Since the upheaval of 2020, the global economy has drastically changed, eCommerce included. Even so, eCommerce has always operated at breakneck speed, which means you need to keep up to keep selling.
Whether you’re just breaking into eCommerce and are trying to learn the basics, or you’re a veteran keeping an eye out for the next optimization, there’s always going to be a mountain of new knowledge to dig through.
Your business thrives on the latest information. By continually developing your eCommerce skills, you’ll stay ahead of your competitors and optimize for conversions.
36 Learning resources for eCommerce sellers
From podcasts to blogs and Facebook groups, there’s a wealth of resources offering educational materials. Make sure you check out the following places to sharpen your eCommerce skills and stay at the forefront of online selling.
DTC (newsletter)
DTC is a bi-weekly newsletter that is quickly becoming one of my favorites for their interesting topics. Much of their topics are self-contained within the email, which means you have everything you need to know right upon open, without having to click out to a different page.
As the name implies, this newsletter covers timely topics for direct-to-consumer businesses. They give great advice on product page optimizations, include plenty of resources and freebies if you like, and share relevant eCommerce events.
Read: Take a glance at their past newsletters – my favorite so far has been the issue on one-click checkout.
2PM (newsletter and Twitter)
2PM is a media company and growth consultancy. Its newsletter, which the company refers to as “2PM letters,” is delivered three times a week at, you guessed it, 2 p.m. (time zone varies).
Each letter provides original commentary on the latest news reports, in addition to a curated list of must-read news.
If you’re active on Twitter, follow @2PMinc for quick snippets of their memos, letters, and other relevant conversations.
Read: 2PM authors weekly memos, which are in-depth essays analyzing recent headlines. See an archive of memos here.
Second Marathon (newsletter)
This eCommerce newsletter is managed by Second Marathon co-founder Matthew Hertz. It’s sent roughly once a month, though there are occasional delays between issues. Despite the spontaneity in publication, this newsletter is one of the best.
Hertz summarizes his top reads in each email, giving his two cents on what makes a particular headline worth paying attention to. Each newsletter features no-nonsense subject lines and covers a variety of valuable topics, like third-party marketplace and M&A news.
Read: See an archive of their previous emails here to get a taste of Hertz’s reporting style.
A Better Lemonade Stand (newsletter)
You’ll find much more to appreciate about A Better Lemonade Stand than just its clever name. The purpose of this publication is to help entrepreneurs build better eCommerce businesses.
Their newsletter often features in-depth guides, some of which clock in at 5,000+ words. Visit A better Lemonade Stand for comprehensive guides on launching a new business and propelling your growth, and sign up for their newsletter for some of their bonus content.
Read: 100+ Store Updates to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do
eCommerce Insider (newsletter)
The eCommerce Insider newsletter is run under Online Selling Experiment, and written by Ryan Grant.
Recommended to me by one of my favorite clients and co-founders, this newsletter delivers a quick bullet list of what’s happening (and important) in eCommerce. It’s the newsletter where I learn about Amazon updates, new industry publications and research, and important dates in eCommerce (like shipping deadlines for the holidays).
Page One (newsletter)
Page One is the Teikametrics newsletter, covering advertising, market intelligence, and marketplace strategies.
As an entrepreneur, you’ve likely heard of the flywheel effect. Coined by Jim Collins, the “flywheel effect” is what happens when all of your combined efforts work together and gain momentum to spin the flywheel. Once a flywheel gets going, it becomes easier to maintain speed with minimal input, creating a self-sustaining, conversion-generating machine.
The Teikametrics newsletter and blog offers insight into the flywheel effect and eCommerce metrics to stretch your efforts further.
P.S. Their website also contains a library of useful content for eCommerce business owners. This includes ebooks, webinars, brand performance matrices, and case studies you can learn from to increase your profits.
Read: There isn’t a public archive of their past newsletters, but to get a feel for their content, check out their Guide to Amazon Live.
