[downandout]

A big factor in their churn rate is the fact that a significant chunk of their growth has come from make money online gurus. Search YouTube for “Shopify dropshipping” or similar and you’ll see what I mean. It became viral among the scam artists, who all came up with different systems to sell, with one thing in common among them: Step 1 is to go open a Shopify account.

When the systems that most of these gurus sell fail to work, their students simply abandon their Shopify stores. I would never buy shares of Shopify for this reason. For now, they continue to grow because there are still thousands of gurus pushing Shopify, but we are reaching the end of that cycle. As soon as a new fad takes hold among the gurus, Shopify will be a ghost town.

[jeromegv]

Nothing you say is backed by data. Their revenue keeps growing with Shopify payments (they take a share of every transaction), which is an entirely different metric than the number of stores. If those were all empty store with no sales that would show. But that’s not the case. Also huge growth with their enterprise solutions shopify plus. Read their financials, it’s all there and easy to understand.

[downandout]

Nothing you say is backed by data.

And none of the data you pointed to disproves anything I said. Additionally, there is some data to back up my position: while it’s true that it would be impossible for anyone to have data on how many accounts have been opened due to the guru effect, a quick search of YouTube should help you understand the gigantic scale of this issue.

Here’s why you have not disproved a single thing I said. Most of these gurus are preaching facebook ads + Shopify + dropshipping. As long as these students keep putting money into FB ads, and the gurus keep recruiting people, Shopify payments sales volume will continue to grow - whether or not the guru students are actually making a net profit after expenses. But of course that won’t continue forever, as people don’t have infinite sums of money to lose, and most will lose money.

Right now, there is still enough momentum to keep it growing. I would imagine that within a year though, you’ll start seeing it level off or start to decline, as the gurus move onto the next fad. Once that starts happening, the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.

[tim333]

The cohort data from their presentation https://s2.q4cdn.com/024715446/files/doc_presentations/2019/... suggests the 'ghost town' thing won't happen. eg the 2014 cohort are producing like 2x the revenue they did in 2014 rather than dying off.

[downandout]

Of course they are, there are many more gurus pushing them today than there were in 2014, and those that still remain from 2014 will necessarily have grown their revenues. Further, because the guru quotient was relatively minor in 2014, the businesses that used Shopify back then would tend to be more solid than those that have been brought into the fold in the last 2 years. That won’t continue forever, and the internet marketing world is already starting to show signs of Shopify fatigue. Courses aren’t selling as well, etc. The fact that they are at 2x what they were in 2014 does not disprove that their growth is being driven by a fickle source that is soon to end.