Watch me use AI to make millions in ecommerce

Why is no one talking about Alibaba's new AI agent platform? It's made it ridiculous easy to find ideas, find trends, find suppliers, reach out to them, and figure out if there's an opportunity for a multi-million dollar e-commerce business. I'm a guy who's a software entrepreneur. You know, I I stay away from e-commerce. cuz I know my lane. But this new uh AI agent platform, it's called Axio by Alibaba, is getting me a little converted. You know, now there's an opportunity for me to use something that makes it easy to start an e-commerce business. And I love unfair advantages. So, this episode, if you stick to the end, you'll understand how to use Axio. Um, and you might be like me, interested in starting a multi-million dollar e-commerce business in 2026. Enjoy the episode. >> I've never been a huge e-commerce person. And a big reason for that is because it's been so hard to understand what to build, why to build it, and how to build it. And today we're going to go through Axios. Axio. And by the end of this episode, you will understand how to use it. um and and maybe in 2026 building a really big e-commerce business. And even if you're not, if you're like me and you're a software person or you're a boring business person and you you know you you've never created an e-commerce business, learning these tools is super helpful. So, I encourage you to stay to the end. Let's go. Let's let's get into it. So, when you get to Axio, it's actually free. Um, and by the way, I have no um I have no affiliation with Alibaba or this company. I'm just a guy who likes to use products that, you know, give me an unfair advantage. Um, you can see that there's got they've give you uh some examples of how to use the product. So, for example, spot rising trends. So, it says analyze current market trends in baby products and identify what is gaining traffic. Uh, so you can click here, view details. So it gives you an overview and it you know ties into Amazon trends. You can see here the search val um is on in the blue and then and then the in the pink the sales count. Um there's things but like okay you can get that trend data anywhere. What's really interesting is it it gives you like actual products that are crushing it. So it's like convertible cribs with green guard gold certification. This is like a category I would never have thought of. or multi-functionable functional convertible cribs with beds and smart features. And by the way, I have a baby. So like I I should be thinking about this and I'm an idea guy so I should be thinking about this but I you know haven't. So I think that you know this is why it's good to use this and it gives you more market insights right organic and natural products. Okay I could have come up with that but you know smart baby products are you know are are is a key differentiator. Smart monitors, app connected thermometers, automating feeding systems are gaining popularity and then you can go and like a perplexity or whatever go and actually check the sources. So it gives you the product recommendations. It says based on stable demand for electric nasal aspirators despite fluctuating surge volumes, enhancing features like suction power, temperature control, ease of cleaning. Um so it gives you these products. It shows what's working. Um and I think that's pretty cool. But what I think it's even more cool um is that it could actually uh create product designs. Um so for example, you can hear since Squid Game Netflix 3 is popular right now, I want to design some products based on Squid Games. Help me figure out what kind of products can sell well and generate product design image. And then it goes and actually does a market analysis on it. And it shows like, you know, okay, here's these costumes and masks. Here's some guard costumes, uh, Netflix player 456 jacket, all these different things, and it literally gives you product design concepts. Now, is this something that, you know, is good to go and you can just say like, "Okay, go make it." I don't think so. But it's giving you it get it's getting you the creative juices. At least it's getting my creative juices flowing. Um, and it puts all these product design concepts into visualizations. Um, and then what I think is most importantly, it actually gives you who you could uh reach out to to go and build these things and what it's going to cost. So, you can see here um you know, $6.71 for a hoodie. Um, and you know, it's a verified uh manufacturer. And if you click here, it says uh matches. So, why is it a match? Adon matches? Well, cuz they do screen printing, they do embroidery. Um, and I think this is why it's cool that it's built in with Alibaba. And by the way, it doesn't just integrate with Alibaba, it integrates with other Alibaba Express and a few others. So, it gives you that data and then you could go ahead and just reach out to people. Sam Alman, the co-founder of OpenAI, just said that it is the era of the idea guy and he is not wrong. I think that right now is an incredible time to be building a startup. And if you listen to this podcast, chances are you think so, too. Now, I think that you can look at trends uh to basically figure out what are the startup ideas you should be building. So, that's exactly why I built ideabrowser.com. Every single day, you're going to get a free startup idea in your inbox and it's all backed by highquality data trends. How we do it, people always ask. We use AI