Amazon gold rush

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Updated: July 21st, 2022

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Amazon gold rush

Can Amazon keep growing?

Short answer: Yup.

In 2021, its revenue was $469B -> 67% up from the previous year. Yeah, you read that right.

Thus, the Amazon gold rush is still alive and strong. There are over 9M sellers on Amazon. And they just keep coming.

You can chase that Amazon gold. And you may just find it. But there’s a different opportunity to make money in the Amazon economy and it’s as big as the biggest seller on the platform: sell the picks and shovels.

Amazon is so big, you can make millions finding little niches and being the best in the world at them.

Here are just a few ideas:

#1. Create kickass product listings

A poorly written description, low-quality images, or not using the right keywords can bury a product on the last page of every search.

This guy makes $720K/year writing Amazon product descriptions.

#2. Handle shipping and logistics

Dealing with shipments from a garage has risks and being late often can kill a business.

This immigrant entrepreneur built a $60M/year fulfillment business.

#3. Master inventory management

Getting an order and realizing you don’t have stock of that product or taking too long to order a new batch can also cause major dealy problems.

These founders grew their business to $6M/year in 3 years helping Amazon sellers with their inventory.

#4. PPC ads campaigns

Many sellers just start advertising without any kind of strategy. That’s a recipe for wasting a lot of money.

This agency makes $12K/month running PPC ads campaigns.

#5. Video killed the photo star

Did you know that people who watch a product video are 3.6x more likely to buy the product? Hard to find a better selling point for your service than that.

This company grew to $360K/year by making incredible product videos for e-commerce businesses.

#6. Data analysis

Once a seller has more than a couple of listings, managing and understanding all the information that Amazon provides can be daunting. Especially for someone who’s already struggling with everything else.

This plugin for sellers on Merch By Amazon (see how niche is possible to go?) makes $120K/year.

Another example: This Google Sheets add-on that connects with Amazon Seller Central grew from $8K/month to $23K/month in one year.

Finally, you could take the 360º route and create an agency that tackles several of these issues. This successful seller used his expertise to start an $80K/month business that helps other Amazon sellers.

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$tock images

3.2 billion images are shared daily on the Internet.

There’s a never-ending need for images. Every blog post, almost every social media update, etc needs an image.

The stock photo market generates a $4 billion revenue and grows 5% per year.

That 5% growth can go to the ~30 dominant players’ pockets. OR some fresh competition can try to get some of it.

This guy decided he wanted a piece of the cake and started a ShutterStock competitor that now has 1.4M customers.

When the demand is so huge, don’t get discouraged by the presence of big competitors. They can’t please everyone, which means there’s value left to capture. Read opinions and tweets about what people don’t like about those services and make it better.

Small players can launch and grow within this space, see other examples:

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Quick hitters

(1) This weird apparel creation makes $1.2M/year in sales. What if you bred sweatpants with overalls? That’s actually a great recipe for DTC brands to succeed: originality.

More examples? This Apple watch accessory makes $200K/month, this mystery game reached $5M/month in sales.

(2) This travel Chrome extension topped the AppStore charts. A really underappreciated kind of business that has been the seed of huge companies like Grammarly.

Want to see how others built great businesses in this space? This plugin reached 250K users, this guy makes $360K/year with a Chrome extension that hacks the Instagram and TikTok algorithm, and this extension for Amazon sellers makes $120K/year.

Thanks for reading!

meet the author

David Bustos

Hey there! 👋 I'm David, and if you ever got an email from Starter Story, I probably wrote it. With a background in working with startups and writing, being part of this team is kind of a perfect fit for me.

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Amazon gold rush

$tock images

Quick hitters