Shopify: Small Business Blog of the Day

First, let me tell you about this great blog that Typepad featured yesterday. It's called Typepad Hacks and it includes instructions to add things and manipulate templates on Typepad blogs. Very cool. While looking at a few of their recent posts, I stumbled upon a brand new e-store solution that lets you sell products for a measly 2-3% cut, and it works with PayPal. Guess what? They have a blog...

What it is
Jaded Pixel is the blog for the development company of the same name in Ottawa, Ontario who just released a product/website called Shopify. The blog is written by the co-founders, Scott Lake and Tobias Lütke.

Shopify is a new e-store solution that allows you to upload products, set the price, and sell them using services like PayPal. This is not a new concept...far from it. What makes Shopify different is it...

"...removes the traditional barriers that have kept many individuals and small business from selling online. It is a Web 2.0 product that focuses on providing buyers and sellers with the features essential to completing e-commerce transactions. It is simple, elegant and desperately needed."

Features
Really good historical record of the company coming into existence and creating a product. It's like a case-study on steroids. There are contests for readers and good personal posts that humanize the company and show that the employees are not all business all the time.

Favorite Post
High Tech Coffee is a personal post from Scott mentioning the new coffee shop in Ottawa.

"At Bridgehead, there is free high-speed wireless connectivity, pretty standard for alot of places except for the fact that its FREE! In addition, there are electrical outlets at every table in the entire place. No more watching your battery go down to zero percent because the guy reading the New York Times won’t move from the one spot with the electrical outlet. Lastly, if your sitting with a laptop, you can stay as long as you want as long as you buy something when you come in. Heaven!!!"

Now I'm not one to suggest anyone is a geek, but...geek.

Further Comments
It looks like the blogging platform they are using is of their own design, and it's pretty good. I wish they had an archive-by-month feature in their navigation, although you are allowed to continue to older posts at the bottom of the page.

The older posts didn't include any photos, but they have added more and more as the blog has matured. That's great because I found myself stopping at most of the posts that had photos to see what the photo was about, while scrolling right past the posts without a photo.

What I really like is that the product just launched...like last week. Yet the blog has been around since August. Two of our last three featured blogs have used their blog to promote the launch of their product. There's a lesson here.

Tags: shopify, shopify.com, jaded pixel, tobias lutke, scott lake, ecommerce, estore, bridgehead coffee

Comments

[Mia, e-shop owner]

I love this whole collaborative, customer-driven thing. When it works, it utterly rocks.

[T1 Internet Service]

Good article and comments!