I'm back...
A blog isn't much good if it isn't consistently updated. In fact, one could argue that one would be better served NOT to have a blog than to have one that has become dusty...
With that in mind, I pledge to do better!
I was recently afforded the opportunity to speak at a conference. Thus, I have been brainstorming ideas for a topic and for this particular audience, one obvious choice would be Amazon. This group consists of entrepreneurs many of whom are affiliate marketers.
AM's reside in a unique niche since by and large they do not act much more than as a pass-thru engine. The AM market has exploded with the enormous growth of AMZN and many mom-and-pop operators are trying to exploit said growth. In most cases, the barriers to entry are minimal so the entire arena is fertile ground to those I often refer to as 'wantrepreneurs'.
Thus, first I would like to divine some macro trends, patterns that account for the explosive growth of Amazon. My initial thought was to compare Amazon to other brick-and-mortar retailers. An obvious choice would be Walmart but I decided to go back even further to the ORIGINAL Amazon - Sears.
Sears was founded in 1886 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck. By the turn of the 20th century, they published a 500+ page catalog, allowing all 76 million Americans access to products that were previously out of their reach. They truly were the Amazon of their day!
Yet, anyone who follows the news knows that Sears - Where America Shops - has fallen on hard times. Their stores are closing at an alarming rate - 3500 down to less that 700 since 2010 alone - and there top line is imploding.
Below are two graphs I found in an article from SeekingAlpha published in January of this year -
The second graph shows the starkly different directions the two companies are headed. But something immediately jumped out at me. What about these charts gave me pause?
That will have to wait for my next post...
With that in mind, I pledge to do better!
I was recently afforded the opportunity to speak at a conference. Thus, I have been brainstorming ideas for a topic and for this particular audience, one obvious choice would be Amazon. This group consists of entrepreneurs many of whom are affiliate marketers.
AM's reside in a unique niche since by and large they do not act much more than as a pass-thru engine. The AM market has exploded with the enormous growth of AMZN and many mom-and-pop operators are trying to exploit said growth. In most cases, the barriers to entry are minimal so the entire arena is fertile ground to those I often refer to as 'wantrepreneurs'.
Thus, first I would like to divine some macro trends, patterns that account for the explosive growth of Amazon. My initial thought was to compare Amazon to other brick-and-mortar retailers. An obvious choice would be Walmart but I decided to go back even further to the ORIGINAL Amazon - Sears.
Sears was founded in 1886 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck. By the turn of the 20th century, they published a 500+ page catalog, allowing all 76 million Americans access to products that were previously out of their reach. They truly were the Amazon of their day!
Yet, anyone who follows the news knows that Sears - Where America Shops - has fallen on hard times. Their stores are closing at an alarming rate - 3500 down to less that 700 since 2010 alone - and there top line is imploding.
Below are two graphs I found in an article from SeekingAlpha published in January of this year -
The second graph shows the starkly different directions the two companies are headed. But something immediately jumped out at me. What about these charts gave me pause?
That will have to wait for my next post...
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