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E-commerce is growing exponentially. I frequently see overnight successes of such companies through viral marketing; globalization and software have made it trivial for someone to open a store and saturate a product.

I spent about 1000 USD with 300 annual recurring costs (which I eventually stopped) selling on Shopify with ads on Facebook Ads, earning about 200 annually in revenue. I also had some other experiments with trying to move bulk on Amazon and trying to set up some ads on Tiktok. I lost money, and I consider this as just education fees.

I have another product on an unmentioned platform, with about 1000-3000 in annual revenue, netting half of that as profit (this online store is ongoing).

Here are some things learned:

• All businesses are just trying to answer one question: “How do I get someone to give me money?” I’m very logical, so I have always thought the answer to that question was the exchange of utility. However, I have learned that in markets where there is a general surplus, the choices we make are often emotional.
• Everything we buy is a choice, and almost everything we buy is due to interruption marketing. Large aggregators of data make extremely accurate guesses on what we might like, and money is spent so we make decisions we might not otherwise have made.
• A good market fit means you’ll pay less to get someone to buy something. A good brand or story means you can get someone to pay more to buy something.

It was kind of costly to run these experiments but it’s educational to see the systems that sellers use. What surprised me the most in all of this was that a disproportionate amount of money is spent on acquisition (and not on the actual product). A pair of shoes can cost $100 on a shelf but can only cost $10 to make. With future advances in automation, AI content, and consumer data collection, it can cost even less.