12 ms·

Peddling the ‘Secrets’ to Getting Rich on Amazon

117 points by kyaghmour 8y ago

chunger 8y ago
"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"
- jeklj 8y ago
  > a little bit of hard work Heck, they didn't even want to do that! They did end up working hard (according to them), but the plan was that it would be essentially free money.
joshstrange 8y ago
> 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.
- nzb 8y ago
  I feel like you're replying to a troll comment. Wasted energy. :D
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  It’s a re-hash of the “start an Internet business and make millions of dollars from home” scam [1]. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/10/03/654124255/episode-680-anatomy-of-a-scam https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/10/03/654124255/epis...
  - kposehn 8y ago
    Pretty much. The WFH crews all went to doing amazon instead of affiliate marketing as it has a brand attached to it and makes it easier for them to sell the courses.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >I simply cannot understand people who think like this. Such people are the subject of several Coen Brother movies, including Fargo, Burn After Reading, Ladykillers, and so on... (Not that I don't feel for them though. It sucks to lose your savings, even if you did it by being greedy/stupid).
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  I think the source is zero sum thinking and shallowness of thought. Amazon is profitable while they are not therefore it is Amazon stealing from them. There is a logic there that could be circumstantially correct but is loaded with fallacies and self-serving thinking. Naive economic intuition has proven shockingly bad - especially historically. It is one thing not to grok rate of returns or market direction or make poor investments. Those people would be geniuses compared to historic economic fallacies. We are talking things like the Ancient greeks thinking wealth could only be earned by conquest (logically implying that someone who conquered the entire world and enslaved it would be very rich but would not grow wealthier) and medieval thinking that merchants had to be frauds to sustain themselves given that goods had a value the same everywhere - despite the fact travel was known to be slow risky and expensive meaning just being a transporter is clearly an honest service even with the fallacious universal value assumption. Even if you are a lord who can afford something you may not have the time to travel to exotic locales to buy it directly from the source.
  - hopler 8y ago
    If goods have the same value everywhere, it would be impossible to make money transporting it because transportation costs would make the product cost more than it was worth to the manufacturer and seller.
    - dmix 8y ago
      Yes, that's why the above commenter used it as an example of incorrect medieval economic thinking...
- astura 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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.
  - Regardsyjc 8y ago
    I've been selling on Amazon for the past few years and there is money still to be made. However the landscape is always changing whether the economy or Amazon's own internal plans so for how long, I'm unsure. It's a great place to easily and quickly find customers, build a brand, and launch a company though. I helped turn a sinking Amazon small business around last year. They did a little over $2m revenue. One of our promotions became so viral that we had $2000+ in orders with less than $20 in ad spend within a few hours. In this sense, things are always changing but I don't think it has ever been this easy to start a business with so little. Information changes quickly so you can burn a lot of money on outdated information or pure ignorance. For example, my $2m+ client would probably have failed or were on the verge of failing because they weren't able to adapt to Amazon's increased competition in the last year. They had no idea what keyword ranking was, how to identify keywords, drive traffic, or launch products because they never needed to in the past. Because things change so quickly it is very hard to find experts who maintain their expertise... However once you understand the fundamentals, learn how to surf, riding the Amazon waters gets a lot easier. If you can learn quickly and adapt, Amazon is still a gold mine, some risk involved, but with great payouts.
- southerndrift 8y ago
  > it takes more research, time, and effort all of which they decided was beneath them Or it's above them and they fell victim to a Dunning-Kruger situation?
