0:02 Your print on demand store is bleeding
0:05 money. And the worst part is you're the
0:06 one causing it. Because whether you
0:09 realize it or not, you're already making
0:12 at least one stupidly expensive mistake.
0:14 Now, I just reviewed 50 stores for my
0:16 community and every single one of them
0:19 was leaking money in the exact same ways
0:21 that I did before ever scaling past
0:24 seven figures. And here's the trap.
0:26 These mistakes feel like the right move.
0:28 They make you believe that you're
0:30 setting yourself up for success when in
0:32 reality, they're the reason most sellers
0:35 quit before they ever see traction.
0:37 That's why in this video, I'm going to
0:39 break down the five stupidly expensive
0:41 mistakes that I've made on my own brand
0:43 and that I've seen time and time again
0:46 for those 50 stores that I reviewed in
0:47 my community. So, if you're somebody
0:50 who's interested in doing over $6,200 a
0:52 day in Shopify sales, this video is for
0:54 you. And if you're a complete beginner,
0:56 you're going to be able to avoid these
0:58 expensive mistakes and be able to keep
1:00 more profit in your pocket by avoiding
1:02 them altogether. So, let's get into it
1:04 and fix these mistakes on your store.
1:06 Let's get right into mistake number one,
1:08 which is selling unproven products
1:10 instead of what you know works. Here's
1:12 something that'll blow your mind.
1:14 According to Shopify's own research,
1:16 stores that focus on one to three core
1:19 products in their first year have a 2.3x
1:22 higher profit margin than stores that
1:25 launch with 20 plus products. Why?
1:28 Because it allows us to focus on product
1:30 lines that allow for better inventory
1:32 management, clearer brand messaging, and
1:34 stronger customer trust. When you spread
1:37 yourself thin across multiple products,
1:39 you end up diluting everything. I
1:41 learned this the hard way with my first
1:43 brand that I ever ran because it
1:45 completely tanked. Now, to kick things
1:47 off, I picked no niche, which was Strike
1:50 One. And then I started with t-shirts,
1:52 which was a great start, but I wasn't
1:54 getting sales. And instead of asking
1:57 myself, why wasn't I getting sales on my
2:00 t-shirts? I panicked. And I didn't dig
2:02 into my designs. I didn't analyze my
2:04 niche. I just thought, I need more
2:06 products. If people aren't buying my
2:08 design on a t-shirt, maybe they'll buy
2:10 it on a mug or they'll buy it on a Yeti
2:13 cup. I just thought, I need more
2:15 products. So, I took my bad designs and
2:18 I plastered them on everything. Mugs,
2:20 hoodies, phone cases, tote bags, you
2:23 name it, I slapped my terrible designs
2:26 on it. I convinced myself that if I just
2:29 add enough products, one of them would
2:30 connect with somebody. But here's the
2:32 thing, my husband Chris was selling
2:35 t-shirts. hundreds of thousands of them
2:38 every single day. I knew that t-shirts
2:40 sold. I had proof right in front of me.
