A large number of operators are considering switching platforms

Job hunting season is also a season of confusion!

It is almost May in 2023, and many cross-border e-commerce companies are still releasing recruitment positions. Similarly, the mobility of cross-border e-commerce operation positions is still not small. It is well known that there is a comparison between different e-commerce platforms, which is commonly known as the "chain of contempt". The status, work content, and salary of operators on different platforms will naturally be different. Not only are there differences between platform operators, but also between different sites. The US, European, and Southeast Asian markets are the most widely involved markets for cross-border people. Judging from the evaluation of these markets by operators, there are particularly many complaints about the European market.

As the saying goes, people outside the circle want to come in, and people inside the circle want to get out. In the process of choosing a job, most operators often fall into the confusion of "Should I change a platform or a market?" What is the current survival situation of Walmart, independent stations, Amazon, Temu, TikTok and other platform operators? Relevant insiders share their own experiences.

Every time you stand at the crossroads of life, the direction you choose often determines all the choices you make in the future . This is the importance of choice. In this process, cross-border people in different positions and ages need to weigh the pros and cons, and it is inevitable to feel confused and anxious. When you are undecided, listening to other people's stories may help you hear your own inner voice.

“Two-way flow” between Amazon operations and development positions

If you were to ask what profession is most likely to age people, many industry insiders would answer: cross-border e-commerce operations.

If we further refine which e-commerce platform is the most difficult to operate, many industry insiders will answer: Amazon.

The Amazon platform can be said to be the platform with the largest number of Chinese sellers. The related cross-border companies’ thirst for talent is self-evident. This has also led to a very large group of Amazon operators. Naturally, the mobility of this position is not small. Some operators choose to jump from one company to another, some operators choose to switch to development, and some operators choose not to work for Amazon.

Xiao Liu (pseudonym) is one of those who want to do development. In his opinion, switching to product development does not deviate from the Amazon industry. His previous operational experience can help him in his work. It is said that the way out for Amazon operations is management and working alone. Understanding development knowledge is equivalent to mastering another skill, which means that it will only be beneficial to working alone in the future. Another very important reason is that 70% of Amazon's success depends on products and 30% on operations, so he personally believes that the future development prospects of development are better than operations.

"Amazon operations work is quiet and boring, and the performance pressure is high. My mood is linked to the number of orders. If the store has a good number of orders, I will feel better. If the store has a bad number of orders, I will be irritated and often think about leaving." Like Xiao Liu, Duo Yunyan feels that operations positions have no future. Repeating the same work day after day and year after year is really hard to endure, especially since many jobs do not have technical content, are time-consuming and laborious, and do not help improve personal abilities. Relatively speaking, Amazon's operations are not complicated, and development positions involve a wider range of skills and knowledge.

In fact, there are quite a few developers who want to switch to operations positions, and the employment environment in the past two years has exacerbated their escape from this circle.

"To outsiders, the work of development may not seem boring. You can communicate with factories and go to exhibitions to study products. However, after doing it for a long time, you will find that the focus of communication with many factories is not the product, but the calculations to distinguish each other; it seems that the products are always the same at exhibitions; and when you want to improve a product, you often cannot put it into practice. In the end, you actually did a lot of work, but all your efforts went to waste." A developer believes that development is not as easy as imagined. It is becoming increasingly difficult to launch new products, and the commission for development depends on the success rate and profit of the developed products. Therefore, many people can only get a basic salary in the early stages, and their income may be better after the accumulation of products in the later stages.

Another developer also believes that this position requires a long period of loneliness. "For example, to develop a simple product, it takes 1 month to launch the product, 1-2 months to ship it, and the initial promotion of the new product. It takes about half a year. If the product development fails, it is necessary to invest in a new round of product selection, and the time to get the commission is also extended. In addition, even if the product development is successful, it does not mean that the developer can sit back and relax. Many companies will limit the commission period for developers, usually 8 months or 1 year, and then no commission will be given or the commission will be sharply reduced. This requires developers to constantly develop hot products to maintain income."

You can find that another very realistic problem is that many cross-border companies do not have much demand for development positions. This can be seen from the fact that many Amazon stores are launching new products at a slower and slower speed. It is inevitable that some developers will be eliminated. As competition on Amazon increases, the way out for ordinary products is often to open up a price war. Differentiated products require fine-tuning and mold opening, which will involve the company's financial support and designer support. In fact, many small cross-border companies are not equipped with relevant resources and talents ...

In the same company, operations and development often have different opinions and dislike each other, but when it comes to complaining about their own positions, they reach unprecedented consensus.

The current status of platform operations and market conditions that are most discussed

There are also levels between platforms. The Amazon platform is undoubtedly the most popular one with the largest market share, but this does not mean that other e-commerce platforms have no chance. Whether it is the old e-commerce platforms eBay and Walmart, the independent sites that are regarded as the "opposite" of the platform, or the short video giant TikTok, or the new dark horse Temu, they are relying on their respective advantages to "grab land" around the world.

What are the unique confusions faced by the workers on these platforms?

