Fearless Salary Negotiation is a great book - very approachable and practical. I learned a lot from it.
Also for context - just remember that actually negotiating already puts you in a good subset of people. Many people - including myself initially - are reluctant to negotiate. It's a learned skill.
Learning about financial independence. The peace of mind that comes from knowing you have your financial world in order is enormous and opens up many possibilities. You are in control once you have 'F--- You" money.
Yeah these are really good points @petra. Honestly I don't know what the future is. I lean more towards your interpretation about FBA selling being a short-mid term opportunity. Though I don't think it will just evaporate in the next 5 years.
The thing is - sellers should be using this opportunity to build up a brand by borrowing Amazon's audience while they can. AND simultaneously building their own storefront. But I don't see many talking about that.
I do also agree with @sfifs below that many manufacturers don't want to be bothered with marketing and selling, no matter how easy Amazon makes it. They seem to want to stay in their core competency, which is understandable but probably short-sighted on their part.
Yeah, there are definitely too many FBA sellers who are 100% reliant on the Amazon audience for sales. No online store (Shopify etc.), no marketing, no email list etc. It's hard hearing those cases where seller accounts get turned off for some reason and the seller has to fight to get them item back online.
As for some being "scammy" - yeah sure, there's definitely a bit of people looking to make a quick buck on whatever they can at FBA. Every market has that. But the people I've seen have the most success on FBA do just what you mentioned
- listen to the customer via reviews
- improve value via product fixes, bundling, packaging, etc.
- provide good feedback & service
That said - I don't know how anyone selling commodity, off-brand stuff does it. I could see that being a huge race to the bottom as stated. The only people I know doing FBA stuff are going the private label route to avoid competing solely on price.
My brother actually makes a full-time living off of FBA now via private label goods. He really enjoys being his own boss and providing a BETTER product than what was available before.
I sold my first FBA product, not a huge success, but validated the business model is real if you work at it. FYI - I've started compiling info for small-scale eCommerce sellers at http://www.privatelabelweekly.com for any sellers interested.
I'm in the same boat @BeetleB. Sold a line of private label toys on FBA. Not a run-away success but definitely a great introduction to the market. My family members are also FBA sellers.
The thing that most people don't realize is that Amazon is moving away from selling everything itself. As stated by Ben Thompson in his excellent
"Stratechery" blog (paywall):
> "...I wrote about the ongoing transformation in Amazon’s e-commerce business: while Amazon was originally a traditional retailer that bought products from manufacturers and wholesalers and then sold them on to customers, the company has been shifting to a marketplace model, wherein 3rd-party retailers sell to users on Amazon’s site through a program called Fulfillment by Amazon."
For some direct proof, check out the highlights from the 2016 Q4 earnings report:
- Sellers on Amazon’s marketplace accounted for 49% (!!!) of units sold during the fourth quarter
- Fulfillment by Amazon delivered more than 2 billion items on behalf of sellers in 2016 and the number of active FBA sellers increased by 70 percent.
In short, Amazon is in a good spot by creating the marketplace. They own the audience. Sellers on FBA "borrow" that audience & Amazon logistics in return for storage and sales fees. No need for Amazon to sell everything. FBA sellers do that for them.
FYI for any online sellers out there: if interested, I curate an eCommerce newsletter for the small-scale seller covering Shopify, FBA etc. at http://www.privatelabelweekly.com
Pilots are repeatedly taught to never "silence" the annoying warning horns that come on for different reasons (slow speed, wrong landing gear configuration). The idea being that mindlessly dismissing alarms will build a bad habit pattern. Especially when you're actually in trouble.
Update - so...my bad. My brother actually uses http://www.zebrapals.com/ which is a logistics company but NOT a fulfillment center. They take your shipment, inspect, label etc. and send to the fulfillment center.
He has had great success with them, if you need those services.
The only logistics / fulfillment experience I've had so far has been Flexport (excellent BTW). They currently don't do 3PL - but may want to keep an eye on them as they expand.
However, my brother is also big into FBA and just expanded into 3PL - I'll get his info and re-post here when I have it.
FYI - I started a newsletter to cover this stuff. Fast-paced niche, so I figured why not curate the best info and share.
Great point r2dnb. This used to be my mentality as well and it hurt me.
I was looking for a "smart" business that was "worthy" of me. How could these people spend so much time on such an indefensible & unscalable process?!
Well, the joke was on me. My brother stopped consuming info and started Amazon FBA. And he does really well (full-time job replacement). Instead of waiting for the perfect idea - he executed.
Now I'm happily off my high horse and trying to follow in his footsteps.
Lesson learned - there is no perfect business. Get started with something simple and build from there.
This was a very interesting article. And I can’t speak to the statistical methodology described. But I think it paints too broad a brush in terms of why the Air Force fatality rate (or “Class A Mishap Rate” as it’s called) decreased over the decades. Quick side-note – I’m a former USAF pilot and studied USAF history a bit.
The short version is – technical details like adjustable cockpits certainly played a part. But the bigger driver was the ever-increasing culture of safety, mishap prevention and leadership accountability.
Safety: things that were common place “back in the day” have been banned for many decades in today’s Air Force. These include traveling without appropriate weather checks, acrobatics maneuvers at low altitudes and unauthorized airspaces, and flying without enough sleep.
Mishap Prevention: incredible resources are poured into scientific investigations on what exactly happened in each incident so that A) we can learn from it and B) all pilots can be briefed on the mistakes made so that they can save their own lives.
Leadership Accountability: if you are a senior leader at an Air Force base with a fatality, you have a large issue on your hands that needs to be handled with extreme attention to detail. Lapses in safety are not looked favorably upon at any level. I wasn’t in the USAF back in the day. But it’s fairly obvious that there was less punishment meted out when mishaps occurred compared to when they happen now. Different times – yes. But overall fatalities were just accepted as “something that happens.”
The safety culture is all-pervasive and common in today’s military. But there were different attitudes back in the ‘40s. So while many of today’s pilots gripe about the excesses of safety culture - and I was one of them – most pilots know deep down that it’s a good thing. I wouldn’t want to return to the old school days where crashes were just the cost of doing business.
I'm curious - how did you amass your 1.2m USD? I have a similar background and have done well but have not reached your level. Was it thru regular investing? Or did you have some "high payout" one-time events like making a lot of money on house appreciation, sale of a company, etc.
Correct. The U.S. has many retention programs to try to keep pilots serving past their initial military commitments. There is a lot of money invested into them.
Nobody knows. We usually cannot predict future conflicts very well.
A number of people think Stealth increases the chance for WVR engagements (WVR = Within Visual Range, or dog fighting). I'm one of them. The U.S. has a bad history of predicting the end of WVR engagements (see Vietnam and the F-4 produced without internal guns). Air superiority is definitely not a thing that can be taken for granted. But many people do because the West has dominated the skies for many decades now.
There's some truth to this. But, after you dig through this "bar talk", most every pilot would take the best technology has to offer when going into a fight. I'll gladly take a JDAM over a Mk-84 (dumb bomb). And I'll take any modern fighter over an F-4, etc.
Pilots do complain about technology (which always amuses me), but in the end we want the technology that helps us win.
Nice explanation. It can be hard to describe how pilots may or may not use certain cockpit displays depending on the situation. People tend to assume you are always using every indicator.
Also for context - just remember that actually negotiating already puts you in a good subset of people. Many people - including myself initially - are reluctant to negotiate. It's a learned skill.
https://fearlesssalarynegotiation.com