2:42 But instead of sticking with the proven
2:44 product and fixing the actual problem in
2:47 my business, my designs, and my niche, I
2:49 just kept throwing money at ads for
2:51 products that had zero data on it. Now,
2:53 this mistake ended up costing me about
2:56 $2,500. I lost $1,500 on the store in
2:58 total. And even though I was making some
3:01 sales, I was pumping way more money into
3:03 ads thinking that would solve the
3:05 problem. It didn't because I was making
3:08 panic decisions instead of strategic
3:10 ones. Now, once I finally focused,
3:12 picked one product type, fixed my
3:14 designs, dialed in my niche, that is
3:17 when sales started coming in. That's
3:20 when I could actually scale. But here's
3:22 what's wild. Even when you pick the
3:24 right product, most people tank their
3:27 budget on this next mistake. Want to
3:30 know the fastest way to waste $500 and
3:32 actually make your store worse? Research
3:33 from Little Data shows that a 1-
3:35 secondond delay in page load time can
3:39 reduce conversions by 7%. Heavy, bloated
3:41 themes with unnecessary features are one
3:44 of the biggest culprits of slow site
3:47 speed. Most premium themes, they're
3:49 overloaded with features that you'll
3:51 never use. Now, don't get me wrong, they
3:53 look really impressive in the demo, but
3:55 they absolutely murder your conversion
3:58 rate, and I fell for it. Hook, line, and
4:00 sinker. Now, when I was starting out, I
4:02 thought I had to buy one of those fancy
4:04 marketplace themes, you know, the ones
4:08 that are $500, $250, beautiful demos,
4:10 all the bells and whistles. I genuinely
4:12 believed that if I invested in a high
4:14 quality theme, more people would buy for
4:18 me. So, I bought one, and that was $500
4:21 gone. Then I uploaded it into the theme
4:23 editor and realized it's stripped down
4:25 to the bare bones. It basically feels
4:28 like the free Shopify theme. I had this
4:30 idea that these magical features like
4:32 they advertised in the demo would
4:34 automatically be in the theme that I
4:37 purchased. But that wasn't it at all. I
4:39 still had to do a ton of work. I still
4:42 needed apps. And the kicker, it slowed
4:44 down my site so much that it actually
4:47 hurt my conversions. and I wasted $500
4:50 on something that made my store worse.
4:53 So, here's what I do now. I stick with
4:55 the free Shopify themes. You're going to
4:57 customize it anyways. You're going to
5:01 need apps anyways. So, save the $500 and
5:03 put it towards your marketing or design
5:05 tools that you actually need to move the
5:08 needle. Now, my site loads faster, my
5:10 conversions are higher, and I keep $500
5:12 in my pocket. Don't get me wrong,
5:14 Shopify themes are a ton of work and
5:16 it's one of the reasons why most people
5:18 don't want to start on Shopify because
5:20 the amount of work that goes into
5:22 building the theme. Now, there's no need
5:27 to spend $100, $250, $500, $1,000 on a
5:29 theme. It's absolutely not necessary,
5:31 and I want you to keep that money in
5:32 your pocket. But if you're somebody
5:34 who's sitting there and you're like,
5:36 "Well, even if I do a free theme, it's a
5:38 ton of work that I have to put into
5:40 making this theme ready to take sales."
5:42 I have a solution for you. Build my
5:44 pud.ai is going to take you through the
5:47 steps of actually creating your Shopify
5:48 store for you. It's going to set up an
5:50 account. It's going to connect a
5:51 Printify account for you. It's even
5:54 going to upload 20 designs into your
5:56 store based off of the niche that you
5:58 select in the store builder. And the
6:00 best part is it's completely free. So,
6:02 you get to keep all the money in your
6:04 pocket. And the best part is it's built
6:06 on one of Shopify's free themes. So,
6:08 it's not going to be bogged down. It's
6:09 not going to be super slow. It's going
6:12 to be one that you can rely on. It's
6:15 going to take out 95% of the setup time
6:17 because you're not going to need to
6:19 tweak and fix all these little things.