1. Is it feasible to switch eBay operations to Alibaba International Station?

Compared with Amazon, the eBay platform is not actually discussed much, but this does not deny the cross-border status of the eBay platform. As one of the four major cross-border e-commerce platforms, it has gained a lot of loyal consumers around the world. Therefore, many companies have a strong demand for eBay operations.

According to feedback, the main work content of eBay operations is much simpler than that of Amazon, which means that there is not much to learn in operations, and some people have begun to consider quitting.

Xiao Zhang (pseudonym) has two years of experience in eBay operations. He is now preparing to leave this track and turn to Alibaba International Station.

Xiao Zhang believes that operations positions have both advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantage is that operations is like a donkey in a production team, doing monotonous, tedious and mechanical work every day with low wages. This kind of life is not what he wants. Considering that he wants to work alone in the future, he finally chose to move towards the position of Alibaba International Station Platform Consultant. Not only can he work and make money, but he can also improve and enrich his cross-border knowledge, accumulate resources and experience, and form a closed loop of cross-border operations.

"If I don't plan to start a business, I might continue to be an operator. In addition to eBay operations, independent site operations and AliExpress operations are also within my consideration," Xiao Zhang said. There are many complaints about operations, but there are also many advantages. For ordinary people, there is no better choice if they don't do operations.

It is worth noting that Amazon operations, a popular cross-border job, was not within Xiao Zhang's scope of career choice. "It is said that Amazon is very difficult to work. I heard too much about it, so I believed it."

Another operator in Jiangxi wanted to work for eBay, but was discouraged by the salary. A company thought he had no relevant work experience and only offered him a maximum comprehensive salary of about 4,000. He needed to achieve sales of tens of thousands of dollars per month to get performance bonuses, otherwise he would not get any.

2. Are Walmart operators swearing every day?

In recent years, Walmart platform has been actively attracting Chinese sellers.

The latest data from Marketplace Pulse shows that in the past year, 46.7% of Walmart's new third-party sellers are from the United States, and the rest are foreign sellers, with Chinese sellers accounting for a large proportion. So far, China accounts for more than 90% of Walmart's new international sellers and nearly half of all new sellers. Although Walmart may open more sites outside of India, the United Kingdom and Canada in the future, Chinese sellers will still dominate.

Walmart continues to attract many Chinese sellers to join the platform. So the question is, how is Walmart's operation? Is there a future? At present, there are also many complaints.

Amazon operators have endless complaints about the platform, with frequent system bugs and customer service staff being unable to understand what they are saying being the hardest hit areas of complaints. However, compared with Walmart, these problems seem to be dwarfed by the big ones.

"I have to curse the Walmart platform every day to vent my anger. The customer service responses of this platform really make people feel powerless." A Walmart operator who is preparing to "run away" said that Walmart itself has no logic and rules, which is reflected in all aspects: for example, although it has been operating for a long time, the store's sales are still extremely unstable, like a roller coaster, which makes people confused; the manager is like a decoration, and can't give any meaningful guidance except for constantly asking people to promote sales at low prices; Walmart's rules are imperfect, and copy-selling is a very arrogant existence on this platform, and brand registration is useless.

What most discouraged this operator was the salary issue. Walmart's traffic is only about one-tenth of Amazon's, and it is not suitable for all categories. The ceiling of many categories is very low. Even if it has reached the top, the daily sales volume is only about 10 orders. All in all, the monthly profit of the store is not enough to pay his own salary. Judging from the general feedback, the situation encountered by this operator is basically the same as others.

It is understood that there are not many cross-border e-commerce companies that mainly do business with Walmart. Most sellers are just trying it out, hiring one or two people to start the business, or arranging for individual employees to operate the platform as a side job, and they do not invest much money and resources.

"I suggest that those who are looking for operations jobs should automatically ignore the Walmart platform. Almost all of them are recruiting new people. I have been doing this for nearly two years and I am still doing it. It would be better for you to work on platforms such as Shopee and Meikeduo. The operations salaries offered by related cross-border companies are not low, and there are not many competitors." said a Walmart operator.

Another operator who mainly operates Amazon and Walmart said that their company is mainly operating on Amazon's US site, and the boss wanted to expand sales channels, so he asked him to register a Walmart store. A few months have passed, and the current progress is only to register the store and upload a few product links. Since there is not even much advertising, the store has no natural traffic and no orders .

There are many people who are not optimistic about Walmart, but this does not mean that Walmart is useless. There are still many sellers who are quietly making a fortune on this platform. One seller believes that Walmart is absolutely not suitable as the first platform for sellers to explore, otherwise it is likely that the products will be cleared out immediately after they are put on the shelves. However, once Walmart opens the door , it will be easy to make money. After tasting the sweetness, some sellers attach more importance to Walmart than Amazon. "All the new people our company has recruited in the past year have been concentrated on Walmart. Originally, there were only two operators on this platform. As a result, the order volume suddenly increased, and the profit margin was much higher than Amazon. So the boss recruited several new Walmart operators. On the contrary, the Amazon platform did not pay much attention to it. Even if it recruited people, it was to fill the vacancies of resigned employees, and there was no intention of expansion at all."

