Okay I’ve been sitting on this one for a while because I wanted to phrase it right without it turning into a doom post or a hype post. Bear with me.
I started my first store in late 2024. I’ve talked to enough people on forums like this one to have a decent sample size of experiences. And I genuinely don’t know what to think about the “is it harder now” question - because the honest answer is complicated and nobody seems to want to give the complicated answer.
So here’s my attempt.
The case FOR it being harder
Let me steelman this first because I think the people saying ecommerce is getting harder aren’t wrong, they’re just sometimes pointing at the wrong reasons.
Ad costs are real. CPMs on Meta have gone up year over year for the better part of five years. TikTok is catching up fast now that every dropshipper and their cousin has figured out that TikTok ads work. Google Shopping is competitive in almost every category that has decent margins. The arbitrage window that existed in like 2017-2019 where you could run a generic product ad to a generic audience and make money just because the platform was cheap - that window is closed. It’s not coming back.
Consumer expectations are also real. People in 2026 expect fast shipping, easy returns, professional-looking stores, responsive customer service, and competitive pricing. All at the same time. In 2016 you could slap up a basic Shopify store with AliExpress products and 3-week shipping and people would deal with it because it was still kind of novel. Nobody is dealing with that now. Amazon has trained an entire generation of online shoppers to expect their stuff in two days and a no-questions-asked return policy. You’re competing with that expectation whether you like it or not.
Product saturation is real. If you find a winning product today, there’s a decent chance ten other stores are running it within two weeks. The testing cycles that used to give you months of runway now give you weeks. Copycats are faster, spy tools are more accessible, and the barrier to launching a competing store is basically zero.
The case AGAINST it being harder
Here’s where I’m going to push back on the doom crowd a little bit.
The tools available to beginners in 2026 are genuinely better than they’ve ever been. AI copywriting, AI ad creative tools, better analytics, platforms like Sellvia that handle sourcing and fulfillment in ways that would’ve required serious operational effort five years ago. The floor for what a beginner can build in their first month has never been higher.
The information available is also better. For free. There is more useful, specific, actionable content about ecommerce on YouTube, forums like this one, Reddit, and Discord than has ever existed at any point in this industry’s history. The learning curve is still real but it is not as steep as it used to be for someone who’s willing to actually consume information and apply it.
And here’s the thing that nobody wants to say out loud - a lot of people who claim ecommerce is getting harder tried it once, spent a few hundred dollars, didn’t get the results they expected in the timeframe they expected, and quit. That’s not ecommerce getting harder. That’s the same failure rate this industry has always had, just with a louder megaphone because now everyone has a social media account to complain on.
The success stories still exist. They’re less flashy now - you don’t see as many “I made $100k in my first month” posts because those were mostly either fake or unsustainable. But people are building real stores with real revenue doing this in 2026. They’re just not as loud about it.
What I actually think is happening
The gap between beginners who make it and beginners who don’t has widened. That’s my honest read.
It used to be that a mediocre approach with a decent product could still produce okay results because the ad platforms were cheaper and consumer expectations were lower. Those two buffers have shrunk significantly. Which means the margin for error has also shrunk. You need better creative than you used to. Better targeting strategy. Better store UX. Better product research. Better post-purchase experience.
None of that is impossible. It’s just less forgiving than it was.
The people who approach this like a real business - who study the craft, who test systematically, who treat the first $500 in ad spend as tuition, who don’t quit at week three when nothing is working yet - those people are still finding success. Not always big overnight success. But real, sustainable, growing revenue.
The people who approach it like a vending machine - subscribe to a platform, add some products, run some ads, wait for money - are failing faster than they used to because the environment no longer tolerates that approach.
So is it harder? Yes, in the sense that the floor you need to clear is higher. No, in the sense that the ceiling is still there and the tools to reach it are better than ever.
The question I actually want this thread to answer:
What specifically is harder compared to when you started - or compared to what you expected when you started?
I’m less interested in the general vibe of “it’s harder now” and more interested in the specific mechanics. Is it ad costs? Product research? Store design? Customer acquisition? Post-purchase retention? Because those are different problems with different solutions and lumping them all into “ecommerce is harder” doesn’t help anyone figure out what to actually do about it.
Drop your experience below. Especially if you started recently - I want to know what specifically has surprised you about the difficulty level compared to what you were told to expect.