My AI Podcast Avatar Speaks Spanish Like A Native — Claus Lauter | Thoughts on Too Many Shopify Apps, Current Trends in Ecommerce and Ad Spending, Why Avoid Dropshipping with Alibaba, Benefits of Founder’s Sidekick Program, Claus’s Nomad Lifestyle

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Voice Over: This is the e commerce coffee break. A top rated Shopify growth podcast dedicated to Shopify merchants and business owners looking to grow their online stores, learn how to survive in the fast changing e commerce world with your host Claus Lauter and get marketing advice. You can't find on Google.

Welcome. Welcome to the show. The

Claus Lauter: Claus Lauter E commerce Coffee Break Podcast. This time I'm coming from you from Columbia from the city of Medellin for the business that know that I was born as Iris for a year, have settled over to Columbia for a bit. And in a couple of weeks I will continue my travels and will be in Cyprus.

So while being here in Columbia, I am meeting a lot of Entrepreneurs, business owners getting a feeling on what's happening in the e commerce world of Colombia after having done the same in Argentina. And there's a huge need and not much on podcasts in the language speaking world when it comes to e commerce.

So for the Newsletter listeners, who have followed the Newsletter, they already know that I was working with my team on a project and I want to lift the secret here now. I have created a Spanish version of the e commerce coffee break podcast. with the help of artificial intelligence of AI. Now I have spent by now quite a bit of time in Latin America, in South America, but my Spanish is still not that good that I could do a complete interview in Spanish.

And the idea I came up with is why not taking the interviews that we already have more than 320 episodes and also upcoming episodes with my guests. that are in English and use AI to translate them into Spanish. That will also open obviously, the interviews to everyone in Spain, Spanish language community in the United States, the whole of Latin America, Central America, and so on and so forth.

And overall, that's about 147 million podcast listeners right now who listen to podcast in Spanish. So we went into finding out what kind of artificial tools are out there, what works, what doesn't work, and came after quite a bit of testing to a tool set that works for us. And I can now say that we have done the first three episodes.

All the episodes of the e commerce coffee break podcast in Spanish. So we are using AI voices. So basically it's not me speaking in Spanish to you, talking in Spanish to you. Also not the guest, but AI has basically taken the transcript and converted that into Spanish. Now you might think, well, how good can the quality be?

How good can that be? I mean, that might sound like a robot. Talking in Spanish, but actually it's very surprising. So first of all, we use the original transcript from the English version. And I have someone here, a English Spanish speaker, who did a complete proofread on the whole thing. So we have a transcript that is in a very clear, very Colombian, clean Spanish.

And we have fed that into the AI and attached to AI voices to it. And the outcome is surprisingly good. Um, so I have had a couple of locals here in Columbia listened, listening to the Spanish episodes and they could not tell that this is not a human talking there, but is artificial intelligence. So it's really, really good.

Now I said the whole purpose of that is not only to test out artificial intelligence and what it can do right now. It is about. opening the podcast to the Spanish language e commerce community worldwide. And we have done this with three episodes and we will continue slowly but steadily adding more episodes there.

And obviously the offer to new guests to get their episode translated into Spanish so that they can introduce their solution, their app or whatever they have to offer to South America, to Spain and any other country where there are Spanish language speakers. So exciting project. If you want to listen into and want to find out how it sounds to have, um, a AI voice actor, so to say, um, using or doing the podcast for me, you can go over to es.

ecommercecoffeebreak. com. That is es. ecommercecoffeebreak. com.

Hey Claus here, just a quick one. If you like the content of this episode, sign up for our free newsletter and become a Smarter Shopify Merchant in just 7 minutes per week. We curate content from more than 50 sources, saving you hours of research and helping you stay on top of your e commerce game with the latest news, insights and trends.

Every Thursday in your inbox, 100 percent free. Join now at newsletter. ecommercecoffeebreak. com dot com. That is newsletter dot e commerce coffee break dot com. And now back to the show. Now what else has happened? A lot of things have happened, obviously, in the e commerce world. If you're following the newsletter and if you have not subscribed yet, you should do so.

So go at newsletter dot e commerce coffee break dot com. Podcast to receive the Thursday newsletter. It's free with the latest updates, insights, and trends in e commerce and Shopify. And you will have seen that I mentioned that there's more than 10, 000 apps in the Shopify app stores. Now, now my big question there is.

Does that really make sense? So first of all, how many of these app developers are actually making money out of these apps? I would reckon, and that's my guess, less than 10 percent actually making money. There is tons of apps that do exactly the same thing and Shopify is not really doing the Shopify store owner.

And again, that's my opinion. Um, service there because if you have 20 different referral apps, if you have 20 different apps that deal with email newsletters, if you have 20 different apps that deal with upsell or downsell or whatever, it makes it very, very difficult for the merchant, for the online seller to pick the app that really works for them.

Obviously, you're getting go buy reviews. But again, I think that's just far too many apps in there. And on the other hand, Shopify is adding more and more features to their core system that makes basically a lot of these apps that are available. They are redundant and not really necessary to, to have them in there as well.

So let me know what you think. Is it a Advantage, is it a benefit for you as a merchant to have the selection of 10, 000 apps or would you rather have less apps that make it easier for you to pick the right app for your store? Now, when we're talking about trends in e commerce, some numbers there. It is sort of, um, said that e commerce will hit 6.