  - hopler 8y ago
    That's not what Dunning-Kruger is about, so, no. D-K doesn't say ignorant people consider themselves experts.
- theothermkn 8y ago
  It seems like this comment was anticipated in the article: > One of the constant themes is the silent sucker—the person who was taken in but doesn’t want anyone to know,” Balleisen told me. Today’s America is very pro-entrepreneur, anti–big government; many Americans don’t have sympathy for people who lose their money to these kinds of schemes, he said. We celebrate the self-made man who starts a successful business from scratch, but mock the people who get duped trying to do the same thing. No one wants to admit that they’re the only one who can’t make it work.
kup0 8y ago
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 8y ago
  The same BS peddled by people like Gary V and co.
  - icedata 8y ago
    Or DT and co. https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/10/politics/trump-university-settlement-finalized-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/10/politics/trump-university-set...
  - james_s_tayler 8y ago
    lol except he literally works 18 hours a day running a ~1000 person advertising company on Madison Avenue that does hundreds of millions a year in revenue?
- darioush 8y ago
  Actually it seems promising people this BS is a consistently reproducible way to make money on the internet. (just look at the number of options and amount of effort people put into all this) It's a tad bit below my moral standards.
- donarb 8y ago
  And there's always the "get rich by self publishing on Amazon" scheme where you buy the book that tells you how to get rich by self publishing on Amazon and copying and selling it to others.
sct202 8y ago
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.
derekp7 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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 8y ago
      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 8y ago
        The other meme is about efficient markets. What is yours about?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
eutropia 8y ago
There's a reason those guys were selling classes for 4 grand instead of quietly becoming rich following the advice they're selling people.
- duxup 8y ago
  That always reminds me of folks selling gold on TV adverts or selling house lists of great homes to sell. Now granted the gold profit is taking a cut but at the same time for both if they're so sure this is a great investment....
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    Downside protection. Plus if you control enough $$$ you can start controlling the market.
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      I thought it's easier to find openings if you have less money to deploy.
    - seanhunter 8y ago
      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.
maldusiecle 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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.
- mattlondon 8y ago
  Yep I've found this too. That said, Amazon returns service is actually pretty decent one the few times I've had reason to use it. I've never even had to send the items back - they just refund it and suggest ordering again if I want to. Not sure if they'd do that for like a TV or something, but certainly anything under about £50 is an immediate refund with no-questions-asked it seems.
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
> 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.
Johnny555 8y ago
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...)
- snarf21 8y ago
  This is the same thing for all the free seminars you hear on the radio. At best, they already have a position and are running the pump train so they can cash out.
- mattlondon 8y ago
  This is the real "secret" that people seem to totally miss/willfully ignore. 4K is quite a lot for what is essentially pretty obvious stuff that I am sure a weekend of searching around could get you. Caveat emptor
  - bdcravens 8y ago
    Finding information is easy, filtering is the hard part.
    - Johnny555 8y ago
      The problem is that even paying $4000 for a seminar doesn't ensure that you're getting the right information. Even if the speaker at the seminar tells you exactly what he did did, that doesn't mean that his method is still the best or that it will work for you. So yeah, filtering for your situation is the hard part, but you can't rely on someone else to do that filtering unless you're paying him to do it specifically for your situation.
- beauzero 8y ago
