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Podcasts about business and stuff.
G'Day. It's Austin. And in this video, I wanna break down what I would do if I had to start again to get to 10 k a month ASAP. Bit of backstory, I was from Adelaide, South Australia. I'm 24 years old, over the past four years of building online businesses, I made over 25 mil online and millions and millions in profit, and I wanna share with you the exact way I'd go if you stripped everything away.
Austin:On the results that I have, the businesses that I have, if I had to go back to day one, what would I do to get to 10 k a month in profit ASAP? And I've tried a bunch of different online business models. Let's start there. I've tried building an agency. I've tried drop shipping.
Austin:I've tried affiliate marketing. I've tried selling a service locally as a freelancer. I've tried a bunch of different models and the one that has given me the most financial freedom is building e commerce stores, but not just traditional e commerce stores, the way I call them, the way I do it is called building a customer first brand, which is different from traditional ecom and drop shipping. And so if I had to start from scratch and I had to go back, back to where I was four years ago, armed with the knowledge that I have now, but nothing else, this is how I would do it from start to finish. And I'm just gonna preface by saying, look, let's say I start with a couple hundred dollars to my name.
Austin:Starting with absolutely zero, the first thing I do is go and work a job so I can get a bit of cash so that I can actually invest in a business model so I can start it. So let's say you're watching this, you wanna get to 10 k a month ASAP as soon as humanly possible using e commerce, which is the model I think is the best way to get there, and then also the most sustainable way to build wealth long term and build a business that continues to give you financial freedom. So let's say you have a couple hundred dollars to start with. The first step is we need to find a product to sell. Now if I was going back in time, armed with the knowledge that I have now, it would make product research so much easier.
Austin:I had 13 failed products in e commerce before I found one that actually had some real scaling potential and actually went on to give me my first one k day, two k, eight k, 14 k and then beyond that as well. You know, hitting consistent 25, 30 k, even a day where I hit $126,000 in sales. It all started with one product. So before I talk about the exact research method I would use to find a winning product that has the ability to scale and get you to $330 a day in profit, which will put you on track for 10 ks a month or just under. Before we get into that, we need to clarify what are we looking for in a winning product?
Austin:And these are the things I've learned after doing over 13,000,000 with e comm specifically, after coaching over 25,000 people on how to start an online e commerce business. These are the six characteristics that I've found in any product that does well or has potential to do really well. So let's go through those first. The first thing is we need to find a product that solves a high value problem or insecurity for the customer. High value problem or insecurity for the customer.
Austin:This is straight away setting it completely different from traditional drop shipping and what people are looking for. A lot of drop shippers will just look for trending products, ones that are just going viral and they don't care if it actually has utility and longevity. Now I know this video is about making 10 a month as soon as possible, but beyond that we want to have a business that doesn't crash and burn after the first month. We want it to not only make us 10 ks a month now, for every single month moving forward and get better with time. We want a business that's like a fine wine, that's gonna get better with age, it's going to mature and get even better results and continue to be as profitable for us, if not more profitable over time.
Austin:And that starts by focusing on selling a product initially that solves a problem. That is actually a problem solver. And a lot of people throw that around and say you need to solve a problem. But we need to find a product that actually solves something for the customer. Think about something that makes their life easier by removing an inconvenience, it solves that problem.
Austin:Think about a product that genuinely relieves them of that problem to begin with. And so we need to find when we're looking at products, we need to find one that solves a high value problem or insecurity for your customer. Now if I think about the products that have made me the most money over the past four years of building e commerce stores, it's been the problem angle versus the insecurity. Now that's not to say you couldn't find products that are incredible for that insecurity angle, which may be more appearance based, skin based things like that. I've seen a lot of beauty related products do really well when it comes to that, because it's about reducing acne or about improving the complexion of your skin.
Austin:And so by doing that and selling a product that focuses on those problems, yeah maybe it's relieving more of an insecurity, but it's still at the core, it's a problem. You know, poor quality skin or something like that or no confidence in your appearance. That's the first thing. The second thing is we need to find a product that is trending and going viral right now. And the reason why is because when we wanna get to 10 ks a month ASAP, we're not looking at how to build a multi hundred million dollar brand.