agents to go and search what are people looking for and what are they screaming for in terms of products that you should be building and then we hand it on a you know silver platter for you to go check out. Um we do have a few paid plans that you know take it to the next level uh give you more ideas, give you more AI agents and more almost like a chat GBT for ideas with it. But you can start for free ideabrowser.com and if you're listening to this I highly recommend it. Um, you can see here it also gives you some, you know, insight around like what's the margin potential. So like hoodies for example, the margin is 2 to 300%. Maybe I want to do that, but oh no, maybe a phone case is 3 to 400%. Um, and it tells you the OQ range, you know, basically how many units. Um, and then, uh, you know, the wholesale price and and the target retail. Um, but it also says that you need to do licensing, right? So, what why why is this all like really interesting is it's giving you ideas. It's it's basically like a partner for you. Uh, and you know, someone who's going and doing the analysis. Um, and and then I think it's I I think it's super super helpful. Let's go through a few more and then I'm also going to prompt it myself. Um, so let's go and see. Here's a new sort of feature that they uh analyze. Sorry, a new feature that they come out with. Help me identify product opportunity pain points in pet supplies that serve the senior dogs niche market. Um, so you can see here, um, here's the product opportunities. Advanced orthopedic sleep solutions. Would never have thought about this, right? Uh it says like have cooling gel integration for temperature regulation, low profiles for easy access. Makes sense, right? If you're a senior dog, um you know, you want a low profile for easy access. Um memory foam uh technology. I could see a product like this absolutely crushing it. Cognitive simulation product. So, you know, senior dogs face cognitive decline. This creates opportunities for interactive smart toys, treat dispensing puzzle feeders, memory enhancing accessories and then it literally you know mocks up uh you know what it what it could look like and like that's AI man that's I mean yes the soom over there like that's I don't know what that means um but like it's interesting right? uh this looks like an interesting product and it is good fodder to start with and then from there you can iterate and you know you could iterate with other tools by the way um like I've talked about on the channel things like nano banana uh etc. Uh so it gives you all the search volume. It gives you the positive tags and negative tags. Uh so like this is based on Amazon trends. So you can see that there's you know washable peads for senior dogs and the average rating is 3.88. So like that's a bad rating, right? So that means that there's an opportunity to create great products and it's giving you it's it's telling you why people aren't enjoying the products uh on Amazon. This is so insightful. You know, you I I've talked about before how this is the a person, but it's also the age of the insight person, right? You need these insights in order to actually create products that people uh that people want. And I think that's what's so cool about this age is you can use a product like this to get the insight so that you don't waste years of your life here. Um, so I I love this, you know, joint health supplements. It tells you exactly how many monthly searches, what the average rating is. Um, and then it gives you the hot selling market analysis, uh, join supplements. You can see here retail price versus wholesale price. Um, you know, for me, this is some of the most helpful insights is when it actually tells you what the market opportunities, right? So, it's telling you, you know, arthritis, hip displacia, all these things. And then, you know, that helps me ideulate for what type of product I want to create. So, what's really cool about um, Axio is it helps me on the idea side, it helps me on the trend side, and it helps me in terms of like who I should reach out to. So, um, let's do one around like sourcing. So, find manufacturers that offer high quality. This is the prompt. Find manufacturers that offer high quality facial cleansing brush with OEM service, private label available, OQ500 with official certifications and strong reviews. So, um, it literally is giving me all the different suppliers right here. And then I can reach out to them through this product. Um, and you can see like, okay, people are satisfied with this, right? If you would have gone to alibaba.com, it would have been way overwhelming. Um, you can see like what the reorder rate of these things are. Um, so pretty pretty darn darn cool. Um, I have some more um prompts that I want to prompt in and I want to see how it would how it would work. So, let's just try a couple of them. Um, I'm in the market for a mechanical keyboard and I've been getting a lot of ads for it and I think like mechanical keyboards are being, you know, it's it's a trend. Um, that's gotten bigger over the last 5 6 years. So, I said analyze mechanical keyboard and list the top 10 unmet customer pain points with proof from reviews, forms, Amazon Q&A, cluster them by theme, and rank by urgency and willingness to pay. So, we're going to see if Axio uh could actually go and do that. Um says, "Yeah, you know, it's an agent t agent task. Thinking through your request to create the most effective approach and detailed plan. No