In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley shares his predictions for the future of e-commerce over the next decade. Drawing from his experience scaling a brand to eight figures, he analyzes Amazon, TikTok Shop, Shopify, and AI-driven commerce. Josh advises entrepreneurs to master one platform before expanding, build creator relationships through TikTok Shop, leverage Shopify for brand ownership, and prepare for AI-powered shopping experiences. He emphasizes that rising competition, increasing ad costs, and the growing importance of brand trust will define the future landscape of e-commerce.

Bullet Points:

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Introduction to E-commerce Platforms
The speaker introduces the main topics of the episode: Amazon, TikTok Shop, Shopify, and the future of AI in e-commerce.

00:00:55 The Current Noisy E-commerce Landscape
A discussion on how the e-commerce world has become noisier, with Amazon’s dominance being challenged by new platforms and strategies.

00:02:56 Amazon’s Future: Dominance and Challenges
Prediction that Amazon will maintain its dominance with faster shipping but will see increased ad costs and competition from overseas sellers.

00:05:03 The Evolution of Amazon’s Algorithm
The speaker predicts Amazon’s keyword-driven ranking algorithm will be replaced by a more conversational, AI-driven search, eliminating traditional page rankings.

00:06:00 Predictions for TikTok Shop
TikTok Shop is predicted to be a challenging platform for profitability, with rising fees and a shift towards paid reach.

00:08:17 The Enduring Importance of Creators
Working with content creators will become even more crucial for building brand trust in an increasingly AI-driven world.

00:08:17 Shopify’s Continued Dominance
Shopify is expected to become the undisputed king for independent e-commerce websites, integrating with AI and social commerce platforms.

00:11:17 The Future of AI and Agent E-commerce
AI will transform shopping with personal assistants, making brand integrity and trust more important than ever for consumer purchasing decisions.

00:14:08 Where to Focus Your Efforts
The speaker outlines his business strategy, recommending entrepreneurs master one platform, like Amazon, before expanding to others.

00:16:01 The Sequential Approach to Growth
A step-by-step guide: master a platform, build a team, then focus on TikTok Shop to build creator relationships.

00:18:02 Unlocking Shopify and Driving Traffic
After mastering creator relationships, entrepreneurs can effectively unlock Shopify’s potential by knowing how to drive traffic through affiliates and paid ads.

00:20:04 Integrating Agent Commerce and Content
Agent commerce is the final step, focusing on content distribution and building brand trust to rank in large language models.

00:22:25 A Roadmap for Entrepreneurs
Advice for entrepreneurs to focus on one sales channel until reaching $5 million, build a team, and then expand sequentially.

00:24:19 Conclusion: Focus and Proper Sequencing
Final advice to avoid distractions by focusing on one initiative at a time to achieve faster and more sustainable growth.

Links and Mentions:

Tools and Platforms
“Amazon“: “00:00:00”
“TikTok Shop“: “00:00:00”
“Shopify“: “00:00:00”
“AI and Agent eCommerce”: “00:00:00”

Key Predictions and Insights
“Amazon’s Future”: “00:02:56”
“TikTok Shop’s Profitability Challenges”: “00:07:20”
“Shopify’s Dominance”: “00:09:17”
“AI’s Impact on Shopping”: “00:11:17”

Recommendations
“Focus on Amazon until you have a solid team”: “00:15:08”
“Building relationships with creators”: “00:16:57”
“Unlocking Shopify after establishing creator relationships”: “00:19:04”
“Engaging with consumers through content distribution”: “00:21:13”

Additional Notes
“Creator Gold Rush”: “00:16:57”
“Affiliate Management”: “00:19:04”
“Content Distribution and Engagement”: “00:22:25”

Transcript:

Josh Hadley 00:00:00  Amazon, TikTok shop, Shopify, and even AI and agent eCommerce. These are all of the many topics that are surfacing to the top right now in all of the mastermind groups that I’m a part of. So if you’re listening to this, which of these platforms should you actually be investing the majority of your time into? Which of these platforms actually deserve your attention? In today’s episode, I’m going to be sharing my perspective, the platforms that I am actively focused on and why, and what my predictions are for e-commerce over the next decade. Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast. I’m Josh Hadley. I’ve scaled my own ecommerce brand from 0 to 8 figures, and I’m actively building towards nine figures in sales. This podcast is where I document that journey and share the systems, the strategies, and the lessons learned in real time so that you can learn what actually matters and scale your own business. My name is Josh Hadley. First and foremost, I’m a man of faith. I’m a husband to a beautiful wife, and I’m also the father of four children.