For The Love (newsletter)
This newsletter captures the magic of D2C brands that delight their customers. It’s an excellent newsletter to learn about cool brands and products, learn what they’re doing to deliver an amazing buyer experience, and more.
Read: This newsletter on Give It Away Give It Away Give It Away Now talks about how one brand made a strategic decision to lose money on an initiative, which is almost unheard of in eCommerce.
Clarity Magazine (blog)
Clarity Magazine is published by Clearco (formerly Clearbanc), which provides working capital for eCommerce businesses — with an impressive machine for figuring out where their best bets lie. They work with successful eCommerce brands and founders, and their material reflects. The Clarity Magazine delivers professional insights that will appeal to anyone looking for success in the eCommerce space, from funding and finances (their core business) to marketing attribution.
Read: What is multi-touch attribution? An attribution guide. Coming from a funding company, this piece shows just how well Clearco understands the data that drives eCommerce business success.
Retail Dive (blog)
While Retail Dive isn’t exclusively about eCommerce, it’s still a great resource for keeping up with news that may impact your business and the eCommerce industry in general.
Many of Retail Dive’s articles offer a “Dive Brief” — quick bullet points that summarize the story before diving into the details. The content ranges from opinion pieces to news stories, all aimed at keeping you in the know about the fluctuating commerce landscape.
Read: Check out Retail Dive’s article, Costco pilots same-day delivery with Uber. Take some time to read through the Dive Insight, which sheds light on why Costco is suddenly prioritizing same-day delivery.
Common Thread Collective (blog and newsletter)
This aptly named “Coach’s Corner” blog covers tactical insights for growing D2C brands. Common Thread Collective covers some intense topics in-depth and from a boots-on-the-ground standpoint. Their blog provides some great insights into different sales channels, ad strategy, and the industry in general.
Read: Ecommerce Analytics: How to Find Growth Opportunities with Consolidated Data, Benchmarks & Three ‘Layers’ of Revenue. <- This is GOLD.
Jungle Scout (blog and newsletter)
As an eCommerce seller, you probably have ties to Amazon in some capacity. You can keep up to date with the massive marketplace through the latest Jungle Scout articles.
Jungle Scout is an all-in-one platform for Amazon product research. Through its well-informed blog, both beginner FBA sellers and seasoned Amazon experts can expand their eCommerce knowledge.
Read: We love this Why Sell on Amazon? blog post for understanding why your competitors choose Amazon, and why they quit their eCommerce journey.
Helium 10 (blog and newsletter)
Helium 10 is a product research tool for eCommerce sellers. Offering insights into keyword research, product listing optimization, and more, the Helium 10 website is full of helpful learning material for business owners with Amazon stores. Additionally, Helium 10 has several free tools to give you a competitive advantage over other sellers.
If you prefer to listen to their lessons instead, you can also find them on the AM/PM Podcast.
Watch: Your keyword strategy is critical to be seen by high-intent shoppers. In their webinar on How To Crush The Competition With Keyword Research, Helium 10 breaks down how to optimize the right keywords to outshine the competition.
Viral Launch (blog)
Viral Launch is a leader in Amazon ads optimization, product and keyword research, competitor tracking, and more. They’ve built out a suite of tools for Amazon sellers to find their next best seller, with a blog to match. The Viral Launch blog covers the latest in Amazon, Amazon seller strategies, Amazon resources, and more.
Read: Your Beginner’s Guide To Selling Amazon Products on TikTok, because social selling is honestly a huge acquisition driver today.
BigCommerce (blog)
BigCommerce is a SaaS eCommerce platform designed to make your eCommerce journey as stress-free as possible. Their blog is loaded with educational articles and actionable insights for growing your D2C eCommerce business.
Read: If you’re just starting out in the eCommerce industry, the 5 Essential Steps for How to Start a Dropshipping Business contains everything you need to know about establishing your own dropshipping business.
