The basic salary for operations is 40,000 yuan? Amazon sellers who engage in low-price spirals are really rich

Since Amazon's crackdown, the competition among sellers has become more intense, and price wars have become a "life-saving weapon" for some people . One practitioner said that his former company's low-price spiral had a monthly loss of more than 1 million, but the operating base salary was as high as 40,000. At the same time, the mysterious hacker engineer position and the 60,000 salary are also puzzling.

In the spiral situation, the situation in Europe is even less optimistic. After the European tax reform in July, the overall price of products on the European site did not increase but decreased. Some sellers reported that the price war on the European site was more fierce than that on the US site, and low-price inventory clearance was seen everywhere. How is the European site, which has the most compliance requirements but is not as popular as the North American site?

A company in the low-price spiral offers its operations department a base salary of 40,000 ?

Since the end of April, Amazon has been carrying out compliance rectification for about three months, and many seller accounts have had problems. According to statistics from the Shenzhen Cross-border E-commerce Association, in the past two months, more than 52,000 active sellers in Shenzhen have been blocked on the Amazon platform, causing an estimated loss of more than 100 billion yuan to the industry. A total of more than 90,000 active accounts have been blocked across the country.

Under the platform's rectification, many sellers panicked. A wave of low-price spiral tactics entered the sellers' field of vision. "After observing for a long time, sellers in many categories lowered their prices when they couldn't beat the competition. I tested it myself and found that low prices can often generate orders, but they are only suitable for clearing inventory and boosting sales," said seller Xiao D.

When the low-price spiral can produce short-term effects, some sellers, in order to save face, ignore the substance and losses, and focus on maintaining performance first, especially some company operations managers.

An industry practitioner recounted a case from a previous company: "When I joined the company, everything was fine. Later, the management began to use the spiral strategy, directly ordering the entire department to use all products for spiraling. The company's products themselves had no advantages, and large-scale spiraling orders led to huge losses. A new employee under a supervisor could lose more than 20,000 yuan a week, and the blame was put on the old employees who left. The company's losses in May reached more than 1 million, and it is estimated that more will be lost in June."

The person said that the company had already laid off more than half of its employees due to the account being blocked, and the management kept shifting the blame to keep their high-paying jobs. According to him, an ordinary old employee of the company has a base salary of 40,000 yuan, and the salary of a supervisor may be higher!

It sounds outrageous for a company that runs a low-price spiral to pay its employees a base salary of 40,000 yuan! In a loss-making situation, how can there be wages without profits?

A practitioner questioned: The basic operating salary of a leading seller company in the industry is only around 15,000 to 20,000 yuan, and managers of some large companies with poor performance only have a basic salary of 10,000 yuan. Why is this company's basic salary so high?

The editor had the same doubts and asked an insider with doubts. He said that in order to retain talents, some small and medium-sized companies in this industry may offer higher base salaries than large companies because they are eager to increase sales. Some operations personnel poached from large companies will also be given higher base salaries, but it is rare for operations personnel to have a base salary of 40,000.

The basic salary of 40,000 yuan for operations may still be a small part of that of hacker engineers. Recently, a seller posted a screenshot of a job posting on a recruitment website that openly recruited hacker engineers. The job details were: Find out who are the people who have used a certain keyword on Amazon, AliExpress, Baidu and other platforms, and at least provide contact information such as email and phone number.

The poster is indeed bold. "To do something like this, they must have hacked into the databases of various platforms," ​​said one person.

Let's look at the salary package, 60,000 to 90,000 yuan for 15 months. Is this 15 months' salary or 1 month's salary? Someone bluntly said: " The salary is not as good as feeding pigs . The poster must have escaped from a ** hospital . "

The editor asked the company's HR and learned that in the city of Shenzhen, the salary is generally calculated based on the engineer's salary. This should be a monthly salary. Maybe the publisher deliberately filled it out incorrectly, but it is unusual to publicly recruit hacker engineers.

