Add Verified Pro if you want a supplier with 5+ years of operating history.
• Trade assurance is escrow. It stops outright fraud, but it does very little when a supplier ships lower-quality product than the sample you approved.
• Hire a China-based inspector (services like Qima start around $300 per inspection) for every first order with a new supplier. I still use inspectors even for suppliers I have worked with for years.
• Never buy branded merchandise on Alibaba. One of my students had Disney-branded goods seized at the US border as counterfeit.
• You cannot truly protect your IP in China. Sign an NNN if you want, but the real protection is a good relationship with the vendor plus a copyright registered in your home country.
• Safest payment order: trade assurance, then PayPal or credit card, then wire transfer. Never pay by Western Union.
• Typical payment terms are 30% down and 70% on completion. Get a sample before every bulk order and give a duplicate sample to your inspector.

Is buying from Alibaba safe?

Buying from Alibaba is safe if you use a Verified Supplier, pay through trade assurance or a credit card, and inspect every bulk order in China before it ships. It is not safe if you search unfiltered, wire money to a random supplier, and skip the inspection.

The single most useful setting on Alibaba is the Verified Supplier filter. A verified supplier has been checked by Alibaba or a third-party verification firm, including on-site warehouse checks, business-document verification, and an assessment of export capabilities. Turn it on before you type your first search query.

If you want a stricter cut, add the Verified Pro filter. Verified Pro suppliers must have at least five years of operating history, so you weed out brand-new operators who may not survive a full production cycle with you.

What is Alibaba and how does it actually work?

Alibaba is an online directory that connects Chinese factories and trading companies to overseas buyers, then facilitates the transaction. It is not a marketplace like Amazon; Alibaba does not hold inventory, does not manufacture anything, and does not stand behind product quality the way a retailer does.

That distinction matters. When you place an order on Alibaba you are dealing with the factory directly, and the quality of what shows up at your warehouse depends almost entirely on the factory you chose and how carefully you managed the order.

Alibaba’s job is to make discovery, verification, and payment less risky. Your job is to vet the supplier, document every product spec, and inspect the goods before you release the balance payment.

How do I find a verified supplier on Alibaba?

Find a verified supplier by turning on the Verified Supplier filter in Alibaba’s search, then opening each candidate’s company profile and reading the verification report before you contact anyone. Every verified supplier gets a detailed report you can click through, and many include factory-floor photos and even video walkthroughs of the production line.

Inside a supplier’s profile, click into Company Overview and check the certifications, years in business, staff count, and any factory reviews. When I was recently looking for handkerchief factories, several suppliers had a full video tour of their manufacturing floor, which is a strong trust signal.

If a candidate passes the profile check, message them and ask for a sample. Never place a bulk order with a factory you have not sampled first, no matter how good the pictures look.

How does Alibaba Trade Assurance actually protect you?

Trade Assurance is an escrow service. When you check the Trade Assurance box, Alibaba holds your payment and only releases it to the supplier after you confirm receipt of the goods. It reliably protects you from outright fraud, meaning cases where the supplier disappears with your money and ships nothing.

Trade Assurance protects you much less than most buyers assume when the goods arrive but are wrong. Alibaba will help facilitate the dispute, but in my experience they rarely force a refund when the product is a lower-quality version of the sample you approved. The dispute process leans on your ability to prove the discrepancy, which is very hard after the fact.

I had a student who needed inventory fast for the holidays and used a brand-new supplier. Her sample looked good, so she placed a large order believing Trade Assurance protected her. The bulk order shipped as a completely different product, she complained to Alibaba, and Alibaba mediated but did not refund the money.

Why you should always hire an inspector in China

Hiring a third-party inspector in China (services like Qima start around $300 per inspection) is the single highest-return step in the whole Alibaba workflow, because it catches quality problems before the supplier gets paid. The inspector visits the factory, checks the goods against your approved sample, and gives you a report you can use to hold the payment.

For the student I mentioned above, a $300 inspection would have caught the wrong product on the factory floor and saved her thousands of dollars. Once the goods ship and Alibaba mediates a Trade Assurance dispute, the leverage is gone.

I still hire an inspector for every single order at Bumblebee Linens, even with suppliers I have used for many years. It keeps suppliers on their toes and it is cheap insurance against a bad batch making it into my warehouse.

How to negotiate the minimum order quantity (MOQ)

Every Alibaba supplier has a minimum order quantity, and it is negotiable to a point. You can usually push a supplier down 20 to 40 percent from their listed MOQ, but you cannot talk a factory that makes 100,000-unit runs for Walmart into a 500-unit test order.

Different factories cater to different buyer sizes, so the right move when an MOQ is wildly out of range is to walk away and find a smaller factory rather than negotiate. I once accidentally contacted a Walmart supplier with a 100,000-unit MOQ and did not even bother replying; they were clearly out of my league.

The first supplier I ever worked with had a 200-piece MOQ, which is a great range for a first-time buyer testing a product. If a supplier’s MOQ is way too big, that supplier is not your supplier.

How to contact Alibaba suppliers the right way (with a sample script)

Suppliers respect buyers who sound like they know what they are doing, so your first message should project confidence, name a specific product, and ask for pricing at multiple quantity tiers. Never open by telling a supplier this is your first order or that you need handholding.

Here is the exact script I use:

Hi, my name is Steve and I am a buyer for Bumblebee Linens, a store in the US that sells handkerchiefs. We are interested in carrying many of the items you offer. I would like to get pricing and availability for the following items. Please send pricing in 500, 1,000, and 5,000 unit quantities. If you could also send your catalog, lead times, and minimum order quantity, we would greatly appreciate it.

Send that message to as many qualifying suppliers as you can find, then request a sample from the ones who reply with the right combination of price, lead time, and MOQ. You want the sample for two reasons: to confirm the product quality, and to hand a duplicate to your inspector so they know what to check for.

Alibaba payment methods ranked from safest to riskiest

The safest way to pay an Alibaba supplier is Trade Assurance, followed by credit card or PayPal, followed by wire transfer. Never pay a Chinese supplier by Western Union, and never send funds outside of Alibaba on your very first order with a new factory.

Trade Assurance always costs slightly more, because the escrow layer isn’t free. That premium is worth it on the first order. After a supplier has proven itself over several successful bulk runs, wiring becomes reasonable, which is why wire is the most common payment method in the industry even though it is technically the least safe.

How to protect your intellectual property on Alibaba

You cannot fully protect intellectual property when manufacturing in China, so the practical protection is three layers: a written statement (or NNN agreement) from the supplier, a strong personal relationship with the factory, and a copyright or trademark registered in your home country so you can enforce takedowns on Amazon and eBay.

An NNN (non-disclosure, non-use, non-circumvention) agreement is the type of contract commonly used to protect IP when engaging overseas suppliers. The honest problem is that NNNs are very hard to enforce inside China, so their real value is often signalling rather than legal recourse.

What I usually do is have a direct conversation with the supplier about IP and ask them to email me a statement saying they will not resell my design to a competitor. Just having the conversation reduces the odds of IP theft, and it is a cheaper and faster deterrent than the paperwork alone.

The single most useful step is registering a copyright in your own country, because it gives you a real enforcement path on marketplaces where the copycat product actually gets sold. Amazon in particular is very good at removing listings that infringe on a registered copyright, and that is where copycat traffic usually goes.

Are there ethical concerns when sourcing from Alibaba?

Yes, some Chinese factories still use child labor, forced labor, or unsafe working conditions, so ethical sourcing on Alibaba means filtering for verified suppliers and then checking each candidate’s third-party certifications before you place a bulk order. Certifications to look for include BSCI (Business Social Compliance Initiative), ISO 14001 (environmental management), and SA 8000 (social accountability), which cover child labor, forced labor, health and safety, and discrimination.

Ask the supplier directly for copies of their certifications, then verify the certificate numbers on the issuing body’s website. Certifications can be forged, so the free verification step is worth the ten minutes.

The gold-standard step, if the order size justifies it, is to visit the factory in person or send an inspector who can also perform a social-compliance audit. Certifications and photos only get you so far; a real audit is the only way to be confident about working conditions.

What about hidden fees and cost surprises on Alibaba?

There are no true hidden fees on Alibaba itself, but the total landed cost of a first-time import almost always ends up higher than the pro forma invoice, because of communication mishaps, product-spec surprises, and small price creep once production has started. Budget a 10 to 20 percent cost buffer on any first-time order with a new supplier.

A common trap is negotiating a lower unit price after your order volume has grown. We renegotiated price with one of our suppliers after our orders were 20x our original run, and the supplier quietly cut fabric weight to hit the new number. The handkerchiefs came back so thin they were unsellable, even though we had assumed same quality was implicit.

The fix is to document every product spec in writing (fabric weight, dimensions, packaging, materials, tolerances) and reference the exact spec sheet in every quote. If the supplier tries to jack up the price after production starts, or the quality drifts on a renegotiation, your spec sheet is what you fall back on.

Should I use my supplier’s freight forwarder or my own?

Use your own freight forwarder whenever the order is large enough or the shipment is complex enough that communication issues would hurt, because your own forwarder will keep you in the loop when things go wrong. Using the supplier’s shipping service is fine for small or routine shipments, and we have used our supplier’s freight arrangement before with no problems.

The reason to prefer an independent forwarder is the communication gap when something breaks. One of our shipments was on a boat that had an accident at sea and many containers were damaged. Our forwarder gave us updates all the way through the incident; a factory-side shipping agent would very likely have been a language-barrier disaster in that same moment.

For anything over a few pallets, or for time-sensitive inventory, spend the small premium for your own forwarder. The peace of mind on the one shipment per year that goes sideways will pay for itself many times over.

The step-by-step Alibaba sourcing workflow

Here is the workflow I follow for every new product, from search to delivery. It is the same workflow I teach my students, and it is designed to catch problems before money moves.

