Commerce is in the middle of a massive transition - slowly creeping from offline transactions to some version of their online equivalent. Like an iceberg, slowly moving downhill, this creeping transactional - transition is at the same time incredibly slow, and crushingly fast. 

I feel lucky to be an observer, right up close, seeing the transition from ground level. As a former SVP of Marketing at an old-world organization (A University) I led a team as we struggled through the transition to online selling (and online delivery of our programs) - and as a kitchen table entrepreneur with my wife, we struggled (and struggle daily) to find our way in the brave new world of competitive online selling. 

I've also had the privilege of teaching Online Marketing at the University level - as well as teaching my Shopify Power course to over 1,000 students via Udemy (an online learning marketplace). 

In this post, I'd like to share what I call the E-commerce Formula - The...

Can you make sales on Shopify? That is a common question for new Shopify store owners. Your mission on Shopify will be to test whether you can acquire new customers for less than what they spend on your site. This is your greatest challenge and primary project on Shopify.

We call that challenge your Primary Site Hypothesis (PSH). You are speculating that you can acquire new customers and that they will quickly buy items of equal or greater value than the cost of acquiring them. Do it - and your baby Shopify site will survive and hopefully go on to thrive. Fail - and you will loose money until you shut down your site. In our Ecommerce Mentoring Program, we walk you through how to systematically make that happen.

How We Hit Our 1 Millionth Order On Shopify

You might be wondering about my own experience on Shopify and maybe you’ve already take the time to check-in and see who I am and what I’m actually doing on Shopify with my own website(s). I think our journey can shed a...

Veteran online sellers have found a tried and true product strategy for scaling a business to six and even seven figures - and Shopify is a great platform to implement this blueprint on. 

What's the product strategy? I call it Product Stacking, or the Integrated Product Stack. It's not complicated - and here is a chart that outlines the concept:

Product stacking is built on the idea that people want to 'go deeper' in connection to their area of interest - and if they trust you for one aspect of that journey, they'll likely trust you for the other aspects as well. Or, if they don't trust you, at least you're ideally positioned to make an offer to them associated with the other needs related to the topic. Since you've got their contact information and you know they purchased something in associated with that issue you are more ideally suited than anyone else to offer them a related product.

Step One - Initial Purchase

If you offer something - and someone...

Legendary money manager Bill Miller once said, 

"There are three sources of competitive advantage in investing: informational, analytical, or behavioral."

We can apply this to the real world of competitive marketing and say, there are...

3 Sources Of Competitive Advantage In Building Your Brand

Informational Advantage: You can win by simply knowing more about the business than your competitors. It's very common for entrenched competitors to face new upstarts. That can be troubling. One way they win is by simply knowing more about the business than their younger rivals. What can they know? 

• Customer buying behavior (what will sell and what won't)
• Pricing strategies that work in that niche
• Supplier options and challenges
• Seasonality
• Margins
• A million other small but important facts that give the entrenched marketer an advantage - as they simply wait and watch the upstart rival make predictable mistakes.

What can the new upstarts know that serves as a competitive...