All it would take is raising prices across the board by just a little bit. Amazon has more than $70 billion in annual sales, so a 1% average increase in prices would bring in more than $700 million in annual pretax profits. A 10% average increase would bring in over $7 billion more a year.
In fact, if Bezos were to ask his executives to go through Amazon's entire portfolio of products and services to figure out how, when, and where they could raise prices the most to maximize present profits, the company would quickly become one of the world's most profitable businesses. Customers -- particularly Amazon Prime members who've gotten used to clicking a button and ordering for free delivery almost everything they need -- will not suddenly change their buying habits if, say, the price of light bulbs on Amazon.com goes from $0.79 to $0.89 per unit.
So I agree with Wilson: Amazon's lack of profits today could be a very good thing. It all depends on WHY Bezos is holding back from taking all those easy profits already available to the company.