1. Filter first. Turn on Verified Supplier and Trade Assurance in the Alibaba search before you type a single query. Add Verified Pro if you want a five-year track record.
2. Vet supplier profiles. Open Company Overview on every candidate. Check certifications, years in business, staff count, factory photos, and any video tours.
3. Send the confident intro message. Use the script above. Ask for pricing at three quantity tiers, lead time, and MOQ.
4. Order a sample. Always. Get a spare and set it aside for your inspector.
5. Negotiate MOQ and unit price. Push the MOQ down 20 to 40 percent if it is close, walk away if it is wildly out of range.
6. Place the bulk order with Trade Assurance. Typical terms: 30% deposit up front, 70% on completion before shipment.
7. Line up your freight forwarder. While production runs. Get quotes for door-to-door delivery, customs, and destination charges.
8. Hire an inspector in China. Book a pre-shipment inspection through a firm like Qima. Give them your spec sheet and your spare sample.
9. Release the balance payment only after a clean inspection report. If the report flags issues, use it as leverage before you release funds. This is where inspectors pay for themselves.
10. Ship and reconcile. Confirm delivery, count units, and compare landed cost to your pro forma. Log any variances for the next order.

Frequently asked questions

Is Alibaba legit or a scam?

Alibaba is a legitimate company and the world’s largest B2B directory of Chinese suppliers, but the platform is a directory rather than a retailer, so the safety of any individual order depends on the supplier you choose and the protections (verified supplier, trade assurance, third-party inspection) you use. Follow the standard safety protocols and outright scams are rare.

What is the minimum order quantity on Alibaba?

Minimum order quantities on Alibaba vary widely by factory, from around 100 to 500 units for small factories serving small brands to 50,000+ units for factories serving big-box retailers. Most first-time buyers should target suppliers with MOQs of a few hundred to a few thousand units, and treat any MOQ over 10,000 units on a first order as a signal you are talking to the wrong factory.

Do Alibaba suppliers really steal designs and copy products?

Yes, some Alibaba suppliers do copy designs and resell them to other buyers, and there is no truly reliable way to stop this from inside China. The best defenses are choosing verified suppliers with a track record, building a real personal relationship with the factory, adding an NNN or written statement, and registering a copyright or trademark in your home country so you can force takedowns on Amazon, eBay, and other marketplaces.

How much does an Alibaba inspection cost?

A standard pre-shipment inspection in China runs around $300 per man-day through services like Qima. Given that a single bad container can be tens of thousands of dollars of unsellable inventory, this is the cheapest insurance in the entire sourcing workflow, and I still use inspectors even on suppliers I have worked with for years.

What is the difference between a verified supplier and a gold supplier on Alibaba?

A Verified Supplier has passed third-party checks on their business documents, warehouse, and export capabilities, while a Gold Supplier is a paid Alibaba membership tier that suppliers subscribe to for higher visibility. Verified Supplier is the more meaningful trust signal because it involves an actual on-site or documentary audit; Gold Supplier alone does not guarantee anything about product quality.

Can I buy small quantities on Alibaba, or do I need to order in bulk?

You can buy small quantities on Alibaba through the Ready-to-Ship section (in-stock, small MOQs) or through Alibaba’s sister site AliExpress, but custom-branded product runs typically require the factory’s normal MOQ, which starts around a few hundred units for smaller factories. Samples are always available on request and are the right way to test any supplier before committing to a bulk order.

What are the safest ways to pay an Alibaba supplier?

The safest payment methods on Alibaba, in order, are Trade Assurance (escrow), credit card or PayPal (chargeback and dispute rights), and wire transfer (cheapest but no recourse). Never pay a supplier by Western Union, and never send funds outside the Alibaba platform on your first order with a new factory.

Do I need a business license to buy from Alibaba?

You do not need a business license to open an Alibaba buyer account or place an order, but you will need proper business registration and any relevant import documentation to legally sell the goods in your home country, and to clear US customs on a commercial-quantity shipment. Consult a customs broker or import attorney if you are not sure what your product requires.

Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?

If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.

In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!

Podcast: Download (Duration: 42:49 — 49.3MB)

To grow a TikTok following that actually sells product, treat every video as if it lives or dies in the first five seconds. That is the entire game on a scroll-based feed. Eugenia Chen, founder of Pandaloon.com, has built her dog-costume brand into a TikTok account with over 6.1 million followers and roughly 1 billion total video views, and on this episode of the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast she walked me through exactly how she does it.

Her method is simple to describe and hard to execute. Lead with a hook, show the problem your product solves in the opening seconds, post at volume, and lean into your founder origin story because audiences trust people, not brands.

Below is her full playbook for growing a TikTok account from zero and turning the views into real ecommerce revenue, plus the TikTok Shop and live-stream tactics working right now.

Key takeaways

• The first 1 to 2 seconds decide whether a TikTok gets watched. Open with a visual or emotional hook that stops the scroll, not a slow intro.
• Watch time, shares, and saves are the two signals TikTok’s algorithm weights most. Rewatchable, shareable content is what compounds.
• Product-focused videos with a clear problem-solution structure convert better for small brands than lifestyle content.
• Founder-origin videos out-convert brand-voice videos. Audiences engage with people, not logos.
• TikTok is actively promoting videos 60 seconds and longer, and roughly 50 to 70% of TikTok watch time now goes to videos of a minute or more.
• TikTok Shop is winning for broad-appeal categories like apparel, beauty, and skincare. Niche categories still convert better on your own site or Amazon.
• Expect one in 20 videos to hit big. When it does, drop everything and reply, remix, and post again while the momentum is live.

How Eugenia Chen grew Pandaloon’s TikTok to 6.1 million followers

Eugenia grew Pandaloon’s TikTok to 6.1 million followers by riding one accidental viral video into a repeatable content system built around her dog Huxley and cute, novelty pet costumes. She started as an applied math professor who taught herself to code an online store, then sewed a panda costume for Huxley and posted a video of him running through the park.

That first video went viral on Facebook, not TikTok, and celebrities like Damon John reshared it. Customers started emailing Eugenia asking where they could buy the costume, and she scrambled to source a factory, produce a small line of prototypes, and audition for Shark Tank. She landed a deal with Damon John, who still holds equity in Pandaloon.

When TikTok’s short-form algorithm took off, Eugenia moved her content strategy there because organic reach on Facebook and Instagram had dried up. One of her first Pandaloon videos on TikTok hit 140 million views, and she has been iterating on the format ever since.

How the TikTok algorithm decides which videos to push

The TikTok algorithm decides which videos to push based mostly on watch time (how long people watch, and whether they rewatch) plus shares and saves. Comments matter too. Followers and view counts on prior videos matter far less than most creators think.

TikTok is a discovery feed, not a subscription feed. Every video has to earn its impressions on its own merit, so a creator with 6 million followers can still post a video that gets 20,000 views if the hook is weak, and a brand-new account can hit a million views on its first post if the content resonates.

The practical takeaway is that consistency compounds because it gives you more shots on goal. Eugenia estimates that even for an experienced creator, roughly 1 in 20 videos will “pop off” into the millions. Everything else is data for the next attempt.

How to hook viewers in the first 5 seconds of a TikTok

To hook viewers in the first 5 seconds of a TikTok, you need context plus a reason to keep watching, delivered in the opening frame. People are ready to scroll by default, so your job is to interrupt that reflex.

Eugenia uses three hook types repeatedly:

• Visual hook. Walk the camera forward, then pan up to reveal something surprising. The motion creates anticipation.
• Emotional hook. Open on something juicy, embarrassing, or self-deprecating. “Here’s what happened when I accidentally…” works because it primes a story payoff.
• Problem hook. Show the pain point in the first frame. A bug bite, a crying kid, a broken thing. Negative emotion stops scrolls harder than positive emotion does.

She notes that most small businesses spin their wheels trying to be clever across the whole video when they should be spending 80% of their creative energy on the first 5 seconds. Everything after the hook can be simple.

How to make a TikTok that actually converts to sales

The TikTok content structure that converts best for physical products is a straight before-and-after problem-solution demo. Show the pain point, show the product solving it, show the result. Under 60 seconds if you can, longer if the story earns it.

For product categories where there is no obvious pain point (apparel, novelty gifts, dog costumes), Eugenia recommends leaning on the founder origin story instead. Her single highest-converting TikTok on Pandaloon’s account is her Shark Tank origin video, not a costume demo.

Broad-appeal brands like Bloom Nutrition can succeed with pure product-placement content across dozens of influencers because they have the budget to seed at scale. For most bootstrapped brands, product-forward videos plus founder-face content is the higher-percentage bet.

How TikTok Shop works and which categories are winning

TikTok Shop lets viewers check out inside the app during a video or a live stream, and right now the categories crushing it are apparel, beauty, skincare, and viral gadgets like curling irons. Niche categories with narrower audiences (pets, wedding, hobbyist) convert less well on TikTok Shop today because the targeting is broad.

There is a live-stream flywheel that top TikTok Shop sellers exploit. You post 3 to 10 short videos in the 24 to 48 hours before you go live, and TikTok pushes those pre-live videos to new viewers with a blue “live” ring around your profile picture. The videos funnel viewers into the live stream, and the live stream converts.

Once viewers are in your live, they see products tagged for one-tap checkout. Apparel does especially well because live viewers can ask “does it stretch?”, “how does it fit at 5’3”, 150 pounds?”, and get a live model answer, which closes the gap between browsing and buying.

Why long-form TikTok videos now out-perform shorts

Long-form TikTok videos now out-perform shorts because roughly 50 to 70% of TikTok watch time is on videos 60 seconds or longer, while ~90% of creators still default to short videos. That imbalance means less competition per impression on the longer format.

The style that works long-form is not polished YouTube-style production. It is face-to-camera, FaceTime-style talking, as if the creator is casually catching up with a friend. Storytelling and ranting for 3 to 5 minutes tends to hold TikTok viewers because the platform’s culture rewards intimacy over polish.

TikTok is also actively pushing horizontal videos into the feed, notifying creators that horizontal uploads will get boosted. That gives long-form YouTube creators a way to repurpose existing content, and the video plays inside the vertical scroll without forcing the viewer to rotate their phone.

How to turn viral TikTok views into ecommerce sales

To turn viral TikTok views into ecommerce sales, drive traffic to a single, unambiguous destination and follow up in comments while the video is still hot. Eugenia found that when a Pandaloon video hits a million-plus views, more traffic clicks to her own website than to TikTok Shop or Amazon, so a clear bio link plus a strong on-site experience does most of the work.

The second lever is comment engagement in the first 24 to 48 hours after a video pops. Replying to comments with follow-up videos (TikTok’s video-reply feature) keeps the algorithm pushing the original video and creates a new post at the same time.

Correlating TikTok views to sales is easier in peak season for seasonal products (Halloween and Christmas for Pandaloon) and harder off-season, when a viral video may generate saves and follows without immediate purchases. Attribution windows matter; do not judge a TikTok strategy on same-day Shopify revenue alone.

