eCommerce Podcast

Organic Search for Ecommerce in 2026
What happens to an ecommerce business when paid ads stop working? Matt Edmundson walks through the six organic traffic fronts every founder should be building right now, before paid stops carrying the business on its own.
Summary
Paid ads are getting more expensive, less effective, and harder to justify. Facebook CPMs are up 60–90% over the last few years, paid search clicks have effectively doubled across every vertical, and organic clicks have fallen between 11 and 23 percentage points depending on the industry. Matt opens with the story of switching the ads off in his beauty business out of necessity, and watching sales hold because of an organic foundation that had been quietly compounding underneath. He then walks through the six organic fronts he thinks every Digital David needs to be working on in 2026, with one concrete action per front that can be done this week. Twice in the episode he stops to make it very clear he is not telling anyone to turn paid off — the point is to build organic now while paid is still doing some of the work.
00:00 — Turning the ads off and the foundation that quietly held
03:04 — A confession about sponsorship and the SAM reveal
05:06 — Why paid media is breaking for ecommerce right now
15:48 — Why this isn’t an instruction to switch ads off
23:47 — The six fronts of organic traffic in 2026
27:06 — Front 1, AI discovery
29:48 — How Mrs Smith found the beauty store on day one
38:33 — Front 2, site SEO
42:43 — Front 3, blog and content
46:12 — Front 4, YouTube
51:50 — Front 5, social SEO
55:35 — Front 6, digital PR
1:05:00 — What SAM is and how it shortens the runway
1:11:10 — Why a free customer changes the LTV to CAC maths
1:13:24 — A teaser for the next episode and a platform rebuild

Why Paid Media Is Breaking and What to Do About It
[05:06]
Matt walks through the shape of the problem most founders are quietly carrying. Customer acquisition costs climbing, return on ad spend falling, and a treadmill that moves you from Google to Facebook back to Google to TikTok to whatever the marketing industry invents next. Around 8 out of 10 of the founders he speaks to right now have meaningful issues with paid media, and the businesses most exposed are the ones depending on first-time customer acquisition with low repeat rates.
“The marketing industry will keep inventing new places for you and me to spend our advertising budgets.” — Matt EdmundsonHe stops twice to make this clear, once at 15:48 and again at 16:42 — he is not telling anyone to turn paid off. If first-time customer acquisition is the lifeblood of the business and ads stop today, the founder will feel it by the end of the day if not the end of the hour. The point is that paid is still working at some level, and that makes now the right window to build the organic foundation underneath it.
The Six Fronts of Organic Traffic in 2026
[23:47]
Matt argues that thinking of organic as just SEO is a 2018 mindset. In 2026 it sits across six channels, and most founders are only dabbling in one or two of them. Before he runs through them, he flags a warning — the same agency-promises-the-world problem that plagued SEO in 2018 is now happening with AI search, and most of the agencies charging premium fees for AI discovery don’t really know what they’re doing yet either.
AI discovery — getting recommended by ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews. 78% of consumers have used large language models for product research in the last year and 64% plan to use AI chatbots for shopping decisions this year. Three concrete actions, add an llms.txt file to the root of the site, complete full product schema (including GTINs, return policy, aggregate rating), and keep content fresh — ChatGPT pulls about three-quarters of its most cited pages from content updated in the last 30 days.
Site SEO — the technical foundation that made it possible to turn the beauty business’s ads off without dying. Pick the top 10 product pages and audit each one for four things: a 50–60 character title tag using keyword plus differentiator plus brand, a meta description written for humans, og:type set to product rather than the default website, and image alt text that describes the image rather than just naming the file.
Blog and content — the trust layer AI now uses to decide what a brand actually knows. Brands that blog consistently see roughly 13 times more positive return on investment than sporadic publishers. The action is simple — ask the customer service team for the top three questions they get every week, and write one proper 1,200-word answer per month. That’s 12 articles a quarter, 50 a year, each one a piece of content AI can cite.
YouTube — the second largest search engine on the planet, with 35 billion hours of shopping-related content watched last year (a 250% year-on-year increase). 61% of 14–25 year olds say YouTube introduced them to brands they hadn’t heard of. One product demonstration video a month, with a proper title, three-paragraph description, chapters in the description, and product cards on the video.
Social SEO — Gen Z search inside Instagram (67%) and TikTok (62%) before they touch Google (61%). Captions, hashtags, bios, and on-screen Reels text are all searchable assets now. Treat captions like meta descriptions and bios like homepages.
Digital PR — press mentions, podcast appearances, founder authority, Reddit presence. Brand search volume correlates with AI recommendations roughly three times more strongly than backlinks do.

