E-commerce Entrepreneur Monthly M06: AI and Value

Some Progress

Project S

These two months I've forced myself to calm down and learn to build a directory-type web product. Currently about 60% progress—positioning, framework setup, frontend and backend capabilities, and tool learning have all made substantial progress. If things go smoothly, it can launch in July or August.

I've almost forced myself into "solitary confinement" for other matters, afraid of getting distracted and giving up again. After all, I've been talking about wanting to do internet product 0-1 development for a long time, and every time I couldn't even reach the halfway point before giving up—almost always failing at the start. This time I'm directly reducing distractions and handling everything silently.

For daily income, I mainly rely on paid communities, main paid services, affiliate, and my own independent store—these relatively passive incomes to make a living.

Project Investment

Currently incurred:

1. Claude monthly fee: 83 RMB/month—without AI, nothing is possible
2. Website building SaaS platform Webflow: 80 RMB—just stubbornly wanted to try a new platform, but it is indeed the best solution for my needs
3. UI/UX template library: 300+ RMB/month, can cancel after building
4. UI/UX designer freelancer: 9000+ RMB one-time. Actually, just from a design perspective, the UI/UX template library already solved 60% of my problems, AI solved 20%, but the remaining 20% of work if I forced myself to grind through, I could, but I don't think it's necessary. On the other hand, I've also more comprehensively understood the content from the design service provider's perspective
5. Future possible expenses: Some data scraping API fees, depending on my mood whether I need to find Webflow development to help me finish subsequent pages, some necessary tool SaaS fees
6. Conservative estimate: After project launch, first-phase operating expenses around 1-2K RMB per month

For project income, I really have no expectations. But I think this feeling is right:

1. No entrepreneurial project has absolute certainty
2. When you invest in an industry you think is sustainable, you'll find all investments are reusable, all work content doesn't need to worry about "cycles and淘汰"—you can keep沉淀 and iterating as much as possible. There must have been崩溃 and anxiety in between, but overall it's relatively optimistic

Self-media update frequency has significantly decreased. But no matter how busy, I still need to let the otter surf冲冲冲—7 episodes of content got 846 subscriptions! After this busy period, officially start offline events + content recording.

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Some Sharing

1. AI and Productivity

If everyone agrees that "practice is the best teacher," then AI is now your all-around booster for practice. You don't need to worry at all about "Stop talking, I don't know anything, how can I practice?"

What does "know" mean? Systematically finish a book? Complete a set of tutorials from some knowledge blogger, and then you know? You know nothing.

AI is fundamentally changing human lifestyles. Currently, there is no "learning" stage—just start doing directly. While doing, click wherever you don't know. No more systematic 0-1 learning while forgetting, or learning once and failing when you start. Just start doing directly, learn what you do, learn faster this way, and have continuous positive feedback.

2. AI and Knowledge Monetization

This way, knowledge monetization will gradually become a stupid business. Of course, as everyone knows, higher-level knowledge monetization doesn't actually sell knowledge information gaps, but emotions, resources, and circles.

90% of knowledge information gaps can be solved by AI. The new Shopify version can directly generate a section you want in the theme template with AI. This was a huge capability gap six months ago—you'd need plugins and coding to achieve it.

Knowledge monetization: either sell that 10% information gap, or do well in emotions/resources/circles.

3. AI and Ordinary People

I'm not an AI blogger, and I have my own real business. Just these two points make my sharing value surpass 1000% of those AI bloggers out there.

AI bloggers talk about this magic tool and that awesome thing, saying this disrupts and that disrupts—really, credibility is only 1%. In the end, they're just selling you AI courses and generic wrapper AIs. They always talk about the same scenarios: intelligent customer service, intelligent sales, intelligent material production, blah blah blah.

What AI basic capabilities do ordinary people need to master?

First, ordinary people should first delete AI from their minds. Don't be driven by AI to follow those AI money-making bloggers trying this and that. Instead, first think about what your real, sustainable business scenarios are, and what your real business needs are.

Otherwise? Today this AI blogger says digital human self-media is great, tomorrow says XHS viral reposting is great, the day after tomorrow says AI novel writing is great—you follow along like a headless fly eating shit, and it's paid shit eating.

Previously, when you wanted to try side business entrepreneurship, you'd find excuses like "I don't know how." Now there's no excuse. You can know everything, but the premise is that you need to know what you actually want to "know." That is, What is more important than how.

And if you can't even figure out What, then I can't help either. I was also once dazzled by AI bloggers, being硬焦虑 every day.

Second, when you have real business scenarios and needs, no matter what it is—cross-border individual seller, individual application developer, freelancer in your professional field, individual self-media creator—whatever. I think a very important systematic capability is AI automation.

Previously, this was called RPA, which required specialists to customize development for specific clients, making it unsuitable for ordinary people. Now it's different. AI + automation tools can completely allow individuals to develop applicable solutions.

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FAQ

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Summary

AI is fundamentally changing the way we work, but it's not magic—it's a tool. For cross-border e-commerce practitioners:

1. Practice First: Don't wait to learn everything before starting—learn by doing
2. Business-Driven: Have real business scenarios first, then use AI to empower them
3. Automation Mindset: Identify repetitive work and automate it with AI
4. Beware of Hype: Don't be misled by AI bloggers—focus on actual business value

Most importantly: AI makes "I don't know how" no longer an excuse. In the AI era, what really matters is whether you have clear business goals and the ability to execute consistently.

Instead of worrying about who AI will replace, think about how to use AI to make yourself stronger.