How much time TikTok requires to grow an ecommerce brand

Growing a TikTok following that moves product for an ecommerce brand realistically requires 3 to 5 posts per week for 6 to 12 months before compounding kicks in. Eugenia posts less during her Halloween peak because operations consume her time, then rebuilds volume in the off-season with brand-deal and Huxley-Media-Group content.

The time trap most founders fall into is treating every video like a mini-production. Eugenia’s advice is the opposite. Batch shoot in a single afternoon, prioritize hook quality over production quality, and accept that most posts will underperform because that is the shape of a discovery feed.

If you cannot commit to that cadence yourself, hire one editor and give them source footage plus your top-performing hooks as templates. One editor can produce a week of shorts from a founder’s long-form recording in a few hours.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to grow a TikTok following for an ecommerce brand?

Most ecommerce brands need 6 to 12 months of consistent posting (3 to 5 videos per week) before TikTok growth compounds, though a single viral hit can shortcut that timeline. The real bottleneck is not follower count, it is the number of hook iterations you have run.

Does TikTok Shop work for niche products or only broad-appeal categories?

TikTok Shop today is best for broad-appeal categories like apparel, beauty, skincare, and viral gadgets. Niche categories (pets, wedding, hobbyist supplies) still convert better on your own Shopify store or Amazon because TikTok’s on-platform targeting is not narrow enough yet.

How long should a TikTok video be in 2026?

TikTok now favors videos 60 seconds and longer. Roughly 50 to 70% of watch time on the platform goes to videos of a minute or more, and TikTok has publicly said it will boost longer uploads. Aim for 60 to 180 seconds with a strong hook when the story supports it.

What is the most important part of a TikTok video?

The first 1 to 5 seconds. If the hook does not stop the scroll, nothing else in the video matters because the viewer is already gone. Spend most of your creative time on the opening frame, the on-screen text, and the reveal.

Should ecommerce brands post product demos or founder-story content on TikTok?

Both, weighted toward whichever your product supports. Products with a clear pain point (skincare, gadgets, home) do best with problem-solution demos. Products without an obvious pain point (apparel, novelty, hobby) do best with founder-origin and behind-the-scenes storytelling.

How many TikTok videos will go viral out of every 20 posted?

Even for experienced creators like Eugenia Chen, roughly 1 in 20 videos hits the millions of views. The other 19 are the reps that let you find the format, hook, and story that resonates with your audience.

Can you make sales on TikTok without going live?

Yes. Eugenia does not run frequent lives and still drives measurable Pandaloon traffic through short-form video plus a strong bio link. Lives amplify TikTok Shop revenue for apparel and beauty specifically, but short-form video plus off-platform conversion (your store, Amazon) is the more common path for niche brands.

Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?

If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.

In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!

Podcast: Download (Duration: 46:26 — 53.4MB)

The best pet products to sell online right now are food toppers, refrigerated and fresh pet food, novel pet accessories (from custom cages to functional dog gear), and any inventor-style product that solves a real owner pain point. The pet industry is projected to hit $154 billion in 2024, up roughly 8% year over year, and there is more white space inside it than most sellers assume.

That is the top-line from Pet Summit Orlando, where my co-host Toni Herrbach spoke four times last week, walking the floor of the co-located Global Pet Expo with 1,100 vendors and hundreds of pet influencers. In this episode of the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, Toni broke down which pet categories are growing, why most pet brands are losing money on Amazon, and where the real opportunity sits for creators and sellers today.

Below is the full recap: the hot pet product categories, the Amazon influencer angle nobody was using, and the diversification playbook Toni delivered to a room full of million-follower pet creators who had no email list.

Key takeaways

• The pet industry is projected to hit $154 billion in 2024, up ~8% year over year, with a stated goal to grow pet ownership from ~60% of households to 70%.
• Pet food toppers, refrigerated fresh pet food, and functional accessories (feeders, harnesses, terrariums) are the fastest-growing product niches right now.
• Most pet brands are on Amazon but do not understand it. Many are losing money per unit because they never checked their margins against Amazon fees.
• The Amazon Influencer program is under-used in pets. Pet products carry a 4% commission (double the standard 2%), making them one of the highest-earning categories for on-listing influencer video.
• Pet influencers with millions of followers are leaving 80%+ of their potential income on the table by relying on brand deals only. YouTube, email, and private-label products unlock the rest.
• TikTok Shop pays affiliates ~20% commission versus Amazon Associates’ ~2%. One pet creator made $80,000 from a single viral TikTok promoting one product.
• The biggest missed opportunity for pet influencers is YouTube. Most create 5+ videos per day on TikTok and Instagram, but fewer than half repost to YouTube where ads pay passively.

How big is the pet industry and how fast is it growing?

The US pet industry is projected to reach $154 billion in 2024, up roughly 8% year over year, according to the state-of-the-industry keynote at Pet Summit delivered by a former PetSmart executive. Roughly 60% of US households own a pet today, and the industry’s stated strategic goal is to push that number to 70% because the revenue math tips dramatically at that threshold.

Growth is not evenly distributed across categories. Premium and human-adjacent products (fresh food, custom-formulated diets, food toppers, functional supplements) are outpacing traditional dry-food staples. Owners are treating pets more like family members every year, and the wallet share reflects it.

The takeaway for sellers is that “saturated” is not the right mental model for pets. Every subcategory has its own supply-demand curve, and the fastest growth is in premium and specialty niches where the incumbents move slowly.

What are the best pet products to sell online in 2026?

The best pet product categories to sell online in 2026 are food toppers, refrigerated and fresh pet food, functional accessories (feeders, harnesses, custom terrariums, dog hiking gear), and inventor-style products that solve a specific owner problem. Each category sits above the industry’s 8% growth average.

Here is the category-by-category read from the Pet Summit expo floor:

The category we did not see much of at the expo but that keeps coming up in real revenue conversations is dog training and behavior digital products, often paired with a physical accessory (leash, harness, treat pouch). The margin structure of digital + physical bundles beats either alone.

Why most pet brands are losing money on Amazon

Most pet brands are losing money on Amazon because they never modeled their unit economics against Amazon’s fees before listing, and they staffed the channel with whoever was available (often a family member or an outsourced agency they cannot audit). The result is bestseller listings with negative contribution margin on every sale.

Toni and her co-host Liz Saunders walked the Global Pet Expo floor pulling up brands’ Amazon listings on their phones. They found repeated patterns: shipping-heavy products priced without accounting for FBA weight tiers, kits and multi-packs priced below single-unit cost of goods, and hero SKUs subsidizing money-losing SKUs across the catalog.

The most common conversation went: “Who runs your Amazon?” “Oh, we have a guy.” No brand owner in that conversation could produce their landed-cost-plus-fees breakdown by SKU. If you are a pet brand reading this, that spreadsheet is the highest-ROI weekend project you will do this quarter.

How the Amazon Influencer program works for pet products

The Amazon Influencer program lets approved creators upload short review videos that live directly on Amazon product listings, and pet products pay a 4% commission versus the standard 2% on most categories. That doubling makes pets one of the most lucrative on-listing video categories on the entire platform.

Two things most brands and influencers do not know:

• Brands must upload their own video first. An Amazon product listing cannot receive influencer videos until the brand has posted at least one branded video into the top carousel. Once that video is live, the slot is “unlocked” for any approved influencer to publish additional review videos there.
• Approval is easy for pet influencers. Anyone with a legitimate Instagram or TikTok following in pets is being accepted into the program. Multiple influencers at Pet Summit were already accepted but had never uploaded a single video.

The revenue math is compelling. A single evergreen review video on a hero pet SKU can generate hundreds of dollars per month for years, at zero incremental cost after filming. Stack 20 to 30 videos across popular pet products and it becomes a real income stream.

How pet influencers should diversify revenue beyond brand deals

Pet influencers should diversify revenue beyond brand deals by adding YouTube monetization, an email list, an owned digital product (course or membership), and eventually a private-label physical product. Brand deals pay well but stop the moment you stop working; every other channel pays passively.

The pattern Toni saw at Pet Summit was extreme concentration risk. Creators with 100,000 to 1 million+ Instagram followers were earning $5,000 to $10,000 per brand deal but had no email list, no YouTube channel, no digital product, and no way to run a “flash promotion” during a slow month. If the brand-deal pipeline dries up for 30 days, revenue drops to zero.

The five-lever revenue framework Toni delivered on stage was:

1. Brand deals (current bread and butter, keep doing them)
2. YouTube ad revenue (repurpose existing TikTok/Instagram video)
3. Email list (even a single ConvertKit landing page)
4. Affiliate + Amazon Influencer (already creating the content)
5. Private label products (60%+ margins vs. 4-20% affiliate)

The single fastest lever for most pet influencers is #2. Every video they film for TikTok or Instagram can be re-uploaded to YouTube as-is, or stitched together into 10-minute long-form. Most channels can hit YouTube’s monetization threshold in weeks given their existing audience.

How to make a Shark Tank-worthy pet product

To make a Shark Tank-worthy pet product, solve a real owner-observed problem, get a design patent or utility patent, produce a small first run with your own tooling, and be ready to hand-sell into pet retail while paid-social ads build ecommerce demand. That is the exact path one inventor Toni met at Pet Summit had taken with a bug-proof dog and cat feeder.

She spent three years on molds, manufacturing, and the patent, launched on Shopify in December, and hit crickets. The invention was done, but the audience-building work had barely started. This is the most common inventor trap in pets: the assumption that a novel product sells itself.

The right sequence, in order:

1. Ship 100 to 500 units to seed reviews and video content.
2. Run Facebook video ads to a strong problem-solution creative.
3. Apply for Shark Tank the same week (the show wants inventor stories with revenue traction).
4. Approach 5 to 10 pet influencers with gifted product, not paid deals.
5. List on Amazon only after you have DTC data on your unit economics.

How pet influencers should use TikTok Shop for affiliate revenue

Pet influencers should use TikTok Shop primarily as an affiliate revenue channel because TikTok pays affiliates ~20% commission per sale, compared to ~2% from Amazon Associates. On viral videos, that spread turns into life-changing money.

One creator at Pet Summit reported making $80,000 in about a month promoting a single product to a small TikTok following, purely because one video went viral and TikTok kept serving it. The 20% commission on that volume dwarfed anything a comparable Amazon Associate video would have paid.

