amazon is

let’s go over the state of amazon fba.

amazon fba as a model has been around since september of 2006 – so as of right now, about 13.5 years or so.

it would’ve been interesting to be around back then, granted i was a freshman in high school – but it had to open up so much opportunity and i’m positive that it was just like anything else – when it first came out people probably didn’t realize how big it would actually be.

in the most recent annual shareholder letter from jeff bezos, he gave these numbers:

1999 3%

2000 3%

2001 6%

2002 17%

2003 22%

2004 25%

2005 28%

2006 28%

2007 29%

2008 30%

2009 31%

2010 34%

2011 38%

2012 42%

2013 46%

2014 49%

2015 51%

2016 54%

2017 56%

2018 58%

those are the percentages of sales sold on Amazon by independent third party sellers – just like me. i’m assuming that before 1999 they don’t even post because it was such a small percentage – but it seems like between 2001 and 2002 there was a big jump from 6% to 17%.

10 years ago, even 5 years ago from what i’ve read, what i’ve seen – honestly amazon fba was easier. you could pay people for reviews – it wasn’t against their terms of service. you could also literally just find a product, find a supplier, put it up and it would just sell – and for a few years you just had to put your logo on it and put it up and it would sell. things would rank by themselves. it was easier. find a product, stick a logo on it, make money.

that would be nice.

but in the last year (i believe over 2018) – third party sellers did $160 billion. that’s a whole lotta cheddar.

given that it is 58% (and growing) of their sales total, it isn’t going anywhere soon.

here’s the best part – i gave this analogy last week to one of our students asking a question –

the way we teach and help people grow their amazon businesses – we don’t want to go after a piece of the pie. pieces of a $160 billion dollar pie (the total including amazon is closer to ~$277 billion) are reserved for the big dogs. amazon itself. apple. samsung. the big dogs.

we don’t want to go get a piece of that pie, that’s ambitious as hell, and sure it would be nice but you don’t need a piece of a $277 billion dollar pie in order to create absolute and utter freedom for you and your loved ones.

we want to go after the crumbs. we don’t want to step on any toes, we don’t want to try to steal business away from a multi billion dollar company. we want to go after the crumbs. the random products that are (as we like to call them) 7/7 products that we can get a high ROI on. i can promise you – the crumbs of a $277 billion dollar pie are more than enough to change your life. you don’t even need a sliver.

you go after one product, one crumb, and then scale and repeat. i mean think about it – in 2018 48% of every single thing bought online was bought on amazon. are you kidding me. one out of every two things bought on the internet…came from one website. and we have the ability and the option to sell on amazon fba.

there will always be changes, and amazon fba has changed plenty since 2006, it’s changed plenty in the last 2 years since i’ve been doing it. but what i’ve found is the people willing to adapt – the people willing to change – the people willing to play by the rules that amazon has set out? those are are the people who are succeeding. those are the people who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on amazon.

and that’s why we started it. there are some barriers to entry, it isn’t the absolute easiest business model to start – but once you get it going, the possibilities are absolutely endless. that’s why we are striving to put the processes in place to be able to teach thousands of people how to do it.

we aren’t creating competition for ourselves. anyone who asks that doesn’t understand the business model. even on our months where we’ve done $100k+ in revenue – $277 billion/12 months is ~$23 billion. $100k/$23billion is literally like .000004%. that isn’t called competition. that’s called a drop in the bucket.

amazon isn’t going anywhere – i’d argue it’s in one the best places it’s ever been in. there are still so many opportunities for new sellers. and jeff bezos himself has written about how important fba is to their business model in driving revenue and profit. it isn’t going anywhere. the state of amazon is 10/10. and i can’t wait to see where we go.