Many sellers quit Amazon

Amazon operations often say that you should give up your fantasies and change your career as soon as possible! In fact, is "changing careers" also a fantasy?

Many workers, who work as Amazon operators, often yearn for the "outside world".

" When I first joined Amazon, I thought it was okay. But in the past two years, I found that this industry is getting harder and harder to do business , and the Amazon platform is getting more and more deceptive . I must change my career if I have the chance." If you observe carefully, you will find that similar remarks are "echoing" in the cross-border circle almost every day, and the discussion will reach a peak after a certain "deceptive" policy of Amazon is released! Now is the end of the year, and the time of "saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new" is coming, which means that Amazon employees are more eager to escape from their current working environment!

Xiao Liu (pseudonym) is one of them. When he heard from his relatives that this industry had good prospects, he jumped into the trap. From 2017 to now, he has been engaged in Amazon operations, from a new employee in the company to the current management position. His career has reached the ceiling. If nothing unexpected happens, his future days will be as dull as now.

"I haven't felt the peak season yet. I feel like I'm in dire straits every day. If there were other ways out, I would have changed my career long ago." Xiao Liu recognizes the development prospects of this industry. Many companies are doing well and naturally making a lot of money, but her small company cannot be called a "cross-border top student". Sometimes it even hovers on the brink of bankruptcy. The company's development status determines the salary situation of its employees. Last year, her average salary was 13,000 yuan, but this year it may only be 10,000 yuan. With less money in hand, the idea of ​​changing careers will become more urgent.

However, for Xiao Liu, changing careers is just a thought, because she doesn't know what else she can do after changing careers, and changing to a new industry means starting all over again. She is already 35 years old, and she feels that this is an age that recruitment companies will look down on her at first sight. If she really changes careers, she will have no competitiveness. At least she can stay in this industry to make a living.

It is said that the way out for Amazon operations is either to develop into management, change careers, or go it alone. Xiao Liu, who has already entered the management level, is not suitable for changing careers, nor does she want to start a business alone. She believes that the overall environment is not good now and it is not a good time to start a business alone. There are too many examples of friends around her who have suffered losses and failed in their business, which further discouraged her from going it alone. After much thought, maintaining the status quo is the most appropriate option.

Xiao Liu, who is struggling, is a typical representative of Amazon operators. He wants to leave but cannot, so he can only stay reluctantly. Why do you want to give up Amazon? In addition to working alone, Amazon workers can only change their careers? If I don’t work for Amazon anymore, what else can I do? If I leave my current career, will I develop better? ... With a few questions that you care about, the editor interviewed and sorted out the "past and present" of two Amazon employees' "job transfer". The first one entered Amazon from other industries, and after "making big profits and big losses", he switched to the B-side; the second one worked for Amazon after graduation, and after persisting for several years, he switched from Amazon operation to service provider... I hope their life stories can inspire you who are confused.

A former Amazon seller summarized his work: I didn’t learn much about operational skills, but I learned how to file various complaints …

R (pseudonym) is now working in a company to operate Alibaba International Station. All in all, he has been in the B-side industry for more than two years.

The reason why he left Amazon was very simple: he had been working in the gray area for more than three years at Amazon. He did not learn much operational skills, but only learned how to make various complaints ... After several years, when he recalled this short and "magical" Amazon journey, R still remembered the past vividly.

In fact, R's career at the beginning had nothing to do with cross-border e-commerce. Since he studied mechanics in college, he naturally became a mechanical engineer after graduation. At that time, he was in Dongguan and his monthly salary was only 4,500 yuan. In October 2016, when R was working hard on drawing a blueprint, he received a call from a friend, inviting him to start a business with Amazon. Before that, he had never heard of Amazon.

A friend repeatedly claimed that "Amazon makes more money than working for a part-time job." After hearing this, R specifically looked up some information related to Amazon and thought it was worth getting involved. So in December 2016, the two of them officially partnered to work on Amazon. They first locked the product category to data cables and headphones, and mainly sold various infringing products.

When they were working on Amazon, the two did not take the white hat route. Instead, they took the initiative to learn black hat techniques and wandered between various gray operations. In addition to the commonly used operations such as putting keywords on the homepage, merging zombie links, and abusing variants, they also used brand headline advertising to defraud money, using VC accounts to make profits, and other means to increase sales. As a tool for increasing sales quickly and at a low cost, brushing orders was also used by the two with ease. These "sexy operations" naturally have risks. During this period, the two also received various warnings from the Amazon platform, and their accounts were also blocked. After the account was blocked, appeals were routine operations. It is worth noting that, given the excessive number of appeals during the period of working on Amazon, R successfully developed a set of appeal skills, and his strength is basically comparable to that of professional appeal service providers .

In their view, the threat posed by Amazon’s account blocking cannot resist the powerful temptation of “making quick money” and “taking a chance to turn a bicycle into a motorcycle”. Every time their account was blocked, they did not “reflect”, but became more and more obsessed with using gray operations to “overtake on curves” and make quick money.