TikTok Shop works best in pets for consumables (treats, chews, food toppers, supplements) and for viral novelty items (funny costumes, dog beds with unique features). Broad-audience pet gear beats niche species gear because TikTok’s targeting is not narrow enough to reliably serve iguana-terrarium videos to iguana owners.

Why every pet influencer needs a YouTube channel

Every pet influencer needs a YouTube channel because YouTube is the only platform that pays passive ad revenue from a back catalog, and pet creators are already making 5+ videos per day for other platforms. Republishing that content to YouTube costs almost nothing incrementally.

Fewer than 50% of the influencers at Pet Summit were actively publishing on YouTube. Every single one Toni asked said the same sentence: “I know I need to be doing YouTube.” What is stopping them is a mental hurdle, not a real workload hurdle, because the video already exists.

The fastest low-effort path is to compile 5 to 10 short TikToks or Reels into a single 8 to 12 minute YouTube long-form video. Add a simple intro and outro, upload to YouTube, and let YouTube’s ad system do the rest. Creators with existing large audiences on other platforms often hit YouTube’s monetization threshold in 2 to 6 weeks.

Frequently asked questions

How big is the US pet industry?

The US pet industry is projected to reach $154 billion in 2024, growing at roughly 8% year over year according to Pet Summit’s state-of-the-industry keynote. Approximately 60% of US households currently own a pet, with industry leaders targeting 70% household penetration.

What is the most profitable pet product category to sell?

The most profitable pet product categories to sell right now are food toppers and gravies, fresh and refrigerated food, functional feeders, and inventor-style problem-solvers. These categories combine high growth rates, strong repurchase behavior for consumables, and premium price points.

What commission does the Amazon Influencer program pay on pet products?

The Amazon Influencer program pays 4% on pet products, which is double the standard 2% affiliate rate on most other categories. That makes pets one of the highest-earning on-listing video categories for approved influencers.

How much do TikTok Shop affiliates make on pet products?

TikTok Shop affiliates typically earn ~20% commission per sale, roughly 10x the Amazon Associates rate. Individual viral videos have generated $80,000+ in a single month for pet creators with modest follower counts.

Why are pet brands losing money on Amazon?

Most pet brands are losing money on Amazon because they never modeled unit economics against Amazon’s FBA fees, weight-based shipping tiers, and referral fees before listing. Many hero SKUs are being sold below breakeven cost, subsidized by one profitable product.

Do I need a website to be a pet influencer?

You do not need a website to earn brand-deal revenue as a pet influencer, but you absolutely need one to diversify beyond brand deals. Even a single email-capture landing page (ConvertKit’s free plan works) unlocks passive revenue channels that brand deals alone cannot provide.

Can you make money selling pet products without inventing something new?

Yes. You can source existing products from suppliers (Alibaba, US wholesalers, private-label manufacturers) and sell them under your own brand. If you have an audience, you already know what they buy, which is the hardest part of ecommerce and the part most sellers do not have solved.

What is Pet Summit Orlando and who should attend?

Pet Summit is a conference co-located with the Global Pet Expo in Orlando, split into a brand track (for pet product companies) and an influencer/creator track (for pet content creators). It is the top annual gathering for anyone selling pet products online or building a pet-focused audience.

Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?

If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.

In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!

Podcast: Download (Duration: 47:51 — 55.0MB)

The most useful trends coming out of the 2024 eCommerce Fuel Live conference in New Orleans were the ones that changed how a real seven or eight figure Shopify seller spends their next dollar. TikTok Shop can create $1M-per-month tidal waves for the right hero product. Digital courses attached to a physical product line can quietly account for 20% of Shopify revenue and double as a $150 free-with-purchase incentive. Meta Ads still work, but only if the store’s operating expenses and average order value can actually support them.

This is part two of my ECF Live recap with my co-host Toni Herrbach, pulled from the hallway conversations, the mastermind pods, and the sessions we actually sat in. Everything below is what physical product sellers doing $500K to $10M+ told us in person.

Here is what is working in ecommerce right now, the tools people are using, and the traps to avoid on TikTok Shop, AI-generated content, and Meta Ads.

Key takeaways

• TikTok Shop can 30x your Shopify halo traffic when a product goes viral, but you need deep inventory and thin margins tolerant of heavy discounting.
• A single hero product with heavy affiliate seeding is the TikTok Shop playbook. One creator with under 500 followers drove $90,000 in sales in one campaign.
• Digital courses tied to physical products can be 20% of Shopify revenue and replace lead magnets as a $150 free-with-purchase incentive.
• Meta ads need a $60 to $80 average order value and healthy margins. If your operating expenses plus COGS leaves you at negative 10% profit before ad spend, ads will not save you.
• AI images and video are already good enough for product mockups, model shots, and YouTube b-roll. Kevin Williams put it well: “This is the worst it is ever going to be.”
• Klaviyo’s AI segment builder still misses on complex prompts, but it gets close enough to hand-correct.

How is TikTok Shop actually working for physical product sellers?

TikTok Shop is working as a flywheel driven by in-platform affiliates, not by paid ads or your own content. The session at ECF was led by Paul, an operator doing roughly $1 million a month on TikTok Shop. His playbook has three pieces: pick one hero product, pre-seed creators before you launch, and let TikTok’s own affiliate marketplace do the compounding once sales start.

Once your product starts converting, your store climbs TikTok’s internal ranking charts. Creators see which shops are printing money and jump in on their own. TikTok then pushes those winning products harder in the feed, which pulls in more creators, which drives more sales.

The economics can look wild on both sides. Paul cited one creator with under 500 subscribers who drove more than $90,000 in sales for his brand and personally earned a $20,000 commission. Do not filter creator applications by follower count. The affiliate program in TikTok Shop is opt-in for creators, so approve broadly.

The halo effect on Shopify and Amazon

When Paul’s TikTok Shop product went viral, his Shopify sales climbed roughly 30% in the same window. This halo is one of the most underrated reasons to run TikTok Shop at all. He is not on Amazon, but sellers we talked to who are on both channels saw Amazon spike alongside TikTok on the same viral windows.

The point is not that TikTok Shop itself is your best channel. It is that a viral TikTok drives brand searches into every other channel you run. That halo is what makes the tight margins on TikTok Shop bearable.

The TikTok Shop traps to plan around

Two things will bite you if you go all-in without prep. First, you carry the full risk of an inventory blowout. Paul warned that the moment you go out of stock, the momentum dies and you have to build it back from scratch. If a video takes off and you cannot ship, TikTok’s algorithm moves on.

Second, the margins are heavy on discounting. In one example he cited, a $24 product was sold on TikTok Shop for $6 to $7 to trigger the viral loop. Your gross margin has to survive that price plus a creator commission plus TikTok’s cut. If it cannot, you are buying a viral moment at a loss.

The other structural downside is customer data. TikTok Shop is like Amazon in that you do not get the buyer’s email. You do get their shipping address, which you can push through an address-to-email append service to backfill your list. Unlike Amazon, TikTok Shop lets you drop physical inserts and catalogs in the shipment, so sellers doing serious volume are stuffing every package to drive repeat orders back to their Shopify store.

Why digital products belong on your Shopify store

Digital products on Shopify are quietly one of the highest margin plays in ecommerce, and almost no one at ECF was using them. The sleeper session of the conference was led by Julia, who sells barware (cocktail shakers, not clubwear) on Shopify and Amazon. About 15 people attended. The people who skipped it missed the highest ROI idea of the week.

Julia sells eight courses alongside her physical barware. On Shopify, those digital products account for roughly 20% of total store revenue. The course sits alongside the shaker sets and delivers close to 100% gross margin because there is no COGS and no shipping.

How Julia uses a $150 course as a free-with-purchase incentive

Instead of a PDF lead magnet, Julia’s beginner bartending course sits on the store as a $150 product. If a customer spends over $75 in the store, they get the course free. The customer sees a $150 value stacked on top of their shaker set, and Julia pays nothing to fulfill it because it is a digital download.

The same offer converts corporate gifting orders at a much higher AOV. A company buying gift sets for their top managers loves the idea of throwing in a $150 bartending class for each recipient. Julia earns double the order value and her cost stays flat.

The dance course example: your niche, not your subject

Another seller in the room, who sells a hair-styling product for men with thinning hair, added a digital styling manual on the same principle. His original digital product was a dance course, which sounds unrelated until you hear the angle. He targeted the course specifically at older men whose kids are getting married and who want to be able to dance at the reception. That is the same demographic that buys his hair products.

The dance moves are the same ones you can find free on YouTube. The information gain is the audience-specific packaging. That is the whole game with digital products attached to a physical brand. Take a generic skill your customer needs, position it around the specific moment they need it, and stack it on top of the physical order.

Shopify has native integrations that deliver digital downloads if you already sell there. If you are on WordPress, WooCommerce plus a digital-products plugin handles it in an afternoon.

What is working on Meta Ads in 2024

Meta Ads still work for most stores at ECF, but the sentiment is that they feel like a roller coaster. The session that packed the room was Taylor Holiday and David Herman on Facebook ads for physical product brands. The first half was almost entirely about finances, not creative. If your unit economics do not support ad spend, no ad platform will save you.

An ECF attendee volunteered their real store numbers for a live case study. Operating expenses alone came out to more than 40% of revenue. Once cost of goods was added in, the store was running at roughly negative 10% profit before any ad spend. The advice was blunt. Fix the P&L first, then run ads.

Why average order value between $60 and $80 is the sweet spot

David Herman said the ideal average order value for Meta Ads sits between $60 and $80. That range matches the impulse-buy zone for someone scrolling their feed. Products priced meaningfully higher than that require a lot more spend to determine whether ads even work, because the conversion rate drops and the sample size you need to trust the data grows.

The math is simple. Nobody buys a $200 product on impulse while scrolling. If your product is above the impulse-buy range, plan on a longer testing budget, retargeting flows, and more creative variation to warm cold traffic.

The beginner-friendly Meta Ads structure they recommended

The structure they recommended for stores just starting on Meta was intentionally simple: one campaign, Advantage+ Shopping, and roughly three ads pulled from your best-performing creative. Then scale spend on winners. This is a much cleaner starting point than the seven-campaign, dozens-of-ad-sets architectures that were popular a few years ago, and Meta’s algorithm has moved in that direction.

How ecommerce sellers are using AI right now

AI is already useful for ecommerce content, images, and data, and the pace of improvement is the real story. Kevin Williams gave the AI session and the line that landed was, “This is the worst it is ever going to be.” He walked through iterations of an AI-generated dog food ad that started as a mess and ended as a photo-real image of a golden retriever with the client’s product.