Josh Hadley 00:00:55  I’ve been selling in the e-commerce space for over a decade, doing over $20 million annually and doing multi millions in revenue on TikTok. Shop, Shopify and Amazon. And I am also the host of the number one business strategy podcast for ecommerce entrepreneurs, Ecomm Breakthrough. There is so much noise going on right now in the world of e-commerce, and frankly speaking, I feel like it’s noisier over the last couple of years than it ever has been in the past. To be honest with you, from about 2015 to maybe about 2023, the only thing you would hear from people is Amazon and Amazon. Amazon. And then we would always wish that Walmart would actually be a serious player in the e-commerce space. But frankly speaking, Walmart never really got their act together. There are some people that are doing well on Walmart. But you know, from my perspective, in any test that we’ve continued to run, is that like the market just simply is not worth the time investment over there. So with that being said, right now, we are living in just like an extremely noisy period of time for e-commerce.

Josh Hadley 00:01:54  And what we heard was many people succeeding on Amazon from about 2015 to about 2023. But then like there has been a massive shift and I believe that it started around the year 2023. This is where the Amazon algorithm really started to break down. For a lot of the brands that were early adopters to Amazon, and it’s not that Amazon magically changed their algorithm or things like that, but Amazon has been heavily recruiting overseas sellers for the past five plus years. And because of that, they’re bringing on, you know, really just like cheaper manufacturers, people that are willing to charge less for their products and don’t need as much overhead or don’t have as much overhead. And so they could live off of slimmer margins. That’s a win for Amazon’s business, because, frankly speaking, they don’t care what our profit and loss statements look like. In fact, they want to make sure that they are milking us for every dollar and every percent of margin that they count out of us while still, you know, convincing us that it’s worth our time to sell on their platform.

Josh Hadley 00:02:56  So if that’s true, where should you be spending your time and attention right now? What is what are my predictions for e-commerce over the next decade? Today we’re going to be diving into that. So let’s talk about each of these sales channels independently. first let’s start with Amazon. So what’s my prediction for Amazon over the next decade. Is Amazon going to get bigger or smaller. My prediction is Amazon only continues its dominance in the e-commerce space. Amazon is not going anywhere. And in fact the fulfillment fees are only going to increase the amount or the percentage of ads that you see on the page is only going to continue to increase, especially with agent shopping. And so my, you know, kind of foresight here is that your percentage of revenue going towards ad dollars is only going to increase on Amazon. You’re going to see more competition than you’ve ever seen before on Amazon. And Amazon will continue to be the default shopping engine of of choice for consumers because I believe that Amazon’s delivery system is only going to get better and faster.

Josh Hadley 00:03:59  And what once upon a time was like, hey, we were really impressed with two day shipping is now going to turn into like two hour shipping. That’s my recommendation. A decade from now, you’re expecting that product, that new thing that you just bought to show up on your doorstep in less than two hours. So Amazon still becomes the default search engine of choice, but it’s only for something that you are actively looking for, like you have a problem. This is extremely low down the sales funnel, which means you have a pain point. You know the solution. You’re going immediately to go find that specific solution and you’re going to Amazon. You’re looking at reviews, you’re looking at price and you’re looking at speed of delivery. And ultimately that’s how people are going to shop on Amazon. So that’s my prediction on Amazon. So if that’s true and you’ve built your entire business on the back of Amazon up until this point, you need to decide if that’s going to continue to be like your default primary sales channel of choice, because the ranking algorithm, I will say, will dramatically change over the next decade.