“The question isn’t how do I rank anymore. It’s how many people are searching for your brand name.” — Matt EdmundsonHow Mrs Smith Found the Beauty Store on Day One
[29:48]
Inside the AI discovery section Matt tells a story from 2006, when he launched his beauty business. They set the site live, planned to come back the next day to keep testing, and overnight Google indexed them and put them in front of a real customer called Mrs Smith — who placed the first order before the team had even told anyone the shop was open.
“I appreciate that doesn’t really happen anymore.” — Matt EdmundsonThe point of telling it now is that AI feels like that early-Google moment all over again. There’s no rulebook everyone is following, the ones who get in early are the ones who get discovered, and a handful of his own businesses are already getting leads who say “ChatGPT told me about you.”
SAM, the Slingshot AI Mentor
[03:04] [1:05:00]
For the first time on EP, Matt openly opens the episode with a sponsor — his own company. SAM stands for Slingshot AI Mentor, the e-commerce layer Aurion has been running on Claude internally and is now opening up to the public. It’s Claude plus a focused e-commerce knowledge layer plus the context of the founder’s own business. Inside SAM lives Scout, the skill that runs the same six-front audit covered in this episode automatically across a site and hands back a playbook of specific changes. SAM membership is currently $2,000 (about £1,600) on a waitlist with personal onboarding from Matt. Anyone who joins the waitlist by Thursday 22 May 2026 gets a 25% discount code plus extra credit for Scout. Available at ecommercepodcast.net/slingshot.
Why a Free Customer Changes the LTV to CAC Maths
[1:11:10]
The point of building organic isn’t to abandon paid. It’s to change the underlying maths of the business. A customer who finds the brand organically has, in effect, a CAC of zero. Organic isn’t actually free — it costs time and staff — but it costs differently, and it compounds.
“Organic isn’t actually free. It just costs differently.” — Matt EdmundsonPaid media CAC across ecommerce is currently running about 2.5 times higher than blended CAC. Drop ten organic customers into the LTV to CAC ratio, then a hundred over a year, and the shape of the business changes — not because more customers are being acquired, but because the average cost of acquiring them falls.
Free Resource Mentioned in This Episode
Matt has put everything in this episode into a free printable PDF — the Organic Audit Kit. It includes the full checklist for each of the six fronts, 18 AI prompts (one to audit, one to fix, one to verify per area) that paste straight into Claude or ChatGPT, a scoring radar to see strengths and weaknesses at a glance, a 20-minute quick win for each front, and a glossary for the technical terms. Grab it at ecommercepodcast.net under Resources.
About Today's Episode
Host: Matt Edmundson
Company: Aurion
Website: aurioncompany.com
LinkedIn: Connect with Matt on LinkedIn
Episode link:

Up to 40% of Amazon US sales now touch Rufus, Amazon's AI shopping assistant — and most sellers haven't optimised a single product for it. That's the gap David Balan, founder of Selluna, walked through with Matt this week. The customer who used to type "blue football" into a search bar is now asking a chatbot what kind of football would suit a six-year-old, and the products that show up first are the ones answering the right 25 questions.
David has spent the last few years helping thousands of brands across the US, UK, Europe and Asia-Pacific sell more on Amazon. In this conversation he laid out a three-pillar framework — traffic, clicks, conversion — and made the case that anyone selling on Amazon without a Rufus strategy right now is leaving 12-24 months of compounding advantage on the table.
Key Point Timestamps
[04:29] Why the Amazon algorithm is simpler than most sellers think
[05:28] The three pillars of Amazon — traffic, clicks, conversion
[07:00] Rufus, the top 25 questions, and how to answer them in priority order
[12:03] Traditional Amazon SEO — 80+ keywords, frequency, and the "stuffing" myth
[19:30] Why Rufus optimisation now is the new 2016 SEO play
[24:57] Why not A/B testing the main image is "criminal" in 2026
[33:08] The conversion stack — seven images, A+ Content, brand story, premium branding
[39:32] Text speaks to the algorithm, images speak to the customer

