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Well, running a rudimentary eBay store you realize these things help pretty quickly, but it's good to have data. However... Starting a new e-commerce property?

Well, running a rudimentary eBay store you realize these things help pretty quickly, but it's good to have data. However... Starting a new e-commerce property? Good luck finding traffic in anything profitable. Amazon and other Giants dominate search rankings so I'm not sure how you will find your traffic unless you create a new niche. Maybe you're a thought leader in a hobbyist space, that can work... But you're not going to be succeeding because of these tricks

nik736 9y ago
That's simply false. There are always categories or "side"-categories that can be highly profitable and big stores only care about as a side business (small category in their store). Being a small category for a huge store means they don't care about that category too much but it doesn't mean there isn't a lot of cash to be made. I've helped several companies to build an online store that did exactly that and they are all doing 5 digit revenue month after month. It's easy to rank higher in search engine for something you are 100% focused on compared to a big stores where it's only a small thing that they don't highlight.
- kossae 9y ago
  Agreed. I work for a company in such a niche and there are definitely side-niche markets still out there for people to find and dominate, sometimes even on SEO alone. A small piece of a huge pie is still a very large piece to me.
  - cylinder 9y ago
    Have a good example of one that took that piece? Outside of Amazon
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- pbowyer 9y ago
  Can you give any examples of small categories? I can't think of any, let alone get my brain round what kind of thing they would be.
  - ecommerceguy 9y ago
    I can think of plenty, but I'm not going to say... Tehehe sorry for the joshing, it's interesting that free shipping doesn't correlate into increased revenues, or at least as much as one would think (although I'd like to see this same test on merchant fullfilled Amazon listings)..
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- thirdsun 9y ago
  > It's easy to rank higher in search engine for something you are 100% focused on compared to a big stores where it's only a small thing that they don't highlight. Exactly. The classic example that always comes to my mind: I work with audio and music production in my spare time and looking for equipment from that category will almost certainly result in a first search result from Thomann, a store focused on studio gear (like Sweetwater for europeans/germans), rather than Amazon, eBay and Co.
- antisthenes 9y ago
  5 digit revenue could be as low as $10,000 a month. When you factor in cost of goods and labor, what's the net income on that $120k/year? An educated guess would put it below the median wage for the country. How many of them have at least $1,000,000/year revenue?
  - nik736 9y ago
    If you think about that these are only side gigs without much labor involved (mostly drop shipping) and made on a tight budget, even $10k would be good money. Launch such a store every month and you have $120k MRR after 12 months.
draaglom 9y ago
I'm not saying it's not hard, but success is very much possible. E.g. Shopify handled $15.4 billion worth of transactions[1] in 2016, and that's just one platform. [1]: https://www.shopify.com/2016 https://www.shopify.com/2016
skinnymuch 9y ago
Shopify as just one example of a platform is still aggressively growing, no? Beyond that I know for sure there are still niches or unique ways to take to make money. I haven't done it personally, but know of a few people.
jmtame 9y ago
Counter-argument: http://fortune.com/2017/05/11/tophatter-e-commerce/ http://fortune.com/2017/05/11/tophatter-e-commerce/ Disclosure: I work at Tophatter.
- cylinder 9y ago
  This is a marketplace though, I am talking more of direct online retailing.

nik736 9y ago

That's simply false. There are always categories or "side"-categories that can be highly profitable and big stores only care about as a side business (small category in their store). Being a small category for a huge store means they don't care about that category too much but it doesn't mean there isn't a lot of cash to be made. I've helped several companies to build an online store that did exactly that and they are all doing 5 digit revenue month after month. It's easy to rank higher in search engine for something you are 100% focused on compared to a big stores where it's only a small thing that they don't highlight.

kossae 9y ago
Agreed. I work for a company in such a niche and there are definitely side-niche markets still out there for people to find and dominate, sometimes even on SEO alone. A small piece of a huge pie is still a very large piece to me.
- cylinder 9y ago
  Have a good example of one that took that piece? Outside of Amazon
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
pbowyer 9y ago
Can you give any examples of small categories? I can't think of any, let alone get my brain round what kind of thing they would be.
- ecommerceguy 9y ago
  I can think of plenty, but I'm not going to say... Tehehe sorry for the joshing, it's interesting that free shipping doesn't correlate into increased revenues, or at least as much as one would think (although I'd like to see this same test on merchant fullfilled Amazon listings)..
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
thirdsun 9y ago
> It's easy to rank higher in search engine for something you are 100% focused on compared to a big stores where it's only a small thing that they don't highlight. Exactly. The classic example that always comes to my mind: I work with audio and music production in my spare time and looking for equipment from that category will almost certainly result in a first search result from Thomann, a store focused on studio gear (like Sweetwater for europeans/germans), rather than Amazon, eBay and Co.
antisthenes 9y ago
5 digit revenue could be as low as $10,000 a month. When you factor in cost of goods and labor, what's the net income on that $120k/year? An educated guess would put it below the median wage for the country. How many of them have at least $1,000,000/year revenue?
- nik736 9y ago
  If you think about that these are only side gigs without much labor involved (mostly drop shipping) and made on a tight budget, even $10k would be good money. Launch such a store every month and you have $120k MRR after 12 months.

draaglom 9y ago

I'm not saying it's not hard, but success is very much possible. E.g. Shopify handled $15.4 billion worth of transactions[1] in 2016, and that's just one platform. [1]: https://www.shopify.com/2016 https://www.shopify.com/2016

skinnymuch 9y ago

Shopify as just one example of a platform is still aggressively growing, no? Beyond that I know for sure there are still niches or unique ways to take to make money. I haven't done it personally, but know of a few people.

jmtame 9y ago

Counter-argument: http://fortune.com/2017/05/11/tophatter-e-commerce/ http://fortune.com/2017/05/11/tophatter-e-commerce/ Disclosure: I work at Tophatter.

cylinder 9y ago
This is a marketplace though, I am talking more of direct online retailing.