10 things I stopped buying when I ran the numbers. The math changed everything

We going to rock it till the wheels fall off. Hold up. You are analyzing a TikTok video that measurably outperformed its creator's own baseline, for a swipe file used by founders studying how other people MARKET their products. ## Is it promoting something? Two different mistakes to avoid, and the second is the costly one. FIRST: talking about an industry is not promoting a product. - "Here's how I built my SaaS in a weekend" -> not promotional - "Top 5 tools to start a SaaS business" -> not promotional (listicle, no one product) - "I'll teach you to start a SaaS business" -> promotional, course_info - A screen demo of Invideo -> promotional, saas > ai_tool - A screen demo of Shophunter -> promotional, saas > ecommerce_software SECOND, and more important: the best-performing promotions do not look like promotions. Content that goes viral is rarely an advertisement — it is genuinely good content with the product baked in quietly. Catch these: - A day-in-the-life vlog where the editing app is visible on screen throughout - A funny skit that resolves with "I just used <tool> for this" - A tutorial that solves a real problem and happens to use one specific product - A story-time where the product appears for three seconds in the background - A "before/after" where the transformation was done with a named tool These ARE promotional. A quiet sell is still a sell. If a specific, named, findable product is meaningfully present, mark is_promotional true and set promo_subtlety to native_mention. Do not require an explicit pitch or a call to action — the absence of a hard sell is the technique, not evidence against it. The line to hold: a product must be identifiable and findable. An unbranded generic object, or a tool mentioned only as one of many, is not a promotion. ## Name the thing being SOLD, not the thing on screen This is where classification most often goes wrong. Ask what the viewer is being sold, not what happens to be visible: - A store doing $50k/mo that runs on Shopify -> the STORE is the product. Shopify is substrate. Do not name Shopify. - Someone using a TikTok built-in feature -> that is the platform we are on, not a product being sold. product_role: substrate. - "Link in bio" pointing at linktr.ee / beacons.ai / stan.store -> those are link containers. The product is whatever the container leads to; if you cannot tell what that is, say "none" rather than naming the container. - A vlog edited in CapCut, mentioned once -> incidental, not the subject. - A screen demo of Invideo -> Invideo IS the subject. Name it. If the only nameable thing is a hosting platform, marketplace, social network or link aggregator, the honest answer is product_role: substrate and promoted_product: "none". A generic category ("an AI tool", "a CRM") is also not a product name — say "none". ## Everything else Be concrete. Quote the hook exactly as spoken or displayed — never paraphrase. If the video is silent, set transcript to an empty string and prefer the silent_ugc or text_heavy format. Describe what is actually on screen, not what you assume a video like this would contain. ## Context Caption: The true 10-year cost is unbelievable 🤯 Here is the 10 things I stopped spending money on (including what it would've grown to invested) 1. Coffee shops — $200/mo — $41,000 invested 2. DoorDash — $120/mo — $25,000 invested 3. Eating out mindlessly — $300/mo — $62,000 invested 4. Amazon impulse buys — $150/mo — $31,000 invested 5. Subscriptions — $140/mo — $29,000 invested 6. Convenience fees — $30/mo — $6200 invested 7. Extended warranties — $25/mo — $5200 invested 8. Buying new when used works Creator's bio link: http://linktr.ee/thejoehardy If that bio link is the product promoted here, use it for promoted_product_url and set bio_link_is_product true. Creators often promote their own product without ever saying the url aloud. But a link aggregator (linktr.ee, beacons.ai) or an unrelated store is NOT the product.