The current state of practical use for a Shopify store owner falls into three buckets: images, ideas, and data.

AI images and video for product marketing

AI images are already good enough to build hero photos, model shots, and lifestyle scenes without a photo studio. In my own course, one student redesigned a cat harness product page using AI-generated cats and then Photoshopped her actual harness onto the generated image. It looked completely real.

Another student who sells purses could not afford models. She used Midjourney to generate the models and then Photoshopped her own bag into the shot. The output looks like she paid for a full studio day.

The workflow is the same on the dog food example. Generate the scene, then Photoshop your actual SKU into it. AI cannot yet render your exact product accurately, but it can render everything around it. On video, the tools shown at ECF were already good enough to replace stock b-roll for YouTube. That alone is a five-figure-per-year saving on a Storyblocks-style subscription for any brand doing serious video.

AI for content ideas and beating the blank page

Kevin’s other point was that the highest ROI use of AI right now is destroying the blank page. Feed a model your brand, your product line, your style, and your customer, and ask for 100 video ideas or 100 blog post outlines. You will never sit down to a blank document again.

He also recommended paying for ChatGPT rather than using the free tier. His view: the free tier is not accurate enough for serious commercial work, and on the free tier you are the product.

AI for Klaviyo segmentation and data

Klaviyo now ships an AI segment builder that lets you describe a segment in plain English (for example, “everyone who spent over $100 in a single transaction in the last 90 days”) and generates the segment for you. It is not perfect. On complex prompts it misses, but it gets close enough that you can hand-correct the resulting filters.

The broader lesson from Kevin’s talk: AI as a data mining and summarization layer over your existing tools (Klaviyo, GA4, Shopify) is where the highest-leverage wins are for existing operators.

What sellers are actually asking about in masterminds

The mastermind pods at ECF this year (Andrew Youderian broke the room into small “houses” of about 25 sellers) surfaced the same question over and over. Sellers doing well on one D2C channel, usually Meta Ads or Amazon, want to know how to build a real content operation on top of a real brand.

One eight-figure seller in the room built a supplement-adjacent, herbal, all-natural product. His opening line to the pod was, “We bought the fifth largest winery in Colorado, but we don’t make wine.” That is the entire content strategy for that brand, and he did not know it. Every founder at that table was pulled in by that one sentence. Video of the fermentation process alone would carry TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube.

The lesson: most operators have a founder story that is 10x more compelling than the ads they are running. They just do not hear it as marketing.

The “director of marketing” question every $3M seller asks

Another sellers with a roughly $3M business wanted to hire a local director of marketing at $150K a year. The room pushed back. If you have been running the marketing and it is working, document your process as SOPs, then hire an overseas operator from the Philippines or Colombia to execute the SOPs. Save $100K per year and postpone the senior hire until the business is a size that comfortably justifies it.

How TikTok Shop, Meta Ads, and digital products compare for a physical product seller

Different channels solve different problems. Here is the frame we heard from operators actually doing all three.

The stack that came up most at ECF was Meta Ads plus Shopify plus a digital product for AOV lift, with TikTok Shop as an opportunistic bet if a specific SKU looks like a viral candidate.

Frequently asked questions

Is TikTok Shop worth it for small ecommerce brands in 2024?

TikTok Shop is worth it if you have one hero product with margin thick enough to survive 60% to 75% discounting plus a creator commission plus TikTok’s cut, and enough inventory to survive a viral spike. The halo into Shopify (roughly 30% lift in one ECF case) and the free brand exposure are what make the platform pay back, even more than the direct sales.

How much should I spend on Meta Ads to see if they work?

David Herman’s rule at ECF is that you want to reach roughly $1,000 per day in Meta spend for a beginner store, ramped up from a smaller test budget. Before you spend a dollar, make sure your average order value is $60 to $80 and your operating expenses plus COGS leave real margin for ad spend. If the P&L is already at breakeven, ads will lose you money.

What is the best AI tool for ecommerce right now?

For a store owner today, the practical stack is paid ChatGPT for content ideas, Midjourney or DALL-E for lifestyle and model images (with Photoshop for the actual product), Klaviyo’s built-in AI segment builder for email, and one of the AI video tools (Runway, Pika, or Sora once available) for b-roll. There is no single tool that does it all.

Can I use AI-generated product images if the product does not physically exist yet?

You can use AI to render a scene, a model, or a lifestyle backdrop, but you should Photoshop your real product into the image rather than relying on AI to render it accurately. AI still struggles with specific SKU details (pet food texture, exact garment cuts, logos). The hybrid approach (AI scene plus real product) is what most sellers at ECF are actually shipping.

What is the “halo effect” from TikTok Shop?

The halo effect is the secondary lift on your other channels (Shopify direct, Amazon, brand search) that comes from going viral on TikTok Shop. One ECF operator reported a roughly 30% Shopify sales lift during his TikTok Shop viral window. That halo is often more valuable than the direct TikTok Shop revenue.

Do I really need to attend an in-person ecommerce conference to stay current?

The value from an event like ECF is the hallway conversation and mastermind pod, not the sessions. Real operators sharing real P&L numbers and specific channel results is not something you get from a podcast or a blog post. If you can afford one industry event a year, pick the one where the room is small and the attendees are actually running seven and eight figure stores.

Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?

If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.

In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!

Podcast: Download (Duration: 45:18 — 52.1MB)

The seven, eight, and nine figure ecommerce sellers at eCommerce Fuel Live in New Orleans are frustrated with Meta, frustrated with Klaviyo, and quietly moving budget toward affiliate-driven creators and organic social. That was the loudest shared signal across four days of hallway conversation, small “house” masterminds, and dinners with operators running real physical product businesses. Most of the sellers still doing well have a real moat, a real content operation, or both.

This is part one of my ECF Live 2024 recap with my co-host Toni Herrbach. Everything below is what real operators told us in person, not what LinkedIn is talking about.

Here is what actual seven and eight figure ecommerce sellers are complaining about, betting on, and switching to in 2024.

Key takeaways

• Meta Ads sentiment is at a multi-year low across the room. The complaint is dependency, not deliverability. Sellers now realize their whole business dies if the iOS 14 style shock happens again.
• Klaviyo customers are frustrated with post-IPO pricing, slower support, and IP deliverability. SendLane pitched 30% to 50% cheaper for equivalent functionality at ECF.
• Influencers entertain, creators educate. Educational creators convert dramatically better for physical product brands than lifestyle influencers.
• Sellers with real moats (proprietary design, distribution, contractor relationships) are the ones still growing in a rough year.
• Roughly half of the sellers in the room run two or more separate ecommerce or content businesses. Single-brand focus is less common than the internet suggests.
• One reel, one comment, one product feature can change the trajectory of a physical product business. Real examples came up all week (collapsible dog crates, stylish compression socks, a viral nail-mixing reel).

Why is every ecommerce seller frustrated with Meta Ads right now?

The frustration is not that Meta Ads stopped working, it is that operators just realized how completely dependent they are on a single unstable channel. In our ocean-themed “house” of 25 sellers, almost every introduction turned into a complaint about Meta, and every complaint got collective nods from the rest of the room.

The trigger for a lot of the anger is older than 2024. Apple’s iOS 14 privacy changes broke attribution and conversion tracking for a lot of small-to-mid direct-to-consumer brands, and the recovery has been uneven. One high-fashion seller in the room described a business that was fantastic on Meta two years ago and has been fighting for stability ever since.

The deeper issue is structural. Sellers realized their business would not exist without Meta. That is the same story we saw with Amazon sellers five years ago, and the takeaway is the same: you need a second channel that can actually pay the bills, not just supplement them.

What sellers are moving budget to instead

The channels getting the extra attention at ECF this year are affiliate-driven creator relationships (especially on TikTok Shop) and owned organic social. Patrick’s wife runs a nail polish brand and a single Facebook reel of her mixing polish went viral over the holidays and drove a huge chunk of Q4 revenue. That is not a paid ad, and it did not depend on iOS attribution.

Why sellers are unhappy with Klaviyo after the IPO

Klaviyo customers at ECF are unhappy with the pricing, the slower support, and the deliverability. Klaviyo has sponsored ECF and my podcast for years, and this is the first year Andrew Youderian let a competing email platform (SendLane) sponsor ECF. That is a meaningful signal about how the room is feeling.

The pricing complaint is loudest for sellers spending $2,000 to $5,000 per month on the platform. The perception is that Klaviyo’s focus shifted toward enterprise after going public and the seven-figure customer no longer feels like a priority. Support that used to be human is now gated by an AI chatbot for the first ten minutes of any interaction, which is fine for tier-one questions and painful for anyone past that.

The deliverability issue nobody talks about

The deliverability story surfaced at my lunch table. I ran quarterly deliverability tests using GlockApps (which tests inbox placement across major providers) right after Gmail and Yahoo tightened DMARC, DKIM, and SPF enforcement. On two of three test runs, my Klaviyo account was sent from an IP that was on a spam blacklist. My students in the class ran the same test and got the same result.

An operator running very high email volume explained why. Klaviyo has internal tiers (bronze, silver, gold) that determine which IP pool sends your mail. Gold-tier senders get the clean pool and Klaviyo aggressively kicks anyone off it who trips a spam threshold (roughly 0.1% complaint rate). Bronze-tier senders sit on shared pools that include weaker sender reputations. There is no way to know which tier you are on, and you cannot buy your way in.

For context, the same test on Drip (which I use for my blog) came back clean on all three runs. If email is a serious channel for you and you send under 5-10 million per month (the threshold where a dedicated IP starts to make sense), the platform’s shared-pool reputation matters and it is worth testing.

SendLane’s pitch: 30% to 50% cheaper than Klaviyo

SendLane’s booth pitch at ECF was 30% to 50% cheaper than Klaviyo for equivalent ecommerce email functionality, plus white-glove migration for anyone switching off Klaviyo. Migration is the real friction with any email platform switch (rebuilding flows, re-tagging subscribers, warming a new sender reputation), which is why most frustrated Klaviyo customers stay put. If the migration is done for you, the math starts working.

Influencers entertain, creators educate: the framing that changed the room

The single biggest “aha” moment in my house was the distinction between influencers and creators. Most physical product sellers who tried influencer marketing and got nothing back were actually paying influencers, not creators. Those are two different audiences with two different purchase intents.

