Hey, it’s great to have you.
There’s so much going on right now - an intense time!
I’m trying to focus my efforts on three areas:
Experimenting with e-commerce
Creating content on consumer tech strategy
Improving my Chinese
To make room for doing all of this at the same time, I’ve carved out a chuck of my day for each; hopefully I’ll be able to continue chugging away at every work session without distraction nor efficiency loss from switching tasks.
I’m doing all of this at once as a form of diversification and a way to take advantage of utility.
Doing even something is better than doing nothing.
Starting some new things now to set the stage for what’s next.
In This Letter:
Essay - Made Some Dough
Lastly, I finally fixed the SSL certificate on my site - now it’s back up and running.
I also updated the homepage to give a quick summary of what I’m about.
Let me know what you think about the newly redesigned leolu.info.
Essay #6: Made Some Dough
I turned some yeast into dough. Now it’s time to bake a bread out of it.
Wanted to make a pun about dough since my new store did make money, but I still have a long way to go (tell me if you liked the pun)…
Taking the learnings from playing around with Facebook ads, I built another store by finding a new product to sell and locating a supplier, creating the storefront on Shopify, and running ads on Facebook to promote the goods.
Here’s it looked like:
In the above, I broke down the whole process of selling something online into three stages of ideation, production, and promotion.
Ultimately, I was positively surprised that the store I created could make money… I was selling a pretty random product with thin margins, selling it on an online storefront crudely pieced together.
Some of my ads even had decent engagement:
But this was a valuable learning experience - it’s easy to throw a bunch of things together and call it a day; it’s another to have everything tight, smooth, seamless.
Now onto the next store, this time focusing on conversions.
Facebook seems to do a good job at getting people to click on your site. But once your audience is there, it’s up to you to get them to buy.
Zebra IQ’s 2020 State of Gen Z Report
Zebra IQ, a research and community tech company, published a 100+ page report on Gen Z, covering their behavior, trends in social media, and up-and-coming companies.
I combed through the entire presentation - click through it if you find this interesting:
Creators are working together to make content; look at collab houses
Influencers are becoming brands and selling their own goods to their audiences
The next wave of social will be in the areas of e-sports and audio
Personally, I only use Instagram and Tik Tok for my e-commerce purposes so I’m very out of touch with what’s going on with Gen Z (I made sure to put my summary before posting this snippet).
However, I don’t mind. I personally gain more from using less social media.
What I do find interesting is Zebra IQ’s upcoming software offering, allowing creators to run their own communities. This puts them in competition with companies such as Discourse and Mighty Networks; the kicker though is that Zebra IQ has the insights and network that could give them the edge for Gen Z.
How to build and maintain communities
Twitter intellectual Visakan Veerasamy writes about just this topic, while sprinkling in a bunch of thoughts that relate to life in general.
I found his idea of a "safe space" that is nourishing and NOT coddling fascinating. By limiting a group to only "insiders", or those who have similar experiences, it automatically sets context.
This creates venues for discussions, akin to what he cites as "going someplace where we can talk" - something we can all relate to.
Thus, this is not censorship and, with members living and taking action in the real world, also not an echo chamber.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading! Have any thoughts to share? Comment on the post!
Find me at leolu.info or on Twitter.
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