Peddling the 'Secrets' to Getting Rich on Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/men-peddling-secrets-getting-rich-amazon/578443/ <comment><USER3> > 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.

<comment><USER4> 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.

<comment><USER5> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 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...)

<comment><USER7> +1 but to be honest, I wouldn't consider Levi Strauss jeans to be a luxury good.

<comment><USER8> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 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.

<comment><USER10> 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.

<comment><USER11> 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..."

<comment><USER12> 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."

<comment><USER13> The other meme is about efficient markets.

What is yours about?

<comment><USER14> competitive advantage

<comment><USER13> Hmm, I still don't get it, can someone explain?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 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.

<comment><USER16> _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.

<comment><USER17> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There's a reason those guys were selling classes for 4 grand instead of quietly becoming rich following the advice they're selling people.

<comment><USER19> 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?

<comment><USER20> Downside protection.

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

<comment><USER21> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "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 - <USER2> 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.

</comment><comment><USER23> 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.

<comment><USER24> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >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...

</comment><comment><USER25> 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"?

<comment><USER26> Which academy makes the specific promises and claims that you just asserted?

<comment><USER25> [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)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "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"

</comment><comment><USER28> 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.

</comment><comment><USER29> 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.

</comment><comment><USER30> 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)

<comment><USER31> 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.

<comment><USER4> 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."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > 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.

</comment><comment><USER33> 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.

</comment><comment><USER34> > 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.

</comment><comment><USER35> 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.

<comment><USER26> > 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.

<comment><USER36> 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.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I feel they glossed over how these guys and others of their ilk, spam the Apple podcast charts to get in the top 100.

</comment><comment><USER38> >> 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!

<comment><USER39> 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)

<comment><USER38> What a rabbit hole that was. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> 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.

<comment><USER41> There is the concept of franchises like McDonalds which seems to go against your point.

<comment><USER42> Franchises don't sell a way to get rich quick. They sell a job.

<comment><USER33> Plus you need at least $500k min cash on hand before you can start.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> 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.

<comment><USER44> The same BS peddled by people like Gary V and co.

<comment><USER45> 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)</comment></comment></comment>


German police raid "Cyberbunker 2.0" and arrest seven - <AUTHOR> https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/09/german-cops-raid-cyberbunker-2-0-arrest-7-in-child-porn-dark-web-market-sting/ <comment><USER2> >nefarious purposes, including human trafficking, and drug trafficking.

I'm sorry for this comment, but I really hate how this article lumps together drugs with child, human traficking.

Big Pharma spends millions lobbying to keep marijuana prohibition a thing so they can protect their profits. Not because they are altruists. Insulin is expensive in the US because of a crony government-corporate racket. Profit is the motive here.

At least thankfully there are some things which are so repulsive that we can't allow it. Human misery and death apparently doesn't always cross that line, but at least we prosecute and investigate child predators. I guess unless they're Jeffrey Epstein--then somehow it's still hard to see that through without him being suicided. Such a clown world with so many garbage people.

</comment><comment><USER3> Related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21091597](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21091597)</comment>