Shopify (blog)
Shopify is one of the biggest names in the eCommerce world, with more than 820,000 merchants using the platform to power their sites. Their blog is a great resource for sellers who are just starting out.
From guides on how to raise capital to tips on how to choose which products to sell, the Shopify blog offers tons of free, valuable knowledge.
Read: Here’s a great article for people looking to launch a side gig from home: Shopify’s 13 Home Business Ideas That Let You Work From Home can spark your creative juices and includes links to specific how-to guides.
Shopify Plus (blog)
Shopify Plus proclaims to be the only cost-effective enterprise platform that’s built for change. It’s the advanced version of Shopify: while the core functionality is the same, Shopify Plus offers greater flexibility and customization options.
The Shopify Plus blog offers 301-level (and above) content, compared to Shopify’s 101-level articles. It touches on technology and concepts that are relevant to large-scale brands looking to stay ahead of new trends.
Read: One of our favorite reads is Shopify Plus’ Headless Commerce 101: Does My Ecommerce Site Need to Go Headless?. Headless architecture is growing in popularity — make sure you know why and how to leverage it for your site.
Shopify Masters (podcast)
Selling online isn’t restricted to Amazon. Direct-to-consumer (D2C) is an excellent option that gives you more control over your channel, audience, and platform. You set your own rules and gain a direct line to your customers, removing any mention of the competition (unlike in marketplaces, where you’re showcased side by side).
Although designed for Shopify store owners, the “Shopify Masters” podcast is a great eCommerce learning resource for any merchant.
Every Tuesday, the podcast invites an eCommerce founder to talk about their business, share the lessons they’ve learned, and offer helpful resources. It’s a rich learning opportunity for any eCommerce owner.
Listen: Your dreams of starting an eCommerce business may stem from the desire to work on something you’re passionate about. The episode on Turning Your Passion Project Into a Seven-Figure Business is one to listen to if you want to turn your passion project into a revenue machine.
Resilient Retail (podcast)
Resilient Retail is a Shopify podcast that covers seller stories to teach listeners about the struggles, breakthroughs, and insights to help make any retail business future-proof. Kristen LaFrance is excellent at getting to the heart of the most interesting aspect of each brand story, and uncovering the surrounding tactics and strategies.
eCommerce Fastlane (podcast)
eCommerce Fastlane captures the tone of this podcast masterfully. If you’re in the fast lane when it comes to growth, sales, or investment, this podcast covers topics that can help you survive it all and thrive.
Listen: Accelerate Your Shopify Brands Success Through Automation, Delegation Or Elimination, because we all need some of that in our lives.
Future Commerce Podcast
Future Commerce is a retail media research startup that helps eCommerce businesses create their strategic visions. They have multiple podcasts, including Stairway to CEO where they interview CEOs and startup founders on their origin stories, and Step by Step, which is a 5-episode series helping eCommerce businesses build smarter.
Their Future Commerce Podcast explores the intersection of eCommerce and its impact on the world, including consumerism, capitalism, and more across different sales channels.
Listen: The Future of eCommerce Agencies is Discourse
Honest Ecommerce (podcast)
Honest Ecommerce is a community of eCommerce store owners and managers who want tactics without the fluff. They publish a weekly podcast where they interview founders and marketers who are doing the work and reaping the results to break down their strategies.
Listen: Fighting the Misconceptions of Dropshipping and Passive Income – with Nora Inveiss
The eCommerceFuel Podcast
eCommerceFuel is a community of 7- and 8-figure store owners, with more than 1000 vetted sellers following their podcast, blog, and community. They provide high-level strategies, meant for business owners already deep into their founder stories and looking to optimize and expand even further.
Listen: Your Ultimate Bandwidth Limiter – I enjoyed this take on the hardware that still runs our lives in a very-much-virtual industry.
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast has gotten so popular it’s grown into a Facebook group as well. This podcast isn’t affiliated with Shopify, but covers all the growth strategy and tactics behind D2C brands.
