Lost 3 million! Amazon seller: Should I sell my house and continue?

"Selling a house to start Amazon" is not a new topic, but every year there are similar questions: "I lost millions doing Amazon, should I sell my house to continue?" "I am almost 30 and have accomplished nothing, should I sell my house to start Amazon?" "I see others making a lot of money doing Amazon, I want to do it too but I don't have the funds, should I sell my house?"...

When money is scarce, people always subconsciously regard housing as their only card. But they don't seem to think about how many people working at Amazon dream of buying a house of their own, and how many people are working hard and persevering for their own house.

People are trapped in the vicious circle of "selling houses to make Amazon"

"Does anyone really sell their house to start Amazon in real life?" someone asked on Zhihu.

The editor has observed that there are not only such people , but quite a few of them.

Among those people, some are outsiders who think that Amazon is full of gold and they can earn more than the money to buy a house as long as they enter the market. Some are people who have already started but suffered heavy losses. They are holding the idea of ​​fighting a last-ditch effort and think that a bicycle may become a motorcycle. Others are people who have worked in companies in the industry for a while and have accumulated some experience. They are ready to go out on their own but lack funds.

Not long ago , a Shenzhen seller who had lost 3 million yuan considered selling his house in Wuhan and continuing to invest in Amazon . In 2014, he used the first pot of gold he earned to buy a house in Wuhan, and he had 1 million yuan left. However, the impact of the epidemic in the past two years and the increasing difficulty of Amazon not only caused him to lose all the 1 million yuan, but also the 2 million yuan he borrowed from the bank. Seeing that he had fallen from a well-off state to the bottom, he thought about selling the house to make up for his losses.

There are many people who are also "difficult to deal with" with houses . A seller who often shares useful information on social platforms said that one of his fans has never been in contact with Amazon, but thinks that cross-border e-commerce has a bright future and is eager to join the market. In order to raise startup funds, he even sold his house worth about 2 million yuan .

As early as 2019, an operator with several years of experience said that he was nearly 30 years old and felt more and more anxious. He did not want to be boiled like a frog in warm water and wait for death, so he thought of selling his house and using the funds to operate the store he had.

…

There are many reasons for wanting to sell their houses and start Amazon, but the common point is just one: to make more money and create better living conditions, which of course also includes buying a car and a house.

This inevitably makes people feel as if they are trapped in a vicious circle.

Netizen: Wake up, in a few years you will find that you can only earn enough for a down payment on a house

Of course, this phenomenon has also caused some heated discussions in the industry.

Some people think that this is completely putting the cart before the horse. Others use the money they earn from Amazon to buy houses, while people who already have houses are selling them to start Amazon. The priorities are completely reversed.

Some people joked : "I wonder if I can sell Amazon and buy a house."

Others have urged those who "sold their houses to start Amazon" to be more sober. They said: "These people will find that they work day and night, their team size continues to expand, and their company's performance continues to rise. After a few years, they can finally afford to buy the house they sold before. Or if they are unlucky, the money they earn is not enough to pay the down payment for the house they sold before, or even lose everything."

In this regard, a seller told such a story : Ten years ago, a man sold his 120 square meter house in Beijing and started a business. Ten years later, he succeeded in his business and became a multi-millionaire, so he used all his money to buy a house, and bought a 120 square meter house in Beijing.

This shows that many people think this approach is irrational.

Of course, it is undeniable that there are people who sold their houses to start Amazon and then became very successful and made a lot of money. But we see more examples like the following :

A novice Amazon seller who entered the market by selling a house worked very hard but still suffered a monthly loss of $80,000. At the end of a year, he had lost all the money he earned from selling the house.

So don’t give up your home easily. Amazon doesn’t make as much money as you think, and it’s not easy to run a business.

Only 20% of sellers earn $100,000 in three years, and some people still lose money after working hard for three years

Previously, Jungle Scout conducted a questionnaire survey on nearly 5,000 Amazon sellers and found that only 20% of them have earned $100,000 since their establishment (2-3 years).

$100,000 seems quite impressive, but it is not so when you calculate it in detail. Let's do the math: because the survey emphasizes "since its establishment", so assuming that a seller has been doing it for 3 years, then he has earned a total of $100,000 (about $650,000) in 3 years, which seems not much better than working. Not to mention that a large number of people do not earn $100,000.

Some sellers have complained before: "I have been in Amazon for three years, but I am still losing money."

One netizen even said that his friend who had worked on Amazon for more than a year has also changed his career. "He sells underwear, buying goods for 20 RMB and selling them for 20 USD. On the surface, it seems like a huge profit, but the middleman fees are very high, and the actual profit is not much."

This year in particular is hailed as the most difficult year in Amazon's history. Various policies have been tightened, logistics have been sluggish, and profits have been "eaten" up by skyrocketing advertising costs, logistics costs, etc.

A seller who just entered the industry in March this year said that this year's profits have been eaten up by advertising and first-leg logistics, and he is still in a loss-making state.

When people talk about Amazon, most of them only see the US dollar earnings and high profits, but ignore the costs. Logistics fees, advertising fees, platform commissions, etc. are all costs.

When analyzing the costs of cross-border e-commerce, one seller pointed out that platform commission accounts for 15%, advertising fees account for about 10% of sales, return and exchange and storage fees account for about 4%, and product costs account for about 15%... After calculating all costs, the final average profit of most products is about 15%.

Therefore, as long as one or more of these costs increase in price, profits will be further squeezed. Even the increase in advertising costs alone can easily eat up profits.

In general, Amazon is a high-risk, medium-return project. If you have spare money, it is understandable to use it to invest in Amazon. After all, compared with other industries, cross-border e-commerce has obvious advantages in terms of development prospects and development speed. But if you sell your only house to invest in such a high-risk project, it is equivalent to a gamble, and the result of this gamble is obviously not very ideal.

It is true that some people who sold their houses to start Amazon eventually succeeded, but there are more failures that you don’t see. So those who want to sell their houses to start Amazon should wake up! !

Selling a house to do Amazon