With BigDaddy, lots of (mainly affiliate) stores product pages dropped out of the main Google´s index and now they´re only listed within the supplemental results (because of duplicate content, at least I suppose). I just wondered whether it is still possible to build an online store which will survive (without too much work like manual modification of each item, of course)...
Anything with duplicate content will find it hard to survive. I dont feel any readymade site is going to make serious money.
If your online store relies completely on SE Rankings, you are making it pretty hard on yourself and these days it will hard to have consistent sales (especially if its new) There are countless other ways you should be marketing your shop. I spend a good amount of time on SEO and rank quite well yet probably only 15% of my sales are from visitors coming from Search Engines. It is not only possible but easy to have a succesful store provided you utilize all the marketing tools out there.
OK, let´s say you won´t use any readymade script. You can create your own, it´s not that difficult. The problem is that even if you check (original) sites like shopwiki.com, and jump to some 20th or 30th SERP, you´ll see it´s all in supplemental... just try site:www dot shopwiki dot com
yfs, I agree with you, but you are talking about large, general (or wide niche) shops. The strait niches still have to rely on SEs.
Still don't agree as you can market just about any physical product outside of SE's successfully.If you rely on rankings and GoDaddy doesn't hit you, at some point you are going to get hit by an update and when you make your living with your shop, thats a recipe for disaster.