- Creator Logic
- Posts
- She doesn’t sell to her audience
She doesn’t sell to her audience
(2 min read) Avalon Warren’s 4 steps to make six-figures without selling directly to her audience.
Avi Gandhi
September 24, 2024
Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe
Some Creators can’t stand promoting to their audience. Reasons include:
They’re scared - what if the audience hates it and unfollows?
They feel fake - especially promoting products that the Creator doesn’t use or love
They feel like sellouts - believing artists shouldn’t exploit their audiences for commercial gain
I always thought, “Tough - you have to promote something if you want to make a living as a Creator.”
Then I met Avalon Warren. She’s a neurodivergent lifestyle Creator with nearly 1.4M followers across TikTok (1.1M), Instagram (238k), and YouTube (21k).
While Avalon does do brand deals, she makes a big chunk of her nearly six-figures in annual income selling products…
But not to her audience.
I don’t sell products I individually promote. They're products that I use my platform as a testing process for. I use the videos that I make as research to figure out what could be successful.
Let’s get into why and how this model works!
But first - if you make YouTube videos, you’re going to find this week’s sponsor super valuable:
.Sponsored.
Better Music, Better Content, Better Performance
Rumor has it that David Dobrik, once one of the biggest YouTubers in the world (until his fall from grace - a different story), made almost no money from his 7 billion+ YouTube views.
Why? He, a perfectionist, used popular music instead of the same royalty-free tracks everyone else uses. Though it made his videos better, all the millions of dollars he would have made were claimed by the copyright owners.
Fortunately, today there’s a music platform for Creators that lets you use popular / viral music from huge names including Dua Lipa, Justin Bieber, and other billion-stream artists.
It’s called Lickd, and it’s got 1.4 million songs in its catalog. There’s real value for YouTubers here - studies show viral music gets videos
13.5% more views
21% more Likes
51% more Comments
Since you’re actually able to monetize these tracks, that means it leads to more money in your pocket. You can test it yourself:
Avalon’s Audience-Product Research Process
1. Focus on a niche.
Avalon is a lifestyle Creator, but her focus goes one step deeper: she is autistic, and focuses on her lifestyle as a neurodivergent woman.
As a result, much of her most engaged audience is also neurodivergent women. You might think this is a small niche, but small niches can get big numbers because they are underserved:
I do a lot of content on neurodivergence and food sensitivity, like a series that was about things I eat as an autistic woman who hates eating. It was very successful, averaging a good bit over a million views per video.
Building an audience as a trusted voice within a specific niche allows her to focus on the specific needs of a small group of people when taking the next step of her process:
2. Ideate a product for that niche.
Next step is to come up with an idea for a product that serves your niche.
Avalon likes to start with product categories that already have an organic market.
I wanted to sell something that people are already searching for, like planners. People constantly buy and are searching for planners, notebooks, journals. There’s already demand for that, so you don’t have to market or advertise.
It’s also important that the products are simple to produce - ideally via a white-label, print-on-demand, or reselling platform like Amazon On Demand so you don’t have to spend a ton of time or money on product development or inventory.
If I wanted to do something scientific or really unique, that’s going to take me years to create, design, and research. It’s not something I can do right now, so for me, it’s more about branding and adding touches that I like. For example, with a journal, adding specific kinds of affirmations, transitions, colors, and formattings within the pages - minor little tweaks that are emotionally exciting or help a neurodivergent community member feel more seen.
It’s more on the spectrum of white-labeling.
3. Run the product idea by your audience (but pass The Mom Test).
Once you have an idea, you need to validate that there’s a market for it before you run off to start producing and selling it.
This is where having an audience in the niche to whom you’re selling matters. You want to create content about the product idea that generates views and engagement from the target niche in your audience.
So let's use affirmations - a journal with affirmations on every page - as an example. I’ll make a video talking about how affirmations are helpful as a neurodivergent person. My audience may respond yay or nay, and if they respond yay, they like that idea and I’ll create that journal and put it on Amazon.
Avalon doesn’t outright promote that she’s considering selling these products, largely because she doesn’t want to sell to her audience.
However, it’s actually a good idea not to mention your intention to sell even if you will eventually sell to them, because you want unfiltered feedback. If you say this is your idea for a product, your fans may say “Great idea!” even though they may not actually care. The point is to get feedback on the idea, not on you selling the idea.
(In product management, this is called The Mom Test - if you ask your mom if your idea is good, she will lie because she loves you. If you ask her if an idea is good, and she doesn’t know it’s your idea, she is more likely to give you real feedback.)
Avalon uses a simple test:
If something has over a million views, that's when I pay attention.
She averages ~200k views per TikTok, so a million views is 5x her average. If it hits that threshold, then she collects specific ideas and feedback from the comments before moving to the final step.
4. Develop and sell the product via marketplaces that you can optimize for discovery
Now it’s time to produce and sell your market-validated product!
While I’m sure there are a number of platforms that work here, Amazon is the all-in-one solution that drives most of Avalon’s business.
Amazon On Demand and Kindle Direct Publishing let you make clothing, phone cases, pillows, books, journals, and more. If you want more complex products, you can work with manufacturers on Alibaba to design and produce them, and then sell on Amazon (including inventory and shipping management) via Fulfillment by Amazon.
Avalon will put her products on Amazon, and then optimize them - the product names, descriptions, and other metadata - for the specific audience, product, and need she is targeting.
Since Amazon is a marketplace with its own search engine, if she does a good job of optimizing her listings, people in her target market end up finding and purchasing - even without her actually promoting to her audience.
Just imagine how much she (or you) would make using this process with promotion.
Poll
Did you find this article interesting or valuable? |
🚨Last call: Enter to win a FREE trip to Nashville, including flights, hotel, dining, and more. The giveaway ends on September 30th – don’t miss out.
If you found today’s article interesting or valuable, please forward this email to a friend. Our mission is to enable a million people to find freedom in the Creator Economy, and every time someone new subscribes, it gets us one step closer!
For feedback, advice, consulting, sponsorships, speaking engagements, or anything else, reach out anytime - [email protected].
If you’re not already subscribed, please do - it’s free:
See you next time!
Like what you see? Subscribe Now or Partner With Us
Written by Avi Gandhi, edited by Melody Song,
powered by TheFutureParty
Reply