
Peddling the ‘Secrets’ to Getting Rich on Amazon - kyaghmour
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/men-peddling-secrets-getting-rich-amazon/578443/
======
joshstrange
> They’re frustrated with Amazon, which they say is making money off the
> failures of people like them.

Wait what... I can't even. It's not Amazon's fault you bought something no one
wanted then tried to sell it. You wanted easy money and it doesn't exist. You
CHOSE to ship directly to Amazon so you didn't have to handle shipping, you
CHOSE a quality item that kept breaking, they CHOSE to use Amazon, any they
CHOSE to order a huge quantity of crap.

I simply cannot understand people who think like this. They plopped down a ton
of money on something they didn't fully understand in a get-rich-quick-scheme
and then blame the marketplace for their failures.

Can you make money doing this? Absolutely but it takes more research, time,
and effort all of which they decided was beneath them and then got all mad
when it didn't result in them raking in the money.

~~~
astura
Is there really any money left to be made? Reselling from China on Amazon such
a crowded space I don't know if it's possible to get in the game at this point
without employing shady tactics. Especially now that the Chinese are selling
direct on Amazon.

~~~
csa
Yes, but it’s not easy, and its not conducive to a “passive income” model:

1\. Find, maintaining, and keeping a high quality manufacturer in China is
hard but doable.

2\. Building a brand and audience is hard but doable.

3\. Creating intellectual property and protecting it is hard but doable.

The folks I know who sell a lot on Amazon do all of these three things
decently, and one (often more) extremely well.

From the sound of it, the folks in the article made a lame attempt at #1 and
maybe a token attempt at #2 via Amazon ads.

This low level of effort simply will not cut it for most products.

------
Johnny555
People forget that history repeats itself -- the ones that got richest during
the California Gold Rush were the ones selling tools, unless you were lucky
enough to hit a motherlode.

So if someone is selling you an expensive tool that will help make you rich,
ask yourself why they aren't using that same tool themselves. (and if the
answer is "I have all the money I need, I just want to help other people...
then ask why they are charging $4000 for it...)

~~~
achillesheels
+1 but to be honest, I wouldn’t consider Levi Strauss jeans to be a luxury
good.

~~~
hopler
If I'm going prospecting, it's obvious I need jeans and pickaxes, and obvious
that Levi can make more of those than he could use in prospecting himself.
Levi isn't telling you you'll get rich from his jeans, he's just selling you
what you know you need if you are prospecting. It's not obvious why I need
your How to Mine for Gold and Riches book and why you can't use that
information to get rich youdser, if it's good information.

------
derekp7
The way to make money "easy" is to have a skill combined with an insight that
most other people don't have, and work to exploit that ability for profit. For
example, someone who is a good application developer but works in a dental
office can identify what exactly is needed by that demographic, and how much
they are willing to pay for it (thereby using their potentially "hobby" skill
of programming to create that run-away successful SAAS startup).

But once you hear of other people doing something (drop-shipping items from
China to Amazon, or cryptocurrency mining), chances are very good that you
will have too much competition. The only way to make it big is if you get into
that business before you hear of it off the street.

~~~
kemiller2002
I was always told to follow the rule that if you think of something that will
make a ton of money, do some research, because someone has probably already
thought of it and done it. If no one has, then your idea is probably flawed.
It's the really small percentage of ideas that fit into neither category where
you can make a lot of money, but that is incredibly small. Understand your
probably of success before you start planning your dream of living on a beach
for the rest of your life.

~~~
F_J_H
Two economists walking down a street. One spots a $100 bill and says "Look, a
$100 bill!" The other says, "Probably fake. If it was real, someone would have
grabbed it already..."

~~~
Retra
Don't substitute a meme for thinking. The real story is as follows:

Two economists are sitting at home. One says "Lets go out and look for $100
bills in the street." The other says "There are better ways to make money."

~~~
coralreef
The other meme is about efficient markets.

What is yours about?

~~~
mlevental
competitive advantage

~~~
coralreef
Hmm, I still don't get it, can someone explain?

------
maldusiecle
This is the flip side of an experience that's more and more common when buying
on Amazon--there are a lot of sellers peddling poorly made or counterfeit
items for a quick buck. It's a crowded marketplace, and it's mostly crowded
with sketchy sellers.

I avoid Amazon for anything other than books, lately. For anything else,
there's no telling what you'll actually get.

~~~
reaperducer
_I avoid Amazon for anything other than books, lately. For anything else,
there 's no telling what you'll actually get._

As noted previously on HN, they're even selling fake books on Amazon. One was
a Python programming guide.