The Algorithm Is Simpler Than Sellers Want To Admit [04:29]
Most sellers treat Amazon's algorithm like an opaque, mystical force. David disagrees. "The algorithm is more simple than we like to make it," he told Matt. "The algorithm is trying to make Amazon as much money as they can get out of it. So once we understand their goal, if we align our goals with theirs, then everyone's going to be happy and you're going to be selling more at the end of the day."
That's the philosophical shift. Stop trying to outsmart Amazon. Start asking what Amazon wants and give it more of that. Every metric David teaches — traffic, clicks, conversion — is a proxy for the same goal, putting the right product in front of the right customer at the right time.
The Top 25 Questions That Make Rufus Recommend Your Product [07:00]
Rufus is Amazon's ChatGPT-style assistant, embedded in the marketplace. Instead of typing "football" into a search bar, customers now ask questions — what colour, what size, what age group, premium or budget. Rufus interrogates their needs and recommends specific products. Some data suggests up to 40% of Amazon US sales now involve Rufus at some point in the journey. David thinks the real number is closer to 20%, but it's growing fast and rolling out across Europe right now.
The play is simple. Rufus, like any AI, leans toward whatever it has the most data on. To make a product the answer, sellers need to identify the top 25 questions customers ask about their category and then answer those questions across every part of the listing in priority order.
The most important questions go in the title
Next most important in the bullet points
Then the product images
Then the back-end attributes
Then the reviews and Q&A

Selluna's free tool at app.selluna.ai/audit will surface the top 25 questions for any listing. Sellers can also run a title and bullets through ChatGPT, or write the questions out manually based on what real customers ask in reviews and support emails.
Traditional Amazon SEO Still Drives Most Sales [12:03]
The SEO pillar still drives most sales on Amazon. David's team targets over 80 keywords on a single listing, with each one appearing on average three times across the title, bullet points, back-end and Premium A+ Content. Top keywords appear 35 to 40 times.
And before anyone panics about keyword stuffing — David's continuous testing shows the conversion penalty is negligible (one or two percent) compared to the traffic gain (ten to twenty percent or more). "Keyword stuffing" is a fear from the Google 2012 era. On Amazon in 2026, frequency is still a seller's friend.
Why Now, Not Next Year [19:30]
David is urgent about Rufus optimisation, and there's a specific reason. Amazon SEO used to be like this. In 2016 to 2018, sellers were building empires on a single product image and a short title because almost no one was doing proper SEO. The brands that put in the work then are still ranking today, a decade later, on the authority they built when the field was empty.
Rufus is in that 2016 moment. Adoption is on a hockey-stick curve. The questions a seller teaches Rufus to associate with their product now will compound into 12-24 months of defended position. The brands that wait will be fighting for second place, the same way most SEO sellers are today.
Why Not A/B Testing Your Main Image Is "Criminal" [24:57]
Once a product is showing up — in Rufus answers and on search pages — people still need to click. And 80% of click-through rate is driven by one thing. The main image.
David did not soften this. "Not doing at least two or three A/B tests for a product that's doing over $1,000 per month in sales is criminal in 2026."
The maths is brutal in a good way. A 10% lift in clicks is not a 10% lift in sales — it's much bigger over 12-24 months, because more clicks tells the Amazon algorithm a product is performing better than the competition, so Amazon shows it more. The compounding can be the difference between $40,000 and $50,000 in monthly revenue from the same listing.
A few practical rules from David —
Make the product as large as possible in the frame
Add contrast, especially heavy shadows behind white products that disappear into a white background
Test the image at the size of two thumbs on a phone, because that's the actual viewing surface for most shoppers
Add a label on or attached to the product showing the main keyword (a "blue football" label on a blue football). Even a 5% subconscious lift in click-through is significant
Don't break the label free from the product — Amazon's AI flags floating elements

