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Shopify Overtakes eBay as Second Biggest Shopping Site After Amazon

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Re: Shopify Overtakes eBay as Second Biggest Shopping Site After Amazon

#21
post #3

So weird. Literally cannot remember if I've ever bought something from Shopify.

Tesla uses Shopify to sell cars -- I'd bet that just a few relatively large companies are the cause of that huge revenue number. Doubly so if eBay only reports their actual cut of sales as revenue instead of the entire sale price.

Re: Shopify Overtakes eBay as Second Biggest Shopping Site After Amazon

#22

Shopify isn't a homogeneous marketplace that is comparable to Amazon.com. It's a SaaS ecommerce platform. I've seen these comparisons made lately and I don't understand it. What am I missing?

Well, Amazon/Ebay/Shopify/Etsy all are platforms that let other people sell things. I get your point (and might even agree with you), however if you look at it from the perspective of "I want to sell something... where do I go?", they're competition. They do discovery, checkout, inventory, fulfillment, etc. It just happens to have a slightly different approach than the others.

Not really the same thing though, Amazon/eBay/Etsy you can browse multiple "stores". Shopify is just a platform so it really isn't that fair. It'd be like including every single Magento powered site to say Magento is the X largest platform.

Re: Shopify Overtakes eBay as Second Biggest Shopping Site After Amazon

#23
Having not checked in on Shopify for a good few years, kudos to Tobias and his team for all they've achieved in growing to the level they have.

I still remember using liquid templates back in the early days of Rails as it was a problem no-one else in the space was really running at.

I had absolutely no idea they were making that kind of revenue these days. It's nice to see that hard work can still pay off.

Re: Shopify Overtakes eBay as Second Biggest Shopping Site After Amazon

#24
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Amazon/Ebay/Shopify/Etsy all are platforms that let other people sell things. I get your point (and might even agree with you), however if you look at it from the perspective of "I want to sell something... where do I go?", they're competition. They do discovery, checkout, inventory, fulfillment, etc. It just happens to have a slightly different approach than the others.

Not really the same thing though, Amazon/eBay/Etsy you can browse multiple "stores". Shopify is just a platform so it really isn't that fair. It'd be like including every single Magento powered site to say Magento is the X largest platform.

Yeah but that's from the perspective of buyers, so OP's point still stands.

Re: Shopify Overtakes eBay as Second Biggest Shopping Site After Amazon

#25

Shopify isn't a homogeneous marketplace that is comparable to Amazon.com. It's a SaaS ecommerce platform. I've seen these comparisons made lately and I don't understand it. What am I missing?

Well, Amazon/Ebay/Shopify/Etsy all are platforms that let other people sell things. I get your point (and might even agree with you), however if you look at it from the perspective of "I want to sell something... where do I go?", they're competition. They do discovery, checkout, inventory, fulfillment, etc. It just happens to have a slightly different approach than the others.

They do discovery? At Amazon and eBay most purchases come via Amazon's and eBay's search engines. Shopify doesn't have a search engine other than the ones inside individual stores. It's a very different business.

Re: Shopify Overtakes eBay as Second Biggest Shopping Site After Amazon

#26
I have a bunch of old camera gear that I'd like to sell. I've been led to believe that on eBay, I'll very likely get scammed, and the customer support always sides with the scammer.

This doesn't concern the massive drop shippers operating 10k transactions per month, as they can easily eat the cost of the occasional scammer. It is very effective deterrent against casual sellers like me, though.

Ebay started out as "Yard sales, except on the internet", and nowadays it's more like Ali Express.

Re: Shopify Overtakes eBay as Second Biggest Shopping Site After Amazon

#27
post #12

Does it really mean that Shopify is selling more than eBay? There are lots of indie entrepreneurs who open a site with shopify and pay for the Shopify subscription only to discover that they don't have nowhere near the the number of sales or even visitors they hoped.

Yeah, that's what I susp3too. It's is a bit of a hype.. I guess shopify will run out of "dreamers" in two years or so.. Then they probably go from flat to "pay per article" or so and call it better customer service and pricing :)

I have a niche e-commerce business I run mostly for fun, although it does make a decent profit vs. the time I put into it. I originally had woocommerce, a paid theme, digital ocean, MySQL, backups, stripe integration, etc. and honestly it was a hassle. I switched everything and now pay Shopify my $30 per month and don’t even think about it. $360 per year is pocket change vs. my stress level.

Re: Shopify Overtakes eBay as Second Biggest Shopping Site After Amazon

#28
Note that they are not the second biggest shopping site by any reasonable metric (sales, visitors, unique shoppers, orders, SKUs, really anything). This article is using market cap:

> The company has quickly become the most popular online shopping destination, second only to Amazon, thanks to an astronomical increase of its shares in the past year. So far this year, stock has soared 160% with revenue coming in at $362 million during its last quarter.

Shopify has a high stock price is the only take away from this article. It's not an ecommerce destination and is not comparable to Amazon or Ebay.

Re: Shopify Overtakes eBay as Second Biggest Shopping Site After Amazon

#29
post #26

I have a bunch of old camera gear that I'd like to sell. I've been led to believe that on eBay, I'll very likely get scammed, and the customer support always sides with the scammer. This doesn't concern the massive drop shippers operating 10k transactions per month, as they can easily eat the cost of the occasional scammer. It is very effective deterrent against casual sellers like me, though. Ebay started out as "Ya…

Like a lot of things, sell through a reputable dealer (like KEH in the case of cameras). But you’ll get less that a non-scammy sale and they’ll be picky about what they’ll even take.

Amazon can also be easy and safe if they want what you want to sell. But you won’t get the best possible price. Still I’ve done it as the path of least resistance.

Re: Shopify Overtakes eBay as Second Biggest Shopping Site After Amazon

#30
post #12

Does it really mean that Shopify is selling more than eBay? There are lots of indie entrepreneurs who open a site with shopify and pay for the Shopify subscription only to discover that they don't have nowhere near the the number of sales or even visitors they hoped.

No, this just means that Shopify has a high stock market valuation. This isn't looking at sales figures at all.

And since they just rent software to people who sell things I'm not sure it makes sense to compare them to more traditional eCommerce plays (if you started selling homes through Shopify somehow it would hugely increase "sold goods", but not in a way that impacts anything).

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