~~~
huac
my copy of "cracking the coding interview" was fake, the pages and cover were
photocopied and misaligned, etc. my friend also got a fake copy from amazon
with the same characteristics.

it's pretty crappy because the author is going to make nothing off the sale,
and i paid full-price for a defective item. obviously amazon doesn't care
since they get their cut either way, and the fake is good enough that 99% of
people wouldn't notice/complain.

------
eutropia
There's a reason those guys were selling classes for 4 grand instead of
quietly becoming rich following the advice they're selling people.

~~~
maxxxxx
Reminds me of a lot of hedge fund guys and VCs. If you already have billions
why not invest your own money instead of dealing with other investors?

~~~
ip26
Downside protection.

Plus if you control enough $$$ you can start controlling the market.

~~~
seanhunter
Most strategies have a finite "capacity" and if you attempt to invest more
than this, the returns dry up. So if you have lots of assets to invest you
start to be forced to invest in your 10th, 100th, 200th best idea, rather than
just your top 1-5 best ideas. This is why it's very hard to sustain
performance as funds grow.

The reason people with big funds are focussed on growing their assets under
management is they get an annual fee for assets under management, and this is
therefore more reliable than the "outperformance" fee that they also charge.

------
james_s_tayler
"passive income"

There's your problem.

Heck even before that you have a big problem in your worldview. That you would
choose to go into business and complain about making a loss after it didn't
work out. If that's your mindset you're not ready to go into business.

"I'll teach you how to get rich on the internet." OK. Here's my money - now
how do you get rich on the internet? "Simple. You teach people how to get rich
on the internet."

I'll cut people some slack. It takes a little while to figure that one out if
it's your first rodeo. But at some point hopefully you realize that "getting
rich on the internet" and "getting rich" have the exact same fundamentals. And
if you're learning tactics before you learn strategy you're going to get your
ass handed to you on the battlefield.

------
inuhj
The biggest mistake they made was ordering 3,000 decanters and 1,500 aerators.
These were not custom products so why was the order quantity so high? As an
importer it's clear that the agent they dealt with in China knew it was a one-
time thing and juiced them on the quantity. Realistically they should've
ordered 100 of each as a quality check, listed them for sale, and seen how it
goes. Minimum order quantities rarely are.

~~~
AstralStorm
The problem is almost none of real good chinese shippers will spot you a 100
item sample. Worse, you might get the sample from some sketch sellers then not
get a bigger delivery.

It is a jungle out there.

And the flat cost of dead load storage is bad and similar enough for both
cases.

------
astura
>The aerators kept breaking, and so Bjork and McDowell had to pay for returns.

Uhhh... People should know not to try to sell anything FBA that's fragile;
Amazon never packages or handles fragile products correctly. Should have been
covered in the webinar... obviously these people are just out to get a quick
buck, not actually help others sell on Amazon. That and they partnered with a
Chinese manufacturer that had minimum orders in the thousands... that seems
like a ridiculous commitment for something that's essentially an experiment.

These people who fell for this seem like the same sorts of people who fall for
MLMs...

I remember someone calling into Dave Ramsey's show saying they spent something
like $60,000 on these "get rich seminars" going through different "levels" and
didn't even make a penny. Unbelievable...

------
poorman
But really, is this any different than these "coding academies" where you pay
$10k to "learn to be a programmer in 30 days and get a great job making $100k+
a year"?

~~~
omarchowdhury
Which academy makes the specific promises and claims that you just asserted?

~~~
poorman
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-12-06/want-a-
jo...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-12-06/want-a-job-in-
silicon-valley-keep-away-from-coding-schools)

[https://www.quora.com/Are-programming-bootcamps-lying-
about-...](https://www.quora.com/Are-programming-bootcamps-lying-about-their-
average-graduate-salaries)

------
chunger
"There’s something uniquely American about believing that with a little bit of
hard work, anybody can make money fast."

Sure sounds like nothing has changed from P. T. Barnum's time who supposedly
said "There's a sucker born every minute"

------
throw7
Here's two ways to get rich (and I'm not even charging anything):

1\. Solve a problem, which creates value, which is something people will pay
you for.

2\. Have a shtick and find a way to monetize it. i.e. be the "Let's get ready
to RUMBLE!!!!" dude.

------
ilamont
Is "passive income" now synonymous with get-rich-quick schemes and fraud?

Sometimes I cringe when I see Ask HN posts with this term. Even though the
answers are usually sincere and illuminating, it seems that the motivation for
seeking out this type of information is usually to find an idea for an easy
niche to monetize, which is what a lot of the consumers of these "Amazon
expert" courses are after, too.

------
taude
Similar to the Reply All #117 episode [1] on the "free watch" and the drop
shipping business, and what they discovered about all the courses people were
selling on how to do it.

