Fact – More Than 50,000 Small & Medium Sized Businesses Exceed $500,000 In Sales On Amazon In 2018
You are probably aware as a business owner that Amazon is one of the biggest online retailers in the world. They may have made an impact on your business because of the simplicity they have made it for consumers to purchase products and the quickness of their delivery times. What you may not be aware of is that they will let you as an e-commerce retailer leverage their platform and help you sell your products!
Something came up in my Facebook newsfeed that really caught my eye today. It was a posting relating to a press release which states that Amazon has helped over 50,000 small and medium sized businesses exceed $500,000 in sales through their platform. It also states that 200,000 businesses exceeded $100,000 in sales and the number of stores that eclipsed $1 million grew by 20% in 2018. Here is a link to the press release so you can read the full statistics. Click here.
These statistics are quite frankly staggering but, in many ways, not surprising to me. As a person who looks for opportunities, I have been aware of Amazon business models that the normal person like me and you can leverage. It is something that honestly, I have not really had the time to pursue up to now but after reading this press release it is something that I am going to put high on my to do list for this year.
Now I have experience in retail but more at a face to face level with consumers. In the past I traded on open air markets in the United Kingdom. I used to source my products from wholesalers within the United Kingdom mainland and then retail them on the markets. I still do a bit of dabbling now where I live in Cyprus and I import products from the far east and then retail them on craft fairs and markets.
The difference being it is a lot warmer in Cyprus than the United Kingdom, but the principle is still the same. That is to find products that are in demand, purchase them at a low price and then retail them for a higher price, giving you profit. If you get that principle in place you can make a living, but you are restricted in how much you can sell.
The Downside To The Traditional Retail Business
What do I mean by that? Well this business model relies on people walking into your stall or high street shop location and unless they are looking for what you have then there is only a small percentage of those people who will buy. The rest are just browsers.
Although I live in Cyprus, I keep a close eye on my homeland and see the reports on the news about how the high street is in some respects resembling a ghost town. Shops are empty and maybe this stems from massive out of town retail parks which attract the footfall of consumers. The trouble now though is some of these out of town retail parks are suffering because individuals buying habits have been changing for a few years now.
It is more convenient for them to sit at home on their laptops, smartphones and other devices to purchase what they want. The can keep in the warm and have their purchases delivered to their doors in just a few days or in most cases the next day.
As an e-commerce business person, you may have noticed this over the last few years and wondered what you can do about it. You may have come to the conclusion that if you can’t beat them you may as well join them and opened your own online extension to your bricks and mortar business. Or completely shut down your shop and put all your efforts into your website.
Now just because you have a website doesn’t mean that you will have floods of visitors to your products and services. You must know how to market your products and services online which is where many businesses come unstuck. They either don’t have the knowledge or the marketing budget to compete with the likes of Amazon who have millions if not billions of dollars at their disposal to command the top spots on the likes of Google and Bing.
Next time you are looking for a specific product online take a note to see where Amazon appears to prove the point I have just made.
So, although this press release is somewhat damaging to you as an independent e-commerce business owner, or even if you are still traditional and operate offline, it should make you excited as to what an incredible opportunity you have. One that you may be totally unaware of.
Will You Take This Opportunity?
The next time you are in your shop or on your stall, even when you look at your website, take a good hard look at the products you have and then imagine them having their very own sales page on any of the multiple Amazon platforms around the world.
Then you can leverage the Amazon brand to get your products in front of the people looking for them with their credit card in hand. Also, this could be a lifestyle transformation for you at the same time. Let me expand on this.
If you are currently what I call a traditional bricks and mortar business with a premises that you sell your products from then you must be at the point of sale in person. This would also involve the storage of your products and the overheads that a traditional business has such as utilities and insurances. Maybe you also have staff wages to cover.
Going back to the point of having to be there in person. Usually your opening hours would be say 9.00 am – 5.30pm. This is your only opportunity to make that transaction and your time is tied. If you have your own website, then you can make a sale 24 hours a day because the internet never sleeps. It is great to make sales while you are asleep, but you still have the responsibility of fulfilling those purchases.
This means picking the products out of your stock, packing them and then arranging for your local courier to pick them up and deliver to the customer, or you having to go to the post office and dispatch the products. Again, this is eating into your time which is the most important thing, apart from health, that money can’t buy.
Imagine The Time Freedom You Could Have
Amazon has a perfect solution for any independent retailer. It is call Amazon FBA or to give it it’s proper title Fulfilment By Amazon. This means you can have Amazon store your products and when a purchase comes through your Amazon listing, they will then pick, pack and ship your products to the customer.
They also handle payment processing and customer service such as returns and refunds. You may have experienced this yourself if you have bought anything through Amazon. Well just imagine your customers receiving your products in that brown packaging with a smile on the outside. One other side note is that you won’t even need your own website to maintain as you can have your own shopfront on Amazon.
Therefore, I have said to imagine the time freedom you can have through running an Amazon store. Not being stuck in a premises for 8 – 9 hours a day, 6 days a week and not having to deal with customer service. You would just need to allocate sometime to monitor your Amazon business and you could do this from anywhere in the world while you are on holiday. You could have more time with your family, being there all the time with your children as they grow up and never missing an important event such as the school sports day or Christmas nativity play.
You could even do this with your husband, wife or partner. Imagine being able to take them away from the job they are doing now which gives them no fulfilment at all. The chance to build something that you are both passionate about and create a lifestyle business with really no constraints at all only your imagination.
Amazon has really given some of its power back to the people. Don’t get me wrong they are still making money from it through the fees that they charge for the service but that shouldn’t put you off as it is a lot less than the costs you currently have. As I have said can you really put a cost on time freedom?
I am really pleased to have seen this press release today as it fits in perfectly with a free workshop series that you can access here or the Free Training tab at the top of this page. The workshop series covers two business models and on of them is the Amazon FBA business model. It will be the second video in the series, but it is something that you will get great benefit and value from if creating an Amazon business is something that interests you. Click here to register for the workshops now.
The Amazon business model may be a perfect fit for you. Let me know what you think of the training series in the comments below and how you get on with your own Amazon FBA business.
I wish you every success.
Pete Harris
Digital Marketer & Information Publisher