Judging from industry salaries and recruitment, some of the current Amazon sellers are radicals. Even when Amazon is cracking down on violations, they still cannot settle down and focus on making products and operating in compliance.

The European site is also a hard-hit area. After the tax reform that caused costs to rise by 20%, the prices of a large number of sellers have hit new lows.

The price war is more fierce than that of Amazon.com. Is the European site going to be in trouble?

Previously, Amazon has notified sellers that starting from July 1, 27 EU countries and regions will implement new VAT regulations, and Amazon will collect and pay them on their behalf.

At the same time, the policy of exempting VAT for goods with a value of less than 22 euros imported into EU countries will be abolished , and all goods imported into EU countries, regardless of their value, will be subject to VAT; the distance sales threshold will be abolished, and a unique and universal threshold of 10,000 euros will be established within the EU.

After the tax reform in July, sellers on the European site generally faced the challenge of shrinking profits; previously, Amazon had reminded sellers that they could raise prices to ensure profits, but the actual situation was just the opposite.

In recent order feedback, a European seller said that for self-posted sellers, the order volume has been halved since the price increase on July 1. This is also a worry for FBA sellers.

After the tax reform, many sellers took a wait-and-see attitude and did not make any moves; some sellers tried to raise prices slightly, but the number of orders soon dropped and their rankings were no longer secure. One seller lamented: "It's too difficult. After raising the price by 4 euros, there were no orders for a long time, and then the price dropped back to a level that was even worse than before. There are also competitors that are spiraling. I have been selling at a loss-making price of 9.99 for half a month. As a newcomer to Amazon, I feel extremely tired."

In order to maintain the number of orders, most sellers are holding on to their profits and not raising prices. One seller said that the gross profit of the category without ads has reached 17%, and the onlookers expressed envy, "The gross profit after tax is still 17%, which is very high", "Our category is almost sold at 0%, and some are even sold at a loss."

Costs have gone up, but why do people lower prices instead of raising them? Sellers analyzed that everyone wanted to grab the rankings before others raised their prices, so no one raised their prices. One seller said that the European market has declined sharply, and after paying taxes, some people raised their prices, but the price dropped even more sharply and could not be pulled back. As a result, the price dropped to a level lower than before the actual payment, and now it is more about clearing inventory.

"Competitors are not raising prices on a large scale, and they are deducting 20% ​​from the original price, so the profit is very low." Not only are prices not increasing, but the European site has also started a low-price spiral. One seller said frankly, why does it feel like the price war in Europe is more fierce than in the United States?

Seller @Amazon美刀 was deeply touched: "Recently, many categories are using the spiral method and so on! Amazon is not something you can do by just investing some money and hiring a few people. Ask those who have been working on Amazon Europe for a long time, are they all using the spiral method to clear inventory? The more they clear inventory, the lower the storage capacity. This is what happened to me. I would like to ask those who have just started working in Europe this year, has the VAT for the UK site been reduced? Let's see how many leeks will be completely killed by the end of the year."

Although some sellers believe that after the current adjustment, the prices on the European site will generally increase, the current situation is indeed embarrassing. Before the tax reform, the number of orders on the European site had already declined, and the continued sluggish sales also forced some sellers to clear their stocks. Not only is the sales situation poor, but the new brand registration, VAT application and delivery issues added after Brexit are also very troublesome.

Seller @北二环 did some analysis: for the same product, the BSR in the US is about 2,000, and the BSR in all European countries combined is about half of that in the US, and sometimes even less. It seems that the potential of the US market is absolutely dominant, and because of the direct tax deduction on European sites, the profit difference between Europe and the US is estimated to be about 20%. In addition, with the extended logistics time, Amazon in European countries is basically just a way to make a profit this year.

With high thresholds, many compliance requirements, and traffic inferior to the North American site, is the European site still attractive to sellers?

Operational salary, Amazon, price war