worries." So, we start the agent task and it really does feel like you're uh using something like a manis. You know, it does feel like agenoriented. Um, you know, when I use Manis, it does feel it was like the first product I ever used that it felt like it was it was it was agents like the agent era was here and and this does feel the same. So, it says uh it's gathering customer feedback on mechanical uh keyboards. You can check its sources if you double click here. Um, and it says I will search for mechanical keyboard customer reviews, form discussions on Reddit and Geek Hack, and common Q&A displays. uh uh comment Q&A complaints to get user pain points. So, it works pretty quick. It's a you know, it's been only a few seconds and it says, "I've gathered a good amount of data from general searches and spec specific form summaries. I have detailed information on hardware reliability, customization gaps, software issues, aesthetics, market shifts. Um I have enough proof from reviews." Um, and then it says, um, I can now synthesize these into the top 10 pain points, cluster them, and rank them as requested. Think about what we're doing, which is absolutely insane. We're we're we we've heard about a trend either we just in life heard about a trend maybe it's on Instagram, Tik Tok, ideabrowser.com and then we've gone and said like hey we want to create a product in this space basically uh but we need to understand the pain points best cuz we don't want to be you know just coming up with ideas not based on data. Um, so we're getting the data and we're going to go and create something that has the highest likelihood of success for that reason. So it comes up with a plan, right? Um, oh, interesting. So, Whoa. Okay, cool. So, I'll do one quick search specific specifically for willingness to pay and budget cubes to better quantify that ranking factor. one search to confirm the willingness to pay for specific features like the hall effect switches or premium stabilizers. After that, I will compete. Wait, I should check if there's more specific data on willingness to pay for fixing these issues. Users often mention, I'd pay an extra X dollars for a feature. I'll look for that specifically to fulfill the rank by willingness to pay requirement accurately. This isn't just an AI agent platform. This is a smart AI agent platform specifically designed with e-commerce in mind that would not uh you know happen on a lot of the other agent platforms because I think that this just understands you know the e-commerce mindset. So it's now gone ahead and updated the plan. Uh it's done a you know final targeted search for willingness to pay. It's completed the task. Um and uh looks like we are almost done. Yeah. So let's see what we got. So it's gone ahead and shown what the pain points are. Key chatter, uh lack of hot swap in mainstream, bloated buggy software, poor wireless doesn't really matter. it just know like as you know it doesn't matter to us really um the point is because you you guys are probably not working on a mechanical keyboard company but the point is like this as someone who's in the you know in I'm not in the mechanical keyboard business but in the market for mechanical keyboards to me that makes sense that those are some of the key features. So it's gone and put it into a chart. Um, the double typing, the key chatter is like the biggest highest urgency complaint. Lack of hot swat PCB, the mo most common source of buyer confusion or regrets, stabilizer, rattle, mushy keys, proprietary software bloat. Um, this is incredible. Um, and then it goes, would you like me to research specific brands that successfully are successfully addressing these pain points or perhaps analyze a different per peripheral category? Wow, that's a hard word to say sometimes. Um, I would say I'm looking to build a mechanical keyboard company for Jenzy women and I really like the trend of cozy gaming. So, I had actually seen like an ad like a, you know, cozy gaming ad and and um I think that there that's where the opportunity is. So, it's going to go ahead and research this trend cozy gaming. Um, and then building mechanical keywords, keyboards for this particular audience. And then if I was to actually go and build this thing, well, we one need to find the suppliers and work with the suppliers. And we can do that on Axio. But the second thing would be also you know once I've built this thing uh reaching out to uh all the different creators in this niche and getting them a part of it you know to help get distribution and stuff like that. So it's uh synthesizing the previous research to create a brand identity and cozy gaming product concept tailored for Jenzi women including a preliminary product roadmap. Um, so this includes a suggested brand name, Cloud Key or Nook and Switch. Actually, not bad. A mission statement focus on turning the desk into a sanctuary. I absolutely love that. And a product line, the Sanctuary series featuring tactile materials like ceramic coatings and thy acoustics. I also prioritize a threephase product roadmap starting with a flagship 75% wireless keyboard. How good is this? How good is this? And why is no one talking about it? Um, maybe they're talking they're not talking about it because it's Alibaba, China, and you know, there's that whole thing. Maybe they're not talking about it because they're just, you know, I don't know, maybe people just haven't heard of this. Um, so anyways, we've gotten uh some of the data