The concrete test: if a creator you are evaluating mentioned a pot or a bowl in a video and their audience actually bought it, they are a creator worth paying. If they post their outfit and their brunch and their vacations, they are an influencer, and their audience will not convert on your physical product.

Why my YouTube channel converts for BigCommerce and Shopify

The example I used at the table was my own YouTube channel. It exists to educate people on starting an ecommerce business. When I make a video about BigCommerce or Shopify, the viewer is already actively evaluating platforms and my conversion rate as an affiliate is much higher than a general “tech lifestyle” channel would be. Same product, same commission rate, different audience intent, dramatically different results.

The right way to run creator outreach

Most sellers who say “influencer marketing failed for me” reached out to three or four people. That is not a campaign, that is a test with a sample size of zero. The realistic hit rate on cold outreach to educational creators is low, so you need to run it at volume (dozens to hundreds of reaches) and then invest in the one or two relationships that do land. For most brands, running that outreach through an established platform like ShareASale or Refersion is more efficient than one-off DMs.

The sellers who are still growing all have a moat

The ECF operators who are having a good 2024 all share one thing: a real defensible moat. One seller in my house sells electrical outlets that install inside a bathroom drawer so you can plug in a hair dryer and keep the counter clean. His moat is a proprietary design, a base of contractors who install his product in new builds, and a repeat-purchase relationship with those contractors on every job.

That is three moats stacked (product IP, distribution, and repeat customer channel), and it is why his business is growing while others are flat. Compare that to a seller running a commodity product on Meta Ads. When one channel wobbles, the commodity seller has nothing to fall back on.

The lesson we heard repeatedly: your moat can be a design patent, an exclusive distribution channel, a first-party audience (email list, YouTube, podcast), or an operating capability (customer service, unboxing, community). Something has to make you hard to replace.

How many businesses do 7 figure ecommerce sellers actually run?

Roughly half of the sellers in my breakfast and dinner conversations at ECF run two or more separate ecommerce or content businesses. That surprised me because the online narrative for focused operators is “one brand, one focus, one moat.”

Examples from the week: one seller runs compression socks plus a data business. Our friend Blake sells face paint and decorative flags and two other stores. Heidi and her husband run a main brand plus a separate odds-and-ends store. One seller who sells collapsible dog crates runs another business on the side.

The pattern is not what you would guess. These are not lifestyle-brand-plus-course stacks. Most are two or more real physical-product operations, run in parallel, often as a hedge against a single-channel or single-brand collapse. That is worth thinking about if the “focus on one thing” advice has kept you from a second product line that would materially de-risk the whole business.

The content gap: most ecommerce sellers still cannot make content about their own products

Most sellers at ECF do not make content around their products, and it is the biggest gap in the room. Everything on Amazon is outsourceable (listing, PPC, creative). Once you get a product idea, you can hire good agencies to run every operational piece. But brand and content are the opposite: there are very few good outsource shops, the good ones are expensive, and it is very hard to hand off “our story” to someone who does not live inside the business.

The content mistake almost everyone makes

The mistake is making the content about the product. Nobody wants to watch a video about how cotton balls are different from each other. What actually converts is content about the customer’s life around the product.

Anja, a Seller Summit attendee, sells fashionable first aid kits for moms. Her content strategy is spring break travel tips, playground packing lists, and seasonal parenting content, with the first aid kit woven in as part of the pack. Her audience finds her through “spring break travel ideas,” not through “how to put on a band-aid.” The kit is the product, but it is never the subject of the content.

The same rule holds for a Shopify keepsake store. You do not talk about the keepsake, you talk about the people who buy keepsakes. You share the day-to-day of the business, funny things that happen, the founder’s story. Over time the audience trusts you, and when they need a keepsake, your brand is the one they think of.

One comment, one product, one reel: how physical product businesses actually get born

Two founder-origin stories from the ECF women’s breakfast landed hard: the collapsible dog crate and the stylish compression socks. Both businesses started with a single offhand comment that reframed a problem, and both are now real physical product companies.

The collapsible dog crate founder was trying to collapse her existing crate, smashed her finger, and someone said “you should design one that actually collapses easily.” Five years later, that is her business. The compression socks founder was a driver who complained about long hours in the car, was told by a friend to wear compression socks, thought they were ugly, and decided to build stylish ones. Same pattern.

The takeaway: your next product idea is probably sitting in a conversation you had this week. Physical product businesses that scale usually solve one specific irritation with a real design change, not a general “here is another version of the thing everyone sells.”

ECF vs Amazon-focused events: two different rooms

The rooms at ECF and at Amazon-focused events feel almost opposite. Most ECF attendees run Shopify or BigCommerce stores and think they should be on Amazon. Most Amazon-focused event attendees run Amazon and think they should be on Shopify. Nobody is ever fully happy.

The honest read: Amazon is a search engine and it captures demand that is not on your website. If real customers are typing your product category into Amazon search, you should be there in some form (even if it starts as merchant fulfilled and grows into FBA). And direct-to-consumer stores need Amazon less than they think, but they still probably need it a little.

Frequently asked questions

Are ecommerce sellers really moving off Meta Ads in 2024?

Sellers at ECF are not moving off Meta Ads. They are reducing their dependency on Meta by building a second or third channel (organic social, TikTok Shop, creator partnerships, email) that can carry meaningful revenue if Meta wobbles. The pain is dependency, not the platform itself.

Is Klaviyo still worth it for a 7 figure ecommerce store?

Klaviyo is still the most feature-complete ecommerce email platform, and for stores generating meaningful email revenue it is usually still worth the cost. But post-IPO pricing pushed a lot of seven-figure operators to evaluate SendLane or return to Drip or Omnisend. If Klaviyo is costing more than 3% of email revenue, run a real bake-off before renewing.

What is the difference between an influencer and a creator?

Influencers entertain. Creators educate. Influencers post lifestyle content (outfits, travel, brunch) to an audience that follows for entertainment. Creators post tutorials, how-tos, and deep expertise to an audience actively looking to learn or buy in that niche. Creators convert dramatically better for most physical product brands.

How do I know if I am building a real moat?

You have a real moat if a well-funded competitor could not clone your business in six months. Real moats include a proprietary design (patent or hard-to-replicate manufacturing), an exclusive distribution channel (contractors, retail relationships), a first-party audience (email, YouTube, podcast), or a repeat-purchase relationship your competitors cannot buy. If your only moat is your Meta ad account, you do not have a moat.

Should a 7 figure seller run one brand or multiple brands?

Both work at ECF, but the honest read from the room is that operators running multiple brands are usually hedging against single-channel risk, not chasing more upside. If your primary business is stable and you have real bandwidth, a second product line can materially de-risk the whole operation. If you are still fighting to make the first brand work, focus.

How do I make content about a boring product?

You do not make content about the product. You make content about the customer’s life around the product. A first aid kit brand posts about travel and playgrounds. A keepsake store posts about the moments that produce keepsakes. A tarp brand posts about renovation projects. The product appears as part of the story, never as the subject.

Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?

If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.

In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!

Podcast: Download (Duration: 14:07 — 16.4MB)

Temu is hurting US ecommerce businesses that sell commodity, unbranded products (especially cheap apparel), and it is barely touching brands with a real value proposition. Temu is losing an estimated $30 per order and hundreds of millions of dollars per year to flood the US with $3 t-shirts and $4 sweaters, funded by two structural advantages US sellers do not have: dramatically cheaper (and possibly forced) labor, and the de minimis loophole that lets any shipment under $800 enter the US duty-free.

This is a solo episode where I walk through what Temu actually is, where the money is going, which US categories are getting crushed, and what a real US ecommerce brand should do about it. My friend Jerry Kozak, who runs an eight-figure t-shirt business, has watched his Amazon apparel revenue drop roughly 50% since Temu and Shein hit the US in 2022.

Here is what is happening, why it works right now, and what the actual defense looks like for a US seller.

Key takeaways

• Temu is losing roughly $30 per order and $588M to $954M per year on purpose. It is Amazon’s early playbook: burn cash to grab household-name status, then raise prices.
• The de minimis loophole lets any shipment under $800 enter the US duty-free. Temu ships direct-to-consumer from China so it pays zero tariffs, while US importers pay full duties on containers.
• Apparel is the hardest-hit category. The entire Amazon apparel category is down roughly 30% year over year per an Amazon rep.
• Commodity, unbranded sellers are in real trouble. Brands with a clear emotional value proposition (True Classic Tees, Dr. Squatch) are barely affected.
• Custom, B2B, and relationship-driven revenue is your durable moat. The half of Jerry’s business that prints for NATO and college sports teams is untouched.

What is Temu and how are its prices so low?

Temu is a Chinese-owned online marketplace, a subsidiary of PDD Holdings (publicly traded on NASDAQ) that ships thousands of products direct from Chinese factories to US consumers at prices that do not add up on paper. Think $3.37 for a pair of shoes or $4.50 for a woman’s sweater, with free shipping in about a week.

Wired’s investigation, confirmed by a company insider, found Temu is losing roughly $30 per order on average. Across the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the annual loss is estimated between $588 million and $954 million. In under a year of aggressive US expansion, Temu already has about one third of Amazon’s US monthly active users.

Temu can price this low because of two structural advantages, and both matter for how a US seller should think about the threat.

Advantage 1: Chinese labor costs (with a serious asterisk)

Chinese factory labor is dramatically cheaper than any US alternative, and part of the labor going into Temu products may be forced. Per the LA Times, products made in China’s western Xinjiang province are being sold to US consumers through Temu in breach of a US ban on Xinjiang-sourced goods. Former detainees, researchers, and advocacy groups have alleged the Chinese government put more than one million people in detention camps in Xinjiang and that laborers in fields and factories were forced or coerced to produce goods for Temu.

The Chinese government calls the camps “re-education.” I do not believe them and no independent observer has been able to verify their claims. What is not in dispute is that Temu’s cost structure benefits from a labor pool with no US-equivalent floor on wages, safety, or consent.

Advantage 2: the de minimis loophole

The de minimis rule lets any shipment into the US valued under $800 enter with zero tariffs, taxes, or customs duties. Temu ships direct to individual consumers, so every order slips under that ceiling. A US apparel brand importing a container of the same shirts pays full duty on the whole load.

Here is the practical math on t-shirts: a blank tee costs a US brand about $2, plus roughly $4 to ship inside the US. Add printing and margin, and the retail price has to land north of $20 for the business to survive. Temu delivers a printed shirt from China to a US doorstep for under $7, shipping included.