6:20 You're essentially going to need to add
6:22 your logo, make any kind of brand
6:24 changes that you want like color and
6:26 typography. And other than that, the
6:28 store is completely ready to go. So, if
6:31 you're interested in bypassing spending
6:33 money on expensive themes and bogging
6:35 down your store and spending time
6:36 setting up a Shopify theme, click the
6:38 link in the description below and get
6:40 started with buildmyod.ai
6:43 today. This alone will cut out weeks of
6:45 work and you're going to save money. But
6:47 even when we are using a free theme,
6:50 most people still kill their conversions
6:53 because of this next mistake. Mistake
6:54 number three is that you're not
6:57 optimizing your store for mobile. Now,
6:59 here's a stat that should honestly make
7:02 you check your phone right now. Mobile
7:05 devices account for 77% of all
7:08 e-commerce traffic globally. But here's
7:10 the killer part. Mobile conversion rates
7:13 are typically two to three times lower
7:16 than desktop. Not because people don't
7:18 want to buy on mobile, but because
7:20 stores aren't optimized for mobile
7:23 shopping experiences. Now, if you're
7:24 somebody who's running Facebook and
7:26 Instagram ads like myself, the majority
7:28 of our traffic is coming through mobile
7:30 because people will click one of our ads
7:32 when they're in the Facebook or
7:35 Instagram app and then try shopping on
7:37 their phone. So, if our store isn't
7:39 built for that, we're making it really
7:42 hard for them to actually buy. Now, I
7:44 made this mistake for months without
7:46 even realizing it. When you're in the
7:49 Shopify theme editor, it defaults you to
7:51 the desktop view. So, I tweaked
7:54 everything. I made it look perfect. I
7:55 checked the images. I adjusted the
7:58 layout. And then I clicked publish. And
8:00 I started running ads. And I was getting
8:02 traffic, but nobody was converting. So,
8:04 I dug into the analytics. And people
8:06 were landing on my product pages, but
8:08 people weren't adding to cart. They
8:10 weren't checking out. So, I finally
8:12 pulled out my phone and I looked at my
8:15 site and it was a disaster. My add to
8:17 cart button was buried three scrolls
8:19 down. My images were getting cut off
8:22 because they weren't optimized for
8:24 looking on your phone. It was an
8:25 absolute mess. One of the biggest
8:27 mistakes that I see is that the add
8:30 toart button gets pushed way down on the
8:32 product page and it needs to be as close
8:34 to where someone's thumb naturally sits
8:36 on their phone as possible. They
8:38 shouldn't have to scroll three different
8:41 times to finally find it. We want to
8:43 make it as easy as possible for someone
8:45 to check out. So once I optimized for
8:47 mobile and I moved that button up, fixed
8:49 the layout, made everything thumb
8:52 friendly, my conversion rate jumped,
8:55 same traffic, just way more sales. Now,
8:57 even if you nail all of this, though,
8:59 the next mistake could destroy your
9:01 long-term profitability. And that is
9:04 mistake number four, which is chasing
9:06 seasonal trends instead of building
9:08 evergreen stores. Here's something that
9:10 most people don't tell you. A study by
9:13 the Harvard Business Review found that
9:15 businesses built on evergreen products
9:18 have 4x higher customer lifetime value
9:21 than those built on seasonal trends.
9:23 Why? Because evergreen products allow
9:26 you to build a consistent customer base,
9:28 refine our marketing, and create
9:30 predictable revenue streams. Now,
9:32 seasonal trends were riding a rocket
9:36 ship up and then crashing. And I lived
9:39 this nightmare on my second store. Now,
9:41 my first store completely flopped, but I
9:42 was able to take everything that I had
9:44 learned there and put it into my next
9:46 store. And then I found a design and it
9:49 was very seasonal. This was during
9:51 summer of 2020 in the middle of COVID
9:54 during isolation. And this design that
9:57 was about like summer travel with COVID
9:59 and being isolated from everybody blew
10:02 up. It connected with people emotionally
10:05 of where they were at in 2020. And I
10:07 went from doing about $200 a day in
10:11 sales to over $25,000 a day in sales. I
10:13 thought I had figured print on demand
10:16 out. I thought I had cracked the code.
10:19 But then summer ended and my sales went
10:22 back to almost zero. I didn't have a
10:23 business anymore. It was gone. I
10:25 couldn't turn the design back on the
10:27 next summer because COVID wasn't the
10:30 same summer of 2021. And the moment had
10:33 passed. I had to start a third store
10:35 completely from scratch. And all the
10:37 momentum that I had built up was gone.
10:39 After that summer, I didn't make sales
10:41 for another probably six months. If I
10:43 had just picked a niche that was
10:45 evergreen from the beginning, I would
10:47 have had a stable growing income instead
10:50 of this roller coaster that nearly broke
10:52 me. Now, here's what I learned.
10:55 Seasonality can boost an evergreen
10:57 brand. But you can't build on
10:59 seasonality alone. When you build with
11:02 evergreen designs, your sales are going
11:05 to naturally grow slowly and steadily,
11:07 and our audience is going to compound
11:10 over time. Our work ends up stacking on
11:12 itself. And that's what I do now. My
11:14 current brand is built on an evergreen
11:17 niche. The sales are more consistent.
