cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/5806576
Why shouldn't they? You've arranged to have product you didn't create shipped to a warehouse you don't operate to be stored by a system you don't maintain to be sold on a storefront under a brand you made up and that you didn't create to be fulfilled by a shipping apparatus instead of you going to the UPS Store. What exactly are YOU doing here that merits a payday? Mediating a relationship between Amazon and a Chinese manufacturing firm? They already have tons of those.
Maybe your point just sucks because finding some cheap garbage on AliExpress that you can sell with instagram ads isn't actually all that hard, or that much work, which is probably why this exact business model was sold to people who, as stated by people selling it, had low skills and no interest in acquiring them, so they can generate passive income by operating an automated storefront on Amazon.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37668690
Say what you will about their means of getting it, but this person did 100% of the leg work of getting that sale. That sale doesn't exists without them.
What leg work? Customer acquisition? They paid amazon for that. Delivery? They paid amazon for that. Manufacturing? They paid China for that.
The sale wouldn't exist without anyone in the pipeline (Amazon, manufacturer in China, shipping merchant, etc.)
I think it's actually worse than that. The merchant is the only party that is not needed. In fact, calling a lot of these folks "merchants" at this point is probably a little too generous. Amazon is the merchant. Many of these other guys are sourcing and marketing "partners" for Amazon and the manufacturers.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37666435
That's literally the meaning of being a monopoly: There are no other distribution channels that can compete with Amazon. They are a distribution monopoly.
There is no monopoly in distribution. The vast majority of items are bought offline. Walmart, Costco, Target, Kroger and on and on and on and on.
The world wide web + google and facebook make finding eyeballs open for all. Fedex, UPS and USPS make shipping products open to all. Stripe makes accepting payments open to all. Cheap 3rd party manufacturing makes making things open to all.
We've probably never been further from a monopoly in any of the areas in question. The reason it's so damn hard to make any money selling random products is that there is just so much competition.