3 Megatrends For Entrepreneurs/Freelancers In 2021 That Will Change Ecommerce Forever 💵

Hey, it's Stefan here. And what I want to talk about today is two trends that I see emerging and then probably converging in 2021, and actually not probably, they are converging right now. So the first is social gaming. If you look at Roblox, for example, which is a gaming platform marketplace that has become wildly popular, if you're not familiar with it, you can go to Roblox R-O-B-L-O x.com to check it out. They just raised another 100, I think $50 million it was. And at a $4 billion plus valuation, they're planning on having doing their IPO in 2021. They were going to do it in 2020, but they moved it back. And the huge thing with Roblox is social gaming. So it's basically a, like an open gaming platform where developers can build games on their architecture and infrastructure and then put them into, like, the, the ecosystem and people play the different games. What's really cool is that the people, the developers get a share of revenue based on people who are playing. It's a lot of kids playing it, and the kids are actually developing and building their own games as well. But there are crazy stats on it. It has 150 million plus active users. And like, half of all kids in the US have played a game on Roblox before. And it's just really booming. But again, the big thing with Roblox is the social aspect of it, right? And when you look at that, it's actually far from, like, unique. So, for example, Rec Room is something on virtual reality, on Oculus Quest and things like that. And it's a social gaming platform, kind of similar to what Roblox does, but within the world of Rec Room. And they just raised, I think it was 20 million in their series C. And they're expecting, you know, continued growth and lots of money. The thing is, money is coming into these ventures, right? But we can take that and then look at how Discord, which is a chat server for people who play video games and esports and things like that. Discord is now valued at $7 billion. There is. I'm looking off a list, so if I'm scrolling through, because I make my notes here, Skillz, which is a mobile esports company that just started trading on the New York Stock Exchange. It went public. They powered something like 2 billion tournaments, including 500 million paid entry tournaments. And they facilitated $1.6 billion in entry fees and generated $225 million in revenue. So again, this is another one that is a, like a platform that's friends and family sort of compete for cash and prizes through esports and things of that nature. Then you look at the fact that Snapchat is kind of partnering with Unity Engines, which is a gaming engine to kind of bring more of a social aspect to games that are run on the Unity platform. There's Navi, which is an esports club that just sort of created a whole project where you can sell items from different platforms and games across different marketplaces. Like basically doing trading and in game sales and assets for virtual items. You're paying real money and creates real money, real value for virtual assets. Something that also happens with Roblox by the way. Roblox has its own in game economy and it has people trading and buying. There's Robux, which is the money in there. But what's interesting here is the, the virtual kind of game currencies that become valuable in real life. This isn't new. I mean I played everquest back in the day which is an MMORPG massive multiplayer online role playing game and you could sell items in the game for real cash. People did it on ebay back then. They could ebay off their characters. And then with World of Warcraft and others people have still been doing that but it's becoming more and more popular and mainstream and that's what's kind of interesting too. Gosh, there's another one. What is it? Oh Boom. TV I read about that basically is a. Another sort of a like, like esports platform that helps people to like compete and, and sort of it does it on. It focuses on less professional esports athletes and more collegiate and high school level. They just raised another $10 million in a series A. Well they did in June and then intel just invested in them. And I know there's even one more I'm not thinking of right here, it's probably in my notes but where they just got another like 2.5. Who was it? 2.8. I don't know. Another company basically that raised 2.5 billion. The point is this is happening with. So what is it? It's like esports and social gaming all combining and then the social aspect and where the convergence comes in is really interesting because the second trend that I really want to talk about is kind of live streamed social shopping. So I read an article in Inc. A little while ago about this and how social shopping is a. Or they call it livestream shopping is a 63 billion dollar industry in China. But it's just Starting to get catch steam in the US which makes sense because essentially this is like QVC for, you know, but on Facebook Live or on Snapchat or other places, including Amazon. So that's what was interesting as I started researching this. You know, Walmart is partner of TikTok to do a live stream shopping event where different like TikTok personalities will be like shopping and buying stuff on Walmart and then sharing Those deals on TikTok. On TikTok. TikTok, you know, but there's also like a bunch of other. What's the other one I found that was really interesting? Oh yeah, there's this company called Ship Loop which is basically where people kind of watch