I’ll say it plainly: I hate the "find a successful creator and say yes to everything they said yes to" approach to product research. Here are the three reasons why, and what I do instead.
- Reason 1: You Can’t See Why Someone Bought a Product
- Reason 2: The Opportunity Is Different for You
- Reason 3: It Wastes Your Time and Money
- What to Do Instead
Reason 1: You Can’t See Why Someone Bought a Product
When you copy another creator’s storefront, you only see what they picked. You can’t see why a shopper bought it, whether the sale came from a video, the carousel, or a Creator Connections campaign, or what the opportunity looks like today.
A product can be on a big storefront for reasons that have nothing to do with the product itself. Saying yes to everything a successful creator said yes to is copying the results without the context behind them.
Reason 2: The Opportunity Is Different for You
The same product is not the same opportunity for every creator. I walk through real examples from my own storefront in the video: a bike, magnesium gummies, and an old brand collaboration. Each one looked like a win on the surface, but the story behind the sales was different every time.
The magnesium gummies had no Creator Connections campaign behind them. The old brand collaboration was a one-time situation that wasn’t a repeatable opportunity. And the product doing about 50 units a month with a full carousel is a very different bet than a product with open space to rank.
Reason 3: It Wastes Your Time and Money
If you buy products or spend hours filming videos for items that don’t sell, that’s time and money you don’t get back. Copying a storefront is a fast way to do exactly that.
What to Do Instead
Judge each product on its real opportunity today: units sold, how crowded the carousel is, and whether there’s a Creator Connections campaign. That’s the exact kind of research I built Oink for Influencers to speed up, so you can see those signals in one place instead of guessing from someone else’s storefront.
Ask yourself what your opportunity is, not theirs. That one shift will save you a lot of wasted videos.
Want a faster way to find products worth making content for? Try Oink for Influencers.