Josh Hadley 00:05:03  Right now there is an algorithm and it is keyword driven and you can get ranked for keywords. To be honest with you. My my prediction in the next ten years is that there is no kind of quote unquote ranking algorithm. Do you know what it is? It’s very athletic. So a consumer is going to go to Amazon and they’re just going to input what they’re looking for, just like you do on ChatGPT or Cloud right now. You just like ask a question, define the parameters. And then Amazon’s going to serve up what you’re looking for. Now I think this is going to look very interesting of like how Amazon’s going to present those results. Because you know Amazon’s going to want a good portion of ad dollars going into every single search. So what does that look like. That’s going to be very interesting. But if that’s the future, you no longer have consumers that are clicking through to page two, Page three. Page four. Like that’s literally going to be unheard of. Number one clicking to page two is extremely rare even as it is today.

Josh Hadley 00:06:00  And so that’s the future of Amazon. So frankly speaking I’m not putting all my eggs in the Amazon basket because Amazon’s going to do what Amazon’s going to do to prioritize their own business and their own personal statement and not ours. So let’s take a look at some of these other sales channels. What are my predictions with TikTok shop? I think TikTok shop continues to evolve. I think that TikTok shop continues to be like an extremely challenging platform to generate like decent profit margin off of. I still think it’s very rare to hear somebody that’s like actually profitable on TikTok shop because like the amount we think that the FBA fees and things that we pay to Amazon are bad now, but it’s even worse over on TikTok shop. Yeah, they’re their seller fees are only 8%. However, I believe those fees are only going to increase. In addition to that. And I think this this is already underway. But in order to get exposure, like organic video views is going to be a massive thing in the past. We saw that playbook with meta, where once upon a time, in order for creators and even brand pages to get followers and to get a lot of distribution on your content, it was pretty easy back in the early 20 tens for Facebook and then even Instagram.

Josh Hadley 00:07:20  And then guess what? They got mass adoption. And so what did they do? They removed all the organic reach, and then at that point they just turned it into like, hey, you want actual reach on these videos or your post? You need to pay us more. That’s where I see things going with TikTok shop. So I think the unit economics on TikTok shop over the next decade. I think it becomes very challenging. And in fact, I think probably TikTok shop is the one where I have the least confidence in my predictions because I think that platform can dramatically shift or go completely extinct, especially now that it’s new under new ownership. Are they going to prioritize the e-commerce side of the business, or are they going to just focus more on the content distribution side, the social media engagement side of the business that I think is kind of like the ongoing challenge now that it’s under completely new ownership at the end of the day. But what do I believe? The thing that will remain the same is working with creators.

Josh Hadley 00:08:17  Working with content creators is going to be something that even a decade from now. number one is important, but I actually believe becomes even more important, especially when we’re living in a more athletic world at that point where there’s probably less trust with something that you see or say online, it’s going to be really reliant upon creators that have built trust, that don’t have a lot of AI content that people know that they could go to for live selling or things like that. So that’s my predictions for TikTok shop. What are my predictions for Shopify. I think Shopify continues to dominate in the world. Like Shopify as it already is today, is almost becoming synonymous with the world of, hey, I have my own e-commerce website, right? I think that Shopify truly does become the king over the next decade. They have all of the integrations with the athletic platforms, the large language models, so that when you search on chat, Claude, etc., it’s going to be piped in and and really tied in, really connected with your Shopify storefront.

Josh Hadley 00:09:17  I think that we’ve already heard rumors about this, but meta is trying to, you know, do something in the affiliate e-commerce space. I don’t think that meta is going to roll out a rival to TikTok shop, where it’s kind of like a closed e-commerce loop, but I do believe that they’re going to kind of revamp their, you know, maybe like a maybe create the ultimate affiliate dashboard, so to speak, where you can work with creators. And then it directly connects to your Shopify storefront so that you could actually more easily. Track where your sales, where your sessions are coming from by creator, and then you can negotiate commissions there on Meta’s platform, you could boost content. I see that changing, and I see that Shopify being a massive player in that space. Amazon’s already metas like default kind of like affiliate partner right now. So creators you can already set and negotiate commissions for any, you know, traffic going to Amazon within metas new kind of like affiliate program that they’re rolling out this year.

