TheFrancophile
Contributor
I know this question is addressed to MJ DeMarco and not myself, but as an experienced Amazon Third Party Seller, I thought I'd contribute.Hey MJ,
In 'The Millionaire Fastlane ', you write about the risks, downsides and perils of "hitchhiking" on someone else's business.
I understand that it's not wise to ride on the coat tails of someone else's business as it means you're at their mercy and they can change the rules or switch off your income at a moment's notice.
This leads me to my question: Do you regard selling via Amazon as hitchhiking?
When over 50% of ecommerce sales in USA are conducted on Amazon, I feel like less of a guppy and more of a shark, swimming in the vast Amazonian waters.
Or, do you advocate for entrepreneurs to hitchhike their way into the fastlane? E.G Testing a product's viability on Amazon and then expanding into their own websites and using another third party fulfilment service like shipbob.com?
Look forward to hearing your thoughts.
And the brutal truth is...
If you're selling on Amazon (or any other platform that you don't control), you are DEFINITELY not a shark. You're still a guppy in someone else's ocean.
Amazon can:
- close your account arbitrarily at any time, for any reason (or for no reason at all);
- set maximum prices to a level where you're not profitable;
- impose ridiculously high fees/commissions on you, effectively taking all your profits away;
- arbitrarily and unjustly refund, at your expense, lying customers who fraudulently claim they haven't received their product (which happens quite often here in Europe);
... and you can do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about it. You're at Amazon's mercy. They can close your account and kill your business at any moment, with a single decision - and you can do NOTHING about it.
And, as MJ DeMarco wrote in his books, that is exactly a definition of depending on someone else.
Doesn't matter if Amazon controls over half of the US e-commerce market or not. If that's true, it only proves what a big, indomitable shark they are.