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Is Amazon FBA dead?

Published Categorized as Amazon FBA

So if you’ve read anything written by me or listened to any of my podcast appearances where I’ve talked about growing my Amazon FBA Business to 7 figures, you’ll know I’ve managed to make Amazon FBA work for me.

When I got into Amazon FBA in early 2016, I was told and feared that I’d got in too late to make any money with Amazon FBA. That obviously wasn’t the case!

However, the things that changed between 2012 and 2016 were NOTHING in comparison with the changes we faced in the last 5 years – not just on the Amazon Marketplaces, but in the form of:

  • Trade tariffs and trade wars with China and the USA
  • Sales tax reform for good and bad in the USA
  • Brexit – bringing European sales for UK sellers to it’s KNEES
  • COVID-19 – ok, great for some – but atrocious for others, especially in travel
  • Increasing FBA Fees
  • Decreasing storage limits that have massively increased storage and shipping costs
  • a HUGE swathe of competition from China and other “wannabe” sellers

That’s literally just to name a few and each of those has their own set of sub-stories.

We’ve been brand focused with Amazon FBA to ensure that we stood out from the crowd from the beginning.

However, those once differentiating factors are now the NORM – and Amazon FBA Sellers are faced with a dilemma;

Continuously evolve – or DIE

So for many – the answer to the question: Is Amazon FBA Dead?

Is simply – yes, it’s dead and buried if you aren’t now elevating your thinking to be focused on building an “eCommerce business” and “defensible and differentiated brand”.

Building an eCommerce business and strong brand isn’t for the faint hearted – and it costs cash – a chunk of it.

Back in 2016, you could launch products on Amazon and let the branding catch up once you’d done a trial.

These days (and has been the case for some time now) you need to be committed to the launch and your product research needs to be on point as the costs to launch a product on Amazon FBA unsuccessfully a great and could be enough the prevent you from being able to launch a second product.

Not to mention, if you do get success – your product ranks, you get positive reviews and customers love your product…

That’s great – but now you have a huge cross-hairs on your back and the MANY beginners and experienced sellers alike trying to either get started on Amazon FBA with a private label product or seeking their next “winner” are eager to copy your product and take a slice of that cake.

I’m going to dig into some of the reasons Amazon FBA IS dead but also some of the reasons you can still make money on Amazon FBA in 2021 and beyond in this quick reference article.

I’m building out this post as we speak, so for now, bookmark this page and stay tuned for updates below to find out the truth about Amazon FBA!

By Ashley Pearce

I'm the founder of Future State Media, a "small-on-purpose" creator-focused SEO agency skilled in helping creators systematically generate traffic, build audiences and maximise their monetisation whilst staying true to their brand.