In my opinion, yes, Amazon is a

online juggernaut monopoly. But

he's on primetime TV though with Tucker Carlson. He's not going to say anything negative about

Amazon. As soon as they find out who he is, they're like, yeah, you deleted your accounts

Amazon decides what you charge for your products. And if you don't

obey, they will shut you down in the most passive, aggressive corporate

This is true. I sell my product on Amazon at a higher price

point, hence why I lose the buy box. I actually want people to buy my

product from my other platform. I'm

Matthew Fraser and this is Amazon Ecom

Secrets. I'll be sharing with you the secrets that helped me go from

millions in debt to an eight-figure entrepreneur. If

you're ready to escape the nine-to-five and live life on your terms,

let me show you the way. Hey guys, welcome to Amazon Ecom Secrets. My name

is Matthew Fraser. In today's episode, we're going to be watching a

video and getting my reaction to what is going

on. I can see from the outset, from the screen, it's just about to roll. It's the first

time I've seen this video. It's my good old friend, Tucker Carlson,

one of my favorites. And I will say just from the outset too, Tucker, mate, what

are you doing with that green tie against a blue gingham

shirt? That's a big no-no. Some of his ties

and shirts combinations are a bit questionable, but I don't

know, maybe it's an American thing. But in any case, I love

Buying products on Amazon.com is a little bit like masturbation. Not everybody

admits to it, but honestly, you suspect it's pretty common. It's just so easy. But

what exactly does Amazon.com do? How did Jeff Bezos get so rich? The details

are unknown to most people, even frequent users of the site. Well, a new documentary takes a

closer look at what Amazon does at its business practices and what those

practices do to the people who try to make a living selling their products on the site. The documentary is

called Amazon Market Power Monopoly. So the filmmakers interview Amazon

Already this is going to be interesting because as you know, I'm an Amazon seller,

been on Amazon space for now, since 2017. I

have heard of questionable things happening in Amazon. I

haven't been at the mercy perhaps of some of them, but let's see

Practices due to the people who try to make a living selling their products on the site. The

documentary is called Amazon Market Power Monopoly.

So the filmmakers interview Amazon sellers who say they are barely keeping

their heads above water because of the company's policies. Those

policies tell them exactly how much they can charge for their own products. So

take a look at this clip from the movie. It shows a German businessman who

makes and sells children's beds and does nearly all of his business on

Amazon.com. He says the company puts pressure on him to

keep his prices as low as possible to keep customers from

buying that same product on another site, such as eBay. If

Amazon finds out that he's selling his products cheaper on another site

like eBay, they will punish him by making his products very

hard to find on Amazon. They do this by taking away

This is true. Now, I will say this has happened

to me. I wasn't sure about what questionable things he

was going to refer to, but this one, It has happened to

me i sell a multiple platforms amazon ebay

shopify i have a tie through facebook and google and

i sell on multiple platforms around

the world like a lot of multiple amazon platforms and ebay and

yes quite often. I will lose the

buy box because I do sell the product elsewhere. Amazon

do want me to sell, and it makes sense. I can understand. They're like, hey, we're going

to provide you this Amazon platform. We want you to sell your product

at the cheapest possible price. for the consumer, obviously.

There's pros and cons, I guess. For starters, Amazon

has a massive amount of customers coming to their platform, so you'd

want to try and take advantage of that customer base by

having a good price point. I'm talking in my

product, the difference is $10 between one to the other, so $59 compared

to $69. I sell my product on Amazon at a higher price

point, hence why I lose the buy box. because I

actually want people to buy my product from my other platform, which

is actually my Shopify store, because then I don't pay a certain amount of fees. But

look, I see where they're coming from. Let's keep listening to what Tucker has to say and