Which US ecommerce categories are actually getting hit by Temu?

Temu is hurting commodity, low-price, unbranded ecommerce most, especially apparel, and the damage tapers off quickly once a category requires trust, brand, or a strong emotional buy. Jerry Kozak (guest on a prior podcast episode, runs an eight-figure t-shirt business on Amazon and Shopify) has seen his Amazon apparel sales drop by about half since Temu and Shein hit the US in 2022. That is a single seller in the most exposed category, so take the number with a grain of salt.

The category-wide signal is more concrete. An Amazon representative said the entire Amazon apparel category is down roughly 30% year over year. Other apparel and ecommerce operators in the communities I belong to are seeing the same drag.

The pattern is clear: the sellers being wiped out are the ones selling generic products with no real differentiation, no brand equity, and no reason for a consumer to prefer them beyond price. If your only pitch was “cheaper than the other guy,” Temu wins that fight forever.

Is Temu going to keep losing this much money forever?

Temu is not going to burn $500M+ per year forever, and the endgame is the Amazon playbook: subsidize into household-name status, then start raising prices. That is exactly what Pinduoduo (Temu’s parent) did to dominate China, and it is what Amazon itself did in the US in the early 2000s.

Two things could disrupt that plan. First, Temu is squeezing Chinese suppliers to price levels that even Chinese manufacturers cannot make money at. One Chinese manufacturer (referred to as “Tai Chi” in reporting) joined Temu in 2022 and quickly found he had no control over pricing. Temu asks you to lower prices, then Temu decides what “lower” means. Refuse, and you get delisted. Suppliers are already leaving.

Second, US regulatory scrutiny is real. TikTok is under active pressure to divest or be banned in the US. Temu is under scrutiny for data collection on US citizens and for Xinjiang sourcing. If Congress closes the de minimis loophole (there are active proposals to do this), Temu loses one of its two structural advantages overnight.

How US ecommerce brands actually beat Temu

You beat Temu by making the price comparison irrelevant. Your customer has to want your product for a reason that a $3 Chinese knockoff cannot deliver. The two categories that are working right now: emotional value propositions and relationship or customization-driven revenue.

How True Classic Tees sells $25 t-shirts against $3 competition

True Classic Tees sells plain solid-color t-shirts (arguably the most commoditized category in apparel) for about $25 each and has crossed $250 million in revenue since launching in 2019. Temu literally sells the same physical product for a fraction of the price.

The reason True Classic Tees wins is the ad. Their commercials open on an overweight guy in a badly-fitting shirt with his belly hanging out, then cut to the same man in a True Classic Tee looking dramatically more flattering (biceps emphasized, midsection hidden). The product promise is not “a shirt.” It is “a shirt that makes you look better.”

Temu can undercut the price. Temu cannot manufacture the mindshare, the ad creative, or the emotional promise. That is the moat.

How Dr. Squatch sells premium men’s soap

Dr. Squatch sells premium bar soap to men, most of whom (myself included) do not think about soap the rest of the time. Their ad creative does not talk about ingredients or lather or exfoliation. It shows a woman getting close to her partner and saying, essentially, “you smell so good I want to jump you right now.”

The product is soap. The purchase is confidence, attraction, and identity. Temu can sell a bar of Chinese soap at half the price. It cannot replicate the reason a man reaches for Dr. Squatch instead.

Jerry Kozak’s other half: custom B2B

Back to Jerry. Half of his t-shirt business dropped in half. The other half of his business (custom prints for NATO, for college sports teams, for other organizations) is completely untouched. That revenue does not compete on Amazon search results and it does not care what Temu is doing.

Those customers stay because of the customer service, the attention to detail, and the years of trust Jerry has built. Temu has no way to enter that market. Every US ecommerce brand needs some version of that non-search, non-price-competitive revenue stream.

How Temu compares to a US ecommerce brand on the same t-shirt

The math does not work for a US commodity seller. It works fine for a brand whose customer does not shop on price.

What US sellers should actually do about Temu right now

Three concrete moves. Do the ones that fit your business.

First, get out of pure commodity plays. If you are selling a generic product with no brand, no design IP, and no customer loyalty, you are not competing with Temu on that product long term. Reposition into a defensible niche or add a real emotional angle to your marketing.

Second, build a non-search revenue stream. B2B custom orders, subscription boxes, wholesale relationships, community-driven direct sales. Any revenue that does not require you to win an Amazon search result at the lowest price is revenue Temu cannot touch.

Third, engage on policy. If the de minimis loophole feels unfair, write your congressional representative. There are active bipartisan proposals to close it. If forced-labor sourcing bothers you as a consumer, do not buy from Temu. Real consumer pressure is one of the few things that moves this fast.

Frequently asked questions

Is Temu really killing US ecommerce businesses?

Temu is hurting US ecommerce businesses that sell commodity, unbranded, low-price products (especially apparel, where the entire Amazon apparel category is down roughly 30% year over year). It is not meaningfully hurting brands with a real emotional value proposition or a relationship-driven customer base. If your only pitch is “cheaper,” you are exposed. If your customer buys you for a reason beyond price, you are largely fine.

How does Temu sell products so cheap?

Temu sells products cheap for three reasons stacked on top of each other. Its parent company (PDD Holdings) is subsidizing an estimated $30 loss per order to buy US market share. It benefits from dramatically lower Chinese labor costs, some of which allegedly involves forced labor from Xinjiang. And it uses the US de minimis loophole to import products duty-free by shipping direct to individual consumers under the $800 per-shipment threshold.

What is the de minimis loophole?

The de minimis loophole is a US customs rule that lets any single shipment valued under $800 enter the country duty-free, with no tariffs or import taxes. Temu ships every product direct from Chinese factories to individual US consumers, so every order qualifies. US brands that import inventory in bulk pay full duty on the container.

Which ecommerce categories are safest from Temu?

Categories that require trust, expertise, customization, safety certification, or a strong emotional connection are safest. Custom B2B printing, high-touch subscription products, premium branded goods with real ad creative (like True Classic Tees or Dr. Squatch), specialty food and beverage, health and supplement brands, and any category where consumers vet the seller before buying. Generic apparel, generic accessories, and generic household goods are the most exposed.

Will Temu keep losing hundreds of millions per year?

Temu will not lose money at this scale forever. The playbook (borrowed from Amazon and PDD’s own Chinese subsidiary Pinduoduo) is to subsidize into household-name status, then raise prices. It could be disrupted early if the US closes the de minimis loophole, if regulators act on data-privacy or Xinjiang-sourcing concerns, or if Chinese suppliers keep leaving faster than Temu can replace them.

Should I be worried about Temu if I run a niche Shopify brand?

If you have real brand equity, emotional ad creative, and a customer who buys you for a reason beyond price, you should not be worried about Temu. Watch your Amazon revenue for the same category compression that hit apparel, and make sure you are not one policy change away from losing your entire business. Build a second revenue stream (custom, B2B, subscription, community) that does not depend on winning search results at the lowest price.

Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?

If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.

In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!

Podcast: Download (Duration: 46:11 — 52.9MB)

The most profitable way to sell on Etsy today is print on demand, using the same launch playbook that works on Amazon: a heavily discounted launch price, Etsy ads to force sales velocity, and an email list you own so you can hit the same customer at every Q4 holiday. Print on demand blanket-style products routinely sell for 79 to 89 dollars with roughly 40 percent margins, and around 80 percent of a typical Etsy seller’s annual revenue lands between November and December.

In this episode of the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, I sit down with Scott Voelker of Brand Creators, one of the original Amazon podcasters, whose wife Debbie now runs a thriving print on demand Etsy shop that Scott helps market. Scott has interviewed the number-one jewelry seller on Etsy (over 2 million sales) and reviewed dozens of six and seven figure shops, so the numbers and tactics below are pulled directly from what he sees working.

Here is the full playbook: what to sell, how to rank a new listing, how Etsy ads actually work, and how to squeeze the most repeat revenue out of the email tools Etsy quietly added in 2023.

Key takeaways

• Etsy has roughly 7.5 million sellers and 95 to 100 million buyers, and it is dominated by gift-giving, so around 80 percent of most sellers’ annual revenue lands in Q4.
• Print on demand (sweatshirts, pillows, flags, ornaments, blankets) counts as handmade on Etsy as long as you design the artwork yourself. Blankets sell for 79 to 89 dollars with about 40 percent margins.
• The launch formula is Amazon-style: launch the listing, discount 40 percent for a week, run Etsy ads at 25 dollars a day, email your list, and force sales velocity so the algorithm ranks you.
• Etsy ads have almost no knobs. You pick listings and a daily budget. The real value is using the search-term report to add negative keywords and see which queries actually convert.
• Since September 6, 2023, Etsy’s Share and Save program refunds 4 percent of your Etsy fees on any sale you drive yourself with your own traffic.
• Etsy now lets you email customers legally with integrations like AWeber and Everbee. You get consent through the order-status flow, then own the subscriber and can export the list any time.
• Canva Pro (not Photoshop) plus Creative Fabrica for fonts and elements, and the occasional Fiverr designer, is the entire design stack Debbie uses.

How big is Etsy in 2024 and how much can a print on demand shop make?

Etsy has around 7.5 million sellers and 95 to 100 million active buyers, which is roughly a thousand times smaller than Amazon on the seller side but still a massive gift-focused marketplace where six and seven figure shops are common. Scott interviewed the number-one Etsy jewelry seller who has done over 2 million sales, largely on Etsy alone until adding Shopify in 2021, and now employs about 30 people.

For print on demand specifically, Scott estimates his wife Debbie’s shop could scale to seven figures if they pushed it, and they intentionally cap it because they prefer the lifestyle. A typical benchmark he shared: a first serious Q4 for a new shop can land in the 20,000 to 30,000 dollar range, with veteran million-dollar sellers doing 400,000 to 500,000 dollars in November alone.

The catch on revenue potential is customer support. Print on demand almost always includes personalization (dates, names, monograms), which means real customers with real mistakes and real refund requests. Even with a third-party printer like Printify, you cannot run this fully unattended.

Why Etsy is still an “untapped” marketing channel

Scott’s core argument is that most Etsy sellers do not do any external marketing. They list products, hope the search algorithm favors them, and never build an email list, run ads, or drive outside traffic. Anyone applying standard Amazon or Shopify marketing tactics on Etsy has an enormous edge.