Listen: Using Pre-Orders to Grow Inventory. This is a cool story on how one brand owner used pre-orders to fund her inventory growth.
My Wife Quit Her Job (podcast)
Sometimes the best way to learn is to journey through someone else’s story.
On the “My Wife Quit Her Job” podcast, Steve Chou interviews small business entrepreneurs who have bootstrapped their businesses and started their own ventures. In each episode, Steve and his guests reveal the strategies that led to their business success.
Listen: Steven chats with Jeff Oxford about How To Rank An Ecommerce Store In Search, which is a great listen for eCommerce business owners who want the top spot in Google search results.
“Built to Scale” eCommerce Show (podcast)
The Built to Scale podcast is from the AdKings duo Darius Kunca and Justin Gecevicius. They tackle everything growth and acquisition-related in eCommerce, and then some. Their quick, punchy episodes deliver valuable information in short episodes, usually between 10 to 20 minutes (although I’ve seen some episodes hit 40+ minutes, and others sit at 4 minutes). Their topics range from leadership and brand building, to eCommerce trends in the industry.
Listen: My favorite is still one of their flagship episodes; How We’re Spending Up to $100K a Day On Facebook Ads For One eCommerce Business, where listeners get an inside look at how they run their ad agency.
And speaking of AdKings…
eCommerce Growth 7 & 8-Figures Mastermind by AdKings (Facebook group)
You can learn a lot from joining Facebook groups, as the AdKings mastermind on Facebook proves.
This group will teach you how to leverage social media ads for eCommerce sales. With approximately 2,000 members, the group provides the opportunity to connect with other eCommerce sellers, share your experiences, and learn how to grow your business.
The Exceptional Ecommerce Blog
Disclaimer: Shogun is one of my clients
Shogun is a headless commerce platform and Shopify page builder that caters to merchants of all sizes. Their articles are all extensive, helpful, and actionable. Their main blog categories include building customer experiences, headless commerce, how to sell online, and scaling your store.
Read: Learn how to boost your AOV with upselling and cross-selling strategies, or how to improve your conversion rates and buyer experience with A/B testing.
Web Retailer (blog)
If you want to learn how to grow your eCommerce business, Web Retailer is a great starting point. Its website contains all of the information and resources you need to sell successfully online, including some well-researched data and analysis of different sales channels and software providers. Web Retailer is passionate about helping eCommerce businesses of all sizes find success.
Read: Harness the power of multi-channel sales by reading Web Retailer’s 9 eBay Alternatives: The Best Seller-Friendly Marketplaces To Consider. This article shares a list of seller-friendly marketplaces to help get your eCommerce business up and running.
Digital Commerce 360 (blog)
Formerly known as Internet Retailer, Digital Commerce 360 has been reporting on the digital transformation for over 20 years. It’s a leading research and media company that strives to deliver objective news and competitive data.
Through their site, you can glean valuable tips related to B2B selling and retail, plus access annual eCommerce rankings (though these require paid memberships).
Read: Their article on how E.l.f. Cosmetics does more than pay lip service to personalization touches upon a unique strategy for engaging more website visitors. (To access the full article, you’ll have to create a free Digital Commerce 360 account.)
Practical Ecommerce (blog)
Practical Ecommerce prides itself on operating independently of any eCommerce company or vendor. It covers everything from eCommerce SEO to marketing hacks, and local selling to global commerce.
It features short, punchy reads with unique perspectives on popular strategies.
Read: Most sellers focus on one or two primary audiences, but what about secondary audiences? We love this insightful blog titled What Is Your Company’s Secondary Audience?
Tinuiti (blog)
The Tinuiti blog covers the marketing side of eCommerce, from emails to ads and AI. They’re on top of the latest in the industry, and have a good eye for knowing what trends are coming up next. I especially like their content repurposing approach, as you’ll find plenty of webinar recordings, Q&As, and event recaps on their blog as well.