Austin:We're not looking at how to build something incredibly massive. With that probably requires a degree of innovation, requires you to create something new that's never been done before. But to get to 10 k a month in profit and give yourself financial freedom and create an online income for yourself that can replace your day job or just at least give you the flexibility when it comes to money. Maybe it's not 10 ks a month, maybe it's a little bit less, but to do that, we just wanna piggyback on something that is already working and selling well. And all of the best products that I've launched have already been sold elsewhere.
Austin:And so we're looking at products that are already selling in the market that people have validated for us. They've spent their own money to figure out that they sell well, we're gonna come in, we're gonna do it better or if not just a little bit better. And then that's how we're gonna get to 10 a month in profit. That's number two. You wanna find a product that is going trending or is viral right now.
Austin:And the research method that we'll actually use when it comes time for that. And the one that I really recommend relies on that heavily. So that's baked into the research process. Number three, it needs to have room for improvement. And so when you're looking and you're finding these different products using the research method, and you start looking at the competitors, you're looking at stores that are already selling that product, you wanna see is there any room for improvement?
Austin:Is it a pretty garbage store? Are they talking or speaking in the language that a customer would appeal to? Do they look like they're actually selling the product well? And you can tell that by looking at the number of reviews they have, how their product page looks, does it look scammy or does it look legit? Their branding, all those things, do it look like a legitimate brand?
Austin:You need to look at is there a bit of room for improvement? Because if your market is completely saturated with all these different sellers and they're all doing an amazing job and the product pages are beautifully laid out and so many reviews and all those things. Look, there still might be a gap for you in that market just to get 10 k a month worth of profit out of that product, but we wanna look for some improvement there. We wanna try and make it better than what everyone else is doing even by a little bit. The fourth thing is we need to have a strong profit margin.
Austin:And so regardless of how good you are at selling a product, and if you're watching this video, you're probably starting out. And so we wanna make it easier for our self. I love the example with all of these principles that you really wanna stack the deck in your favor. And so when you go to a casino, they're doing everything they can to make sure that they come out on top. And so we wanna do the same when we're selecting a product.
Austin:We wanna look for one that has a strong margin from the get go because Facebook ads, even though that's not gonna be the method that I'm gonna tell you to use later on, look, there's costs that are involved with getting our product out there and getting sales. So we need to have enough margin in there. Now I like to apply my three x profit markup rule. And so whatever you can get the product for from AliExpress or from eBay in the country that you're selling to, you wanna times that by three and that will be your sales price. So that gives you plenty of margin to play with, and the only exception to that rule is when your product price is very high.
Austin:So if you had a 2.5 x markup and your product price was still really high, the amount of profit you'd make per order would still be worthwhile. And so you can justify going down to as little as a 2.5 x markup, if you're gonna be making anywhere from 60 to $80 profit per order, then I'd say it's okay to be a little bit below that three x markup rule. But number four, we need to have strong profit margin. Number five, it needs to pass the BS test. And look, I don't know, I think maybe as an Australian, I just have a really good BS radar anyway.
Austin:You can tell if something's legit or not, but you need to look at the product, you need to say, look, if it's promising things and it's promising these results and all that, is it actually gonna deliver? Is it gonna pass the BS test? Because it doesn't matter going through all this effort of product research and building a store and all these things, if it just doesn't do what it says it's gonna do. And then product characteristic number six, is it must be able to be advertised. This is the easiest one of all of them.
Austin:You just need to make sure that it doesn't violate any policies when it comes to marketing or using these social media platforms to get sales. It's the last piece of the puzzle. So I'm with those six winning characteristics. Then now when we look at how to find these products, you can run it through the lens of all of those. Does it meet those characteristics?
Austin:Now it may not meet all of them, but it meets most and so that's very important. And the more that it can meet the higher chance of success that it will have. Now when it comes time to find winning products, the one method that I really like to use is using a tool called Minea. And the reason I like Minea or any ad tool, product research tool that is based off of winning ads, is because it's showing you the winning ads that are already been run on Facebook and Instagram or TikTok. And so you don't have to go searching for these.
