Validating product ideas has never been easier in the history of the world. I've validated (and invalidated) a LOT of product ideas, for both myself and clients, over the years. I promise you it's never been easier to do it today, thanks to AI.
With AI you can create:
Use Meta ads to validate products. Meta = Facebook and Instagram. While many people have since left Facebook, people are still actively using Instagram.
Don’t spend a lot on validation: not a lot of money, not a lot of time. My tip: take the sales price of the product and multiply it by 5. That’s your “validation budget”. Spend about a week running ads. At least 3 days. 2 weeks max.
Setting everything up shouldn’t take longer than a day or two.
A product is “validated” if you can get at least 2 sales out of that 5x CPA budget. That’s not profitable at all, and it indicates that Meta isn’t the right channel, but it means that there’s a market for it. Someone wants it and is willing to buy it in absence of social proof.
If it’s profitable, then it means that Meta is a good channel. Get your product made and rev up those ads. Expect refund requests.
Make lots of ads, different ones. Use AI to generate the majority of them, film a few of them yourself and use AI to create the script. Let the algorithm figure it out. You don’t know what kind of ads are going to work the best. Human faces, product in use, product in place, product held in hand, no-product ads, all sorts of possibilities.
"How do I use AI to make good ads" ask it, tell it about your product, tell it to look at the competition, and then go through Meta Ads Library for your competition. But you don't need GOOD ads for this step, you just need ads that do the basics: call out your target audience, show them the product, and tell them what's in it for them.
Take inspiration from the following sources: direct competition, direct substitutes, and high performing organic posts from any niche. Go on YouTube Shorts on incognito mode and look at the hooks they use.
Use mostly still image creative, but include some videos. Don’t spend on UGC creators until the product is validated.
Which AI image model do you use? Depends on the time. Right now as of May 2026 ChatGPT Image 2 is the best. Next month it probably won’t be the case.
The most basic type of ad is product-on-white. Include this as part of your tests.
If you take money, and the product is never made, you must refund people. It is illegal to sell something that doesn’t exist. However it is NOT illegal to take pre-orders. But don’t let this discourage you from doing pre-sales before you have a product made. You must also let people know that there will be a delay between them ordering the product & them getting it.
If it’s not profitable, that doesn’t mean your product is bad, but it depends on how far from profitable you are.
You don’t have to stick to this ad method to generate all your sales. You can focus more on organic social media, or SEO, or Google ads, or Amazon, or something else. Maybe Meta isn't the right channel for you. It's just a really convenient way to test products without being good at making content.
If your product doesn’t sell, go back to the drawing board. It’s not easy to answer “why didn’t it sell” when it got no feedback, but it’s not impossible. Look at your competition and what they offer, and compare it to what yours does. If there is no real difference, then of course they’re gonna buy the competition. They have social proof. But if there’s a big, significant, value-added difference, they’ll buy yours even without thousands of reviews.
Read the comments on the ad. If your product is interesting and enticing, but people aren't sure about it, they'll ask questions and make comments on your ad post. Check both Facebook and IG because presumably you'll be running on both.
There's way more to say on this topic but really, you don't know what you don't know & you need feedback before doing anything. You might as well test your idea super quick, super cheap, and with no obligation.
Who knows... you might have a winner.
With AI you can create:
- Basic mockups of the product
- A fully functional Shopify website
- Ads featuring said mockups
- All of the marketing copy you need
Use Meta ads to validate products. Meta = Facebook and Instagram. While many people have since left Facebook, people are still actively using Instagram.
Don’t spend a lot on validation: not a lot of money, not a lot of time. My tip: take the sales price of the product and multiply it by 5. That’s your “validation budget”. Spend about a week running ads. At least 3 days. 2 weeks max.
Setting everything up shouldn’t take longer than a day or two.
- Do the math first. Figure out your estimated cost of goods sold and sale price. Ask AI to help you with this, but generally that means finding someone who will give you a quote. Alibaba has a great tool to find suppliers. (Tooling costs are not part of COGS, they're capital expenditure)
- Set up your Shopify and Meta ad accounts.
- Install the Meta pixel on your Shopify account.
- Set up a theme for Shopify.
- Make a basic logo in Canva.
- Generate a basic mockup for your product idea with AI.
- Generate at least 5 product images for your product image carousel.
- Generate sales copy for it. Benefits, use cases, emotional hooks, scarcity/urgency
- Don’t use fake AI-generated testimonials, but get testimonials from family and friends. You only need 3 of them.
- Emulate your best competitor’s website. Don’t try to be cute and creative here. You’re trying to test a product, not wow the public with your design skills.
- Generate ads, at least 20 of them that look distinct from each other. No more than 50. This eliminates the "bad ad" problem.
- Load em up & run em
A product is “validated” if you can get at least 2 sales out of that 5x CPA budget. That’s not profitable at all, and it indicates that Meta isn’t the right channel, but it means that there’s a market for it. Someone wants it and is willing to buy it in absence of social proof.
If it’s profitable, then it means that Meta is a good channel. Get your product made and rev up those ads. Expect refund requests.
Make lots of ads, different ones. Use AI to generate the majority of them, film a few of them yourself and use AI to create the script. Let the algorithm figure it out. You don’t know what kind of ads are going to work the best. Human faces, product in use, product in place, product held in hand, no-product ads, all sorts of possibilities.
"How do I use AI to make good ads" ask it, tell it about your product, tell it to look at the competition, and then go through Meta Ads Library for your competition. But you don't need GOOD ads for this step, you just need ads that do the basics: call out your target audience, show them the product, and tell them what's in it for them.
Take inspiration from the following sources: direct competition, direct substitutes, and high performing organic posts from any niche. Go on YouTube Shorts on incognito mode and look at the hooks they use.
Use mostly still image creative, but include some videos. Don’t spend on UGC creators until the product is validated.
Which AI image model do you use? Depends on the time. Right now as of May 2026 ChatGPT Image 2 is the best. Next month it probably won’t be the case.
The most basic type of ad is product-on-white. Include this as part of your tests.
If you take money, and the product is never made, you must refund people. It is illegal to sell something that doesn’t exist. However it is NOT illegal to take pre-orders. But don’t let this discourage you from doing pre-sales before you have a product made. You must also let people know that there will be a delay between them ordering the product & them getting it.
If it’s not profitable, that doesn’t mean your product is bad, but it depends on how far from profitable you are.
You don’t have to stick to this ad method to generate all your sales. You can focus more on organic social media, or SEO, or Google ads, or Amazon, or something else. Maybe Meta isn't the right channel for you. It's just a really convenient way to test products without being good at making content.
If your product doesn’t sell, go back to the drawing board. It’s not easy to answer “why didn’t it sell” when it got no feedback, but it’s not impossible. Look at your competition and what they offer, and compare it to what yours does. If there is no real difference, then of course they’re gonna buy the competition. They have social proof. But if there’s a big, significant, value-added difference, they’ll buy yours even without thousands of reviews.
Read the comments on the ad. If your product is interesting and enticing, but people aren't sure about it, they'll ask questions and make comments on your ad post. Check both Facebook and IG because presumably you'll be running on both.
There's way more to say on this topic but really, you don't know what you don't know & you need feedback before doing anything. You might as well test your idea super quick, super cheap, and with no obligation.
Who knows... you might have a winner.
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