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Hey everyone, welcome back to the ZIK Learn podcast.
Today we're diving into something powerful.
How to spy on any Shopify store and uncover the sales data, profit margins, and marketing strategies they don't share publicly.
Imagine pasting A competitor's URL and instantly seeing their monthly revenue, their best selling products, even the exact apps they're using to upsell and convert.
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In this episode, Ben and Zoe breakdown how to skip the guesswork, eliminate trial and error, and start building your store based on proven data.
If you're ready to stop guessing and start scaling with facts, this ones for you.
Let's get into it.
You know, there's this, this very specific feeling.
0:46
I think every entrepreneur knows it.
You're sitting there, it's maybe 2:00 in the morning.
The coffee's gone cold, and you're just staring at a blank screen.
Oh yeah.
The what do I do now moment.
Exactly.
You want to start a store, you want to launch a product.
But you're just.
You're stuck.
1:02
The dreaded analysis paralysis.
That's it.
It's the sort of Field of Dreams problem.
We think if we just build it, you know, if we have this amazing unique idea, customers will just show up.
But that's not how it works.
Yeah, in reality, you're just guessing.
You're throwing spaghetti at the wall.
1:19
And hoping something sticks.
And let's be honest, in e-commerce, that's some very expensive spaghetti.
You're burning cash on ads for products that might not even have a real market.
It's the fastest way to fail.
Really it is, which is why today's deep dive is a little different.
1:34
We're not talking about being a visionary today.
We are talking about being more like a a forensic investigator.
We're talking about having X-ray vision.
X-ray vision is the perfect way to put it, because here's the thing that most people don't get the Internet.
1:49
It feels private.
Yeah, you think all that data is locked away?
You think your competitors sales data is in some digital vault somewhere, but it's not, Not at all if you know where to look.
I mean every successful Shopify store is leaving this huge digital footprint.
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They leave bread crumbs.
And what we're going to do today is show you how to use the competitor analysis tools right here at ZIK to follow those crumbs well all the way to the bank.
We are talking about the whole cake.
Imagine, just for a second, if you could look at a competitor's website.
2:23
Just the URL.
Just the URL and instantly know how much money they made in the last 30 days.
See where their traffic is coming from.
See their ads.
And even see the exact software they're using to get more money from customers.
That's the mission for this chat.
We want to get you away from trial and error.
2:38
Trial and error is for amateur.
Right, we want to move you toward copying what works.
We're going to show you how to spy on the winners so you can, you know, skip the losing part.
OK, so let's unpack this, the core of all this.
It revolves around the sales tracker and what really blows my mind is just how simple it is to get started.
2:57
It's deceptively simple.
You don't need to be a hacker, you just paste a Shopify store link into the tracker.
It just works.
It pulls data that Shopify doesn't exactly advertise, but it's there if you know how to ask for it.
So I paste the link.
What's the first thing I see?
What's the big headline number?
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Revenue, that's the anchor.
You immediately see the estimated dollar amount they made in the last 30 days and I can't stress enough how much this just it changes your whole mindset.
It validates the entire niche in one second.
Right, because you're not just looking at a pretty website and hoping it's a good business.
3:31
You're looking at a business and knowing it's doing, say, $80,000 a month.
It turns a hunch into a fact.
Exactly.
But we both know revenue can be a vanity metric.
You know I could sell $1,000,000 worth of product but if I spent 2,000,000 on ads?
You're sleeping on your friend's couch.
3:47
Right.
So you can't stop at that top number.
No way.
That's why you'd have to look at the context.
The tool gives you sales charts so you see the trends.
Is it consistent or was there this massive spike on the 15th of the month?
And if there is a spike, you become a detective.
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Did they run a big sale?
Did one of their Tik Toks go viral?
Precisely.
It turns a static number into a story.
And then you dig deeper.
You look at traffic sources.
Are they paying Meta for all their customers or are they just crushing it with organic search?
4:20
OK, but here's the part that gets really interesting for me.
The tech stack.
Yes, it sounds kind of boring and technical, but I honestly think it's a treasure.
Wrap it.
Is the single most overlooked feature in the entire tool.
The tracker literally lists every single app the store has installed.
4:36
So why should anyone listening care about what apps the store is using?
Because apps reveal the strategy.
A website is just the storefront.
The apps?
Well, there's the engine room.
OK, give me an example.
So if I scan a store and I see they have Recon, convert, post purchase, upsell installed, that tells me everything I need to know about their profit model.
4:54
It tells you they aren't making their real money on that first sale.
Exactly.
Yeah, it tells me their whole game is about maximizing average order value.
They're probably breaking even on the first product just to get the customer.
And then making all their profit on the upsell right after checkout.
So if you try to copy their product, but you don't copy that upsell strategy, that upsell app.
5:15
You're going to lose money while they're getting rich.
You're cloning the body, but you're forgetting the heart.
You have to copy the infrastructure that makes the whole thing profitable.
That is such a key point.
It's cloning the engine, not just the paint job.
OK, let's make this real.
We have some case studies our team dug up that frankly, they blew my mind.
