Jumping On The Amazon Bandwagon (Beware the dangers and pitfalls)

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Jumping on the Amazon Bandwagon (Beware the dangers and pitfalls)

One of the things that happens when you run an online business is you get hit with lots of business opportunities and trainings regularly. I was talking to one of my clients today who was talking about selling on Amazon, Ebay and some of the other big players websites. Don’t get me wrong, if you can get millions of buyers to buy your products using them; fire away, it’s great.

When you are using all these platforms you are completely not in control of anything that happens. What you are doing is throwing your cards on a table or at a business and hoping everything will work out fine. Even if you know the numbers and the market inside out. If this is a bonus income stream for you or a short term fix then count it as one, because if you rely on one of these companies to put food on your table for the next few years you could end up sorely disappointed.

Now I know there are going to be lots of Amazon gurus and top earners telling me I am crazy but I believe applied knowledge is power, and ignorance can, and many times will up being a catastrophe. So knowing this could save your income somewhere down the road. I am certainly not trying to put you off making money from these sites but just letting you be aware of what can happen. If you blindly follow Amazon as the next holy grail of online marketing, or any other big online network.

About ten years ago I setup a seller account on Amazon and started selling a few things. I came across this property book which offered a 50% Commission payout at the time it was £20 and £4 postage and packaging. And I discovered I could post it on Amazon for £30 and make sales all day like it was going out of fashion tomorrow. Over the next year or two I made well over 4 figures, selling this one book. Each one got me about £20 profit minus Amazon seller fees.

During this time I went to Bulgaria and Greece for 5 months and I remember logging into my Amazon account seeing my 3 or 4 orders I got daily. And then hopping on to the affiliate website with my affiliate link ordering the book putting in the Amazon customers address details and paying with my credit card. The next day I got an email from the bookseller saying the book had been shipped. And I was making £60 to £80 some days for 10 mins work.

I’m sure you’re thinking Wow! That sounds great. And yes it was. And that is the great part about it. Amazon ranks at the top of Google for most products so it is an easy way to sell stuff for sure. There are a few pitfalls too and we will talk about these as well. Firstly we will assume that you are the only person selling the product but let’s say you sell your book for £30 after a while lots of people start selling the book they read on Amazon for cheaper let’s just say £16. That can start to slow your sales down a bit.

A great way to avoid this is if you have your own product which only you can make and or sell on Amazon. That way you won’t have as much competition as there is no one else selling it. Unfortunately the people who buy it can sell it on Amazon once again as a new or used product if they bought it from you previously and no longer want it. You can not list a new product on Amazon unless you have a pro seller account. You pay a monthly fee for this, and getting your new products listed can be a bit of a pain in the ass as a friend of mine who does it tells me.

Okay, so far you have read this and said that’s it. I am still ready to go ahead and kill it on Amazon. (Great)

Now we get to the slightly not so fun part.

Amazon seller fees do tend to be slightly higher than some other websites and they do take a commission from your sale, check out the Amazon website for more details. I do not sell their anymore so don’t really care about their fees.
Amazon can and do sometimes ban your account for any reason they choose (They banned mine for life and my wife’s for operating from the same IP address for absolutely no fault of my own or hers)
Not sure about the full implications, but if you were in Chicago you can not be an affiliate for Amazon as they brought in some taxes there, so being in the wrong place could wipe out your income as an affiliate anytime something like this happens in other locations.
You do not even get your customers email anymore – someone buys from you and they do not even give you the email address of your customer so it makes it very hard to build a customer email database. (Be sure they are keeping your customers details) You contact your buyer through Amazon direct messages.
Whenever they decide to change a rule, change commission rate or ban you, their say is final. You have absolutely no control over your business and certainly do not have any control over Amazon.

Even though I was banned by Amazon and one income stream being completely shut down from my online business, it did piss me off and was a great lesson.

Here are some other unfortunate people below

And More Happy Amazon Sellers

This Is My Post Continued
And we are not just talking about Amazon either just don’t rely one income from one big company Full stop..

Don’t trust Amazon, Youtube, Google, Facebook and Twitter or any other social network as you never know the day you log in and it says your account is blocked or shut down or disabled.

It happens all the time. I got banned from Youtube because one negative comment out of 3000 positive ones showing how I got 60,000 Twitter followers a teenager commented that teaching people how to get Twitter followers was a scam. He flagged the video but not before he stole my licence key from the software I used in the video for my Twitter software and starting using it himself.

Something similar happened on Twitter. I have seen friends getting blocked on Facebook and too many people to mention in this post getting their Youtube channel shut down.

I am not saying don’t use them to promote your business I am saying use 5 or 6 of them that way when one or two social media accounts or businesses go down you only lose 20% of your income instead of 100%.

If you depend on one giant company like Google or FB or Twitter or Amazon by themselves then one day you might find yourself with a hungry family starting up your business all over again. Or worse still, working in a job helping to build someone else’s dream business or lifestyle selling your hours for next to nothing.

Think it won’t be you? See what these guys below say.

My advice to you is if you want to make money using any of the big corporations go right ahead but in the meanwhile you need to also brand yourself, create your own website and online products or at the very least other people’s affiliate products if you want to have any sort of real control over your income or business.