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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

#41

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, type shopify.com and let me know if you can buy a pair of shoes. You can't. You go to eBay and you can. Shopify is just the platform and the entire ecosystem supports the amount of transactions.

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

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that is likely coming at some point - but who knows... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20411992 Also with the recent postal changes in the US I think that will hurt AliExpress, Banggood and help Shopify and Amazon.

Aren't most drop ship sites on shopify? I feel like every few articles and blog is "be a drop shipper" with those three simple services..

Drop shippers are on all e-commerce platforms, from the shopify 1-pagers to merchants on ebay and Amazon. It's saturated the entire market at this point.

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

#43
post #3

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

I think (?) that's intentional. I think the Shopify platform is generally branded as part of a company's website, and customers are generally unaware that Shopify was involved in the transaction. Which is sort of the polar opposite of the way Amazon works.

Precisely - Shopify is a white-label ecommerce platform, whereas ebay and amazon are walled gardens.

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

#44
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…

I’ve bought and sold a bunch of vintage camera stuff on eBay, and it’s mostly been okay. Just a hobby type thing for me. Not much in the last couple of years though. A couple of times there were minor issues. The fees really are bad, though.

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

#45
post #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 $36…

No, the article goes on to explicitly state:

Data also shows the platform recently overtook competitor eBay, once a powerhouse in this space, in terms of quarterly sales.

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

#46
An article put forward by marketing. Not sure why many HNr's like this kind of article.

By no stretch Shopify is bigger than eBay, market cap is a game played by investors and this kind of article are used to boost it. If someone is holding Shopify stocks it will be the best time to sale.

Funny enough by this ridiculous metrics SAP's commerce cloud and Adobe's Magento will become the largest shopping site miles and miles ahead of shopify.

This kind of articles I believe are paid for to affect the stock prices to move market, I am sure it will result in large stock sales after increase in prices.

Shopify has consistently been loss making so it's very hard to see light at the end of tunnel given it is similar to many open source platform and commerce platform. It's just trying to outspend it's way to take over SAP, Adobe and Salesforce commerce offerings, let's see how long it continues.

Someone from shopify's marketing might be working to contain critical comments.

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

#47

An article put forward by marketing. Not sure why many HNr's like this kind of article. By no stretch Shopify is bigger than eBay, market cap is a game played by investors and this kind of article are used to boost it. If someone is holding Shopify stocks it will be the best time to sale. Funny enough by this ridiculous metrics SAP's commerce cloud and Adobe's Magento will become the largest shopping site miles and m…

In fact the founder of YC and HN has an essay decrying this exact kind of article: http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

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

#49

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?

The seller side is the perspective that matters in this comparison. If you have wares to sell and want to start selling through the internet though a managed platform, amazon, ebay, etsy and shopify are competing options for you.

A main difference is shoppify you do still need to bring your own consumer traffic to your site, others have a captive audience of shoppers already, but will likely cost you more out of each sale because of that.

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