11:19 The growth is more predictable. And I'm
11:22 not starting over every few months. But
11:24 here's the most expensive mistake of
11:26 all, and it's the one that you can't see
11:29 until it's too late. Now, mistake number
11:31 five is not building and using your
11:34 email list from day one. Here's a stat
11:36 that honestly should terrify you. Email
11:38 marketing has an average return on
11:43 investment of $36 for every $1 spent. A 36,000%
11:45 36,000%
11:48 return. And according to Omnisend, email
11:51 drives 29% of all e-commerce sales,
11:53 making it the second highest converting
11:56 channel. translation. If you're not
11:58 building your email list from day one,
12:01 you are literally leaving 30% of your
12:04 potential revenue on the table every
12:06 single month. And I learned this lesson
12:09 the most expensive way possible. I was
12:12 collecting emails. I offered discounts
12:14 in exchange for signups, but I let those
12:17 emails just sit there. My first two
12:19 stores, those lists honestly went down
12:21 the drain. I didn't send any campaigns.
12:23 I didn't nurture those customers. I
12:26 didn't even understand how valuable they
12:28 were. I was so focused on chasing new
12:30 customers through Facebook ads that I
12:32 completely ignored the people who had
12:34 already raised their hand and said,
12:37 "Hey, I'm interested." Now, fast forward
12:40 to now. I've spent the last year
12:42 building my email list strategically and
12:44 actually using it the way that it should
12:47 be used, and it has honestly changed
12:49 everything. My email used to make up
12:52 roughly 10% of my monthly revenue, but
12:56 now it's almost 30% of every single
12:59 month. This is huge growth. I can send
13:02 an email out to a couple thousand people
13:06 and make 1,500, 2,000, heck, even $5,000
13:09 in revenue from one email. And here's
13:12 the best part. It's almost purely profit
13:14 because I'm not paying for Facebook ads
13:17 to acquire these customers. I'm just
13:19 paying for the cost of producing and
13:21 shipping them the product. This is why
13:24 the Facebook ads are too expensive
13:28 argument falls apart. Yes, ads cost
13:30 money to get somebody in the door for
13:32 the first time, but once they're on our
13:35 email list, I can market to them time
13:37 and time again for pretty much free.
13:40 This is especially huge right now in Q4
13:42 because ads are the most expensive
13:43 during the holidays because we're
13:45 competing with every brand for
13:47 attention. But if you have an email
13:50 list, you can scale while you're paying
13:52 a little bit more for the ads. It's not
13:53 going to affect our profitability as
13:56 much. Here's what you need to do. You
13:58 need to start collecting emails now.
14:01 Then we want to create a plan to stay in
14:03 conversation with those customers. You
14:04 want to send them value, send them
14:07 offers, and stay top of mind. An email
14:09 list is the difference between starting
14:12 over every month and building a real
14:15 sustainable business. Look, I made all
14:17 five of these stupidly expensive
14:19 mistakes over the years. They cost me
14:22 more money than I even want to do the
14:24 math on. Two failed stores, two years of
14:27 my life spinning my wheels. But once I
14:29 fixed them, that's when I went from
14:32 struggling to hitting six figures
14:35 consistently every month. You don't need
14:37 more traffic. You don't need a magic
14:39 product. You just need to stop bleeding
14:42 money on mistakes that you can't even
14:45 see. Now, if we fix these five mistakes,
14:47 I promise you, you will be running a
14:49 completely different business. Go build
14:51 something that actually works. And if
14:53 you're interested in grabbing that
14:55 completely free store builder that will
14:57 build your Shopify theme for you, just
14:59 click the link in the description below,
15:01 head over to buildmyput.ai, and get
15:03 started today. Other than that guys,
15:05 thanks for watching and if you enjoyed
15:06 this video, please like and subscribe to
15:08 my channel. It would absolutely mean the