What is called his buy box. The buy box is

the area you click on the product page to make a purchase. If

there's no buy box, customers tend to leave and buy

it somewhere else. That sounds confusing. Watch

His most important online shop window at Amazon? The so-called

So this whole box here, that's just called the buy box, and

you can see the add to cart button here. And if I click

on it now, then I have this in the shopping cart and I can buy the

But Marko Schock can also lose the buy box for his beds. For

That means for me, with Buybox, I can sell. Without Buybox,

Who gets the Buybox is decided by Amazon alone. Marco

I'm going to change the price to 349 euros. And

we will see that in about 15 minutes, the Buybox here is

And indeed, after 15 minutes, the buy box has disappeared. For

customers, it now seems as if the item is not available at the

In other words, Amazon decides what you charge for

your products, and if you don't obey, they will shut you down, but in

the most passive, aggressive, corporate way. They just remove your

buy box. It's fasting, and there's a lot like that in

this film. It goes on to follow the business of a man called Molson Hart. He's

the CEO of an educational toy company that does most of its business on

Amazon. The film crew was there when Hart learned that Amazon

would once again raise its fees on him. So

We are probably gonna have to raise prices. So

what they, what Amazon did is they increased

all the fulfillment fees by about 5%. So

if you look over here, we got

an email, shipping brain flakes is going to

I just want to jump in here because look,

Amazon's increased the fees, but this I don't think is directly

because of Amazon, right? There's

so much within the business context that I don't know if this guy knows about. And

I'm not saying that Amazon could obviously absorb these

fees in their profit margins, but they're obviously going to make a profit too, because

they're also a publicly traded company. But there's things like

wages in Australia, wages, superannuation, payroll

tax, electricity. Obviously, these huge warehouses in

FBA, Amazon FBA, cost an absolute fortune to run

and operate. So you've got all these costs.

And this all stems from just the economy as a whole. In

Australia, we've got Albonomics here, kindly brought

to you by Anthony Albanese. Prices have gone up 25% in

some cases in the last three years on certain things. So that

ultimately gets passed on. The problem with any type of business, and

I'm in the same category as well, I haven't been able to put my prices up.

And it's not because I haven't been able to, it just hasn't seemed to

be It'd be very hard for me to increase the price because it

almost puts it at a point where it wouldn't make it

right, I guess, for the consumer to pay that price. They might say, yeah, it's too much.

This guy here selling these toy products would probably be

in a very similar situation, too. The difference, I guess,

with his is he's got a range

of toy products which would be very,

very hard to compete against other people because

they'd be a shit ton. of toy products probably very

similar to his. So he puts his price up, he's now not competitive with

the other seller. Now that would be, this is where it's

very difficult when you're competing against Chinese manufacturers and

Chinese sellers, because the Chinese aren't

exactly known for increasing wages and

paying superannuation. So this becomes the ultimate problem.

We want to live in a country where we're paid a decent amount of money. We want to

contribute towards our superannuation, which is actually dictated

by the government. And I've got a whole other

episode I could essentially do on why I think even

the labor force should be more of a free market system. But

anyway, in Australia, there's laws that tell me what

I need to pay staff, whether I

like it or not. China, not so much.

So therefore, they can make goods

at a much cheaper price is what I'm getting at. So they will be able

to undercut this guy because already we know he's in America. America's

got Sort of high wages compared to China. So

he's put at a global disadvantage so

in a nutshell before I continue What I would say is

you need to find products where you can compete on a global level maybe

that's through some of the digital type products that I have mentioned in

some of my other episodes before such as Kindle books or YouTube channels

where you don't have a an inventory that

you have to manufacture and or manage within

your own country. It's all digital, which can then be outsourced. And this, I'm

gonna go and rub a hole now, but this goes back to having

a global market of people. Now, if

you're in a space where you can outsource things to foreigners, people

in India, Pakistan, China, who

are working on digital type things, whether it's content creation,

et cetera, well, they're gonna be cheaper. Right? And

so this comes back to then you're not going to give it to someone who's based

in Australia because it would be probably 20 times more

expensive to get it done in Australia than it would be overseas. And considering all

you have to use is the internet, it makes it unviable

to use someone in Australia. And so that becomes the downside

of dictating from a government level what you need to pay

In order to keep our profits at the same level, we're going to have to raise the price by,

