Back in April 2022, Amazon launched their “Buy with Prime” program, allowing sellers to offer customers shopping on their website the option to make purchases using their Amazon Prime accounts and receive items through Amazon’s sophisticated fulfillment network. The goal was to generate additional revenue for Amazon, gather data, and compete with platforms like Shopify.
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In ancient times, shopping was an adventure: people had to leave their houses, get in their cars, and explore aisles of physical retail stores, searching for treasures and good deals. Then came ecommerce, which changed the world. People now had the option to shop from their couches and get products delivered directly to their door. As a result, and for a long time, there were two very different worlds that provided very different experiences: physical stores and online shopping. How cool would it be if customers could have a unified shopping experience, whether they shopped from their laptops at home, a smartphone app, or directly at a retail store? That is already the case, and it is called an omnichannel strategy.
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Have you ever been scrolling on your Instagram feed, seen a picture of a model wearing a pair of shoes you really like, and then found a View Products tag? That is social commerce: the fusion between ecommerce and social media. Kids are now born with a smartphone in their hands and social media on the screen. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok drive huge amounts of traffic daily and have billions of users worldwide. Companies had to find ways to monetize all this traffic and data, and social commerce is one of them. This relatively recent way of selling is significantly impacting the digital marketing world, and it is getting bigger by the year. But how big is it exactly and should you use it? Let’s find out.
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In the age of Amazon.com, is it still relevant for brands to have their own ecommerce website? Many entrepreneurs use Amazon, or other marketplaces as their primary and only sale channel. Others focus mostly on their own website. And a lot of businesses go with a hybrid approach and sell on multiple sales channels. So what is the right approach? And is a website still necessary?
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If I had a dollar for every “Get rich with Amazon FBA” course out there, I could quit working and retire early. Whether these courses are useful or not is irrelevant. The sheer number of gurus selling these methods shows how much attention Amazon has been getting for the past decade. Their net revenue went from $61B in 2022 to over $513B in 2022. However, Amazon is not the only marketplace out there. Everyone knows eBay—I remember waking up early to bid on video games and pairs of rollerblades when I was still in middle school. There is also Walmart Marketplace, which is gaining more and more traction, or Etsy for those who like shopping for handmade goods.
Because of the millions of customers these platforms attract, it can be a tremendous opportunity for entrepreneurs. While selling on marketplaces has its risks and issues, they can still be very profitable sales channels. After writing about the dark side of marketplaces, I’d like to talk about the flip side and go over the main reasons why some companies would consider joining one of these platforms.
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Introduction
When I started my first business, I created an online store but also listed my products on Amazon. As a new entrepreneur with little experience, I was expecting to get a few more sales from Amazon than my own website. It turns out that for each order I received on my website, I got almost ten orders from Amazon. There are many great things about selling on popular marketplaces, the most important being piggybacking the marketplace customer base and the built-in trust with customers.
Yet, there are a lot of issues with online marketplaces that are not obvious before you start selling on one of these channels. It took me years before I started to fully understand the challenges and issues that came with online marketplaces. I do not blame the marketplace operators for all these issues, but I want to discuss the dark side of these important online channels so you are better prepared for the day you join one of them, if you have not already.
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Behind this provocative title, I want to highlight a grim reality in the ecommerce world: too many unsuccessful entrepreneurs are actually trying to trade commodities on Amazon. You probably know that commodities are products like steel, sand, or oil. But if you think about it, many products sold to online consumers are close to being commodities. And being a commodity seller isn’t where you want to be as an ecommerce entrepreneur. Let’s see why.
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“Everyone is glued to their phones these days.” We’ve all heard that dozens of times, yet it is more true than ever. Smartphones are a big part of our lives, and we now have the ability to shop online from anywhere at any time. Technology creates massive business opportunities, and entrepreneurs will always take advantage of it. In the ecommerce space, there are now thousands of mobile shopping apps available for download. As an entrepreneur, you’ll find many people recommending that every online business should have its own app. So, should you jump on the bandwagon, or would creating a mobile app be nothing more than a huge waste of time and money?
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My name is François, I’m the author of this blog. I love writing and talking about business and ecommerce. I hope you enjoy my work, feel free to contact me for any suggestion!