Apparently the secret to getting rich on Amazon is still safe:
In late 2016, McDowell and Bjork stumbled across a podcast hosted by Behdjou and Gazzola, normal guys who claimed they were making thousands of dollars working less than two hours a day on Amazon. The pair promised that anyone could do the same — all they needed to do was pay $3,999 for three months of coaching that would teach them everything they needed to know about the business. They’d learn how to source and ship a product from China, how to list it for an attractive markup on Amazon’s third-party marketplace, how to advertise it to consumers, and how to get them to leave good reviews. Amazon would take care of the logistics of storing and shipping, for a fee, through its Fulfillment by Amazon program. Behdjou and Gazzola even provided class participants with a manufacturing contact in China, and organized paid tours of Chinese merchandise markets.
At the time, the couple was living in a tiny New York apartment, struggling to make rent. McDowell was working a job she hated. Behdjou and Gazzola were offering a way out, and they seemed credible. They even posted screenshots showing the money they had made from selling supplements on Amazon. Bjork emailed a few people who had taken the class, all of whom said they were happy with their experience.
So the couple put the class fee on their credit card, started attending Monday night webinars, and picked their first two products: a glass wine decanter and plastic wine aerator, both sourced from China. Following Behdjou and Gazzola’s advice to purchase the minimum mass order possible, they ordered 3,000 decanters and 1,500 aerators and had them shipped directly to Amazon warehouses across the country, from which the company would send them directly to consumers.
Six months later, they had sold only about 100 decanters and a few hundred aerators. Customs taxes and shipping costs were starting to add up. The aerators kept breaking, and so Bjork and McDowell had to pay for returns. Amazon charged a seller fee of $39.99 a month, a per-piece fulfillment cost of a few dollars a unit, and a storage fee of 70 cents per cubic foot that increased during the holiday season. Then there was the cost of advertising, which they needed to actually get their product noticed amid the thicket of other people also selling wine accessories, also bought cheap from China, also on Amazon.
Maybe worst of all, the couple told me they were left alone to deal with all these headaches: Though their payment guaranteed them three months of coaching, they couldn’t reach Behdjou after the first few days, they say. (Behdjou disputes that he and Gazzola disappeared, writing in an email that all students get a response within 24 hours Monday through Friday.)
Within six months, McDowell and Bjork had spent nearly $40,000, with almost nothing to show for it. So they auctioned off what inventory they could, paid Amazon to destroy the rest, and got out of the business. “It’s not a passive income; [it’s] a ton of work,” McDowell told me. “We lost all our savings — everything we had.”
I feel a lot better about lazily ignoring those ads for generating Amazon passive income, now.
I’m torn.
I’m in one of life’s more secure positions for the foreseeable future. But as more and more of life turns toward a gig & hustle economy, or back toward one, I think of my younger self and shudder. So in that frame of mind I’m fairly sympathetic to anyone who has to live that life, has to seek and identify opportunities, and isn’t good at it or just picks the wrong horse.
On the other hand, I remember the brief exchange we had here on the deeper intended meaning of that old saying that you can’t cheat an honest man.
What’s the line between a necessary hustle to make a living, because that’s how the economy works now, and trying to make a fast buck without working?
“… a storage fee of 70 cents per cubic foot that increased during the holiday season.”
There’s rip-off number two.