you know, 50 cents. So maybe we're going to go to $17.99, up

The problem, if he increases on

Amazon, he must also increase the prices of his products on

eBay, Walmart, and even in his own web store, although

they are not affected by the fee increase. If he doesn't do that, experience

Oh, so it's not really a free market tactic. If

they're forcing you to raise your prices on other platforms, it's

a monopoly tactic, and there's a difference. That's not the free

market you just saw. That's how monopolies operate. Molson

Hart knows that very well. He's lived it. He's the man you just saw in that clip, and he joins us

now. Molson Hart, thanks for joining us. The clip we just played is

Yeah, that's absolutely a fair representation of our life as

If your products are cheaper off Amazon than

they are on Amazon, then you lose all your sales

on Amazon, which is a big problem for us because 90% of our

So what you're saying, I think, is that Amazon sets the

price market-wide, not just on its own site, but

In a way, that's true, right? So if you look at the statistics, and a

lot of people have different statistics out there, Amazon controls

roughly 50% of the whole online e-commerce market,

depending on how you calculate it. And for us, since 90% of

our sales come from Amazon, and since Amazon is

more expensive to sell on, than other platforms like

eBay, Walmart, or even our own website. Amazon, in

a way, kind of does set the price. Because if we price our

products lower off of Amazon, because those off

Amazon platforms are cheaper than Amazon, we

lose 90% of our sales on Amazon. So

we have to constantly keep our prices up

off Amazon. And we can't lower our prices on

Amazon to the costs off Amazon because then

And this becomes a problem with, I guess, operating on a big platform like

Amazon. Yes, I see what the guy's saying about, you know,

it's a monopoly. The alternative is don't

sell on Amazon. Now, the problem with saying that is that Amazon, like you just said,

is 50% of the marketplace, the online marketplace,

you know, combined with everything else combined and then there's Amazon, right? Like

eBay, Walmart, Shopify websites is 50% here,

and then there's Amazon alone 50%. And so you could potentially

be missing out on a lot of sales. But

if you don't like the system, don't be part of the system. No one's forcing anybody

to go and be on Amazon. I

always say this guys, I'm not married to Amazon.

I'm just married to the platforms that will help me make sales, whether

that's Amazon or not. In

my experience, Amazon has been a huge success for

me and I've done millions and millions of dollars on Amazon. So

you just have to do your own numbers. But let's keep seeing what

Because Amazon is more expensive to sell on. to

It's fascinating. So

if you don't want to use Amazon and up till now you haven't had much of a choice because

it's effectively a monopoly, well, now you don't have to because there's

an option. A new service made for you, it's called Public Square,

This actually just led right into that, you know, Tucker was talking about

Public Square, exactly what I was talking about before, which was you don't have to be on Amazon,

but what is the alternative? Well, interesting. Now Tucker's talking

about this new platform called Public Square. Now, it

sounds good in theory. I mean, there's already other platforms you can use,

such as eBay, such as Walmart, right, or your own website. But

this is the problem. Are there going to be people,

as in consumers, coming to Public Square to shop? So

unless Public Square becomes the dominant place

where people can go to to shop, then there's going

to be no point, right? Because you're going to have to either stay on Amazon or

stick to your traditional digital platforms now, like

eBay. But let's see how Public Square goes. I've

never even heard of Public Square. That's the first time I've heard of it right

now from Tucker's mouth. So let's see how they go. I tell you,

I would definitely like to use a different platform. And I guess the way

they're going to get sellers like myself onto that

platform is to have cheaper fees than what Amazon

The primary way they do it is basically by using an algorithm that

just like scrapes the entire internet, looking at prices on Walmart,

looking at prices on eBay. And in the video that

you showed in the documentary, that's how Amazon was

able to shut down that person's product so fast, within 15 minutes. So

the algorithm is kind of like monitoring the whole internet to see if prices are

higher or lower on and off Amazon. And it might

also be possible for there used to be like a button on pages on

Amazon where consumers could report like a better price elsewhere. So

there might be like a human component as well. But it's

I'm going to stop it here. There is possibly a way around

this issue, because the only way Amazon is going to

know if you are selling that exact product on another platform

is through some of the data that's on there. For example, barcoding.