creators showing off things that they like or that they've made and then people can buy on the app. So it's like kind of QVC Live selling. Amazon literally has this with Amazon Live, which is where you can essentially live stream or do live videos showing off your objects and items and selling them. And both, you know, Amazon talent can do that. But also brands are able to do it through the Amazon Live creator platform. Facebook, by the way, started doing this in 2018 with Facebook Live Shopping. And there's another company called Pop Shop. So there's a bunch of companies that are doing this where they're essentially selling stuff through live streaming, right? And then on top of that, beyond selling there, I think the other opportunity with Live Stream, like I kind of, they call it live stream shopping in some of these articles. I think livestream selling makes more sense because this is like these are examples of people selling. But I think shopping actually is a big opportunity too. And to back that up, if you actually look at Twitch, which is, you know, a streaming platform originally for gamers, it had a record 1.7 billion hours streamed in November of 2020. But out of that, the number one substantial segment was the just chatting category of 228 million hours watched, which is up 246% from last year. And a lot of what they're doing there is actually people talking about like chatting, beauty, makeup and things of that nature. So from this Venture Beat article that I found, I can quote where it says women are more than 40% of the gaming lifestyle scene streamed. Elements Chief Executive Officer Duran near said that makes livestreaming platforms the next frontier for beauty products. Over the past 12 months we've seen the beauty category on twitch growing over 260% in terms of hours of watch of cosmetic brands like Oriole, Mac M Hero and Elf already dipping their toes in the water. So I think again there's a cool opportunity there to watch other people shopping and as a livestream or for you yourself, right? You could livestream yourself shopping and finding the best deal and price comparing and putting on coupons and put it on Twitch or other places and probably generate a lot of followers from doing that. Just in the same way people I mentioned this to a few of my friends and people say oh like Ryan's toy reviews which is on YouTube and where this kid like basically unboxes toys and making some ungodly amount of money, tens of millions of dollars a year I think even more frankly, which is awesome. But yeah, it's kind of like that. But actually livestreaming shopping, like turning shopping into a sport just like gaming has become of esports. In both cases you're live streaming and there's a social aspect and. And same thing with selling too, right? Communicating, chat. So basically I think you look at the social. Socialization may not be the right word because I don't want the connotations of socialism, but essentially there's social is applying to specific activities and to everything. And you're seeing social now really converge with shopping and E commerce in a way that's never been done before. I think really accelerated by COVID 19 and I think then even with games and social gaming with the in game economies and the way people are selling, I think that's where the convergence gets really interesting because you're going to have this blur between shopping, playing and communicating. That's all kind of happening and the money's there. Again, if you look at the IPOs, you look at the venture capital being raised and invested, it's like it's already happening, the amount of users this is happening now. So I think there's a lot of interesting opportunities there and ways that you could take advantage of the trend for. I mentioned one, if you could live stream yourself shopping and then you could put in affiliate links and then people could buy stuff that you find and recommend, right? Or you could do it and then also plug your own stuff. Or you could get sponsored advertisers to sponsor you as you shop for their stuff, right? If you have enough followers, it's a really easy low cost barrier. But as a brand or a company, like trying this QVC model out, right? Going live on Facebook and starting to having some of your inventory, your product shopping or showing it, sharing it, like, like telling about the features and benefits, selling it, telling the story behind it and then you know, selling X amount of bottles to your followers, whether it was on Facebook or YouTube or Instagram or TikTok or whatever. And, you know, and then I think on the gaming side, it's like really just finding ways to, to connect with gamers and things. I mean, I don't just look at opportunities for these in game economies and how those are then being transferred to the outside world. But, you know, I don't have like the perfect answer to how this all converges, but I think there's clearly a common thread there. And so these are trends that, you know, I think people are just interested in the future will find valuable. But also for entrepreneurial type people, there's a lot of opportunities for you. So want to share this video? Hopefully you like it. If you do like it or find it interesting or have other trends you want to share that maybe I missed, make sure that you leave a comment and hit the like button. You know, subscribe to my channel if you haven't share this with other people. Help me get views so I feel motivated to keep making content that'd be awesome and hopefully you do enjoy. All right, thanks.