here. Uh, it it's gives the product concept, the sanctuary series. They're calling the company Cloud Key or Nook and Switch. Um, it tells you what the features are. Um, and it gives you the visual concepts and this, you know, that looks pretty cozy to me. That looks pretty cozy. Look how cool that is. How with a little mushroom there. You kidding me? That's awesome. Um, so I'm going to say, okay, this looks great and all, but um, I need a trusted supplier from Alibaba or somewhere else to reach out to and create this and make it a reality. Give me a list. So, we're going to ask the agent to act, you know, go and give us a list of it. Uh, identify and vet suppliers. Um, you used to have to either search endlessly on places like Alibaba, um, and other kind of like sketchy marketplaces. You don't have to do that now. Um, you can just ask the agent to do it. It's going to rank it by the ones that it thinks is going to be best. And then that's when you you actually have to do uh some of the hard work of like vetting these people, right? Just because they say it's 4.7 uh or people had a good experience doesn't mean you're going to have a good experience. So please please do call these people. Make sure that you you feel good about them as well and get to know them, right? You don't you know buy 50 units in the beginning and don't buy 5,000, right? Uh, so but the point is like why aren't we using this, right? It it this just like makes me want to start an e-commerce company in 2026. And I can't even believe I'm saying that. Um, because the reason I, you know, I wouldn't start an e-commerce company is cuz it's just hard to do. But with things like this, it makes it a lot easier. So, um, it's still working on the task. Um but it's it's giving me some notable suppliers. Um like you can see this Shang Zoo Demolan Elect Demolin Electronic Technology which supplies brands like Leobog Wab Key. Um so it's going to go ahead and do that. It gives a short list summary. says, you know, the Zenzoo is the number one the most aligned partner because they're building, I guess, some of the bigger uh competitors. But let's see. Okay, so it's going to go. So, it's made uh it's giving me four um and it's giving me like mid-range, high volume. So, it's telling me why it's it's great. And then, okay, but like how do I outreach? So when you reach out to these suppliers, I recommend starting with three critical technical verifications. The ceramic finish rather than the anodiz anodization. The sound profile. Confirm they can support a five layer internal dampening structure to achieve the thy rain sound signature and the color matching. Verify if they can match the PVT keycap plastic color to the CNC case color for seamless monochromic aesthetic. Would you like me to draft a professional inquiry email you can send to these suppliers or should I re research cozy influencers for your launch partnership? What? That's a bit too ahead uh right now, but I'm going to say yeah, you can draft an inquiry email. Also, I was wondering, is there any suppliers on Alibaba that that I can reach out to, too? These don't seem like they are on Alibaba or another or similar website. So, let's see what that says. Um, but what's cool about this um this platform is it it seems like it works, right? A lot of times you like you're working on, you know, an a new LLM or a new product and it it sort of it goes a bit wonky, but most, you know, I've been just I'm impressed. I'm impressed here. So, uh, verify verify supplier platforms and search for additional options. Um, so it's going and doing that and this will be our last thing that we'll ask. Um, but I'm just curious. Okay. Oh, so these suppliers are indeed are indeed on they're actually on Alibaba. So, wow. So, hi. I'm looking to This is the the outreach email. I'm looking for a high-end manufacturing partner for our upcoming Gen Z focused brand, Cloudkey. We are developing Nook75, a premium 75% mechanical keyboard designing for the go cozy gaming aesthetic. Specifications, it it puts it all out there so I don't have to do anything. The customization, delivery terms, it gives you the top verified Alibaba suppliers and then says strategic outre uh outreach recommendations. Don't ask for matte paint specifically. Ask for eco e-code e-coding. These are the things that like why I wouldn't go and start a a new e-commerce product company is for these little things that I would never have asked. I feel like I would just get rinsed, rinsed, rinsed, rinsed if I started an e-commerce company for these reasons. But with something like Axio, you know, seems I just feel more confident. Um, and then it gives you a whole document of all the different people I could be reaching out to. um with a checklist and technical questions. Um and I can even press the send inquiry button direct from Axio. All right, this is really cool. There you have it, folks. Uh my tour of Alibaba's new and really cool ecommerce uh LLM called Axio. no affiliation, but think it's cool and uh it's got me thinking about e-commerce startup ideas in 2026. I hope you enjoyed this. If you did, please drop a like, a comment, share it with a friend so I know that I should be doing more of these uh startup idea podcasts episodes. Um, and if I should should I be doing more e-commerce stuff. Is that interesting to you? Or should I stick to my lane of just software? Uh, or do you like me you like me to spice it up here and there? Thanks everyone and I'll see you next time.