3. Are there more unstable factors in the operations of independent sites, Temu, etc.?

Similar to the operation position at Walmart, in many companies, the operation of independent sites and platforms such as Temu and TikTok is more like the role of "experimenter".

Let’s first look at Temu. Currently, Temu is indeed in a period of platform dividends, with sellers flocking to the platform. However, a phenomenon that cannot be ignored is that the demand for Temu’s operating positions has not yet reached a certain scale. The editor observed recruitment software such as Boss Direct Recruitment and found that in Shenzhen, only a very small number of cross-border companies are recruiting Temu full-time operations, and there is almost no demand for Temu’s operating positions in Zhengzhou. In order to maximize the per capita output ratio, bosses mostly recruit comprehensive talents who can operate Temu and Shopee platforms.

"For cross-border companies, Temu is very simple to play, and most of the time it does not require operations; if you want to apply for a buyer position in Temu, it is also recommended to give up. A friend has a base salary of more than 10,000 yuan, plus overtime pay, and gets nearly 20,000 yuan. But overtime is serious, hair loss is serious, and insomnia is serious..." An industry insider is not optimistic about the development of this platform. First of all, Temu is still in the stage of subsidizing money. Once the subsidy stops, whether the platform can survive remains to be considered; secondly, the attitude of the United States and other countries towards Temu is still unclear. Recently, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) issued a report stating that Temu has data risks, procurement violations and trade loopholes, which pose risks and challenges to U.S. regulations, laws and market access principles. If the United States takes unfriendly measures next, all relevant personnel in the Temu chain, including operations, will be affected.

In recent years, there has been a lot of discussion about independent websites. Whether it is the demand for branded operations or the advocacy of national policies, independent websites have been pushed to a very high position. Are independent websites really easy to build? Successful people say it is really good, while unsuccessful people are full of complaints.

According to statistics jointly compiled by E-net and the top three technology companies in the cross-border industry , the survival rate of group members in the first large-scale independent website seller community established by E-net in 2011 is less than 5%, which shows the difficulty of operating an independent website.

Many sellers have testified that the threshold for setting up an independent website is quite high, and it is a complex and huge system. Very few sellers can persist in doing so. This also means that the operational work is complicated and progress is very slow, especially in the early stages.

However, cross-border sellers rarely have the patience to "pave the way first and then make money". They often hope that their employees can give them rewards as soon as possible. This runs counter to the characteristics of independent sites. After operating for a period of time and finding that they have invested a lot of money but still have no returns and need to invest more money, they often choose to give up. At this time, the entire group will be laid off.

4. Is the European market collectively disliked?

The cross-border workers are a large group with many types of jobs, which means that their dilemma is just the tip of the iceberg. Should they choose a distribution company or a boutique company? Should they choose a company with a high base salary and low commission or a company with a low base salary and high commission? Should they focus on one market or try all markets?

In response to the last question, an obvious change is that the American market is still extremely attractive, the Southeast Asian market continues to gain momentum, and the once very popular European market is being disliked by more and more operators.

"I have been working on the European site since I started, but there are a lot of troubles in Europe, and the pits are getting deeper and deeper, but the profit is not higher than other markets. Various compliance policies eat up too much money." It is understood that some sellers want to hire a suitable European site operator, but they have not been hired for a long time, while the US site is just the opposite...

Final Thoughts

Often, cross-border people worry that they have worked on a platform for many years, and starting over on a new platform means that their work experience will be reset to zero, their salary will be greatly reduced, and they are not sure whether they can jump from the old pit to a new one; if they do not change, the platform is on a downward slope and the prospects are not bright ...

Cross-border is a circle. On the one hand, workers have plans to switch to another platform and continue to be operators. On the other hand, there are also relatively bolder "considerations", such as quitting their jobs to work alone, or directly switching from selling goods to serving sellers. By analogy, groups such as freight forwarders who are in positions of serving sellers are also planning to work alone and change careers.

Cross-border people are thinking about very realistic problems, and it is human nature to be entangled. Apart from the many superficial factors that bother people, everyone needs to look at the advantages and disadvantages of each platform objectively, think deeply about what skills they have, what kind of work they are suitable for, and what kind of work they like to do, and then match them with corresponding positions.

For some operators, they believe that competition between platforms is the most brutal, and the platform determines the future of the individual. Therefore, in the short term, Amazon, whose dominant position is unshakable, is the first choice for employment. Once operators and other workers have a thorough understanding of this platform, they will also understand the basic logic of e-commerce, and will be able to work on other platforms as well.

Another group of people tend to believe that "more skills are better than less". They believe that while mainly operating on platforms such as Amazon and eBay, they can also try to learn about social media operations, independent website operations, etc. Integrating and combining these operational methods will be beneficial to improving their own abilities.

Of course, many people have other ideas. The circumstances behind each idea or decision are different.

What are you confused about right now? Welcome to leave a message to discuss.

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