  Have helped some >10M year companies sell new, remaindered and used books on Amazon/Ebay 10 out of the last 15 years. ...selling is the easier part. ...shipping quickly and profitably is harder. ...finding profitable inventory is very very difficult.
hourislate 8y ago
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 8y ago
  > 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 8y ago
    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.)
- sidlls 8y ago
  If you treat it like what it is--a business requiring market research, advertisement, and offering products of a quality commensurate with the price--it is possible to run a profitable business on Amazon.
poorman 8y ago
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 8y ago
  Which academy makes the specific promises and claims that you just asserted?
  - poorman 8y ago
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-12-06/want-a-job-in-silicon-valley-keep-away-from-coding-schools https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-12-06/want-a-jo... https://www.quora.com/Are-programming-bootcamps-lying-about-their-average-graduate-salaries https://www.quora.com/Are-programming-bootcamps-lying-about-...
  - sct202 8y ago
    Some of the bootcamps report much more modest salaries ($50k-$70k) to https://cirr.org/data https://cirr.org/data
- mattlondon 8y ago
  I'd argue that coding is more of a skill that people need help starting with, and some hands-on help in the classroom when it comes to issues etc. Books etc are great, but two main issues: if you get stuck it can really help to have a teacher etc to get you back on track, and most importantly (IMO) is you likely need guidance on what to learn and when (i.e. don't attempt to read knuth cover-to-cover before you've even learnt what a while-loop is yet - there are perhaps too many books to chose from unless you have someone with some experience to point you in the right direction). Just even the "how the hell do I get started?!" question (put yourself in the shoes of an absolute newbie with a blank computer - how do you even start programming? Like do you write stuff in MS Word and Save As 'myapp.exe'? Someone entirely new wont know without help) is helped by a classroom situation. Selling stuff on amazon is pretty simple by comparison. Sign up, buy and ship some stuff to their warehouse, click a few buttons to create a listing, then wait for sales. I could 100% imagine my mum working this out on her own, but I see zero-chance of her managing to write "hello world" in javascript on her own without considerable coaching and help.
taude 8y ago
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-expensive-free-watch https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/117-the-worlds-most-ex...
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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."
inuhj 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
blunte 8y ago
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 8y ago
  There is the concept of franchises like McDonalds which seems to go against your point.
  - teej 8y ago
    Franchises don’t sell a way to get rich quick. They sell a job.
    - sct202 8y ago
      Plus you need at least $500k min cash on hand before you can start.
  - nkrisc 8y ago
    Running a franchise seems neither quick nor easy and usually requires a large upfront investment.
    - astura 8y ago
      And since the franchisee is representing the franchise's brand they have incentive to help the franchisee succeed and only accept franchisees that are likely to succeed. Not to mention the franchise collects commission on the franchisee's ongoing sales, not just a lump sum up front and say "you're on your own, have fun." It's quite a different ballgame altogether.
  - wtracy 8y ago
blang 8y ago
I feel they glossed over how these guys and others of their ilk, spam the Apple podcast charts to get in the top 100.
throw7 8y ago
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.
astura 8y ago
>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...
ilamont 8y ago
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.
ada1981 8y ago
>> 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 8y ago
  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-slime-economy https://www.npr.org/2017/10/01/552422040/the-rise-of-the-sli...
  - ada1981 8y ago
    What a rabbit hole that was. Thanks!
- tschwimmer 8y ago
  Hey, this isn't your average industrial waste or household filth... this is handcrafted artisanal slime made in small batches with love and dedication.
megaremote 8y ago
> 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.
james_s_tayler 8y ago
"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.