8 trillion US dollar by 2028. Huge number there. The global ad spend is expected by to grow by 5 percent this year. And, um, it will be about Seven, uh, 750. It will be about $750 billion on ad spend worldwide. So that's a ton of money. And also US consumers. For instance, only 4% of the global population account for 24 20 5%.

Of the 2. 3 trillion global media spent. So you see, there's a lot of money to be spent. And if you following the news closely, you will see that Timo, um, one of the Chinese suppliers spent about 3 billion on Facebook ads lately. Now what does that mean for you as a online seller, as a seller, as a small business, as a solopreneur?

solopreneur as a side hustler, it basically means ads are getting more and more expensive, more and more competitive. And it will be more difficult for you to stick out to get traffic to your store and sell your products. So overall, far more competitive on the, on the other side, obviously the fear of recession.

And all of that, what comes with that, that customers are just spending less money gets you in a situation as a seller that business has become much, much harder lately. So what can you do about it? So first of all, finding a product, a niche where you have something to sell that's profitable. solves a problem.

You have heard that a million times and where you can provide a product or service that has a profit margin and hopefully repeating customers, um, that will give you a way to survive in this market. If you are just a starter and you're looking into older online courses, and there's still a ton of them that are telling you dropshipping is still a big thing, and you should just use Alibaba, Aliexpress, or any other of these platforms out there, I can.

pretty much tell you, you will not survive in the market that is out there. The profits of margins are too narrow. The shipping times are too long and everything that comes with marketing is too expensive. So don't follow that fall into that trap. Rather try to build up a business with a product or solution that you develop or something that has been proven.

And that is more on a higher price point that will help you far more better in building up a business there. Now, as a new starter in e commerce or somebody who's just started their journey a short time ago, you might have a million questions in regards of what can I do in sales, in marketing, in administration, in just that.

business development in general. Got a lot of questions there and I've decided to start what I call the founder's sidekick program. So basically I will be your sidekick, you are the founder, and I will be your second opinion, um, your coach, your consultant, your go to person, whenever you're stuck in your business and need some kind of, again, second opinion or some advice to move your business.

Into the right direction in my work life as a 25 years of an entrepreneur, I had consultants, I had business angels, I had people helping me with their experience. And this is now basically a way to give this back to the community. I put it on a price point that is very affordable for solopreneurs, for founders, for starters, to work with me.

And I found a way that it makes it also very convenient to work with me. So if you're interested in having me as a sidekick, then reach out to me, ask for the founders sidekick program, and I will get you the details on that one. One more point before we come to an end today is, um, let me know what kind of topics and guests you want to see on the show.

Maybe you have someone in your network, in your business circle, or just someone that you think is a interesting person to interview. Then please reach out to me, drop me a message on my socials, on the contact form on ecommercecoffeebreak. com and let me know who you'd Whom you would like to have on the show?

Who should I talk to? What kind of topics are interesting for you and where you want to learn more about from an expert that I interview? So again, reach out to me if you know a interviewee that I should have on the show and then I will make. contact with them and see what we can do there. And finally, some of you might be interested, as I started this episode with my travels, as that I am Columbia right now, I will move over to Cyprus for two, three months, and then we'll head to Southeast Asia.

First of all, I will go to Vietnam, that's one of the countries that where I haven't been, it's still on the list. And then I might work for a while from either Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia or from Bangkok before heading back end of the year to back to Argentina to Buenos Aires with the plan with the idea to make Buenos Aires one of my home bases.

You might know that Cyprus is one of my home bases and Cape Town in South Africa is another one. But I fell in love with Buenos Aires the last year. And despite all the problems that the country has at this point in time, I have high hopes that we'll solve them and I would like to make this beautiful city maybe my home base.

So something that I will figure out end of this year, if you're interested in traveling and living the slow nomad, the slow mat, not lifestyle that I have, um, please also feel free. I'm always happy to help people that want to change their lifestyle, that want to travel the world, that want to explore different cities and countries.

Uh, one of my favorite topics. Reach out to me. Um, I'm sure I can help you with one or the other tip there. That's it for this episode today. Next episode, we will have another exciting guest. And as always, please like follow and subscribe to the channel on socials, on YouTube, on Spotify, on Apple, um, to not miss out on upcoming episodes.

And I talk to you or see you in the next one. Have a good one. Hey, Claus here. Thank you for joining me on another episode of the e commerce Coffee Break podcast. Before you go, I'd like to ask two things from you. First, please help me with the algorithm so I can bring more impactful guests on the show.

It will make it also easier for others to discover the podcast. Simply like, comment, and subscribe in the app you're using to listen to the podcast, and even better if you could leave a rating. And finally, sign up for our free newsletter and become a Smarter Shopify merchant in just seven minutes per week.

We create content from more than 50 sources, saving you hours of research and helping you stay on top of your e commerce game with the latest news, insights, and trends. Every Thursday in your inbox, 100 percent free. Join now at newsletter. ecommercecoffeebreak. com. That is newsletter. ecommercecoffeebreak.

com. Thanks again, and I'll catch you in the next episode. Have a good one.