I think that article is summed up in one sentence in the middle of it - "Giving a shit is, by definition, not passive."
This is the fundamental truth; there is nothing passive about running an e-commerce business. You are constantly hands on, and you're frequently putting in far more than 8 hours a day on it if fulltime. I've run a couple of them, and nothing every ran in an automatic fashion. From interacting with customers to build retention and repeat sales to managing inventory, there was always something that involved active work to make sales. The cold selling was the worst because it involved the most marketing activity just to get awareness out there and build traffic.
I do agree a lot of people got suckered into the drop-shipping phase. I remember the pet shop trend. People were ga-ga in running pet accessory stores online with drop-shipping, promising to make tons of big money selling cheap Chinese-made goods to people who want to spend online via Amazon. The only one making money in that whole mess was Amazon.
I think that article is summed up in one sentence in the middle of it - "Giving a shit is, by definition, not passive."
This is the fundamental truth; there is nothing passive about running an e-commerce business. You are constantly hands on, and you're frequently putting in far more than 8 hours a day on it if fulltime. I've run a couple of them, and nothing every ran in an automatic fashion. From interacting with customers to build retention and repeat sales to managing inventory, there was always something that involved active work to make sales. The cold selling was the worst because it involved the most marketing activity just to get awareness out there and build traffic.
I do agree a lot of people got suckered into the drop-shipping phase. I remember the pet shop trend. People were ga-ga in running pet accessory stores online with drop-shipping, promising to make tons of big money selling cheap Chinese-made goods to people who want to spend online via Amazon. The only one making money in that whole mess was Amazon.
Verifluxizing := #1472965