The Magic of Magento for E-Commerce
I’ve spent my entire day buried in documentation for Magento, playing around with the test server I setup. Installing themes is horribly inefficient compared to what it should be, but otherwise, this open source platform is truly revolutionary in terms of what it’s doing for e-commerce.
It reminds me of WordPress, which quickly standardized and came to dominate content management systems. I think there is probably a huge business opportunity for someone to build a dedicated Magento hosting business that specializes entirely in providing turnkey services for clients who want stores as the demand outstrips the supply at the moment. If I were younger, and hungrier, that may be something on my list of potential ideas so I could ride what appears to be an inevitable wave. A good operator could make a heck of a lot of money working for himself or herself if they possessed basic business acumen and technical skills in this area.
I’m learning it through total immersion; dive in, look around, break it apart, and flip switches. Whenever I screw something up terribly, I restore a server image stamped this morning so it rolls back everything I did as if it never happened.
The Magento platform definitely isn’t perfect, nor the right solution for everyone out of the box. It requires a lot of resources, an aptitude for software systems, and a basic understanding of server hosting environments. I’m learning fairly quickly that my database optimization skills are not even remotely up to my own standards, so I’d hire that out were I to ever do anything with it. It’s strength is the opportunity to customize it how you want by tapping into the source code. Being open source, if you have (or can hire) the technical staff to do whatever it is you dream, it can probably happen. You can even run multiple stores, on multiple domains, from a single consolidated backend administrative panel if you plan the foundation correctly.
The community edition is absolutely free, so those of you who love this sort of thing can check it out. There’s a decent amount of documentation out there explaining how to get it up and running by creating a server on your local system if you don’t have a web hosting service already established, which is how I’m testing it at the moment. I created a dummy DNS zone with a fake domain registration name then modified my IP hosts file to connect to it so it’s not visible to anyone else, but I can still mess around with it however I want.
This makes me want to sell something. I don’t know what, but it puts me in the mood to launch a store like my youth because I’m getting that odd combination of frustration, elation, discovery, and triumph.
Reader Comments (5)
Comments are presented chronologically, with replies indented beneath the comments to which they respond.
poonam
January 9, 2014
Great!! Magento is really magical for ecommerce business. It provides an easy, smooth & profitable solution to the users as well as owners. Its features & functionality is really appreciable.
Seth
January 9, 2014
In one of your articles, you talk about building synthetic equity through the use of an online e-commerce system for someone else taking 5% of all sales. Based on this article, it seems that doing something like this requires far more expertise, and is easier said than done. Do you believe that this is just the case with Magento, as it needs to be self hosted, or is this still true with using something like network solutions e-commerce platform or yahoos?
Joshua Kennon
January 10, 2014
Replying to Seth
I've found that almost everything in life worth doing falls into the, "easier said than done", category. Otherwise, everyone would be doing it and it would be the new baseline. If you want rewards that others don't have, you have to do things others don't do.
The rewards often flow in direct proportion to how simple it is for others to do because difficulty serves as a "barrier to entry" in economic speak. For example, the most lucrative course of action would be for a person to build his or her own server (requiring the technical expertise) then sell the hosting package as well as the platform to clients, collecting monthly hosting fees and a cut of revenue.
The next most lucrative option would be to open a reseller account with a host like liquidweb, so they handled all the hardware but you focused solely on the software and development. The profits will be smaller, but still very fat if you know what you're doing.
The next most lucrative option would be outsourcing all of the hardware and software needs to a "rent a platform" service like Network Solutions, which is far easier to use (but if you invest in skills or freelancers, can still be augmented in powerful ways).
There is going to be a learning curve no matter what platform someone chooses. In many cases, it should be far lower on a pre-packed "rent the software" service like Network Solutions e-commerce than a "build it yourself" system like Magento Community (though Magento does have an entry-level program called Magento Go that is comparable to Network Solutions in a lot of ways as the person need not have any coding experience at all, but this is achieved by giving up Magento's biggest advantage, which is customization).
But being harder than it looks? Yes. That's why the payoffs for well-executed systems are so lucrative compared to alternative uses of time. A technically proficient 18 year old should not find it difficult to make $50,000 to $100,000 per year doing projects like this from his or her bedroom. The capital outlays are so tiny relative to the cash inflows it's just not that hard if you've invested in the skills capital necessary to be proficient and efficient. I don't think a person lacking that skill capital, which takes time and effort to develop, is going to be justified in expecting very much out of his or her efforts, just as a farmer who had never bothered to learn about agriculture isn't going to do very well compared to a guy who knows how fertilizer, irrigation, and crop rotation works.
Odai
January 13, 2014
Replying to Joshua Kennon
What you're saying makes sense: Running a business is hard, which is why the rewards are high - few are willing to do what it takes.
But this seems to contradict one of your other articles, "Business Should Be Fun … If It’s Not, You’re Doing Something Wrong". What are your thoughts on that?
Regarding a Magento hosting business, I think the real opportunities exist for someone who can provide a niche flavor of it. Looking at WordPress, the only company making money selling a flat-out WP hosting service is the developers themselves (Automattic Inc, with WordPress.com).
Other companies making money with WP hosting include EduBlogs (a niche blogging market), WPMU Dev (niche plugins), and Tumblr (originally WP, now running an in-house version).
EDIT: Technically, some companies like Laughing Squid and Dreamhost make money selling special WP packages, but that's more of a side offering, not a core business. And there are some dedicated WP hosts, but I don't think any of them make significant money (could be wrong though).
Chris Welch
January 11, 2014
Agreed here. WordPress is a great option for content management, but the ecommerce is still not there yet by a long shot. Only specialty applications seem to be maturing - like Paid Memberships Pro for paid membership sites. Magento is a great option, especially for "stores-within-stores" or folks who want to manage a single catalog for specialty shops spread across many domains.
My wife's new business is ecommerce-based and needs something that she can manage without me (I'm the geek). She ended up using SquareSpace which has a good balance of DIY Web and Ecommerce capability, and can be migrated to Magento if/when things take off or she wants to setup another shop or two. It also is built on RESTful JSON Web Services so there's a nice API for programming on the site for third parties - no custom server code to muck around with.