"There is no skill involved in operating on Amazon. It's all about swiping orders and doing all sorts of crazy things. In addition, the infringing products are very easy to sell. For example, Apple earphones with a 3.5mm interface can be purchased in Huaqiangbei for 10 yuan. After shipping across the ocean, their value skyrocketed. Even on Amazon , they can get a lot of orders at a price of 14.99 US dollars . " R recalled that when the two were selling infringing products, the money they made was nothing short of huge fortune. At that time, a link that sold relatively well could get up to 400 orders a day. In just three months, they made a net profit of 250,000 yuan by selling on Amazon.

“It’s so easy to make money now. It’s enough to cover my salary in previous years.” If time goes back to 2016, R would never have thought that he would become rich overnight. His living conditions suddenly changed. He started to spend money recklessly. He spent more money the more he earned. He subconsciously thought, “If I lose money, I can easily make it back.”

But as Amazon people often say , sellers can only make money within their own knowledge. If they are too ambitious but their knowledge is not up to par, they will lose all the money they have made sooner or later , and may even be burdened with heavy debts. These two are typical examples.

Success is due to infringement and black technology, and failure is also due to infringement and black technology. In 2019, the bonus period of cross-border e-commerce is far less "prosperous" than in the previous two years. At this time, the platform has tightened its policies again, and black hat operations have become increasingly "difficult". However, the two people did not realize that the danger has come, and the survival soil for "black hat" operations is getting smaller and smaller. They still continue with the previous rough fighting methods, and the rough fighting methods "raise their ambitions". When the platform was cracking down, they directly imported a large number of infringing products, fantasizing that they could make a fortune. The consequences can be imagined.

" The goods were still on the way when the store was closed and the balance could not be recovered. " The two men calculated that together with the goods and the balance of the store, they lost a total of more than 1 million.

After the problem occurred, the two people did not think about saving themselves, but what they did seriously violated the rules of the Amazon platform. No matter whether they paid money to complain to the service provider or R himself used his extraordinary complaint skills, they tried every possible method, but they could not save the account!

In an instant, the two fell from heaven to hell.

The company was hit hard and could no longer operate. Since then, R and his friends broke up, and with a lot of debts, he gradually became "disillusioned" with Amazon and eventually started operating Alibaba International Station.

"After breaking up with my friends, I started looking for a job again. At that time, all the salary I earned every month, except for necessary expenses, was used to pay off my debts. Until June 2020, I still owed more than 150,000 yuan." Summarizing this Amazon journey, R said that apart from various black technologies, he almost didn't learn any operational skills, and such life was too tiring.

After switching to the operation of Alibaba International Station, R is generally satisfied with the current situation. "Although the boss does not invest much in his department, the daily work content is acceptable, and the development prospects of the B-side are also very broad." R also believes that compared with the Amazon platform, at least the Alibaba International Station platform is controlled by Chinese people. When something happens, he can always find the corresponding Alibaba investment manager to communicate. But Amazon is different. The platform's investment manager will only reply within seconds when registering a store, and then disappear when there is something to find him again.

Although he has switched from the C-end to the B-end, R has not completely left his previous Amazon circle. Relying on the superb appeal skills he has developed from frequently dead accounts, he will take some Amazon appeal work in his spare time to earn some extra money. He said that every time the store appeal is successful and he receives an email notifying him of the store's performance saying that the store has returned to normal, he always feels particularly proud.

"I am personally a negative example. In fact, Amazon still has a future, but the requirements for those who want to enter the market are getting higher and higher. No one can dream of taking shortcuts, but everyone must control product quality." R concluded.

After stopping working for Amazon, I switched to being a service provider!

“If I stop working for Amazon, I’ll become a service provider.”

This is one of the escape routes that workers have envisioned for themselves. In fact, many operators have left the sales business and turned to service work. Xiao Zhang (pseudonym), who has nearly 4 years of experience as a service provider, joined this group by accident.

"There are many examples of operations people switching to service providers. Most operations people do not switch to business positions. I am a special case. I didn't want to do my original operations job at the time, so I resigned . At first, I didn't think about what I should do next , so I just sent out resumes aimlessly. Then I received an interview invitation from a service provider company. The company thought that since I had been the client , that is, the seller , I understood the client better, so they hired me for a business position . " The content of this job is slightly different from the previous one. Every day I mainly connect with customers, connect with channels, and look for resources everywhere.

When he was engaged in operations before, Xiao Zhang not only worked with independent websites, but also worked on eBay, Walmart and Amazon platforms. No matter which sales channel, it is becoming more and more difficult to do business now. "In the past, cross-border e-commerce was a blue ocean, and sellers were particularly popular. Orders could be placed as soon as the products were put on the shelves. Starting in the past two years, it has become more and more difficult every year. The category we are in is a red ocean, the competition is getting more and more fierce, the traffic is getting more and more expensive, and the platform control is getting stricter and stricter." On the one hand, the living environment of sellers is becoming more and more difficult, and on the other hand, they are tired of the operation work content.

