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Comment by erikw | Hacker News Reader

For small businesses that are able to move online, there is no shortage of revenue available. In the article they mention a yoga studio owner closing up her shop. I agree that a yoga studio is pretty tough to move online. They also mention a jewellery brand, and that is exactly the type of boutique business that can be successful right now with the right marketing and ecommerce solution. My partner does online sales and marking consulting, and every one of her clients has at least doubled revenue within one month of onboarding. Most of them now have problems maintaining stock, not making sales. I don't know if these healthy sales will last, but for now I'm not seeing any ceiling for small businesses who make something or sell a service that works online. My guess is that a lot of SME owners just aren't aware of how to approach online sales.

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Funny you mention Yoga studios, as we are actually seeing a big influx from this market for video hosting. Many are starting to productize their lessons which will likely be bigger wins, versus selling their time as instructors.

I think it's similar to what your partner is seeing. For many of these businesses, there is a viable online path. But that assumes that they have the skills and desire to operate an online business.

Some of these small businesses are operated by folks who may know how to operate in a local market, and have very little interest in e-marketing and shipping products.

Both of the studios I frequent have moved all classes to online. In the cases of the classes I've gone to the number of people in class if now larger, no longer being limited to the size of the building or location of the student.

The world's 50,000th best yoga instructor can probably make a living running a yoga studio.

I'm not sure the world's 50,000th best yoga instructor can make a living selling online yoga classes.

i'm not even sure being good at instructing yoga has anything to do with selling online yoga classes. online engagement is hard, it almost seems antithesis what it would take to sell yoga classes online to the practice of yoga.

I've done biweekly yoga before the quarantine and have continued to do so online. I agree that it's hard to remain engaged in a group class when most of the participants keep their webcams and microphones turned off and the instructor can't comment on your breathing and / or form because at best they have a 2D video stream to work with.

Good point, their advantage has mainly been geographic distance based. Where being within X miles trumps being in the top 100 yoga instructors if you are looking to go to an in person lesson.

Virtual removes that advantage and now favors expertise over distance to instructor. Definitely moves more of the win to the top 1% in each skillset.

It's a big win if you are in that top quantile, but means if you aren't maybe find the thing you are top 1% of? Not sure...just seeds for thought

I am not sure that is necessarily that bleak. With the right two-way camera system it seems like the Yoga instructor could provide a comparable experience whether remote or local. Seems like we just need better hardware and software.

Remote coaching could be huge. The demand for human interaction has never been higher.

someone needs to give you an award

EVERYONE here claiming 'just move your product online' and 'sales have doubled for people who moved online'

do not understand the nature of competition online

You have to be Top 1% online to survive

Top 0.1% to thrive

In the real world you can be the third best coffee shop or t shirt shop in your locality and still do well

Yeah, but Google and other gatekeepers make sure that they get their "fair" share of the revenue. We had about five times the revenue some years ago, but we were making a loss because we spent all on online advertisement. Now our ad budget is exactly zero and we are making a small profit. And that's all that counts for a small business.

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