Your Brand Is A Media Empire (You Just Don't Know It Yet)

The $250 Million Mistake That Taught Me Everything

I watched $250 million get flushed down the toilet.

Not my money, but I had a front-row seat to one of the first Amazon aggregator failures. Picture this: smart people, fancy spreadsheets, unlimited capital... and somehow they still managed to spectacularly face-plant.

Plot twist: That failure taught me the most valuable lesson of my career.

See, everyone was obsessed with buying Amazon brands. "We'll optimize the listings! Improve the PPC! Scale to the moon!"

Narrator voice: They did not scale to the moon.

The problem? They thought they were buying businesses. They were actually buying PPC campaigns with product attachments.

The moment Amazon PPC costs went through the roof (spoiler alert: they did), these "businesses" became expensive hobbies.

Here's what I realized while watching the carnage:

Every brand that survives the next 5 years will stop thinking like a "product company" and start thinking like a media empire.

"What the hell does that even mean?"

Glad you asked. Let me break it down:

Smart brands own the customer, not just the sale.

Amazon sellers used to live and die by PPC. One algorithm change? Game over. Platform decides they don't like you? Poof - business gone.

But what if you owned the relationship with your customers? What if you could send them anywhere you wanted - TikTok Shop, your website, Walmart, hell, even a lemonade stand?

That's the media empire playbook:

Step 1: Build a newsletter (but not how you think) Don't make it about your brand - nobody cares about your garlic press "journey." Make it about the NICHE. Cooking tips, recipes, nutrition hacks. Then slip your products in naturally. It's product placement, not a sales pitch.

Step 2: Growth hack with TikTok Shop affiliates Here's the insider move: We scraped tens of thousands of TikTok Shop affiliate emails. Then we cold email them to join our newsletter. Thousands per day. (Is this aggressive? Yes. Does it work? Also yes.)

Step 3: Manufacture virality Once you have the list, you can literally create viral moments.

1. Newsletter goes out

2. Affiliates see your products

3. They create content

4. You go viral. It's like having a viral content button you can press whenever you want.

Step 4: Diversify the traffic Today it's TikTok Shop. Tomorrow it's Amazon. Next week it's your Shopify store. Doesn't matter - you control where the traffic goes.

The result? Each newsletter becomes a "$10k+ per month business in a box (mostly profit)" while promoting your main products (tons of various monetisation methods in newsletters).

Want two newsletters? That's $20k/month. Three newsletters? You get the idea.

The bottom line: Every brand is already a media company - they just haven't figured it out yet.

While everyone else is fighting over expensive PPC clicks, you're building an audience that follows YOU, not the platform.

And when the next platform algorithm changes, platform fees increase, or new competitor emerges?

You just shrug and send your traffic somewhere else.

That's a media empire.

- Paul 👊

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