Behind the Amazon craze: executives left with huge losses, and small cities in the sixth tier also provide training...

Behind the “Amazon for All”, highly educated people and senior executives have lost a lot of money and left the market. At the same time, the training market is booming, and now all the sixth-tier cities have started to provide Amazon training.

Is it right or wrong to enter the cross-border e-commerce market at this time to make a lot of money or to be ripped off?

Cross-border e-commerce is really "crazy": domestic bigwigs secretly recruit and mortgage their properties to do Amazon

In addition to newbies outside the circle who have seen the money-making opportunities on Amazon, many domestic Internet companies have also been eyeing this opportunity early on. Some sellers have reported that NetEase Yanxuan has called to poach their products, or to promote its own supply chain with thousands of manufacturers.

NetEase Yanxuan was launched on Amazon in 2019, and it sells all kinds of daily necessities, such as cushions, chairs, socks, pillows and other daily necessities.

Miniso, which sells groceries and other products offline in China, has also opened a store on Amazon. As early as August last year , the store had already received messages. Most of the items sold in the store are daily necessities, dolls, ornaments, and beauty products, which are basically similar to those sold in offline stores. One of the products with the highest number of reviews is the portable transparent beauty bag, which is more suitable for travel.

In addition to the Internet companies pouring into Amazon, Alibaba also wants to engage in cross-border e-commerce. Some sellers have reported that Internet giants now want to recruit them to do operations. Previously, there was news in the WeChat group that Alibaba was recruiting Shopify operations: Alibaba Group's AliExpress is recruiting Shopify independent station operations, the recruitment level is P6-P7 (P6 is about 250,000 yuan per year), and the requirements are more than 2 years of experience in Shopify independent station operation and promotion, familiarity with independent station promotion, and proficiency in Facebook, Google, Instagram and other media promotion. This is a very attractive position for independent station operations.

I don't need to say much about the popularity of cross-border e-commerce this year. I believe that everyone in the industry has truly felt it. Especially for Amazon, the preferred track, relevant survey results show that 295,000 new sellers have been added in 2021. Some sellers jokingly say that now it is "Amazon for all".

Because Amazon is an asset-heavy product, the cash flow required for a mature hit product is around three to five million. Some sellers said that this year, more people are mortgaged to Amazon.

The influx of new sellers is crazy. Just look at the living environment of old sellers. Some old sellers said that this year, a large number of sellers have poured into various categories on Amazon. The CPC price of products in the off-season was only about $0.3, but now even a bid of $1 does not get exposure...

Netizen: None of the highly educated and senior executives around me have succeeded in Amazon

In general, the new sellers entering the market this year can be divided into four groups:

1. Sellers who have transformed from Taobao and Tmall.

2. Big capital.

3. Transformation of traditional foreign trade factories.

4. Individual sellers

Among these four groups, the most noteworthy thing, in addition to capital bringing in large amounts of money to acquire Amazon stores, is that highly educated people from 985, 211 and other universities have also joined the Amazon army.

In people's inherent impression, good study = strong ability, so their influx has brought a great sense of crisis to the original sellers. But good study is not equal to business, and there is no necessary connection between good study and business success.

A netizen on a certain social media platform recounted that in the past two years, several of his colleagues who were highly educated and had executive backgrounds had opened stores on Amazon, but none of them had been successful so far.

They all have master's degrees, have studied abroad, are fluent in English, and have worked in the traditional foreign trade industry for many years. However, even so, they still failed in the cross-border e-commerce industry.

When analyzing the reasons for the failure, the netizen attributed it to two points: First, the start-up capital was weak and no money was invested in advertising, so he was out of money after the three-month traffic support period; second, he did not understand the product and did not make full use of the supplier resources at hand, but instead went to 1688 to get the goods.

Not only the highly educated group, but also the sellers who once fought in the popular domestic e-commerce market have been forced to flee.

For example, a seller in Longhua, Shenzhen, rushed into Amazon with his own basic operations team, 3 million in funds, and a specially hired Amazon operations consultant. He thought he would make a comeback as a king, but he was unexpectedly killed in just a few months and had to flee in embarrassment.

Individual sellers who are jealous of others making money cannot escape this "disaster". Xiao He, a new seller, saw that a friend's product could bring in a net profit of 10,000 yuan per month without any maintenance, so he registered a store and started his journey on Amazon.

Whether it was product selection, logistics, detail page optimization, or CPC strategy, he had learned them all and did quite well. He felt that he was doing better than his friends. However, the product still showed no improvement, and the advertising was still burning money. After three months of operation, it was still not profitable.

He has already spent 30,000 to 40,000 yuan, but he only prepared 50,000 yuan. Although he had conducted systematic training before the operation, he still could not operate the product. This situation is not an isolated case. For individual sellers with little experience and funds, failure in Amazon alone is not an uncommon example.

Sixth-tier cities have already started Amazon training. Joining the game means getting ripped off?

In fact, since the explosion of cross-border e-commerce during the epidemic last year, the phenomenon of a large number of sellers rushing to Amazon has never stopped.

Have these sellers established themselves and made a lot of money? I don’t think so.

"A large number of sellers who registered last year have gone bankrupt," said a seller.

A seller with many years of Amazon operating experience put it bluntly: "Not many people can master Amazon. If you don't have three to five years of experience, don't even think about getting rich overnight!"

Another industry insider also said: "Don't think you are rich enough to afford to lose. It is not uncommon to accidentally throw away tens of thousands of dollars on Amazon."

In this case, who will benefit from these new sellers? Undoubtedly, the training service providers are one of them.

A few days ago, a seller lamented that there are already people doing Amazon training in his hometown in a sixth-tier city, and even several of his friends have joined.

The market is expanding at such a crazy speed, one can imagine how many interests are driving it.

In order to attract more sellers and gain more profits, some service providers even avoid talking about the risks of Amazon in their publicity, and only create a false impression that they can make a lot of money just by putting products on the shelves.

As a seller lamented a few days ago, new sellers cannot see the logistics, platform policies and other tortures we are going through. All they receive is information on Tik Tok, such as "a product with a purchase price of 10 yuan is sold on Amazon for 10 US dollars, with a profit of 60 yuan."

There are even more outrageous ones. A seller complained: "Before, an organization contacted me and said that they have a factory to supply goods, and a professional master with a daily turnover of tens of millions will teach me how to operate. He said that as long as I pay the registration fee, I can just wait to count the money!"

On one side, there are a large number of new sellers who have fallen, and on the other side, there are service providers who are sharpening their knives. So I would like to say to new sellers who are about to join Amazon or have already joined: before joining this battle, you must weigh your own capabilities, such as whether you have advantages in product selection, supply chain, funds, or operational capabilities. Otherwise, if you enter the market blindly, you will end up being a leeks without knowing it.

Amazon for All