Josh Hadley 00:10:16  However, I think that’s going to continue to evolve, and I think it really doesn’t land well in the e-commerce space until Shopify is actually what’s truly connected in there. And then they build something along the lines of what TikTok shop looks like. It’s only the fact that the checkout will occur on your website and not inside metas platform. So TBD on that. But I think that Shopify is the right person to, you know, or the right partner to hit your wagon to for the future of agent shopping and even social commerce. I think Shopify continues to lead out on that, and it becomes a fundamental base for any e-commerce brand moving forward, because as these marketplaces get harder and harder to actually profit on, what’s going to be left is the profit that can organically come to your website. So let’s talk about AI. So what’s going to happen with AI? I think that’s anybody’s prediction at this point. I mean, it’s hard to predict even the next six months in the future with AI. So when I go out on a limb and say, ten years from now, here’s what, here’s what I think’s going to happen.

Josh Hadley 00:11:17  I know I’m going to literally laugh at this episode a decade from now. In fact, I’m probably laughing at this episode, maybe even a year from now. But I see a genetic shopping changing in a massive way. Here’s what I do see. I think that there’s going to be a new divide in the next ten years. There’s going to be something that will replace, to an extent, the way we use our iPhones, like the iPhone came out and was game changing to the overall, you know, computer industry, and now everybody is basically walking around with computers. I think that’s going to be the same change that occurs with AI. There will be some type of device where we are walking around with many computers, but they’re not computers that are actually AI agents that know us, assist us in some form or fashion. I don’t know what that looks like. We have meta with there, you know, the AI glasses that they have. I think there’s a play over there. There’s also some type of wearable that I think open AI is going to come out with.

Josh Hadley 00:12:14  I don’t know what that future looks like, and I sure wish Apple would lead the charge on that, but that’s TBD. We’ll see what that looks like. But ultimately, I do believe ten years from now we’re all working, walking around with little personal AI assistants constantly surrounding us. I don’t know what form factor that shows up in, but that means when you have a thought or when you see a product, you’re going to briefly mention it, say it, speak it, whatever it is, and then it gets auto populated by your AI assistant, and it automatically gets added to a cart or sharing your preferred options. It knows you so innately and it knows your preferred brands that I think brand integrity becomes paramount a decade from now. Because what is brand? Brand is nothing more than the trust that you’ve built with a consumer. So when you have this AI agent that’s in your ear, whatnot a decade from now and it’s like, hey, I found this product by X, Y, and Z brand on Amazon or online or whatever it is.

Josh Hadley 00:13:18  Would you like me to ship it to you? You’re just going to say yes, but you’re going to want to know who X, Y, and Z brand is. So here’s the people that I think are going to be challenged. All of the brand brand name soup or alphabet soup companies that we see from China, that’s just registering trademarks left and right, that you can’t even pronounce the name of their brand because it’s not even a real word in the English language. I think, like they’re going to go extinct. They’re going to go extinct because like, nobody has any brand trust with them. They have. Like, if I were to get an AI agent speaking, hey, brand. So blah blah, like, if that’s what I hear, I’m like, I don’t know who that is. Or if if the AI agent says, hey, Nike just came out with this, would you like that? Shipped or tied came out with this new innovative detergent or whatever? Would you like me to ship that to you? Yeah, great.

Josh Hadley 00:14:08  Yeah, I’m a big fan of tide or whatever the brands are that you associate with and that you align with, that you have trust with, those are going to be the ones that that are winning in the e-com space and the AI space over the next decade. So what where do you spend your time? At the end of the day, what it looks like is Amazon is still king. It’s still going to be a place where you’re going to get extremely fast fulfillment agent Commerce is going to disrupt everything in a massive way. So where do you move the needle forward at this point? Here’s what I’m doing in my business, and here’s what I would recommend to anybody. So if you got started on Amazon, first and foremost, I would recommend that you continue to focus on Amazon until you have that business working like a well-oiled machine. And when I say that, I mean, do you have a supply chain manager? Do you have a PPC manager? Do you have a project manager? Do you have a brand manager? Do you have people that are on your team that are that like they own the profit and loss statement for Amazon? Okay.

Josh Hadley 00:15:08  They find new products. They they source new products for you. They bring them to market. They’re managing the launch on Amazon. And until you have that and you can fully say like, yeah, I’ve got that checked off. You have not earned the right. Or you can always go do the other sales channels. But like what’s going to happen is if you don’t have that foundation under you, no matter what sales channel you started with, you are going to fail or you are going to start seeing declines in revenue as soon as you start pointing your attention somewhere else, okay, because you’re going to take your eye off the ball. And if nobody. Nobody’s eye is on the ball because you don’t have a team executing for you. Then inevitably, like the ball will be dropped because now you’re spending your time on TikTok or Shopify or Agent eCommerce, whatever that is. So first and foremost, whatever sales channel you initially had your success with, double down on it until you’ve got a team and you were you have been ultimately worked out of the business.