So there is potentially a way for you to have your

product differentiated through the barcode. So you have one

barcode you're selling on eBay at a certain price and

use a different barcode, same product though, on

Amazon. And I wonder if that would trick the

algorithm into thinking it's a different product and then not matching

them together to then shut you down potentially through

the buy box. Because theoretically, The barcode that

you're using for Amazon would only be used for Amazon and therefore it

couldn't be matched with any other product and therefore you

would always have a buy box. Let me know in the comments if

that is something that you guys do if you're watching this. I'd love

But they know when you've been sleeping, they know when you're awake. I mean, it's like

they're part of the surveillance data. I mean, you wouldn't imagine, because

you're selling on Amazon, that Amazon would be watching your behavior in other places, right?

yeah to my mind it's totally unnecessary and there's there's

no need for this policy um they used to contractually enforce

this so there used to be a line in the contract that sellers signed

with amazon that would say that you would not sell your products for less off

amazon and then there was like kind of like a regulatory kerfuffle

in europe um And they ended up removing that from

their contracts, but then they maintained the policy algorithmically.

And in 2019, I wrote an

article about it. And I can kind of explain why

it's so hard to get these kind of narratives about Amazon. But

I wrote an article about it. And that article ended up getting wrapped up into some

into like an FTC lawsuit, the state of California versus Amazon. And

Just back up a sentence, if you would. What do you mean it's so hard to get that

So like, as I said, right, 90% of our sales come from

Amazon, right? And no one in their right mind, like

wants to bite the hand that feeds them, right? So the people who

know most about Amazon are the sellers who are selling on

Amazon, like, like my company, right? And so when

people speak up, you're taking some risk. I

try to be fair, regardless of whether or not I'm being critical of their policies. I

think they're a good company with great people with some bad policies.

So don't want to bite the hand that feeds you. And then the second thing is my

company, all companies that sell on Amazon, they

sign a contract that says that you're not going to make public statements about Amazon.

You're not going to speak to the press without express

written permission from Amazon. So those

are two reasons for the people who know most about Amazon

to not speak about Amazon. And then you also have to remember that

Amazon is like really big in the documentary media space because Amazon

has its own Netflix, right? They have Prime Video, they have their own Hulu. So

if you want to make a documentary about Amazon, you have to like think carefully about

you know, what's that going to do to your career going forward? I'm

not saying Amazon does this, but, you know, you may not be able to sell a film

or documentary to Amazon in the future. And so, you know,

those are the reasons why it's kind of hard to get this information out there.

Uh, defense department, like the Department of Defense or

You're describing a company that's a lot, and of course we

all sort of know this on some level, but that's a lot more powerful and

a lot more willing to flex its power than maybe some of us imagined just

We can guarantee that Amazon has a massive legal

team. And you know what he talked about then

about, you know, you've signed this waiver to say you're not going to say anything.

I've never even seen that because like most sellers, the document

that you have to tick to say you agree with is about 3 bazillion pages

of like legal jargon. And essentially what

you're saying is, yes, I'm happy to sell on this platform and anything you do against this

platform, then, you know, you're out. You know, make sure you pay

your fees and what have you. So again, Amazon's

not forcing people to be on their platform, but

what I would really strongly do, and it has been a

bit of a minefield for myself as well, navigating some of

the policies regarding, particularly in my space, which is healthcare

space. And don't forget too, Amazon also changed their

policies ongoing. So here's just

a quick example. Someone who I used to work with who was

in my mastermind, former mastermind, had

a product on Amazon, and she said that her product

had no pesticides. But the algorithm picked it up

as having pesticides, even though she'd written no pesticides. So

she was banned. Her listing was taken down. It went through.

It was at least six months of backwards and forwards

with Amazon to try and get it resolved before her product and listing got back live

again. but pretty much just completely deflated

her. So those are some of the issues that pop up. I've had

multiple, multiple suspensions myself from

various different things. But I tell you what, you gotta just keep pushing through

and find ways around policies. And

I guess talk to people like myself who have done it before, because

we can share some of that insight if that's something that you're gonna do. All

right, but if you've got some insight yourself about some tricks that you've

been able to pull on Amazon, put them in the comments below.

