I've found a woderful niche tha I decided to focus on -- Amazon software. Let's unite?
Probably as most of you here -- I've been searching for 'that side project' that will help me financially sustain myself. I went through mobile apps, websites for digital nomads, open source projects and other projects... But I decided to double down on Amazon software as a niche.
I think Amazon app eco-system has a lot of potential ahead. And as biggest upsides I would say that:
- Well...Amazon is huge -- a lot of smaller business strive of it.
- Amazon Business is used to spending money to make money.
- Most of the existing software in eco-system was built mostly by sellers that had a need for automation. Real engineers can do better, right?
- Amazon has launched their own amazon sellers apps marketplace. Currently, it's private. But once it will open to the public, it will be bonkers...
I'm already busy in this space. Why not you? I'm doing research and publically sharing a lot of data on fba_software sub-reddit. Maybe someone is interested in cooperating? Digging in this direction as well? Maybe you already have an app in this space, but struggle to make income from it?
Let's talk! --> https://www.reddit.com/r/fba_software/
I’d love to get involved in an Amazon focused app. I’m not a developer but I can do most things besides code. Testing, research, etc. I can read most code but I wouldn’t want to be charged with writing any.
Maybe you should team up with @adrienshen? :)
I'll be happy to help you guys out if you'll go anywhere :)
As a side project, I'm actually going through the process right now to launch my first product as an Amazon Seller. I'm following the classic FBA approach: using tools like Jungle Scout to identify product niches, sourcing from Alibaba, trying to make product improvements, using keyword tools to set up PPC campaigns. Still a month or so away from launching, but it's been a fun process so far. I'm happy to share my experience as a first-time seller (I joined the Sub-Reddit). My main gig is running two software start-ups, but I had a couple digital nomad friends sell their amazon stores for high 6 figures and low 7 figures -- so thought I'd see what the buzz was all about myself.
Tools I probably need, but probably not until post-launch:
-Inventory management
-Business intelligence
-Listing optimization (A/B testing)
Also, you mentioned 'product hacking'? I actually don't really know what that is. What sort of shady stuff is happening here?
You may want to subscribe to our fbamonthly.com newsletter as well.
Product hijacking -- Chinese manufactures jump on your product ASIN, steal all your sales with a cheaper rip off from your product, totally kill your product reputation and then move on to the next one.
So far, there is no easy solution to deal with this.
Subscribed -- thanks for that.
Hmm, product hijacking sounds like an issue. I imagine they're mostly targeting 'big bang' items / brands making several 5 figures/month. Maybe I'm mistaken though?
I don't have enough data to decline or confirm your assumption. But it seems like a thing that happens with any successful seller at least once, just based on people I'm exposed to. ( I don't sell anything on Amazon myself, I made a decision not to have conflicting interests with my customers )
I've come across some big players in this area before when I was thinking of working on the same thing. It seems people want everything and the kitchen sink for as cheap as possible. How are you trying to narrow down the profitable ones? Just doing a google search and it seems like there is still plenty of competition.
There are indeed very big players in this space. And very strong -- like junglescout ( https://www.junglescout.com/ ) and their line of amazon products.
But there are others, that seem questionable at least (like sellics -- they have bunch of tools in one). Most of questionable toolsseems to be running on investments.
Currently, I'm narrowing down all projects in Amazon eco-system and categorize them. I'm looking for categories that have week entries or try to figure out new solution to an existing problem.
If you'll read up complaints from Amazon sellers -- biggest problem is product hijacking. And while there are at least 5 solutions for this problem on a market, I consider that all of them suck.
Essence of offered solutions is that:
"I'll notify you that someone is hijacking your product. I'll help you fill complaint email to Amazon"
And after that, you need to pray for a month that complaint will take effect (it will not). And your product will not be destroyed by that time.
This feature is usually offered as an add-on for existing service. Probably a good reason to bump up that monthly package price.
:D
It's both a interesting and scary arena. Fun to find possible avenues of entry, but scary that amazon could change their terms or their offerings, etc at any moment.
I'm interested in what you're doing here. Going to follow the subreddit. Thanks for sharing.
I was afraid of that too. But if you think about it, you're always dependent on some big players. Google can kick you out from search, Apple can outlaw your app, Heroku can copy your service and etc.
What do you mean Heroku can copy my service?
Heroku has their own marketplace with add-ons. And some people claim that they recreate most popular add-ons (e.g. heroku redis, heroku ci) and unfairly compete on their own platform.
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I'm pretty sure it's 4000 hours of viewer watch time every year. Making 4000 hours of actual video every year would be insane.
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Reasonable warning! Thanks
What a coincidence. Just a couple of days ago I asked on HN about experiences with shipping apps on the Amazon Appstore, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18398735.
It never breached the surface though, so I'm none the wiser.
I've subscribed to the subreddit, looking forward to gain some insights.
Hey. Can you repost you HN question on sub-reddit? Seems like an interesting one to discuss.
Sure.
Hmm, pretty interesting. I was not aware that Amazon has a app store. Are these apps for sellers on Amazon? I'm a software engineer and just quit my job in August. Looking for some niche to make something useful now. Let's talk, what are your thinking?
Yeah, App store is mostly focused on Amazon Sellers. BUT... There are a lot of PPC Agencies or companies that manage Amazon store on behalf of some company.
So a lot of apps initially focused on Sellers, become so bloated that only professional agent can dedicate so much time to learn it or someone who does Amazon full time.
But I think that one person operated Amazon Sellers are underserved in this market. So I try to aim to have them as my target audience.
Currently, I've launched FBA monthly newsletter. And we automated 80% of work required to maintain this project.
We're also launching store builder platform that uses Amazon as back-end.
If I had more resources I would write at least one more project for Amazon. It seems like a barrier to entry in some categories of Amazon apps is pretty low.
If one knows what he's/she's doing -- it's doable to have MVP after 3 months.
I would be interested in learning more about the amazon ecosystem, the app platform, and what problems there are to solve. Do you have some resources I can take a look at? At the moment, I literally know nothing about selling on amazon, although I did sell some old PSPs on amazon in 2011.
Store builder seems like a large scoped project. You mean like the store builder will automatically generate a website from their amazon product listings?
If you have a solid idea of what product to build, I would like to talk more about it. We can have a call about it. I have around 15 hours free a week to work on some new product idea.
Yeah, Store builder is large. Took me a year to build :-\
As I said, I don't have much free time on my hands to start anything new.
I'm a non-developer but have done lots of research as a possible Amazon seller so I am familiar with common products and pain-points. Email me if you'd be interested in teaming up on something oneplusone183[at]gmail.com
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All the things you mentioned are reasonable concerns. I would recommend everyone to have a plan B, in case things with amazon go south. I personally still have a couple of pivot plans in my head, if something would happen from Amazon side.
One can find a grain of salt in every dish. But I feel with a marketplace opening up -- it would a good moment to enter into this eco-system.