Josh Hadley 00:16:01  Maybe you’re only spending 10% of your time in that sales channel. Great. Now here’s where I would then branch off, and here would be my first focus number one TikTok shop. And when I talk about TikTok shop, it’s not just exploiting that market to be like, oh yeah, I can get a lot of views real quick and raise demand generation for my products. That is all true. The number one reason why I would double down with TikTok shop is because right now is the creator Gold rush. When we look back ten years from now, there are going to be brands that are going to come out of the woodwork and they got their start because of all the affiliate and creator partnerships that were developed right now in the 2020s. Period. Full stop. Those of you that are smart are going to walk away with a creator army. And guess what? It’s never going to be cheaper than it is today. In fact, it’s going to be ten times more expensive, if not 100 times more expensive, to work with creators a decade from now, I can guarantee you that.

Josh Hadley 00:16:57  But right now, there’s this window of opportunity where you have a lot of new creators coming on to TikTok shop. They want to try to figure out how to become an affiliate and make money representing brands and, you know, being an evangelist for some of their favorite products. Now, it’s obviously easier said than done, and it, once upon a time, was easier for creators to go viral. That window of opportunity has not yet closed, but it will be closing over the next few years. And so the main important thing is how do you develop a raving fan base of not consumers, creators, brand evangelists that absolutely love you? That is what I am focused on. That is why I spend a good portion of my time jumping on zoom calls with creators, and I’m the CEO of the business and I have an affiliate manager. I have an affiliate recruiter, I have a TikTok shop operations manager. Yet me, as the owner of the business and even my wife, we are creating personal relationships with creators because as the world changes in a gentle fashion, that’s what’s going to matter even more in person events, those personal relationships, the human interaction that you actually have with people.

Josh Hadley 00:18:02  So I am doubling, tripling and quadrupling down on the creator affiliate space full stop. Because if you can unlock the affiliate creator space, then you have then earned the privilege to. Then what I would say is open up your Shopify account, because if you figured out and you’ve unlocked shop or TikTok shop and creators and affiliates, guess what? You’ve unlocked? You’ve unlocked being able to drive traffic to kind of wherever you would like. Maybe that is traffic to Amazon. If that’s the place where you want to double down, that’s fine. But Shopify IK is it’s a massively different business model. What you have to do to get really good at Shopify is getting really good at driving traffic. And on Shopify, there’s really two sources or places that you can generate traffic right now that are at least worth significant amounts of traffic. Number one, that’s paid advertising, right? Paid ads on whatever platform you choose, social platforms like being able to interrupt somebody’s scroll, getting them over to your website, that’s number one.

Josh Hadley 00:19:04  That in and of itself is much easier said than done. And then part number two is being able to have affiliates that send people directly to you. Okay. And that’s why I’m so bullish on affiliates and creators is because, number one, yes, they could post videos and send traffic to your website. But most importantly, these affiliates are massive leverage for you because they’re going to test out lots of hooks, lots of different angles, lots of different ways to talk about your product. And then you’re going to see what goes viral or what gets better engagement. And then guess what? Now you know the right hooks, the angles to go and interrupt the flow on other social channels, to run paid ads, to get traffic to your website. So that’s why I’m not unlocking Shopify until I’ve unlocked creator relationships and affiliate management. When that’s unlocked, then Shopify is easily unlocked because you already know how to get the traffic and you know what angles are working well for that traffic. Last but not least, where does Agent Commerce come into play here? Where is that on my focus right now? It’s kind of fourth on that focus list right.