Conversion — Where Premium Branding Earns The Price Tag [33:08]
The conversion pillar is where most sellers leave the most on the table, because it's the largest surface area to work with. Seven product images. Premium A+ Content. The brand story, a section above or below the product description that almost everyone skips.
David's principle for product images is the same as for Rufus listings — answer the top 5 to 10 questions in priority order, but visually. If a seller is selling a £60 ($75) premium product against £12 ($15) competitors, the first image after the main one needs to be a "us versus them" answer. As David put it, "a confused buyer is not a buyer."
One of David's clients, Doodlebrush, sells at £60 ($75) against competitors at £12 ($15) and holds 20% market share. The reason is branding. Premium pricing demands premium branding — the same logic that lets Nike and Apple charge what they do. If the branding doesn't match the price tag, the price tag loses every time.
Text For The Algorithm, Images For The Human [39:32]
David's closing line is the one Matt said he'd be quoting. "The text speaks to the algorithm. The images speak to the customer."
The titles, bullet points and back-end fields aren't there for the customer to read (almost no one does). They're there for Rufus and the search algorithm to chew through and decide where to rank a product. So write that text for the machine — keyword-rich, question-answering, dense.
The product images are where the human meets the product. They need to be visual, scannable, and built around the questions a real buyer is asking — not paragraphs of text the algorithm could already read elsewhere.
Where To Start This Week
Audit the top 25 questions — through Selluna's free tool, ChatGPT, or manual research from reviews
Rebuild the title and bullets to answer those questions in priority order
A/B test the main image on any product doing $1,000+ per month with Brand Registry. Run for at least four weeks
Audit the conversion stack — seven images, Premium A+ Content, brand story. Each one needs a job
Match the branding to the price tag — premium pricing demands premium branding before customers will accept it

Today's Guest
Today's guest: David Balan
Company: Selluna
Website: https://www.selluna.ai/
LinkedIn: Connect with Selluna on LinkedIn
Episode link: Up to 40% of Amazon US sales now touch Rufus, Amazon's AI shopping assistant — and most sellers haven't optimised a single product for it. That's the gap David Balan, founder of Selluna, walked through with Matt this week. The customer who used to type "blue football" into a search bar is now asking a chatbot what kind of football would suit a six-year-old, and the products that show up first are the ones answering the right 25...

Rachel Hanretty pays £500 a month for a tool that fact-checks her marketing agency — and she has opinions about why every seasonal ecommerce founder should do the same.
In this episode, Matt Edmundson sits down with Rachel Hanretty, founder of Mademoiselle Macaron, the Scottish brand shipping up to 25,000 macarons a week UK-wide. Rachel built the business from a St Andrews student flat in 2013 after training in Paris, and thirteen years on she has strong views on attribution, agency accountability, the seasonality trap, and the gulf between what Instagram wants and what authenticity actually looks like. The conversation covers Triple Whale, Klaviyo's tendency to overstate its own impact, a Pinterest wedding ads experiment that burned thousands, a Charlotte Tilbury collaboration that produced lipstick-matched macarons at H Beauty, and why Rachel feels "gaslit by her own business" every April to September.
It is half ecommerce masterclass, half therapy session — and Rachel is refreshingly honest about both.
In This Episode
(01:30) From a Paris kitchen to 25,000 macarons a week
(07:15) The seasonality trap: "gaslit by my own business"
(14:00) Attribution wars — why Klaviyo and agencies overclaim
(17:00) The £500/month tool that fact-checks her agency
(22:00) Everyone needs an Alan: fractional CFOs and complementary hires
(27:00) ROMS — return on macarons spent, and experiential retail
(34:00) How do you do authentic Instagram when your niche is Paris?