117 points by kyaghmour 8y ago

"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"

jeklj 8y ago
> a little bit of hard work Heck, they didn't even want to do that! They did end up working hard (according to them), but the plan was that it would be essentially free money.

joshstrange 8y ago

> 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.

nzb 8y ago
I feel like you're replying to a troll comment. Wasted energy. :D
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
It’s a re-hash of the “start an Internet business and make millions of dollars from home” scam [1]. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/10/03/654124255/episode-680-anatomy-of-a-scam https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/10/03/654124255/epis...
- kposehn 8y ago
  Pretty much. The WFH crews all went to doing amazon instead of affiliate marketing as it has a brand attached to it and makes it easier for them to sell the courses.
coldtea 8y ago
>I simply cannot understand people who think like this. Such people are the subject of several Coen Brother movies, including Fargo, Burn After Reading, Ladykillers, and so on... (Not that I don't feel for them though. It sucks to lose your savings, even if you did it by being greedy/stupid).
Nasrudith 8y ago
I think the source is zero sum thinking and shallowness of thought. Amazon is profitable while they are not therefore it is Amazon stealing from them. There is a logic there that could be circumstantially correct but is loaded with fallacies and self-serving thinking. Naive economic intuition has proven shockingly bad - especially historically. It is one thing not to grok rate of returns or market direction or make poor investments. Those people would be geniuses compared to historic economic fallacies. We are talking things like the Ancient greeks thinking wealth could only be earned by conquest (logically implying that someone who conquered the entire world and enslaved it would be very rich but would not grow wealthier) and medieval thinking that merchants had to be frauds to sustain themselves given that goods had a value the same everywhere - despite the fact travel was known to be slow risky and expensive meaning just being a transporter is clearly an honest service even with the fallacious universal value assumption. Even if you are a lord who can afford something you may not have the time to travel to exotic locales to buy it directly from the source.
- hopler 8y ago
  If goods have the same value everywhere, it would be impossible to make money transporting it because transportation costs would make the product cost more than it was worth to the manufacturer and seller.
  - dmix 8y ago
    Yes, that's why the above commenter used it as an example of incorrect medieval economic thinking...
astura 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
- Regardsyjc 8y ago
  I've been selling on Amazon for the past few years and there is money still to be made. However the landscape is always changing whether the economy or Amazon's own internal plans so for how long, I'm unsure. It's a great place to easily and quickly find customers, build a brand, and launch a company though. I helped turn a sinking Amazon small business around last year. They did a little over $2m revenue. One of our promotions became so viral that we had $2000+ in orders with less than $20 in ad spend within a few hours. In this sense, things are always changing but I don't think it has ever been this easy to start a business with so little. Information changes quickly so you can burn a lot of money on outdated information or pure ignorance. For example, my $2m+ client would probably have failed or were on the verge of failing because they weren't able to adapt to Amazon's increased competition in the last year. They had no idea what keyword ranking was, how to identify keywords, drive traffic, or launch products because they never needed to in the past. Because things change so quickly it is very hard to find experts who maintain their expertise... However once you understand the fundamentals, learn how to surf, riding the Amazon waters gets a lot easier. If you can learn quickly and adapt, Amazon is still a gold mine, some risk involved, but with great payouts.
southerndrift 8y ago
> it takes more research, time, and effort all of which they decided was beneath them Or it's above them and they fell victim to a Dunning-Kruger situation?
- hopler 8y ago
  That's not what Dunning-Kruger is about, so, no. D-K doesn't say ignorant people consider themselves experts.
theothermkn 8y ago
It seems like this comment was anticipated in the article: > One of the constant themes is the silent sucker—the person who was taken in but doesn’t want anyone to know,” Balleisen told me. Today’s America is very pro-entrepreneur, anti–big government; many Americans don’t have sympathy for people who lose their money to these kinds of schemes, he said. We celebrate the self-made man who starts a successful business from scratch, but mock the people who get duped trying to do the same thing. No one wants to admit that they’re the only one who can’t make it work.

kup0 8y ago

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 8y ago
The same BS peddled by people like Gary V and co.
- icedata 8y ago
  Or DT and co. https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/10/politics/trump-university-settlement-finalized-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/10/politics/trump-university-set...
- james_s_tayler 8y ago
  lol except he literally works 18 hours a day running a ~1000 person advertising company on Madison Avenue that does hundreds of millions a year in revenue?
darioush 8y ago
Actually it seems promising people this BS is a consistently reproducible way to make money on the internet. (just look at the number of options and amount of effort people put into all this) It's a tad bit below my moral standards.
donarb 8y ago
And there's always the "get rich by self publishing on Amazon" scheme where you buy the book that tells you how to get rich by self publishing on Amazon and copying and selling it to others.

sct202 8y ago

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.

derekp7 8y ago

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 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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 8y ago
      The other meme is about efficient markets. What is yours about?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

eutropia 8y ago

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

duxup 8y ago
That always reminds me of folks selling gold on TV adverts or selling house lists of great homes to sell. Now granted the gold profit is taking a cut but at the same time for both if they're so sure this is a great investment....
maxxxxx 8y ago
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 8y ago
  Downside protection. Plus if you control enough $$$ you can start controlling the market.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    I thought it's easier to find openings if you have less money to deploy.
  - seanhunter 8y ago
    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.

maldusiecle 8y ago

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 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
mattlondon 8y ago
Yep I've found this too. That said, Amazon returns service is actually pretty decent one the few times I've had reason to use it. I've never even had to send the items back - they just refund it and suggest ordering again if I want to. Not sure if they'd do that for like a TV or something, but certainly anything under about £50 is an immediate refund with no-questions-asked it seems.

JustSomeNobody 8y ago

> 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.

