TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #022

Darth Zuckerberg Cryptocurrency, Find Your Product Niche, Shopify Makes a “Handshake” and more.

May 28, 2019

Yo -

I hope that you had a super Memorial Day weekend. I did. Ate some Brats, bowled a few frames, played with my dogs … and I took a few minutes yesterday to remember why we have a Memorial Day here in the US. Three days of simple pleasures and reflecting on why we have such a good life.

Here are this week’s top stories:

1. “FaceCoins?” “ZuckerBucks?” This Can’t End Well

You know … Mark Zucker-Butt must stroll around Facebook HQ is a flowing robe while the company sound-system plays the Imperial March music (dum, dum, dum, dum-ti-dum, dum-ti-dum). So, a few months ago the New York Times reported on a secret BlockChain project that had been going on inside the FaceStar for over a year. Well, more news is leaking out about how the Sith Lord of Facebook wants people to buy and sell on his platform using … wait for it … his own private currency. It is … inevitable …. Soon we will all call him “master” (at least that appears to be the plan).

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For this news item I could have gone with comparisons to “Render Unto Caesar,” but Star Wars Emperor worked better, don’t you agree?

2. Shopify Makes a “Handshake” Deal

New York-based Handshake is/was a B2B eCommerce platform for wholesalers. With little fanfare, Shopify gobbled them up with a plate of grilled onions and a nice Chianti. Overnight, Handshake’s LinkedIn page and staff profile job descriptions all changed to “Minions of the Dark Tower” … or something like that. Handshake had a good chunk of VC funding, so the … ahem, “acquisition” likely came in somewhere between US $50 million and US $100 million, and it seems like an interesting fit.

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3. Half of This Article is “Duh!” and the Other Half ….

Sure, this article has a sexy, link-bait title. But we’ve been preaching about page speed forever. But we agree that eCommerce merchants forget about customer Life-Time Value (LTV) and Cost of Acquisition (CA … but this guy calls it CAC for some unknown reason). So, here’s an article to remind us all about them.

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4. OK … This Might Help a Few of You – Market Niche

This guy wrote up something pretty cool. Lots of merchants have trouble choosing what to sell. Finding the perfect niche can be tricky. And the more stuff sold on Amazon and the more eCommerce sites that spring up, the harder it gets. This article shows you how to do just that with some practical advice.

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5. Sometimes I Think Government Is There to Make Everything Hard

Hey, I get it. A certain amount of governmental regulation can be a good thing. And I am all for consumer protections. But if you’re based in the EU, there is a big chunk of new rules and regs taking effect this September. And what the EU enforces there, they may start enforcing here … yadda, yadda, yadda. I searched and have not found any specific Shopify resources addressing this yet. But on a content awesomeness scale of 1-to-10, we’re a 12, so here is stuff to read.

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Yep … summertime and the living is easy. But eCommerce is still hard. Send this email to a nice person so that they can pursue their own piece of the good life.

Happy Selling,

Zachary