You never know where these things are going, Melson Hart. But I just wonder,

since you obviously have thought about this in larger terms because you've been involved

or a witness to these lawsuits, I mean, isn't this, aren't we

approaching the definition of a monopoly? So a business is

something that controls its silo, you know, where it operates. A monopoly is

a business that controls an entire market. And

kind of what you're describing is a company that controls

Before he says his answer, I want to give my response to Tucker's

question, which is that in my opinion, yes,

Amazon is a online juggernaut monopoly.

But there's so many things in

this world, including the taxation system, the government, all

three levels of government that have restrictions, taxes, laws,

bylaws, compliance. banking the

compliance in banking is outrageous and

The only thing I feel that we can do as little tiny

sheeples in this whole system is to

navigate the system as best we can. For example,

I use an accountant so that I can navigate the taxation system

and pay as little tax as legally possible in

this system. I'm currently investing in a lot

of Bitcoin because in my opinion, Bitcoin is

outside the system and I want to play outside

of this system. But unfortunately, as

the sheeples that we are, and I say that tongue in

cheek, we're trying not to be, but we've got to play within

the framework that we're born into. But

we do our best to try and navigate through it, around it.

And as I always say, Amazon is a platform

to be used at your discretion if you can. Just

use the system to make profit and then get out. That's

my that's my two cents on this matter

We're trying to do the best we can but we're also trying

to get out of the matrix All

I bet he says it is Amazon with its

way and the way that they keep on jamming fees down

sellers throats and This isn't just about me as someone

who sells on Amazon complaining about Amazon's fees. These fees end

up becoming higher prices for you if you shop on Amazon. I

don't want to say that they control pricing on the entire American

internet or the countries where they operate, but they're pretty fifth

He's on primetime TV though. He's not going to say anything negative about

Amazon, right? Because they're obviously watching this show. And as soon as

they find out who he is, they're like, yeah, you deleted. Your account's gone. Sorry.

Sorry. That was a glitch. 20 years later. Still haven't fixed

Because I don't want to get smacked by Amazon. I mean, I don't. But

The Amazon's got great people. They're amazing. They're an

amazing company. And, uh, but they suck. They

suck in there and they're not, they're not a monopoly. Okay. Okay.

All right. Look, the poor guy, he's probably, there's probably a gun that's

literally just off stage that is just pointing to his head and

it says, say, you know, that's a nice suit.

Sure. It'd be a shame to get blood all over it. That's a nice

Amazon account you got there where you're making a million dollars

a year. Sure, it'd be bad if something algorithmic, technical happened

Some bad policies and I think the best outcome would be

I wrote an open letter to Jeff Bezos on Twitter. It got some play.

I think he read it because he's responded to me on Twitter before or

X, I should say. Um, and I, you

know, I think it would just be better if they ended the bad policies rather than,

you know, potentially being broken up or something like that. But again, that's not really for

Well, they're not gonna, I mean, he owns the Washington Post, which

is the main news source in the capital city. So

I don't think they're gonna be broken up anytime soon. And I suspect the Post would editorialize against

Um, so let me just say... Mental note, must

ask you since it's your business, since you're in this business, who makes money

Amazon? Yeah. So, like,

for us, right, so we have a, one of our best sellers is

BrainFlakes. I got my prop. It's $17, okay? Right.

On Amazon right now. And after all the fees are

I'm going to stop interject on this dude right now. I

would say to, well, I would never let

any of my students sell a product on Amazon

for $17, right? Because I know he's going

to say $17, he's got his cost of goods, then he's got his shipping, then he's got the Amazon

fees, then he's got to do advertising. Yeah, he hasn't got enough fat

in it to make money. In my case, I

had enough fat in my product to make money. So he's, I hate

to say it, but from a business point of view, he's actually just chosen the

wrong product. If this is what he's going to say, I guarantee he's going to say he's hardly

Out of the $17. Okay, so it's $17 on Amazon.

After the fees are paid, we receive seven. With that $7, we

have to pay rent, insurance, all employees,

So he's saying he's made a $7 gross

profit, which would be totally fine if he

could sell 10,000 of those a day, right?