5:32
Let's start with selena.com.
Ah.
Yes, the single product powerhouse.
So we scan selena.com.
What are we looking at?
We're looking at extreme efficiency.
This isn't some general store with 1000 items.
They do one thing, and in the last 30 days they pulled in over $80,000 in revenue. 80 grand from one item.
5:53
What is the item?
It's a crossbody clutch wallet.
A wallet.
OK, hold on.
If I went to some business guru and said I'm going to start an online store selling wallets, what would they say they.
'D laugh you out of the room, they'd say.
It's too saturated.
Right, nobody cares.
And well, without data they might be right.
6:10
But the data doesn't care about opinions on saturation.
This wallet sold 1958 times.
In a single month.
In a month.
Wow, nearly 2000 people bought this specific wallet and going back to the tech stack, we saw that Recon convert app, so we know they're squeezing every last cent out of those customers.
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But here's the real aha moment.
It's the profit breakdown because seeing 80 grand in revenue is nice, but are they actually keeping any of it?
And this is where we use the item Finder feature, right?
Correct.
The tool takes the product image from their store and it matches it with suppliers on Aliexpress.
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It finds the source price, the origin story.
OK, hit me with the math.
So selena.com sells this wallet for $42.50.
Which seems like a pretty standard price.
I'd pay that.
And the tool found the exact match on Aliexpress for $12.92.
7:04
Whoa.
And that includes free shipping.
So $42.00 retail, $13 cost.
That has a massive spread.
That's a roughly 70% gross margin before ads, before anything else.
That's about $50,000 in gross profit in one month.
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That's wild, and that's the power of data right there.
If you were just browsing, you'd see a wallet store and just scroll right past.
It oh another wallet.
But when you see $50,000 profit potential, suddenly that wallet looks very, very interesting.
Exactly.
It reveals the arbitrage opportunity.
7:36
You're not looking at a product anywhere, you're looking at a gap.
The gap between the source price and what the market will pay.
And with a margin like that you have so much room for error on your ads.
You can afford to be bad at ads.
You can spend $20 to get a customer and still walk away with a profit.
7:52
So that's if you already have a competitor's URL.
But what if you're starting from scratch?
What if you don't even know who to spy on yet?
That's the blank page problem we started with.
I want to sell pet stuff, but who's winning?
That's what the store Finder is for.
It's like a search engine for money making stores.
8:09
It pretty much is.
You can filter by niche so you type in pet and then you can filter by business model.
This part is key.
So you can look for just drop shipping or just print on demand.
Or single product stores like the one we just saw.
You match the search to the kind of business you actually want to run.
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And what's the strategy?
Just find the store making the most money.
Not necessarily.
You're looking for signs of efficiency, so strong sales with a low product count or for drop shipping.
You might look for high product counts to see what they're testing.
OK, let's talk about case study #2 this was a store you found using the PET and drop shipping filters.
8:45
It's called Cat curio.com.
Right.
So Cat curio.com first thing we notice 488 products.
Which is a huge number compared to the wallet store.
It is.
And that is a classic signal of a drop shipping model.
They're testing a lot of stuff and the revenue, it's solid over 25,000 in the last 30 days.
9:03
So it's a proven winner, but the really interesting part here wasn't just the numbers, it was who they're selling to.
This is such a subtle but important lesson.
They're not selling cat food or litter boxes, things for the cat.
They're selling things for the cat lover.
Exactly explain that difference.
9:20
Well, you look at their products, they've got 2026 cat themed calendars, cat themed home decor.
These are emotional buys for the human.
It's about their identity.
You buy it to say I am a person who loves cats and that.
Completely changes the marketing, doesn't it?
9:37
You can't sell an identity with a boring list of product features.
No, and we saw that in their social channels.
The tool showed they have a huge organic reach. 138,000 Instagram followers.
Wow.
But when we looked at the actual content.
The viral reel I love this part of the.
9:53
Viral reel.
We found this one video.
It wasn't an ad for a calendar.
It wasn't a sales pitch at all.
It was just a beautiful video of a cat chilling next to a fire pit.
Just a cat and a fire.
That's it.
And it got 6.8 million views. 6.8 million for a cat by a fire.
10:09
And that is the vibe strategy.
They sell the feeling, that cozy cat life.
And that feeling drives curiosity, clicks to their bio.
They aren't selling the product in the video, they're selling the lifestyle.
And then once you're in the store, that's when they sell you the black and white cat flower pot.
10:25
Which of course we had to analyze for profitability.
Of course.
You have to check the math.
Store Price 4299 Aliexpress Source Price 2153.
So about a $19.00 profit on each sale.
10:41
Precisely.
Now, $19.00 might not sound as exciting as the wallet, but think about the traffic source.
It's free.
It's basically zero.
They aren't paying for those 6.8 million views, so that $19.00 is almost pure profit.
So the lesson from catcurio.com isn't just sell cat pods, it's copy the content style.
10:59
Yes, if you see a competitor getting millions of views on a chill aesthetic video, don't go make a flashy hard sell commercial.
Replicate the vibe.
