For a little over a year now, Mashable have been attempting to benefit from the hugely lucrative world of Ecommerce.
Marketing products to their huge audience is just a logical step in their evolution, but I would have imagined that they would do affiliate marketing or use Amazon to list their products.
With affiliate marketing, they would have made some easy money as all it takes is just picking a product with good payout and promoting it in a post.
Instead, they've created their own eshop which is available on the shop.mashable.com subdomain. As an internet marketer, this grabbed my attention and I had to explore more to see what's what.
So firstly, when you open up their site, you are greeted by a nice banner which says "Welcome to the Mashable Shop" and "Discover deals & save on trending products you won't find anywhere else".
Really?! Nowhere else? Hmmm... That would mean that these products have been designed by Mashable and produced exclusively for them. It would have been really cool if that was the case. Instead, they just have stuff you can find on Alibaba and basically EVERYWHERE else. And I'm not certain that their products are even branded as "Mashable".
Take for instance this really cool (almost revolutionary even) shower speaker - https://shop.mashable.com/sales/xxl-shower-speaker. They wrote an article about it and I stumbled on it in one of my social media feeds.
Most people reading the article, who are not internet marketers and don't know what makes the internet tick, would go "OMG, this is incredible. I want one.". Job done - they've made some sales off the backs of the ignorant.
For the rest of us more savvy internet users, this product's advertising and listing is so gimicky that we close our browser tabs faster than when our mom's used to walk in on us, while we were browsing for "nothing".
First off, the price. When you see something being discounted and sold for as much as 80% off - RUN. Usually such discounts don't exist and are faked to make you think the product's value is much more than it actually is.
When in doubt about a product's real value, try and look it up on other websites. You would have to know how to search for things and where you are likely to find them though. Knowing that most products nowadays are sourced from China, I did a quick search on Alibaba for "shower speaker", and this exact model was one of the first results. It's manufacturing price was $3-8 depending on quantity ordered. So basically a far cry from the claimed $200 value. I also checked on Amazon, where I found it selling for 15 bucks, instead of the supposedly heavily discounted price of 20.
Then there is the social proof of the product's popularity and quality - reviews. Those seem to be faked too. It says that there are there are 304 reviews and a 5-star average rating, but you can't view those reviews when you click on the star rating. So at best, the number 304 is the amount of products they've sold - artificially giving each sale a good rating without asking the client.
The listing itself is crap too. Not a whole lot of information is available and that what is available, seems to be borrowed directly from the Chinese seller or manufacturer and not revised or written by a knowledgable seller or gadget expert. Proof of that is the power rating (usually rated as RMS), which in this case is labeled as "volume":
Another interesting thing is the line of text where it says "by Neva Tech". Now I don't know exactly what their setup is, but it doesn't seem to be that of Amazon, where they allow third party sellers on their website. It may be that Mashable is dropshipping and not private labeling their products and catering for fulfilment themselves. Clicking on the "Neva Tech" should take me to a page which lists all products by this brand or seller, but it doesn't. It take you to a page with products by various suppliers.
In my eyes, what Mashable is doing is very amateur looking. Even though they haven't had previous experience in Ecommerce, it really shouldn't be a struggle for such a giant to hire a few digital marketers to lead the efforts of this department.
What do you guys know about Mashable's Ecommerce venture? Do you think it will eventually morph into an Amazon style setup with third party sellers, or will it die out for being crap in the first place. I would love to hear your opinion and if you like my content, please follow me at https://steemit.com/@thirdworldhustle