Attribution Is Broken, And Every Platform Is Overclaiming
(Around 14:00)
Rachel's biggest challenge is not product or operations — it is knowing which marketing pound is actually doing the work. Klaviyo, she says, is "way too generous" with the revenue it claims. Agencies do the same. Until she started using Triple Whale, she had no independent way to push back.
"When you're being charged thousands of pounds for a service, you're like, no, I'm really sorry, but that number doesn't match up with the number in my bank." — Rachel HanrettyMatt picks up the thread with a story from Neil Hoyne, Google's Chief Measurement Strategist and author of Converted, who once traced a single pair of shoes back through 236 separate customer touchpoints. If every platform claims that sale, the maths does not work. Matt's recommendation (crediting previous EP guest Matt Putra): stop fighting about platform-level ROAS and track blended ROAS — the one number no agency can spin.
The £500 Tool That Coaches Her Through The Data
(Around 17:00)
Rachel pays £500 a month for Triple Whale, but the attribution modelling is not actually what she values most. The real prize is the platform's AI chat — she calls it "MobiChat" — which she uses as a coaching tool.
"I just say, can you explain what's going on with the Meta ROAS? Should I cut the budget? And it throws up the halo effect model of Meta on Google. I'm like, thank you so much for explaining it — because you're not paying by the hour." — Rachel HanrettyOver six to nine months she has used the tool as much to build her own knowledge as to interrogate the data. When an agency sends a report, she pastes it into Triple Whale and asks: is this right? That single habit has changed the power dynamic in every agency conversation she has.
Shopify-only tool (a limitation worth flagging for non-Shopify founders)
Value comes from the coaching layer, not just the attribution model
Used to sanity-check agency claims and reduce reliance on fortnightly calls

"Gaslit By My Own Business" — The Seasonality Trap
(Around 07:15)
October to March is the heroic half of Rachel's year: Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Easter. April to September is a different business entirely — different audience, different messaging, different paid media strategy. The same product, but the customer and the context shift underneath her.
"Sometimes I feel like I'm being gaslit by my own business." — Rachel HanrettyHer Pinterest wedding-ads experiment is a case in point. The team put thousands into Pinterest last summer aiming at brides, only to realise that people already getting married that summer had booked their suppliers months earlier. Wedding customers need to be reached a year ahead — not in the season itself.
Rachel's lesson: cost per acquisition, not ROAS, is the number that matters when you are used to seeing 5-8x returns and suddenly cannot.
Every Company Needs An Alan
(Around 22:00)
Rachel started the business at 23 with very little reference point for managing people. Two leadership coaches and one fractional CFO later, she has a working philosophy: hire for the gaps in your own skill set, and do not be afraid when those people outshine you in their area.
Her fractional CFO is called Alan. He builds the dashboards that link a website order to grams of sugar, the cost of a 20% off promo, and the capacity implications of a given campaign. He is, as Rachel puts it, "the adult in the room."
