Kevin Stecko is the founder and president of 80sTees.com.  He's been operating the business since December of 1999.

If you aren't Amazon do you need to be Buzzfeed to survive?

Amazon is google for ecommerce.  They took so much friction out of the transaction compared to going to google and buying on another ecommerce site that many people don't want to buy anywhere else.  It's not even about price for many folks.  Amazon has their address, their payment information, and free 2 day shipping.  So now if you want a product you start your search on Amazon.

And yes lots of people are having success with FBA and FBM, but the writing is on the wall.  If your niche is big enough Amazon will spin up their own brand to replace you.  It's just a matter of time.  There are some exceptions for patented products but let's say that this applies to the majority of ecommerce.

So how do you get traffic to your ecommerce store when existing demand goes direct to Amazon?  Facebook ads are great for this.  But if you want to do really well at Facebook ads you might as well study the best.  And that means study Buzzfeed and other companies who have used Facebook to build huge platforms.  And if you are going to study them and emulate them, then you are basically becoming them.  

And what does Buzzfeed do?  They think audience first, and then they find a product their audience will want and share.  So do that.  Build your audience.  Feed them what they like 90% of the time, and then 10% of the time sell them something.  Gary V wrote a book about the concept. But you need to go farther.  You need to think like Buzzfeed.

FedEx vs UPS

Go ahead and cut your own damn grass