$7 times 10,000, $70,000 a day profit. Then he can take away

his wages and his warehouse and whatever else he's paying. Totally

fine. Let me say this. If you're selling something for

$3 and you can say, yeah, but I've got a 50% profit margin, you've only got $1.50 profit margin.

Which is nothing okay, so the dollar amount needs to be also substantial

Plus the turnover now his problem is that he's got a what

I would call a small dollar amount profit margin And

he's not got the volume right because like I said if he was selling 10,000 a

day Even if it was if he was selling a thousand a day We're

talking $7,000 a day profit. But obviously,

he can't get the volume on that type of product. And it's not probably, I

would say, it's not because of Amazon's fault. It's just that type of product doesn't

demand that type of volume. So he needs to choose a

better product with higher margin. Well,

not even higher margin. Even if it's the same margin. high price point

to give him a high dollar profit, and

also a product that's perhaps in higher demand as well. Or

he perhaps needs to cut back on his costs. I mean, I actually don't even have my

own warehouses. That's why I use Amazon warehouses, so I don't have to pay for

my own rent. I don't even have really staff, to

be honest. He's talking about he's got staff and all sorts of things.

So, you know, even as my sales increased to,

you know, a million dollars, millions and millions a month I was doing in revenue,

I didn't increase my overheads. I didn't go and get a warehouse and

get staff and, you know, lots of stuff. I kept it really thin.

So no matter where my sales

are, my, my bottom line or my overheads

are very low, right? I didn't increase my overheads just because my

sales increased. So when it does decrease, you're all good. In this

case, even if his profit margin

decreases because Amazon's increasing his fees, he wouldn't really get into

shit. But in this case, he is. So my point is that I

Wait, so the $10 you're subtracting from the $17 does not

Correct. Yeah, so you start at $17, $10 of

Would you mind? Because that's a crazy number. Yeah, let's do it.

OK. Yeah, do you want me to break down how we get to

I mean, wait, hold on. I'm just, I'm a little bit surprised. I mean, I thought they took a

VIG of some kind, and they should. They're selling your product for you. That's great. But

the fact that they would take the majority of

Well, it's more than the majority. And you have to remember

that we are not selling to Amazon. We are selling on

Amazon. So all the risk is with us. If the product doesn't sell,

Amazon has no risk. They can actually just continue to charge us fees.

Not only that, they'll charge us like extra double fees for

having too much inventory at Amazon. if if So

let's call that around $2.50. So 15% of $17. So now I'm down to $14.50. Then we have to pay

a fulfillment fee to Amazon. That's around $6.60. So I think I'm at $14.50. So that gets me

to $8. That gets me to $7.90. So just those two things. the

15% commission and then the $6.60 fulfillment fee that Amazon

charges, I believe got me down to nine.

I'm embarrassing myself, but something like the high sevens. And then

we have to pay advertising and storage and

shipping to Amazon. And that gets us

Which part of this, I hope that when he watches this back, he

listens to his own numbers and then says, hang on a second, I've

got, I'll have to wait and see if he says at the end here, but I've got next to no profit

because the fees for selling this product. Now, here's the

flip side. Let's say he doesn't want to sell on Amazon because the fees are

too much. He still can go and have his product in

a fulfillment center, different fulfillment center, and have his own website and

make sales. Or even if he had his stock at his

warehouse and shipped it from his warehouse, he

would still have the fees. He's still got a

fulfillment fees. It's going to cost money for someone to go in and pick

the the product off his own shelf and put it into a package.

The package itself also costs money. Then you have to ship

it. That costs money. Like Australia Post, for example, isn't free. So

all these extra costs is basically what he would have to pay pretty

much anyway. Pretty much. OK, give or take. The

point is, I just don't think he's got the right product still. Let's see what else he

One jar of brain flakes is salt. And

with that $7, we have to pay our rent, our

employees salaries, our insurance. We even have to

pay for, we have to insure Amazon as well. Okay. And

then we have to pay for the cost of the product, which is like, let's say

$350. So on the $17, we'll make, depending on what

our costs are, because costs go up and down between $3 to $4. So our

Right, so he said originally that his GP was $7, so he's gross profit.