[1] [https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/117-the-worlds-most-
ex...](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/117-the-worlds-most-expensive-
free-watch)

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
I've seen those free watch offers and always been intrigued - I assumed it was
some kind of data-gathering exercise that would open the spam floodgates for
the customer. Thanks for the link, I'll give this a listen as it seems there
might be more to it than I'd first assumed.

~~~
astura
It's a ploy to get you to to simply buy the watch. Its cheap Chinese junk, the
watch cost ~$1 to manufacture and ~$1 to ship and you pay $7 for "shipping."

------
megaremote
> They say that one of the first things they teach students is to make sure
> the product will be profitable, and that anyone who loses money simply isn’t
> following their advice.

Oh, of course. Easy.

------
sct202
This reminds me of those house flipping seminars where it's so easy to make
money if you follow these XX steps and pay whoever thousands of dollars for
the secret.

------
JustSomeNobody
> But they’re even angrier with Behdjou and Gazzola and their company, which
> was, at the time, called Amazon Secrets. “It’s a scam,” McDowell said. “They
> take your money and don’t deliver.”

Nothing in life is free except a hard time. These "I'll show you how to make
passive income" schemes have been around long before the internet. It's sad,
but they prey on the people too desperate for an easy way to wealth to think
logically.

------
hourislate
In this day and age it is surprising that people still fall for "Get Rich
Schemes". Anyone selling Investment Advice, Business Advice, Products, etc
that promise success, wealth, etc are charlatans.

These two took advantage of desperate people. There is little to no money to
be made on AMZN today. No one is getting rich anymore.

~~~
omarchowdhury
> There is little to no money to be made on AMZN today. No one is getting rich
> anymore.

Really? That's like saying there's little to no money to be made in
entrepreneurship today. Are you saying everyone on AMZN operates their
business at 0% or less net profit margin? Because that's essentially what you
are saying.

~~~
soundwave106
I think the gist of that statement is that there is no "easy" money anymore,
if there ever was. I'm pretty sure it would be quite difficult get rich by
simply importing commodity Chinese products and marking them up in FBA -- this
is something that a large retail organization like Amazon can do just as well
for much cheaper than any individual can.

To stand a chance at making some money as a small business (and I'm saying the
more typical "some money", not the "strike the motherlode" type language many
of the make.money.fast type scams promote), you have to have a good product
idea, and do the full work of the low-margin retail business, with all that
this entails.

In this regard I do imagine it's possible to make _some_ money via Amazon with
a traditional retail business. But even though it's the behemoth of American
e-commerce, Amazon probably should not be a product's _only_ Internet retail
outlet. (You should probably have your own e-commerce site for a start... and
other more focused outlets, especially if they fit a product's niche -- like,
say, Newegg for a computing oriented product -- should also be pursued.)

------
blang
I feel they glossed over how these guys and others of their ilk, spam the
Apple podcast charts to get in the top 100.

------
ada1981
>> A Maryland woman, Allyson Pippin, who sells ___slime_ __, said she was
about ready to scrap her product and start all over. <<

I love how the author mentions this casually without any further context on
why someone would think selling SLIME was a good idea in the first place.

SLIME!

~~~
ericabiz
I am guessing you don’t have kids? :)

Slime has been one of the most popular fads over the last few years. It even
got to the point a while back that stores ran out of glue.

I’d say now the fad has mostly run its course, though I still see kits for
sale at Walmart.

[https://www.npr.org/2017/10/01/552422040/the-rise-of-the-
sli...](https://www.npr.org/2017/10/01/552422040/the-rise-of-the-slime-
economy)

~~~
ada1981
What a rabbit hole that was. Thanks!

------
blunte
I don't know why people still believe that someone with a winning (money
making) system is going to share that with others. If a system works that
well, nobody is going to sell instructions on how to do it. Maybe they'll
share the knowledge with a few friends or family, but they sure won't sell it.

To sell "how to get rich" information clearly implies that the seller is not
getting rich. If they were, and even if they were exceptionally generous and
wanted to share the knowledge, they wouldn't bother charging money for it.

~~~
jensv
There is the concept of franchises like McDonalds which seems to go against
your point.

~~~
teej
Franchises don’t sell a way to get rich quick. They sell a job.

~~~
sct202
Plus you need at least $500k min cash on hand before you can start.

------
kup0
This is the internet equivalent of those "get rich quick" TV infomercials,
where the only people getting rich quick are the ones providing sham
classes/books/seminars and charging outrageous amounts for them.

~~~
coldtea
The same BS peddled by people like Gary V and co.

~~~
icedata
Or DT and co. [https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/10/politics/trump-university-
set...](https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/10/politics/trump-university-settlement-
finalized-trnd/index.html)

