Add money or cut losses? The dilemma facing small Amazon sellers

Facing the midlife crisis, prepare in advance

After graduating from college, I worked my way through some detours and finally stayed in a company as a front-end developer. The life of a programmer is just as everyone imagines, a boring and frustrating job.

And as I got older, I had to consider how to face a very serious problem that many programmers would encounter: my physical strength and energy were no longer comparable to those of new employees. In the process of fighting against bugs day and night, I was definitely getting worse and worse than the new employees, which meant I was facing the problem of losing competitiveness.

In this situation, I can either be promoted to a senior technical position or be transferred to a management position. But I know very well that I am not good at interpersonal communication and it is difficult for me to make further progress in technology. So I am not too old, but I have already started to consider some side jobs last year, hoping that I can be a backup when I face the mid-life unemployment crisis.

At the beginning, I also tried a lot, selling some DIY headphones, outsourcing the front end, including Amazon, etc. In the end, only some of the work I did on Amazon paid off. Although the others did not lose much money, the energy (hair) I put in was wasted.

Because I also like DIY and know a lot about it, I started selling tools needed for DIY on Amazon. The craft culture in the United States is stronger than here, so I am optimistic about the tool market.

Facts have proved that this can indeed be done. Because of my front-end work, I mastered Amazon's backend quite quickly. Combined with some skills I learned on forums and posts at the time, after I selected a few models and uploaded them, I kept an eye on the traffic every day and occasionally changed the words. I got my first order in less than a month.

Because it was a personal plan of self-delivery and there was no platform fee, I didn’t make much from the first order, but it was also net income and I felt quite fulfilled. So I gradually gave up several other side jobs and put all my spare time into Amazon.

The midlife crisis hasn’t come yet, but the sideline crisis has come first

After shipping a few orders by myself, I contacted some foreign friends who I usually play games with or exchange DIY experiences with, and asked them to help write a few reviews for the products. I also sent them a few products and asked them to try them out and give me some real experience.

Then I found an agent to register a company and turned my Amazon account into a professional seller. I selected a few products with good feedback and sent a small amount of FBA. Whether it was shipping products, registering a company or preparing goods, I used my savings accumulated over the years without discussing it with my family.

After FBA was put into the warehouse, it was pretty smooth. It was indeed a lot more traffic than when I shipped by myself, and I could get about two or three orders a day. Although I didn’t make much money, it was considered that my side business was starting to get on track. But at this time, my first hurdle came.

It was a weekday. When I checked the store on my mobile phone during the day, it was normal. But when I got home in the evening, I found that the sales had been suspended. I quickly checked my email and then checked on the forum. It turned out that I had encountered the second review of the store.

At the same time, I also knew that a water and electricity bill was needed to pass the review, but when I sent the water and electricity bill from the agency, it failed to pass the review. I was actually a little panicked at the time, and after asking around and asking the big guys in the forum, I found out that the water and electricity bill must be issued by a state-owned institution.

At this time, the problem with the agent came up. They insisted that they had no idea there was such a bill. No matter what I said or how I showed them other people's bills, they just shamelessly said they couldn't get it out.

I definitely couldn't give up on a store that finally started to grow and still had some inventory. Fortunately, my front-end work allowed me to meet many coders and photo editors, and I ended up using a meal at Haidilao to have a photo editor billed and approved.

I managed to get through this crisis without any major problems. Fortunately, the second review took place when sales were not that high, otherwise I would have been in big trouble for the delayed sales in the past few days. After this experience, I learned a lesson and will repeatedly confirm various details with any service provider when looking for one.

One wave has not yet subsided, another wave rises

After the last crisis, the store grew steadily for a while. I opened several groups of ads and also signed up for some LD activities. During this period, I could basically get more than ten orders a day, and the products I signed up for LD could run 20 to 30. Because I also had income from my main business, I lived a pretty good life during this period.

As the number of orders increased, the number of product reviews naturally increased. Most of them were good four or five stars, but there were also some different voices that pointed out some problems with the tool handles. At that time, I was overwhelmed by the increase in orders and did not pay too much attention to this issue.

This time bomb exploded in the middle of this year. I received an AZ complaint about quality. The customer was scratched by the handle. Although I know that the design of the handle is somewhat unreasonable, it is far from the extent of scratching. It must be that the customer used it in the wrong way or made some other mistakes. However, the scratch happened. Although the customer did not ask for further compensation, Amazon still removed my main product from the shelves.

After multiple appeals, I still failed. I could only remove or relabel hundreds of pieces of inventory (worth about 20,000 yuan). I was really in a dilemma: should I give up completely? Or should I invest in a relocation fee to save the product and continue selling it? If I continue selling it, will there be more complaints/bad reviews?

Whether I give up the stop loss or continue to invest, this money is all my hard-earned money. This loss taught me a good lesson that product quality is really the most important of all factors. I hope my experience can help other sellers. Be sure to check the quality when selecting products.