"Every company needs an Alan." — Rachel HanrettyMatt echoes the point with Andrew Carnegie's epitaph: "Here lies a man who knew how to surround himself with people cleverer than himself." The discipline is not just hiring well — it is managing your ego when someone else shines.
ROMS, Charlotte Tilbury, And The Rise Of Experiential Retail
(Around 27:00)
Rachel's framework for the business breaks down into three "moments of luxury": moments of celebration (weddings, birthdays), moments to impress (corporate gifting and brand activations), and moments of thoughtfulness (gifting). The middle category is where the most interesting growth is sitting.
Last year Mademoiselle Macaron worked with Charlotte Tilbury across H Beauty stores, producing thousands of macaron boxes colour-matched to individual lipsticks. The end customer may or may not eat the macarons — they are often photographed and posted on social media alongside the product. Rachel coined a term for measuring this kind of spend: ROMS — Return on Macarons Spent.
"Sometimes I don't even know if the macarons get eaten, frankly. I'm okay with it as long as they were paid for." — Rachel HanrettyThe Freezer Confession (And A Note From Pierre Hermé)
Rachel shared an operational secret that many founders in the fresh-food space will recognise: Mademoiselle Macaron freezes its macarons. Far from being a downgrade, the French pastry chef Pierre Hermé has publicly said that "anyone who says they don't freeze their macarons is a liar — because it improves the texture." Freezing makes the texture more marshmallow-like, and it gives Rachel the operational flexibility to take pre-orders from October and ship fresh-feeling product right up to the last Christmas posting day.
Authenticity vs The Algorithm
(Around 34:00)
Rachel's "question for Matt" was the most honest moment of the conversation: her niche is Paris, which is aesthetically beautiful, so every other bakery brand on Instagram is polished to within an inch of its life. She went to Paris in January, paid for an Airbnb-experienced photographer to shadow her for 36 hours, and hated every minute of it. Her Scottish phrase for how she feels about polished-female-bakery-Instagram: "gie's me the boak" — it makes her feel ill.
Matt's advice: stop trying to be polished. The videos doing one to two million views are shot on iPhones. The accounts winning are the raw, authentic ones. He points to his own son, Zak the Nutritionist, who built 70,000 Instagram followers in six months doing 60-second IBS-help clips filmed in Matt's back garden — and has now turned that audience into a successful recipe book.
"Consistency wins every single day and authenticity wins every single day. It does not have to be polished. People buy you." — Matt EdmundsonKey Takeaways
Fact-check your agencies. Platform-level ROAS from Klaviyo, Meta, and Google are all overstated. Use blended ROAS and an independent tool to sanity-check claims.
Cost per acquisition > ROAS when you move between seasons or audiences.
Long-tail channels need long-tail thinking. Pinterest for weddings works — but the year before, not during the season.
Hire your Alans. A fractional CFO (or anyone filling your skills gap) is worth more than another marketing hire when you cannot read your own numbers.
Experiential retail is a real revenue channel. Brand activation work pays per unit and builds social proof.
Stop trying to be polished. The algorithm rewards authenticity, not aesthetic perfection — even in aesthetically-driven niches.

