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Comment by ikeboy | Hacker News Reader

>The median success for the typical podcast, Amazon seller, or self-published author in terms of income, after one factors in the number of hours involved and start-up costs, amounts to less than minimum wage.

Potentially for the podcast and self published author, those are both highly saturated niches. But I don't believe that's the case for Amazon sellers. I know many people who make 6-7 figures a year profit on Amazon, well above minimum wage.

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Do you think there might be due to the availability heuristic though?

Could be, I see a decent number of people who aren't terribly talented doing ok, though. I don't think the median attempt at doing it full time ends in under minimum wage.

I'm surprised didn't expect those figures for Amazon sellers, sort of seems like a saturated marketplace with razor margins for most sales. Would you be willing to share a bit more detail on what kinds of things these fairly successful Amazon sellers you know of sell on the site?

I know people doing many different categories. One guy doing a million a month gross just in clothing. One guy doing used DVDs and making over 1k/day profit. Many people doing wholesale in electronics, toys, grocery, health and beauty, pets, and others.

I'm doing electronics and toys and have done as much as 500k gross in 30 days at peak.

But the competition must be ferocious for such generic things, which is why Im so surprised by these profit margins. I don't mean to pry with too many questions but are these the sort of sales and margins created even by sales of more or less generic products or do these people put heavy effort into positioning themselves differently?

For wholesale it's difficult to position yourself differently than anyone else, you need to get stuff at the right price. I'll have suppliers with thousands of products and I only buy ten of them, have to be very selective.

Other people buy from stores at discounted prices, or any number of different sourcing methods.

Sincere thanks for the followup. Interesting points to consider. I'll have to look into products/providers more. Any general sources you'd recommend?

Attend trade shows for wholesale and talk to potential suppliers.

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