You copy the product, but you also copy the context.
The data tells you what to sell and the social spying tells you how to sell it.
11:16
That's the formula.
OK, let's pivot.
We've done single product, we've done mass drop shipping.
What about print on demand or POD?
That feels like a different beast.
It is different with POD.
Your margins are usually tighter, so you have less room for error.
11:32
This is where the tech stack becomes the most important clue of all.
Which brings us to casestudy3nobleparade.com.
Great name.
Great name.
So when we scan the store, what do we look for first?
The apps immediately and we see a specific one Team Blue product personalizer.
11:51
And what does that tell?
You It tells you the exact technology they use to let customers upload a photo of their pet and put it on a product that is the engine of their entire business.
So if you want to compete, you don't just sell a mug, you need to sell a mug with that level of personalization.
12:06
You know exactly which software to buy to match their user experience.
No guesswork.
And Speaking of no guesswork, let's talk about ad intelligence, because with those tight POD margins, you can't afford to burn cash on bad ads.
You really can't.
And the tool?
It lets you see the stores active versus their inactive ads on Meta.
12:23
OK, why would inactive matter?
I feel like I'd only care about the ads that are working right now.
Because inactive means we turned it off, it means it failed.
It didn't convert.
Seeing what didn't work is almost as valuable as seeing what did.
12:39
It's a graveyard of their bad ideas.
It's a map of landmines that they already stepped on for you.
You can look at their inactive ads and see, OK, that font failed.
That joke didn't land.
And then you look at their active ads, the ones they're still spending money on, and you see the winning formula.
You save thousands of dollars in testing because they already did the testing for you.
12:56
It's like walking through a minefield after someone else has already flagged all mines.
It's incredible leverage.
That's the whole game.
So what was the big winning product for at nobleparade.com?
It was almost laughably simple, The custom pet mug.
A mug.
Just a mug.
13:12
A custom mug.
See my gut?
My genius entrepreneur brain would have told me mugs are dead.
Everyone has a mug.
I need to invent a robotic dog feeder.
And your gut would cost you a lot of money.
The data says no.
This specific mug with this specific personalization app is printing money.
13:33
It sold 500 times last week.
It's humbling, isn't?
It it totally removes your bias.
You might think a product is boring, but if the sales tracker says it's sold 500 times, your opinion doesn't matter.
The market has spoken.
I love that your opinion doesn't matter.
13:49
It sounds harsh, but in business it's liberating.
You don't have to be a creative genius.
You just have to be a good observer.
It's the copy and paste philosophy.
Let's break that down into a workflow for anyone listening.
We've thrown a lot at them.
If I want to start today, what's step one?
Step 1.
Build your library.
14:05
Use the add to favorites feature.
Don't just look at a store once, track them overtime.
Like it's a stock portfolio?
Exactly.
Is that wallet still selling next month?
Did they add new roducts?
You need to watch their evolution O scan stores and save the winners.
OK TE 2.
Identify their best sellers.
14:22
A good rule of thumb we use is to look for anything that's sold at least 12 times in the last 30 days.
That sounds kind of low, only 12. 12 is the spark.
If it's sold 12 times, it's not an accident.
It's not just the owner's mom buying it.
It means there is real validated demand.
14:38
That's your baseline.
OK, simple enough and Step 3.
Source and replicate.
Use the item Finder to get the Aliexpress match.
Make sure the profit margin is actually there.
If the math works like with our wallet, then you move to replication.
And replication means.
14:54
It means setting up the store, installing the same key apps, the upsells, the personalizers, and modeling your ads on their active winning ones.
You aren't reinventing the wheel, you're finding a wheel that's spinning really, really fast and just building another one just like it.
Why would you reinvent the wheel when you could just improve on a proven model?
15:12
The blueprint is already drawn for you, you just have to build it.
You know, it's a huge philosophical shift.
We're taught in school that copying is cheating.
But in business, if you look at your neighbor's paper, you might get an IPO.
Right, it's all about execution.
15:28
Look, obviously we're not talking about stealing trademarks or intellectual property, but observing a successful business model and then executing it better.
That's just capitalism.
That's how every great business is built, on the shoulders of what came before.
15:43
The Internet is a huge place.
There's room for more than one person to sell a cat flower pot, especially if you can market it a little better or offer faster shipping.
But starting with a product you know people are already buying, That's the cheat code.
It really is.
15:58
It's the difference between gambling and investing.
When you guess, you're gambling.
When you use data, you're investing.
That's the difference.
So here's the challenge for you if you're listening right now while your competitors are out there just blindly testing products, burning cash on ads that don't work.
You could be building a business based entirely on hard performance data.
16:16
Pick a niche today.
Nets, gardening, wallets, it doesn't matter.
Find one store, just one.
Scan it and look at the number it's.
Completely changes how you see the Internet.
You stop seeing stores and you start seeing spreadsheets.
You see margins, you see opportunity.
16:33
And that's when the real game begins.
Working smarter means using the tools that let you see behind the curtain.
Tools are there.
Go use them.
Thanks for diving in with us today.
I'll.
See you on the next one.