His net profit is, let's say, best case, $4. So

he would still have to sell 1,000 units a day,

pretty much, to make it even worthwhile doing. You could

even argue, rather than him making $4,000 net

profit a day, even if he made 2,000 net profit a day,

times by 30, there's $60,000 net profit, which would be

pretty good for most people. And I'd be happy with

an extra $60,000 a month coming through the door, but I

guarantee you he can't get the volume on

this product. Hence why he might be selling, let's

say, 10 to 20 units a day, right?

And so it's very, very tiny. So it's not

really life-changing, put it that way. So it still comes down to the product

And there are like all sorts of crazy fees I could walk you through. It's wild.

That is amazing. That's not at all what

I imagined, at all. So the strong

And the other thing you mentioned, too, was about insurance. It was like, oh,

you know, we've got to pay Amazon's insurance. Well, that's not really

true. I mean, I pay insurance on my business. You could

take the choice. I could just say, look, I'm not insuring my

product against consumers suing me, for example, right? Do

you want to take that chance? Now, what Amazon say is you have

to have insurance, which is pretty much mandated in

most things anyway. You know, so you could run the risk and not have

insurance in your own business. But if you're going to have it on Amazon, yes, you're going to have to have insurance,

but you're not paying for Amazon's insurance essentially

because you would have it anyway. But I do admit Amazon

does get you to put them in your insurance policy as

a beneficiary of the insurance fund. Whether you had them

So then who, how could you make a living doing it? I mean, how many

brain flakes do you have to sell to like take

Disney World's pretty expensive. Yeah, it is. You know, we're lucky to

sell hundreds of thousands of jars of brain flakes and bigger sets.

And so if we're making $3 to $4 a jar

or whatever, you know, and if you sell $100,000, you do have

money to pay salaries and rent and all that stuff. And

you can maybe go to Disneyland once every two years, I would say.

Does anyone get rich selling, that you know of, get rich

Yeah, people, people still do get rich. I

think a lot of Chinese companies have gotten rich as well. Pretty

crazy statistic for you. Over 50% of

the top sellers on Amazon

are not American. Okay. Australian so

in the u.s. Marketplace, like let's say 52% of the

sellers are non-american and of that 52% The the

top sellers are that of that 52% They're predominantly Chinese.

Yeah, they're definitely Chinese. Let me tell you about that because what's happened is originally

they see the Chinese aren't stupid They're manufacturing

these goods those goods that he sells I guarantee you

are made in China in some factory, right so Here's

the thing, though. Years ago, the Chinese manufacturers were, hey,

we just manufacture goods, and we then sell them to foreigners, and they go and sell it.

And they were selling it at super, super cheap prices. But then as

the world became more globalized and the internet spread around the

world, it was easy now for even A

Chinese manufacturer to simply put up a listing on Amazon USA.

Now it's costing him, like in this case, he's selling that

brain flakes to this dude for three bucks, three or $4, right?

The Chinese guy is probably only costing him like $1 or

$2 to make. So he can now, that's now

his cost of goods for the manufacturer, $1 or $2. So he's

already up on this guy and now he can ship that into Amazon

USA, sell it for even cheaper than what he can. And

that's what happened to a lot of products where you have competition

now from Chinese manufacturers who

are like, why are we going to sell it to this guy when we can just ship it in ourselves and

make the sales, right? So that's the point. And of course, China

doesn't have all the excessive employment

laws like a place like America, and even

more, Australia, who has the most barbaric and

archaic laws in the world when it

comes to industrial relations. It's absolutely insane, and it's a minefield.

And no wonder People don't want to really do a lot

of manufacturing in Australia because it's just too expensive for most things,

right? There are cases where you can get it produced in Australia, as I did a video

the other day, but for most things, like those brain flakes, you wouldn't be able to make in

Australia at all. Probably cost like 20 bucks just to make a packet. You

The Chinese sellers, even though we're selling in the United States, even though it's

our country, we should understand how marketing works here. It's our language.

They just clean up. They do very well in terms of

But I'm also glad that he touched on that, because I thought

he was going to say, oh, nobody becomes rich from Amazon.