Johnny555 8y ago

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...)

snarf21 8y ago
This is the same thing for all the free seminars you hear on the radio. At best, they already have a position and are running the pump train so they can cash out.
mattlondon 8y ago
This is the real "secret" that people seem to totally miss/willfully ignore. 4K is quite a lot for what is essentially pretty obvious stuff that I am sure a weekend of searching around could get you. Caveat emptor
- bdcravens 8y ago
  Finding information is easy, filtering is the hard part.
  - Johnny555 8y ago
    The problem is that even paying $4000 for a seminar doesn't ensure that you're getting the right information. Even if the speaker at the seminar tells you exactly what he did did, that doesn't mean that his method is still the best or that it will work for you. So yeah, filtering for your situation is the hard part, but you can't rely on someone else to do that filtering unless you're paying him to do it specifically for your situation.
beauzero 8y ago
Have helped some >10M year companies sell new, remaindered and used books on Amazon/Ebay 10 out of the last 15 years. ...selling is the easier part. ...shipping quickly and profitably is harder. ...finding profitable inventory is very very difficult.

hourislate 8y ago

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 8y ago
> 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 8y ago
  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.)
sidlls 8y ago
If you treat it like what it is--a business requiring market research, advertisement, and offering products of a quality commensurate with the price--it is possible to run a profitable business on Amazon.

poorman 8y ago

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 8y ago
Which academy makes the specific promises and claims that you just asserted?
- poorman 8y ago
  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-12-06/want-a-job-in-silicon-valley-keep-away-from-coding-schools https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-12-06/want-a-jo... https://www.quora.com/Are-programming-bootcamps-lying-about-their-average-graduate-salaries https://www.quora.com/Are-programming-bootcamps-lying-about-...
- sct202 8y ago
  Some of the bootcamps report much more modest salaries ($50k-$70k) to https://cirr.org/data https://cirr.org/data
mattlondon 8y ago
I'd argue that coding is more of a skill that people need help starting with, and some hands-on help in the classroom when it comes to issues etc. Books etc are great, but two main issues: if you get stuck it can really help to have a teacher etc to get you back on track, and most importantly (IMO) is you likely need guidance on what to learn and when (i.e. don't attempt to read knuth cover-to-cover before you've even learnt what a while-loop is yet - there are perhaps too many books to chose from unless you have someone with some experience to point you in the right direction). Just even the "how the hell do I get started?!" question (put yourself in the shoes of an absolute newbie with a blank computer - how do you even start programming? Like do you write stuff in MS Word and Save As 'myapp.exe'? Someone entirely new wont know without help) is helped by a classroom situation. Selling stuff on amazon is pretty simple by comparison. Sign up, buy and ship some stuff to their warehouse, click a few buttons to create a listing, then wait for sales. I could 100% imagine my mum working this out on her own, but I see zero-chance of her managing to write "hello world" in javascript on her own without considerable coaching and help.

taude 8y ago

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-expensive-free-watch https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/117-the-worlds-most-ex...

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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."

inuhj 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.

blunte 8y ago

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 8y ago
There is the concept of franchises like McDonalds which seems to go against your point.
- teej 8y ago
  Franchises don’t sell a way to get rich quick. They sell a job.
  - sct202 8y ago
    Plus you need at least $500k min cash on hand before you can start.
- nkrisc 8y ago
  Running a franchise seems neither quick nor easy and usually requires a large upfront investment.
  - astura 8y ago
    And since the franchisee is representing the franchise's brand they have incentive to help the franchisee succeed and only accept franchisees that are likely to succeed. Not to mention the franchise collects commission on the franchisee's ongoing sales, not just a lump sum up front and say "you're on your own, have fun." It's quite a different ballgame altogether.
- wtracy 8y ago

blang 8y ago

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

throw7 8y ago

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.

astura 8y ago

>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...

ilamont 8y ago

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.

ada1981 8y ago

>> 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 8y ago
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-slime-economy https://www.npr.org/2017/10/01/552422040/the-rise-of-the-sli...
- ada1981 8y ago
  What a rabbit hole that was. Thanks!
tschwimmer 8y ago
Hey, this isn't your average industrial waste or household filth... this is handcrafted artisanal slime made in small batches with love and dedication.

megaremote 8y ago

> 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.

james_s_tayler 8y ago

"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.