That is why Scott shifted his teaching focus from Amazon to Etsy at Brand Creators. The playbook is nearly identical to what worked on Amazon in the early days, and almost nobody on Etsy is doing it.

What can you actually sell on Etsy with print on demand?

Print on demand on Etsy means sweatshirts, t-shirts, pillows, garden and yard flags, stockings, ornaments, and blankets, all counted as “handmade” so long as you design the artwork yourself. Etsy is actively cracking down on true dropshipping (reselling generic products with no design work), but print on demand where you own the design is fully allowed.

Blankets are one of the strongest categories Scott flagged. A fleece-style blanket with a full one-side print can sell for 79 to 89 dollars with about 40 percent margins, and the listing costs 20 cents for three months whether or not it sells. That is essentially free shelf space with high-ticket upside.

The other reason print on demand fits Etsy so well is that one design multiplies into five products. The same artwork gets loaded onto a pillow, a flag, a blanket, a shirt, and a mug, so a single day of Debbie’s design work spawns a week of listings.

How do you rank a new print on demand listing on Etsy?

You rank a new Etsy listing by forcing sales velocity in the first week, using the same launch tactic that used to work on Amazon: launch at a 40 percent discount, run Etsy ads at 25 dollars a day, email your list to hit the discount, and let the sales spike train Etsy’s algorithm to promote your listing organically. Etsy, like every marketplace, promotes what is already selling.

The mistake Scott sees most new sellers make is “list it and pray.” A perfect SEO title with zero sales history will lose to a mediocre listing with 50 sales in a week, every time. If 50 nearly identical listings exist for the same product, sales velocity is the tiebreaker Etsy actually uses.

Reviews compound on top of that spike. Discounted launch buyers leave reviews, reviews raise conversion rate on future traffic, and higher conversion rate feeds back into the algorithm, all from one aggressive launch week.

Keyword research: use the top-selling listing, not just the tool

Everbee (the Chrome extension for Etsy) is the standard keyword and tag tool, but Scott treats its search-volume numbers as guesses, not truth. His actual research move is to look at the products already selling for the term he wants to rank for, then reverse-engineer their titles and tags.

Everbee can expose a competitor’s 13 backend tags, so you see the exact phrases that are driving sales for the top listing. That is far higher signal than any keyword volume estimate.

One live example he shared: a student was crushing a rustic-wood Christmas Advent sign on TikTok but selling nothing on Etsy. The fix was adding “farmhouse Christmas decoration” to the title, because “farmhouse” is a high-volume Etsy term and her existing title had missed it.

How do Etsy ads work compared to Amazon sponsored ads?

Etsy ads are dramatically simpler than Amazon PPC: you pick which listings to promote and set a daily budget (Scott runs around 25 dollars a day), and that is essentially every control you get. You cannot bid on specific keywords, you cannot exclude products, and you cannot set placement rules.

The one lever you do have is negative keywords on the back end. Etsy shows you which search terms drove clicks to your listing, and you can turn off any query that is irrelevant. For a rustic Christmas sign, that meant killing the generic term “wood” and keeping only Christmas-specific queries.

The reporting is intentionally limited. You see impressions, clicks, orders, and revenue, but Etsy does not deduct your product cost from ROAS.

A reported 15 percent ROAS looks good until you subtract product cost and shipping and realize you broke even. Do that math yourself before you scale spend.

Why running Etsy ads may boost organic rankings too

Scott’s hunch, which matches what many Etsy sellers report, is that running Etsy ads gives you a small organic lift. The reasoning is that Etsy interprets ad spend as “this is a real, serious business,” and rewards it with a nudge on the organic side. There is no confirmation from Etsy, but the correlation is consistent enough that Scott treats ads as both a sales channel and a ranking signal.

How to use Etsy’s built-in email offers to lift conversion

Etsy has three built-in coupon triggers that email buyers on your behalf, using the shopper’s real Etsy inbox and requiring zero email address collection: a “favorited an item” coupon, an “abandoned cart” coupon, and a “post-purchase thank you” coupon. All three are configured inside your Etsy shop and cost nothing to run.

The favorites and cart triggers require a coupon (Scott tested 5 percent, then bumped it to 10 percent because the higher discount converted better). The post-purchase thank-you coupon commonly runs at 20 percent to seed a second order. Etsy reports how many emails were sent and how many sales converted, so you can see exact ROI.

The 90-day retroactive email trick most sellers miss

There is a hidden option most Etsy sellers do not know about: if you turn off a coupon trigger and then turn it back on with a new discount, Etsy will ask if you want to send the new offer to customers from the previous 90 days who favorited or cart-added but did not buy. That is a free retroactive campaign to a warm, product-specific list.

Scott plans to use this every year right after the holidays: raise the favorites coupon from 5 percent to 10 percent, then flip the retroactive box and hit 90 days of Q4 window-shoppers at once.

How to legally collect Etsy customer emails and own the list

Etsy explicitly allows you to email customers about their orders, and you can use those order emails to invite them to opt in to a VIP list you own. AWeber has been the official Etsy email integration for years, and Everbee Email launched in 2023 as a more modern one-click alternative built for Etsy shops.

The compliant flow is: order confirmation email includes a “join our VIP club for early access to new designs” link, the buyer double opts in, and now they are a real email subscriber you control. From there you can export the list to ConvertKit, Klaviyo, or any provider, or keep them in Everbee and email straight from there.

Everbee also pulls your product catalog into the footer of order emails so you can cross-sell your best sellers on every shipping notification. That single addition is a free lift on your average order value.

Etsy Share and Save: the 4 percent fee refund most sellers miss

On September 6, 2023, Etsy launched the Share and Save program, which refunds 4 percent of your Etsy transaction fees on any sale you drive with your own traffic (email, social, blog, ads). Scott ran a case study in October and generated roughly 3,100 dollars from email, which returned about 140 to 150 dollars in fee refunds on top of the sale, essentially free profit for traffic he was already sending.

The signal from Etsy is clear: they want you driving external traffic, and they are willing to pay you to do it. Combine Share and Save with an email list you own and every campaign has an extra 4 percent margin baked in.

How Debbie designs 5 products from 1 idea using Canva

The entire design stack for Debbie’s shop is Canva Pro plus Creative Fabrica for fonts and design elements, with occasional custom illustration work bought on Fiverr. Scott (a longtime Photoshop user) has fully retired Photoshop from his current laptop, because Canva handles every print on demand design job faster.

Cadence matters more than tool choice. Heading into Q4, Debbie pushes roughly one new design per day, and each design gets deployed across five products (pillow, flag, blanket, shirt, mug), so one design day equals five new listings. That output level is what stocks the shop for gift-buying traffic.

Themes rotate seasonally: Christmas heavy from October through December, then Easter and spring in February and March, Mother’s and Father’s Day into May and June, and fall and Halloween from August. The catalog compounds, so evergreen designs (a well-selling Christmas sign) still sell in July when the algorithm surfaces them to gift shoppers.

Do you need AI for Etsy print on demand designs?

Not really, yet. Debbie has experimented with AI art tools and has not found them essential for the personalization-heavy designs she sells. For SVG-driven categories (die-cut signs, layered vinyl) Creative Fabrica still wins on both price and license clarity.

That said, AI is worth testing for on-demand concept ideation and for generating backgrounds and textures. It is a supplement to Canva, not a replacement for the design taste that makes a shop sell.

The step by step launch playbook for a new Etsy print on demand product

Here is the compressed version of Scott’s launch playbook for a new print on demand listing, in the order to execute it.

1. Design the artwork in Canva Pro. Deploy the same design across five product formats (shirt, pillow, flag, blanket, mug).
2. Research the top-selling competing listing with Everbee. Copy the title structure and back-end tags that are actually driving sales.
3. Set the launch price 40 percent below the intended price, and label it as a launch special in the listing copy.
4. Turn on Etsy ads for the new listings at roughly 25 dollars per day, split across the five formats.
5. Email your list on day one with the discount and a hard deadline (this week only).
6. Turn on all three Etsy built-in coupon triggers (favorites at 10 percent, cart-abandon at 15 percent, thank-you at 20 percent).
7. After 7 days, raise the price to full retail. The listing should now have enough reviews and sales velocity for organic traffic to take over.
8. Once orders start flowing, use the order-status email flow to invite buyers to your VIP email list. Own that list going forward.

Frequently asked questions

Is print on demand allowed on Etsy in 2024?

Yes, print on demand is allowed on Etsy as long as you are the designer of the artwork applied to the product. Etsy is cracking down on generic dropshipping (reselling unmodified third-party products), but original designs printed by a third-party fulfiller like Printify count as handmade under Etsy’s rules.

How much can you make on Etsy with print on demand?

Print on demand Etsy shops routinely do six figures a year, and the top of the market is well into seven figures. Scott’s wife’s shop hit 20,000 to 30,000 dollars in her first serious Q4, and Scott interviewed one seller doing 400,000 to 500,000 dollars in November alone.

How much do Etsy ads cost and are they worth it?

Etsy ads are usually run at a fixed daily budget (25 dollars a day is a common starting point), and cost per click is typically much lower than Amazon sponsored ads. They are worth running mainly for the sales velocity and search-term data, since the reporting does not deduct product cost from ROAS and you must do that math yourself.

What is Etsy’s Share and Save program?

Etsy’s Share and Save program, launched September 6, 2023, refunds 4 percent of your Etsy transaction fees on any sale you drive with your own outside traffic. Every email, ad, or social post you send that results in a sale earns you a 4 percent fee credit, effectively boosting margin on all self-driven sales.

Can you legally collect Etsy customer emails?

Yes, Etsy allows you to email customers about their order and to invite them to opt in to a separate marketing list, as long as buyers give explicit double-opt-in consent. Integrations like AWeber and Everbee Email automate the opt-in flow and let you export the list to any email provider.

What is the best design tool for Etsy print on demand?

Canva Pro is the most common design tool for Etsy print on demand sellers today, and it has replaced Photoshop for most everyday design work. Sellers often pair it with Creative Fabrica for fonts and design elements, and occasionally hire custom illustrations on Fiverr.

Why does Q4 dominate Etsy sales so much?

Etsy is fundamentally a gift-buying marketplace, so roughly 80 percent of an average seller’s annual revenue lands in November and December. Weddings, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and other gift-heavy holidays make up most of the remaining seasonality.

Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?

If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.

In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!