Archive for the ‘business’ Category

As someone who’s been working in the Magento eCommerce market pretty much since its inception (with the intention to stick with it for the long term), I’ve been particularly attentive to the development of Magento – both as a platform, a community, and a market.

I wrote a few articles on the question of the acquisition by Ebay and since I’ve recently been asked if I had further thoughts on the topic I decided to share them here.

If you’re in the Ecommerce business and there’s just one post you’re going to read today – make it this one!

Magento’s growth and the connection with eBay

Ebay first acquired 49% of Magento back over a year and a half ago. The exponential growth of the Magento market jumped to new levels after the initial investment from Ebay and is now going even stronger since the acquisition a few months ago (we see that in traffic, market demand, and sales).

The market is booming with an ever wider audience, more traction, etc… My take on this is that this market will continue to grow and that companies who are able to position themselves in a privileged position (such as our Magento Network with its reputation and history) will greatly benefit from the integration with Ebay’s various projects under X.Commerce.

The future of Magento as a stand alone platform

It’s been clear for over a year and a half that Ebay was going to purchase Magento eventually (after acquiring 49% of it) as part of Ebay’s efforts to dominate the Ecommerce space. It’s also clear that Magento will remain a stand alone solution while at the same time being at the core of other offerings such as X.commerce, MagentoGo, etc.

There are hundreds of thousands of merchants who use Magento – and that number is growing steadily every day. Ebay’s strategy is to appeal to all possible audiences by offering different products, starting with Ebay itself for tiny merchants, hosted solutions such as MagentoGo for small businesses, Magento Community edition for small to large businesses, and Magento Professional and Enterprise editions as well as CGI Commerce (which was also recently acquired by Magento) to very large merchants. It seems that all of the above will be under the X.Commerce banner. Ebay also owns Paypal.

To me, Magento will continue to thrive as of in itself – much like Paypal, Ebay, or CGI Commerce will continue to thrive independently. After all, no one would throw away a booming market that’s fully branded, extremely profitable, and has millions of users (hundreds of thousands of active merchants). All of these components will continue as stand alone solutions that are also integrated into the X.Commerce vision.

In addition, since the first investment by Ebay Magento has made tremendous efforts to make the platform’s new features more and more stable in terms of compatibility with previous releases. And that trend has been very beneficial (basically since Magento 1.4). That means that merchants will continue to have a clear and simple upgrade paths when Magento continues to evolve with the upcoming versions, without affecting 3rd party products and store customization.

Magento’s growth continues

Take a look at the Google Trends graph for Magento vs Ecommerce (note the recent growth since May which emphasizes the added traction that Ebay brings to the platform):

Another interesting point is that there seems to be a recent growing trend of companies chosing to enter the Magento market. Here’s for example a recent press release on a business acquiring a small niche Magento extension shop: http://www.pr.com/press-release/340285.

If your business is in the Ecommerce space, I hope this gets you thinking .

Related articles mentioned in this post:

• Now is the time to invest in Magento
• Magento – eBay: the saga continues
• Our Magento network’s traffic and sale data

Whenever possible, your preferred communication method should be email, chat, or social media. No phone calls, no meetings. In other words, use “passive” communication methods.

You see, when you’re on a phone call or meet with people, everyone involved is “stuck”. You can’t take your time to reply, think about what you want to say properly, do some research, or prioritize.

A phone call or meeting interrupts your work flow, disturbs your focus, and puts you in a position where you have less control over your time and resources.

You can choose to get off your email while you’re working, ignore chat windows, etc… When using passive communication methods you can prioritize and decide what requires your attention more urgently and what doesn’t matter as much.

Passive communication methods are more respectful of people’s time and priorities. They’re also usually much more efficient – people tend to be more concise, precise, and effective when they have to write things down.

You can also keep track of your conversations and exchanges and refer back to them down the road.

Of course don’t apply this to your personal life .

Some related posts in this Productivity Tips series:

• Focus on the next step
• Work when you’re productive

For the past few years, our main of focus has been on our Ecommerce line of products which consists of Ultimento, Magentist, and Magento Expert.

All 3 sites provide products and services for the popular Magento Ecommerce platform and I thought it’d be interested to share some of our traffic and sales data and the trend they show over the past 7 months.

30,000 unique monthly visitors across the sites + continued growth:

Big monthly income across the network + continued growth:

Though July is often considered a “low season” month for most businesses, our traffic and profit data continue to show the same steep growth. With the recent release of Ultimento 2.0 the future is looking brighter than ever and profits are continuing to rise steeply.

This data reinforces what I wrote recently about Magento’s growth (since the acquisition by eBay) . Also take a look at the Google Trends graph for Magento vs Ecommerce (note the recent growth since May):

I hope someone finds these interesting!

Related posts:

• There’s never been a better time to invest in Magento
• Magento + eBay – the saga continues

I talked in the past about how ideas are worthless (it’s the execution that matters).

I also shared how at the time Noam Design was a web design company we got so many inquires from people with “great ideas” who never do anything with them (not to mention the guys who want to sign an NDA).

More recently I’ve talked about how “innovative” ideas are usually just more of the same.

Don’t talk it to death. Just do it.

Now do yourself a favor – if you have an idea or a project or something you want to do in life, please – don’t talk it to death. Just do it. (more…)

It’s easy to forget what our true ambitions are. Especially when we’re hard at work either focused on the daily tasks or rushing to get to that “next step”.

Sometimes we’re so deep into whatever it is we’re doing that we forget we even had ambitions. You know, the “when I grow up” type of ambitions. The “this is how I want to live my life” type of ambitions. (more…)

We recently discussed how there’s never been a better time to invest in Magento and I just wanted to post here a few related highlights from the community (mostly related to the topic but also somewhat random). The saga continues… (more…)

Magento has recently been acquired by eBay and the news have shaken the entire eCommerce industry. Businesses that grew around the Magento ecosystem are worried (again) – but do they need to? (more…)

It’s funny how after you start thinking about something you often start seeing it and hearing about it everywhere. Like an art you’ve never heard of until one day you discover it and from that day on it seems like you never stop hearing about it and seeing it almost every where you go.

For a while you simply pay more attention to something you were before overlooking or ignoring.

Over the last few years, I spent a lot of energy thinking about my business strategy and direction. But the last couple of months have been particularly intense for me, not giving me time to sit back and reflect much. A few days ago I realized I haven’t been paying enough attention to where I was going.

And now it seems that everything I do, read, or hear is related to “where I’m going with my business”! This morning I stumbled upon this: (more…)

I think we achieve very little alone so it’s imperative to join forces and energy with other people. You need to involve co-workers, teammates, people in your field (collaboration), friends & family (sharing), and the world (publishing).

In sports, collaboration is usually in-person. Professional tennis players or runners have an entire team of people training with them. They “collaborate” with training partners, share their efforts with friends and family, and they eventually “publish” their results when they go out to compete. (more…)

How is it that everybody drop their new year resolution by February? Because our resolutions are usually too vague and abstract to remain sustainable. If you want to reach the top of the mountain – you’ve got to forget about the top of the mountain and focus on the next step you need to take. Every journey, long or short, starts with one small step – and the entire journey is made of a continuity of small steps. (more…)