Resources Mentioned
Mademoiselle Macaron —

Most ecommerce sellers limit themselves to one or two marketplaces. Jorrit Steinz, CEO and founder of ChannelEngine, argues that's leaving serious money on the table. With over 1,300 marketplaces now available worldwide, the opportunity to reach new customers has never been bigger — or more manageable with the right tools.
In this episode of The eCommerce Podcast, Matt Edmundson sits down with Jorrit to discuss why marketplace selling is no longer optional, how to choose the right platforms for your products, and why spending on marketplace ads might be a smarter move than pouring budget into Google. Jorrit also shares practical advice on getting started without drowning in manual processes, and reveals the biggest mistake most sellers are making right now.
Key points from this episode:
01:49 — What ChannelEngine does and the 1,300-marketplace landscape
09:17 — How to choose which marketplaces to sell on
20:47 — The biggest mistake in marketplace selling
25:49 — Why marketplace ads beat Google spend for organic ranking

The 1,300-Marketplace Opportunity You're Probably Missing
[01:49] Jorrit explains that ChannelEngine connects brands and retailers to over 1,300 marketplaces globally, handling product listing, order management, and stock synchronisation in one platform. The landscape has shifted dramatically. COVID accelerated the trend of traditional retailers launching their own marketplaces, and Amazon itself is pushing sellers from 1P vendor relationships to 3P seller accounts — particularly those under a $20 million threshold.
Matt shares his own experience with this shift, noting that Next in the UK now operates a marketplace where brands sell alongside Next's own range. These "local hero" and vertical specialist marketplaces are multiplying fast.
"There are 1,300 marketplaces in our network. Local heroes, vertical specialists — the landscape is much bigger than most people think."How to Pick the Right Marketplaces for Your Products
[09:17] Jorrit's advice for choosing where to sell starts with a simple principle — look at the seller-to-buyer ratio on each marketplace, not just total traffic. Amazon has 600 million products listed, meaning competition is fierce. Smaller, more specialised marketplaces often have far fewer sellers competing for the same buyers.
He recommends using AI tools like Claude or Perplexity to research marketplace options in your category. The practical starting point is modest — six to seven marketplaces in the first year, then build from there. One of his German customers now runs 60 marketplaces with just two people, because the right automation makes scaling manageable.
"Look at the seller-to-buyer ratio on each marketplace. Amazon has 600 million products — competition is fierce."Why the Biggest Mistake Is Not Selling on Marketplaces at All
[20:47] When Matt asks about common marketplace mistakes, Jorrit's answer is direct — the biggest mistake is not doing it at all. Many brands hesitate, worried about channel conflict or complexity, and miss the growing opportunity cost entirely.
For established brands, Jorrit recommends pairing an agency with automation tools to get moving quickly. For those just starting out, the path is different — begin on marketplaces first, then build your direct-to-consumer shop alongside. The key is to always be where your customers already are, rather than trying to pull them to where you want them to be.
"The biggest mistake? Not doing marketplace selling at all. The cost of not doing it is increasing every day."Spend on Marketplace Ads, Not Google — and Why That Builds Organic Ranking
[25:49] Jorrit shares a contrarian advertising strategy. Rather than spending on Google Ads to drive traffic to your own store, invest that budget in marketplace advertising. The reason is that marketplace ad spend builds your organic ranking within that platform. As your products climb the rankings, you get sustained visibility long after the campaign ends.
He also recommends driving external traffic — from social media, email, or other channels — directly to your marketplace listings rather than your own website. This signals demand to the marketplace algorithm and pushes your products higher in search results. It's a compounding effect that Google Ads simply cannot replicate.
"Spend on marketplace ads, not Google. It builds your organic ranking on the platform."Today's Guest
Today's guest: Jorrit Steinz
Company: ChannelEngine
Website: channelengine.com
LinkedIn: Connect with Jorrit on LinkedIn
Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/why-your-products-should-be-on-60-marketplaces-not-just-amazon

Start a Print on Demand Business on Etsy for Less Than £15
What if you could launch a profitable ecommerce business with no stock, no warehouse, and no design skills for under £15? Nigel Wymer from POD Launch Pro joins Matt Edmundson to walk through exactly how to build a print-on-demand business on Etsy from scratch. With nearly 20 years in ecommerce and almost £40k net earned last year while barely working on his stores, Nigel brings the receipts to match the strategy. In a hands-on episode framed around helping Matt's daughter Zoe start her first business, they cover niche research with AI, Etsy store setup, the algorithm game, sourcing, pricing, and realistic income expectations.
Key points from this episode
[04:32] What print on demand actually is and why it requires zero stock
[07:28] Why Etsy beats Shopify for beginners
[12:41] How to research niches using AI and why specificity wins
[33:33] Setting up your Etsy store for SEO and trust
[36:41] Working with the Etsy algorithm as a new seller
[45:59] Pricing without racing to the bottom