Austin:They're just presenting them to you and you can filter it by looking at the ads with the most engagement, the most likes, the most comments, all that kind of stuff. And so we're looking for products in there because this validates the trending and going viral characteristic that we talked about before. It shows that the product is already getting sales. And instead of trying to reinvent the wheel and find a new product that no one else is selling, we're just choosing a product that is already selling and just getting a slice of that pie, a little slice of that pie, so we can get to 10 ks a month in profit ASAP. And so using a tool like Mania, we're then gonna look for winning ads that are being run on Facebook and Instagram.
Austin:And we're gonna start there. And you're gonna look through. Now look, this process may take some time. If everyone could find a winning product in thirty seconds, everyone would be rich. And that's just not how it works, but the juice is worth the squeeze.
Austin:And so spending the time looking for these products is gonna pay dividends. And so spend the time on it. If you feel like it's taking you a while, that's okay, that's natural, that's what it should feel like. And so look for that product and use a tool like Mynia to find it. There are a few alternative methods that I've seen work really well, and then I've used myself.
Austin:You can go into Facebook ad library. This is a full database of all of the advertising that is being run across Facebook and Instagram. And you can simply go on here and search a keyword that most e commerce brands and stores and even drop shipping stores would use in their advertising, something like shop now, something like free worldwide shipping, something like Afterpay available or Klarna available, different keywords like that will show you all of those ads. You may need to filter through it a little bit more. That's one of the benefits of a tool like Minier is that you can just get to the good stuff a little bit faster, but if you don't want to do that, you can just go on Facebook ad library and find products like that.
Austin:So now that we have our product, the next step is to build our store. This Shopify store obviously is where we're going to put the product on and it's the thing that will market customers to get sales. And so to create a Shopify store, it's very simple. I've actually put a full course video on my channel, so you can watch that from start to finish. It's like a six and a half hour YouTube video that shows you through absolutely everything.
Austin:And it's not just the store building part that it shows you, it shows you everything from start to finish. So if you wanna know how to build a store, watch that video. If you wanna know how to find a product before that, watch that video and actually walk you through everything from start to finish. Screenshare walk through step by step exactly what to do. So you're gonna build a Shopify store.
Austin:Now the key part here is that it's gonna be branded and trustworthy. Spend a bit of time creating a great logo, a bit of branding that will separate you from just a trashy drop shipping store. Now this is one of the core elements of building a customer first brand is selling a product that people actually need, but also selling it on a branded and trustworthy Shopify store. Now most people just think they need a winning product, they can slap it on this basic Shopify store, and that the money is just gonna come pouring in. And it just doesn't work like that.
Austin:Maybe it did work like that ages ago when drop shipping was in its infancy, but it's just not the case now. Customers are aware of what's going on. They know, and they're looking at these stores through the lens of can I trust this store? And by investing a bit of time, not money, just time into creating some great branding using Canva. Again, in that six hour course video, I walk you through exactly how to do that and I give you templates for it.
Austin:So go and check that out if want step by step guide. Now after we've done that, this is where it's gonna be a little bit different. You got two options. I'll give you two paths here, choose your own adventure. I used to read those books as a kid.
Austin:I love how you could choose your own adventure. Which way do you wanna go? You got two pathways. The first pathway is the super low budget way. Still gonna require some capital, but not as much as the other one.
Austin:This way is where we use a method called product seeding. And so we've got our product, our winning product. We found a supplier for it. So we need to look on either eBay in the country we're selling to or AliExpress and find someone that actually sells that product so we can send it to customers when we get orders. We built our store, and so we've got a branded and trustworthy Shopify store that is ready to start selling.
Austin:Now we can either use paid means to get sales by running Facebook ads, it's my recommended method to get sales, or we can use the product seeding framework. And so this method involves finding micro influencers in your niche. You're looking for people that are creating content for the audience that would likely buy your product. And what we're gonna do is we're just gonna reach out to them with a simple DM and say, hey, I'd love to send you and then you insert your product name. That's it.
Austin:Maybe a little sparkle emoji at the end. And what that does is that that sparks this huge amount of curiosity because they're like, oh, they just wanna send me something for free. Normally, normally when brands pitch influencers on some kind of engagement, creating content for them, whether it's free or paid, they'll lead with this really long message. And straight away, you're like, I don't wanna read that. You know, for most micro influencers, they get bombarded with that.
Austin:They just don't wanna see it. So we just wanna start by saying, hey, I wanna send you this. That's it. And then you're gonna have such a high percentage of people that get back to you. So that's part one.
