5 ms·

This is a silly and doomed to failure mindset for an aspiring entrepreneur. The question should be, how large is my addressable market and how much gross profit

This is a silly and doomed to failure mindset for an aspiring entrepreneur. The question should be, how large is my addressable market and how much gross profit can I generate to cover my overhead. Shopify Merchants are selling roughly $80B a year, at least 5x WooCommerce merchants. Paying Shopify 20% means you net at least three times higher monthly revenues over paying WooCommerce zero commission. Apple charges devs 30%, but in return you get access to the worlds highest volume App Store paying developers $35B a year. You can also make iOS apps using an enterprise certificate, and distribute to tens of thousands with zero commission, but no one will ever find you on the store search, or give you public App Store ratings, you’ll never appear in a top category list or get featured by Apple, and any potential customers you reach will be leery of using your custom payments or subscription system, leading to lower paid conversions.

claudiulodro 6y ago
> Shopify Merchants are selling roughly $80B a year, at least 5x WooCommerce merchants. Paying Shopify 20% means you net at least three times higher monthly revenues over paying WooCommerce zero commission. This seems a weird way to calculate potential eCommerce platform plugin profits because (unless you are a payment gateway), the quantity of stores is more important than the volume those stores sell, and WooCommerce is by far the most popular eCommerce platform. For example, Kylie Jenner's Shopify store has approx. $330mm[1] in revenue a year as far as I can tell, but that's only going to translate into one potential plugin purchase. [1] https://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/tech-how-shopify-turned-reality-tv-star-billionaire https://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/tech-how-shopify-turn...
- Androider 6y ago
  You also don't want to just target the largest number of users, but the largest amount of users who are willing to pay for your plugin. I'm not familiar with the demographics of this particular market, but perhaps it's akin to iOS vs Google? Even though the latter has a hojillion users, app developers make way more money on iOS.
- valuearb 6y ago
  It’s imperfect, but probably the best possible way to gauge market potential. It’s going to depend upon what value your app provides, and to what type of merchants. Kylies a bad example, since her dev team can presumably afford to build the specific custom features they need. Merchants in the $100K to a few million a month range aren’t likely to be able to afford much custom development, but won’t blink an eye at paying hundreds of dollars a month for useful apps. A $10k a month merchant might balk at spending a $100 a month on anything but mission critical apps, and a $1K a month merchant probably isn’t buying any apps. But when Shopify sales volumes are at least 5x Woo Commerce (more likely over 10x because I don’t believe Woos numbers), odds are Shopify is much bigger in every customer segment.
andreygrehov 6y ago
I like your way of thinking. I'm an engineer, any recommendations on how to learn all this business-related stuff?
- valuearb 6y ago
  You are on the right site for that.
  - andreygrehov 6y ago
    Well, I'm familiar with HN (if that's the site you meant). Looking for some actionable recommendations.

claudiulodro 6y ago

> Shopify Merchants are selling roughly $80B a year, at least 5x WooCommerce merchants. Paying Shopify 20% means you net at least three times higher monthly revenues over paying WooCommerce zero commission. This seems a weird way to calculate potential eCommerce platform plugin profits because (unless you are a payment gateway), the quantity of stores is more important than the volume those stores sell, and WooCommerce is by far the most popular eCommerce platform. For example, Kylie Jenner's Shopify store has approx. $330mm[1] in revenue a year as far as I can tell, but that's only going to translate into one potential plugin purchase. [1] https://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/tech-how-shopify-turned-reality-tv-star-billionaire https://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/tech-how-shopify-turn...

Androider 6y ago
You also don't want to just target the largest number of users, but the largest amount of users who are willing to pay for your plugin. I'm not familiar with the demographics of this particular market, but perhaps it's akin to iOS vs Google? Even though the latter has a hojillion users, app developers make way more money on iOS.
valuearb 6y ago
It’s imperfect, but probably the best possible way to gauge market potential. It’s going to depend upon what value your app provides, and to what type of merchants. Kylies a bad example, since her dev team can presumably afford to build the specific custom features they need. Merchants in the $100K to a few million a month range aren’t likely to be able to afford much custom development, but won’t blink an eye at paying hundreds of dollars a month for useful apps. A $10k a month merchant might balk at spending a $100 a month on anything but mission critical apps, and a $1K a month merchant probably isn’t buying any apps. But when Shopify sales volumes are at least 5x Woo Commerce (more likely over 10x because I don’t believe Woos numbers), odds are Shopify is much bigger in every customer segment.

andreygrehov 6y ago

I like your way of thinking. I'm an engineer, any recommendations on how to learn all this business-related stuff?

valuearb 6y ago
You are on the right site for that.
- andreygrehov 6y ago
  Well, I'm familiar with HN (if that's the site you meant). Looking for some actionable recommendations.