The cross-border e-commerce company where Xiao Zhang worked at the time was not very large. He was mainly responsible for promoting clothing products. During work, he had to do various miscellaneous tasks such as product selection, material selection, advertising promotion, and optimization. Moreover, the commission was not high . "With a gross profit of more than 100,000 yuan, the commission is actually only more than 2,000 yuan." In addition to the low salary, what really made Xiao Zhang think about giving up the career of operations was an operation that cross-border people are very familiar with.

"At that time, there was a team in the company I was working for that relied on selling infringing products, which brought huge economic benefits to the company. As the saying goes, if you walk by the river, you will get your feet wet. Soon, the company was shut down for selling illegal products, and the boss was also arrested. I don’t know if he has been released yet." Fortunately, Xiao Zhang did not do these things, otherwise he would have to bear the corresponding consequences.

After becoming a service provider, Xiao Zhang found that the difficulty of the work varies depending on the client. Relatively speaking, if the client is a brand seller, the work is easier to carry out. On the contrary, if the client is a general merchandise seller, then he will also face greater work pressure. Overall, the current work content is definitely not as stressful as before, but the overall salary is not much higher than before.

After several years of operation experience and service provider experience, Xiao Zhang experienced the difference between selling goods and providing services. He found that service providers did not have the money-making halo as rumored, and some of his illusions about this industry began to be shattered. "Everyone is looking up to me, and I look up to you. It's really hard to do it. It is said that cross-border sellers are too competitive now. In fact, the service provider group is also very competitive. We are slightly better, but the payment, website building, and logistics service providers are more difficult. In fact, the pressure is no less than that of sellers. Whether it is a seller or a service provider, if you want to do it for a long time, you have to go the branding route."

However, Xiao Zhang does not regret changing his career, as he believes that his current job is more suitable for him.

Would you regret not working for Amazon ?

As the largest cross-border e-commerce platform, Amazon has contributed too many "love and hatred" and bizarre stories to the cross-border circle. With more and more Rs and Xiao Zhangs, the army of people "abandoning Amazon" is gradually growing. It is certain that more Amazon people will leave this platform in the future.

Will everyone who leaves Amazon have no regrets like Xiao Zhang and R?

The editor found that unlike Xiao Zhang and others, there are many people who actively distanced themselves from Amazon and then returned to Amazon's embrace again.

"2019 was the most difficult year for me working on Amazon. When I couldn't hold on any longer, I saw my friend working on Pinduoduo and could place thousands of orders a day. I was very envious. Later I also followed Pinduoduo, but unfortunately several months passed and there was no improvement at all. In the end, I had to give up. After giving up Pinduoduo, I picked up the Amazon platform again and continued to develop Amazon. So far, I have finally made a little money." One of the industry insiders said that this incident gave him deep inspiration. If you can't even do well in an industry that you are very familiar with, then when you switch to an industry that you are not familiar with at all, you will probably not do well. Instead of spending time and energy to understand an unfamiliar industry, it is better to continue to study the industry you are already familiar with.

This statement is recognized by many sellers. However, in the eyes of some others, life is a process of continuous experimentation until you find the career that suits you best. It is understood that many Amazon sellers had no connection with Amazon before, but after accidentally coming into contact with this industry, they unexpectedly found the direction for their future struggles, and since then they have "set up camp" and stabilized, and basically no longer have any desire for other platforms.

Xiao Zhou is such a person. He used to work in traditional manufacturing. Since this industry has been basically monopolized, it is difficult for ordinary people to get a piece of the pie. So he switched to Amazon and has been working there ever since. Comparing the two, Amazon is obviously much easier. Although the threshold is getting higher and higher, it has not yet reached the ceiling. This can give ordinary people a lot of room for operation and is also an opportunity for ordinary people to achieve class leap.

"Be content with what you have. Even though my brother-in-law abused me thousands of times, at least I was able to buy a car and a house and live a stable life. In short , I have to thank Amazon." In response to the problem that it is becoming increasingly difficult to do business on Amazon and people are anxious about it, a senior Amazon seller said that it is difficult to do business in any industry now. It is not Amazon that makes us anxious, but the deteriorating trend of the overall environment that makes us suddenly unable to adapt. Regardless of whether we work for Amazon or not, we still have to improve our abilities in the end.

"If I don't work for Amazon anymore, what else can I do?" Perhaps, no one can escape their final destination. Boys become security guards when they get old, and girls become cleaners when they get old...

Looking at the current situation, those who no longer work for Amazon have found a variety of ways to escape.

Some people want a "iron rice bowl" and work hard to become teachers or civil servants; some sell stewed dishes in a high-profile manner, with advertisement banners that directly read "Amazon operations changed careers to sell stewed dishes, Amazon guys can taste for free, and enjoy a 10% discount on purchases"; some people used to be general managers of cross-border e-commerce companies, but now they are willing to be diligent Huolala drivers; some people, after ending their "drifting" life in Shenzhen, went straight back to their hometown to raise pigs...

Of course, there are even more people who, even if they don’t want to work for Amazon anymore, do not plan to leave the cross-border circle, but continue to stay in this industry. Except for not touching Amazon, they can choose any other job!

The three simple words "Amazon" are given different interpretations by every Amazonian!

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