Why Etsy Beats Shopify When You're Starting Out
[07:28]
Platform choice is one of the first decisions any new print-on-demand seller faces, and Nigel's advice is unambiguous. Start on Etsy.
The reasoning is simple. With Shopify, you launch to zero traffic. From day one, you're spending on ads or pouring time into social media just to get eyes on your products. Etsy, by contrast, had 86.6 million buyers last year — people who actually purchased at least one item. That's a massive built-in audience you can tap into without spending a penny on advertising.
"If you want to go on to Shopify, then that's something I recommend you go on to later, once you know what sells. You've got the audience there now that you can trial it with on Etsy." — Nigel Wymer [08:10]The trade-off is familiar to anyone who's sold on Amazon. You don't own the customer relationship the way you would on your own site. But for someone just starting out, access to traffic far outweighs that limitation. And with just a £15 one-off fee to open a store, the financial barrier is almost non-existent.
Niche Research With AI Changes Everything
[12:41]
This is where most people get it wrong. They dream up a design, create a product, list it, and hope for the best. Nigel's approach starts in the opposite direction — research first, always.
And there's a common misunderstanding about niches. Dogs and cats are not niches. Sports is not a niche. You need to go much deeper.
"You really want to go into these smaller areas where you are being very specific in your targeting. But also there is much less competition." — Nigel Wymer [14:40]Nigel demonstrated this live on the show. Starting with "sports" as a broad category, he used AI to identify underserved sub-niches. Ice hockey came up. Still too broad. So they went deeper — ice hockey goalkeepers, then into the specific slang, culture, and identity of that community. That's where you find products so targeted that customers feel like you made them just for their world.
The obvious pushback is market size. Nigel's answer is elegant — you stack niches. Each micro-niche might only generate a small amount on its own, but when you're targeting dozens of specific communities, it adds up significantly over a year.
"What you do is you're stacking up lots of different niches... you're getting a small amount of money from each, but stacking it up over the year will add up to a lot of money." — Nigel Wymer [15:58]Matt ran a live AI experiment during the episode, asking Claude for 20 underserved print-on-demand niche ideas for Etsy. The results included adaptive clothing for neurodivergent communities, grief and memorial keepsakes, and niche outdoor micro hobbies like gravel biking and disc golf.
Working the Etsy Algorithm as a New Seller
[36:41]
New stores face an inevitable chicken-and-egg problem. No reviews means less trust. Less trust means fewer sales. Fewer sales means no reviews.
Nigel's solution requires patience rather than tricks. List regularly — not ten products in one day, but one today, another tomorrow. Each new listing gets a temporary visibility boost from the Etsy algorithm as it tests whether anyone is interested. By listing consistently, you're telling the algorithm you're an active seller, which earns higher rankings.
"Once you've got 10 sales, then the algorithm knows what you're about and who to show your product to. And it will then start growing." — Nigel Wymer [37:50]After that initial growth phase, you don't need to maintain the same pace. Nigel spent most of last year barely adding new products because he was renovating a house, and his established stores kept generating sales on autopilot. The key elements for a professional store that builds trust from the start include a branded banner (made on Canva), a simple logo, and a photo of yourself — since over 90% of Etsy sellers are individuals, and buyers want to know who they're purchasing from.
The About Me section does double duty. It builds trust with buyers and contributes to your store's SEO. Beyond that, it's standard ecommerce optimisation — keyword-rich titles, detailed descriptions, proper meta text, tags using keyword phrases rather than single words, and alt text on images.
Realistic Income and Getting Started This Week
[48:23]
Nigel cleared almost £38,000 net last year while barely working on his stores. That's the established-store reality. For someone just starting out, the benchmarks are different but still compelling.
Nigel appeared on a Channel 4 programme presented by Scarlett Moffatt that investigated different side hustles. Print on demand came out on top as the easiest way to make £10,000 a year.
Pricing is straightforward and doesn't require competing on price. A basic mug costs Nigel around £4.50 plus shipping from the manufacturer. He sells it for £10.99 plus shipping, passing the shipping cost through to the customer. For international orders, larger manufacturers have production facilities in multiple countries, so a US order gets made in the US — keeping shipping costs and delivery times reasonable.
"The answer is not, as a lot of people will do, I'm not getting sales, I'll discount it, I'll go cheaper than everyone else. That's not the answer. The answer is create your totally unique product." — Nigel Wymer [45:59]To get started this week, open an AI tool and ask for 20 underserved print-on-demand niche ideas for Etsy. Pick one niche and go deeper — ask for sub-niches, community slang, inside jokes, and cultural references. Set up a free Etsy store for £15, create a banner and logo on Canva, write an About Me section, find a UK-based print-on-demand manufacturer, and create 4-5 products to list gradually over the first week. Then keep listing regularly.
Today's Guest
Today's guest: Nigel Wymer
Company: POD Launch Pro
Website: podlaunchpro.com
LinkedIn: Connect with Nigel on LinkedIn
Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/how-to-start-a-print-on-demand-business-on-etsy-with-nigel-wymer