Read: Experts Share 5 Google Feed Tests To Drive More Qualified Traffic To Your Site.
Payability (blog)
Experience is a memorable teacher, but if you can’t rely on your own, you can look at what others have done. Payability highlights case studies of one of their eCommerce funding products, showing sellers how to utilize their capital strategically for inventory and marketing.
The Payability blog also offers great advice for sellers looking to increase their eCommerce sales. Stay tuned for the latest eCommerce news and insightful Payability case studies.
Read: We loved reading the GO Buddha Case Study, where Josh Ingraham talks about his experience growing the GO Buddha business through Payability Instant Advance. If you’re interested in learning more about funding for eCommerce businesses, this case study offers some interesting insights.
Sellbrite Ecommerce Blog
To succeed in the eCommerce industry, you need to sell across multiple channels. The Sellbrite resource center encourages you to reap the benefits of multi-channel sales through their exhaustive store of educational materials.
Sellbrite’s blog offers everything you need to know about multi-channel selling. With resource guides on how to sell smarter across various channels, as well as in-depth eCommerce posts and insightful webinars, Sellbrite is a must-follow. The blog covers topics such as retail trends, multi-channel operations, and growth strategies.
Read: It’s not just omnichannel sales that are important; you should also think about an omnichannel marketing strategy. In this article, Sellbrite shares 7 Omnichannel Marketing Strategies to Boost Ecommerce Sales.
EcommerceBytes (blog)
EcommerceBytes is a blog focused on eBay, owned by David and Ina Steiner. The couple is thorough in their reporting, making the blog a nice go-to source for all things eBay. The Steiners have diligently reported on the eCommerce giant for years and have been quoted by major news organizations, like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
Read: To get a sense of the site’s reporting style, view this article detailing how eBay Listings Ended Because There Were No Recent Sales.
Marketplace Pulse (Blog and newsletter)
As the name suggests, Marketplace Pulse publishes research and insights designed to give you a quick pulse of the eCommerce industry and shifts within. Juozas Kaziukėnas provides regular updates on marketplaces such as Amazon, Walmart, and eBay with a neutral and journalistic POV. Claims are backed by research, much of which is original, and
Read: Learn about the boom in yet another revenue stream for Amazon — Ads, in Amazon Ad Business Growing Faster Than Google, Facebook.
Deliverr (blog)
Disclaimer: I ran content marketing at Deliverr from 2018 to 2021.
Diversification is key in eCommerce; more sales channels means more money and stability, in case something happens to one of your revenue streams.
Deliverr’s blog covers all the topics multi-channel sellers need to know to succeed everywhere they sell. It introduces new concepts like the 14:1 rule on Walmart and using category relativity to figure out where to sell next.
It shows merchants how to succeed on individual marketplaces, and also as multi-channel sellers who must have efficient processes to ensure an error-free experience while coordinating multiple marketplaces and websites.
Deliverr offers end-to-end fulfillment solutions for multi-channel eCommerce sellers. The Deliverr blog is overflowing with strategies, advice, and case studies to help you leverage the benefits of multi-channel eCommerce.
Read: Are your delivery standards slipping? Are your cart abandonment rates going up, and conversion rate and visibility going down? Are you ready to expand, or growing too quickly to keep up with demand? It may be time to switch from in-house to outsourced fulfillment.
Wrapping up — Stay on top of the industry with these eCommerce learning resources
In the quickly-changing eCommerce world, it’s always important to keep up-to-date with what’s happening among your current and potential sales channels, competitors, and brands like yours. By picking a few of the eCommerce learning resources above, you can stay informed and equipped to handle any changes.
Of course, there are many more resources available to learn about eCommerce, but I personally use the ones listed above, and subscribe to them to keep up with the industry.
Published: January 4, 2021
Updated: July 26, 2021
Updated: June 23, 2022
Updated: November 24, 2022
Updated: September 18, 2023