Austin:We're gonna do that initial message to start the conversation. The second part of it is once they've confirmed that they want our product is we'll ask them for their shipping address and we'll say, look, in return, would you be happy to shoot some content with the product? And of course, because they're a content creator, they're gonna be more than happy to do that. And so now we'll then send the product out. We'll purchase it from our supplier so we get the best pricing available.
Austin:We just send that product straight out to the content creator and in exchange within a seven to ten day window, sometimes faster, some content creators work quickly. For this campaign, which we've just given them the product for, no additional payment, they might shoot a couple of photos, they might actually create a reel for it, all of this stuff. You're now getting this incredible marketing content that you can use. And all it's cost you, all it's cost you instead of having to pay UGC content creators, instead of having to work with an agency to get content, like I've been there, I used to run a creative agency where we would make UGC for e commerce brands. And it was expensive.
Austin:Like we would charge clients thousands of dollars just to make that content because there's a lot that went into it. But when you do this product seeding strategy, you can get content cheaply for the cost of your product. And so some content will be rubbish, but the whole point here is that we vet those micro influencers before we look at their content. What's on their feed? What stuff looks good?
Austin:And so then we know when we send them the product, we're likely gonna get some good stuff in return. And when these micro influencers have got the product, they're creating the content, they're about to share it, just before that, you wanna make sure you give them the link to your website and say, hey, if you're gonna talk about this in your story or post about it, I love if you share this link. The way you can frame it is saying look if you can generate a lot of sales through your posting, then we can look at a better arrangement here. Some kind of affiliate deal where you can get a percentage of all the sales generated. If you want to guarantee that they say yes, then you could just pitch them the affiliate deal straight away and say look for every sale that is generated through your link and you can create one of those unique discount codes and links in Shopify directly, very straightforward.
Austin:You could say that they get a percentage of all the sales generated through that. So instead of you having to pay for advertising, having pay for Facebook ads, Google ads, TikTok ads, you have now just paid the price of the product to get content and also promotion from a micro influencer. And they'll be happy that you came to them because they get create more content, they now have a percentage of sales that they can generate, which might only be a few, but this is how you get your initial sales so profitably, is by using this product seeding strategy. Now I told you that there are two pathways here. The second pathway is that you could just run ads straight away.
Austin:Now within that, you're gonna need creative to actually run these ads. So you can use the product seeding strategy to get content first, and then use that to running your paid ads. It's a great strategy to use, very cheap, very cost effective. Or you can just use content that is already available online. Now in my six and a half hour course video, I show you exactly how to do that as well.
Austin:Step by step, How to find content that's already online for the products you're gonna sell, and then how to piece that together into your own custom video ad that you can use to launch your Facebook ads with. And I also show you in that video, how to launch the campaign from start to finish. Creating the video ad, setting up the campaign, getting a pixel installed, like everything that goes into it, so that you can go from having no idea how to run ads to actually publishing your first campaign. And the last part is just sticking with it now until you get to 10 a month as soon as possible. Now, you wanna get there as fast as humanly possible, then what you would do is you'd use product seeding to get all the content, and then they will generate some sales organically from their promotion, but you're gonna get the content, and then you can launch your ad campaign on a low budget, but that will allow you to accelerate the results.
Austin:And to get to 10 k a month in profit, we just need $333 a day in profit. If we can do that, then we get to 10 k a month in profit. And so use a tool like Triple Whale. It's a free app that you can install on your Shopify store. In there, you enter in all of your expenses and it will show you your daily sales as well as your daily profit.
Austin:So it calculates it all for you. And so as long as that number is at $3.33 a day, then you know that you're on track for 10 ks a month in profit. Now I know I've just walked through a lot there, a lot of different elements to the strategy and a lot of different pieces that you sort of need to go away and get information for. But if you want everything laid out in one single video, I've made a six and a half hour course video, which is literally one video from start to finish that will show you how to do absolutely everything that I've talked about in this video and go from absolute beginner to getting your first sale with Shopify ecommerce. And so if you wanna watch that, I'll link it in this video as well at the end.
Austin:And so you can click on that and watch everything from start to finish, no opt ins, no funny business, it'll just show you how to do everything. So I hope you've enjoyed this video, I'll see you in the next one.