Summary: As 2017 comes to a close, it’s only fitting to devote our last episode of the year to 2018 ecommerce predictions. Dave and I listed what we think will happen in the ecommerce world next year, from sales tax to Bitcoin. It’s always fun to make these predictions and then revisit them by the end of 2018 to see how many of them actually happened.<br> It would’ve been great to have Dave on the episode as well, but he is still in China as of recording this, so I will just cover his predictions here. This will also be our last full-length episode for the year and we will resume with new episodes twice a week next year. I also recorded a short special for Christmas Day next week, stay tuned for that!<br> Here are our predictions for ecommerce next year:<br> <br> * Amazon will start collecting sales tax for sellers in multiple states (<a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/15/amazon-marketplace-tax-collection-comes-to-washington-in-2018.html">it will begin collecting sales tax for merchants in Washington State early next year</a>)<br> * Shopify will continue to dominate hosted ecommerce platforms but its stock will dive when investors realize there’s a finite number of ecommerce store owners to grow their customer base with<br> * Facebook will start to monetize messaging near the end of 2018<br> * Amazon will continue to get bad press for counterfeits and knockoffs, do a major crackdown which will benefit brand owners but probably hurt sellers selling third party merchandise<br> * China will continue the crackdown on factories heavily contributing to pollution<br> * Facebook ads will continue to get more expensive – way more expensive<br> * Amazon will increase fees substantially (Amazon has just <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.ecomcrew.com/amazon-fba-fee-increases-for-2018/">announced fee increases beginning February</a>, probably with more increases to come)<br> * Amazon will actually do something about the review debacle<br> * More sites accepting Bitcoin in ecommerce–especially international<br> * Amazon will continue to grab market share<br> * Amazon will start or acquire a transportation network<br> <br> Many of these predictions bring terror to us sellers–especially Amazon FBA fee increases and sales tax–but ecommerce in general is expected to grow over the next few years and we are hoping to ride along on that growth.<br> Resources mentioned:<br> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://stamped.io">Stamped.io</a><br><br> <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.ecomcrew.com/inspection">AsiaInspection</a><br><br> <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.ecomcrew.com/amazon-fba-fee-increases-for-2018/">Amazon FBA’s Largest Ever Fee Increase Coming in 2018 – How Will it Affect You?</a><br><br> <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.ecomcrew.com/review">2-Hour EcomCrew Q&A Webinar</a><br> Registration for our <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.ecomcrew.com/review">first-ever webinar</a> is still open. You can ask us anything under the sun about ecommerce for 2 hours for FREE. Go <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.ecomcrew.com/review">here</a> for more details.<br> Thanks as always for listening. Until next year, happy selling!<br> Full Audio Transcript<br> Mike: This is Mike, and welcome to episode number 107 of the EcomCrew Podcast. You can go to EcomCrew.com/107 to get to the show notes for this episode. And this is going to be our last full length episode of 2017. It’s crazy how quickly the year has gone by. But the way that the holidays fall out this year, our Monday episode which will come out would actually be on Christmas Day and then the following one is on New Year’s Day. And it’s like why have a podcast in the middle of all that since it’s the holidays and everyone is on holiday brain.<br> I did record a little special message that’s going to go out on Christmas Day.