Which is not true because, case in point, I've done extremely well

and I can't knock Amazon because

I've become a multi-millionaire off the back of the Amazon platform.

But what was the key? It was I had the right product with

the right margin, right? So I was able to utilize Amazon

with all their crappy fees and all that sort of stuff because

they also had the customer base where I can put the product in there

and customers are going to come in there in droves and buy the product. So again,

it comes down to the correct product choice.

You're not even describing the source of manufacturing. I mean,

I think the number would be a lot higher than 52% if you were if

Yeah, that's such an excellent point. So if you

go back to like the 1970s, 1980s, we had a lot of manufacturers in

Shifted largely to China, some to Mexico, overseas

generally. What's going on now is that the Chinese and

other countries to some extent are kind of vertically integrating and

they're taking over the product design and

wholesaling and distribution that traditionally

has been in the United States. So once upon a

time, you know, you could buy from an American factory, okay? And

the American factory would sell its product to an American store or whatever. And

then we had this transitional period where Chinese factories were selling

to distributors who were selling to stores or Chinese factories were

selling to Target or whatever. What's happening now is that Chinese factories are

selling directly on Amazon to the

US consumers. And the net result of this, because the

playing field is in the Chinese favor, and I

can kind of explain why, is that the US wholesale

distribution product design industry

has come under threat from very tough, difficult competition from

China. And so now, like we lost our factories. And

in my opinion, I think we're going to lose this middle part of our economy,

I mean, the other thing too, right now you can jump onto, you might see

it on Instagram, right? You're flicking through Instagram, you see a product, you

buy it. It's sent directly from China, right? It's

not coming from anywhere else. It's coming straight from the factory, right? So they're going

direct now. They're even using social media, not even

So for one, these Chinese sellers, they're selling

on Amazon. They don't have to file US income tax returns.

I mean, as an Australian seller, I also don't need

to file income tax returns because I'm based in Australia.

I pay Australian taxes. So the money that I make in America is

They have lower costs. And, you

know, that's enough. They're less susceptible to

lawsuits because they're overseas. And it's

just, you know, they may or may not have government subsidies, or just like, I

mean, think about if you want to design a new product, isn't it a lot easier to

Well, that's I'm gonna pull him up there. being in China is a communist country.

They have a ton of government subsidies. That

is the point, right? The government controls everything and they're just propping

guy work that out, that is to like communicate over video, fly

to China, deal potentially with a quarantine and work that out in order

to make something new. So the Chinese have a lot of advantages when

it comes to selling on Amazon. And what's wild is like, we're sellers on

Amazon, whenever we get an email from Amazon, like the top part, it's in

English, and then like the bottom part, it's all in Chinese, because so many sellers are

Selling on Amazon? Yeah. as long as he's not banned or

he ends up in a boot somewhere or some concrete shoes

it used to be 98% usually before 98% of

our sales were on Amazon we've got it down to 90% and then in

2023 we've gotten it down a little bit lower and so we're just continuously trying to

reduce our dependence on Amazon but it's so difficult in the

toy space It's hard, but I like what I'm

doing. I like my team, and it feels really good to make

something, and then to make something that's good for people.

It helps spatial thinking. It's an educational toy. So

No, it's a fake name. No, it's real. It's the

greatest name ever. My

brother's name is Hilton and the joke is he's

where he was conceived and I'm why. My dad used

to work for Molson Breweries up

in Montreal, Canada and he saw it fit to name me after the

brewery even though I'm unrelated and my brother was I

Anyway, there we go. Let's wrap that one up. I think they're wrapping it up as well. The

key thing here, guys, is do the right due diligence

before you go onto Amazon. Don't just throw any old product in.

You have to make sure your numbers are right. Otherwise, you're

going to sink. You're not going to make any money and you're going to be out of there. All right, guys. Thank you

so much for tuning in to this episode. Don't forget to leave some comments about

what you thought of this video and how you are perhaps surviving or

not surviving on Amazon. or if there's another better platform, let

me know. Take care. Thanks for tuning into Amazon Ecom

Secrets. If you enjoyed this episode, the best way to show

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at I'm Matthew Fraser on all social media platforms.