Josh Hadley 00:20:04  It’s Amazon making sure I have the team there. It’s secondly making sure that I’m prioritizing building relationships with creators. Next it’s actually being able to build offers and models on Shopify that actually work that are profitable. And then last but not least, then I’m going to double down on agent shopping. Now, why why do that instead of hey, Josh, know you could get a first mover advantage? Here’s the sequencing that I think makes the the most sense. Number one, you create relationships with creators that are able to generate traffic, and you get to see what videos actually convert and what work. That then unlocks Shopify. And when you’re on Shopify, you still have to like, tell your brand story and actually build relationships now with consumers. So it goes from creator relationship building to consumer relationship building, listening to the consumer, responding to their needs, coming out with more products that fit their needs and their customer lifecycle journey. And then that defines you as a brand. Once you’ve defined you as a brand and what the pain points are for the customers, why they keep coming back to you compared to the competition, that’s when you’re able to double down with quote unquote blog content.

Josh Hadley 00:21:13  I don’t know if blog content’s even a thing a decade from now, but it is putting things out into the world. What do I think will be lasting like YouTube content? Right? Putting out lots of content about your avatar, the customer avatar, your products, why they fit the needs of these certain people, how it fills their customer journey and their needs. With whatever your brand is about, it’s building that trust with the consumer. Over and over and over again. So with that being said, it’s all about content distribution in my opinion. That’s how you’re going to do well in getting ranked and viewed on these large language models is number one. Is there any content for the large language model to pull from, whether it’s a from your website, be in public settings and especially like YouTube content videos that have gone viral. Right. It’s going to want to see that. So honestly, with all of the creators, I see that as like it’s still part of my agenda strategy, because the more videos that I get from creators, they’re going out onto YouTube real or YouTube shorts and meta and Instagram Reels, and they’re going out onto TikTok shop, which is then fully going to be indexed by AI.

Josh Hadley 00:22:25  So the more noise I make outside of Amazon and outside of my website is only going to help me appear more in these large language models. And last but not least, like Reddit, what can I do to engage with my consumers or my audience in Reddit and whatever those social community platforms are in the future? That’s where I’m doubling down my efforts right now. And so if you’re an entrepreneur listening to this, that’s what I would like. Identify where you’re at in your path. First and foremost, I think you need to be crossing that $5 million mark on any single sales platform before I’m going to shift any focus to another sales platform. So like bide your time, build the business. Because when you want to shift onto these other platforms, you’re going to have to take a leap of faith. It’s going to cost money to actually grow, build a retainer, a affiliate program with creators. Okay. So first and foremost, get to $5 million plus in any sales channel. Then establish your team so that they can execute that flywheel for you on that sales channel that you already got.

Josh Hadley 00:23:28  Working as an entrepreneur, you need to see yourself as the 0 to 1 guy, and then your team needs to be the 1 to 99 person. They’re constantly tinkering. They’re constantly, constantly making things more efficient and better for you. But your job is just go, go light up new sales channels, go light up new revenue opportunities for the brand. So that’s my recommendation. Figure out where you’re on this sales journey, where your brand is at, and then take one step at a time. And that also means put up your blinders. Right now it’s extremely noisy. You listen to all the newsletters, the masterminds, all of the content being yelled at you, and it feels like you need to be at ten places at once, right? Which is man, I need. If I’m not optimizing for AI right now, I’m being left in the dust. And if I’m also not initiating a creator program, I’m being left in the dust. And last but not least, if I’m not like, generating sales on my own website, like I’m going to be toast.

Josh Hadley 00:24:19  While all of those things can be true, do them in the proper sequence. And when you do them in the proper sequence, it’s going to allow you to go faster because your attention is focused on one thing, rather than being diverted amongst many other competing priorities all at once. Go deep in one initiative and you’ll find better success. Then build the team. Scale the team. Get them to take care of that one thing that you brought from 0 to 1, and then you move on to the next sales channel. That’s how development works. And if you’re a bootstrapped entrepreneur, that’s how you have to do it. It’s taking one puzzle piece at a time and putting it into the overall bigger picture. If your venture backed and you’ve got lots of capital to deploy, then go all in on all four of these platforms that I talked about. Go hire some ballers, some A-plus talent to oversee all four of these individual areas and build the teams underneath them. And yeah, go scale faster. I hope this message resonated with you.

Josh Hadley 00:25:14  If this helped you and you know another operator that needs to hear this message, please share it with them. Please drop it in the WhatsApp group a slack community that you have, and share it. Share this with others. And until next time, good luck out there.