Amazon operations often say that we should lose our illusions and "change careers " as soon as possible! In fact, is "changing careers" also a fantasy?

Many migrant workers, as Amazon operators, often yearn for the "outside world".

" When I entered Amazon , I thought it was okay at the beginning. In the past two years, I found that this industry has become more and more difficult to do , and the Amazon platform has become more and more difficult. If there is a chance, I must change careers ." If you observe carefully, you will find that remarks like this "resound" in the cross-border circle almost every day , and the discussion will reach a peak after Amazon's "cheating" policy is released! Now is the end of the year, and the moment of "letting go of the old and ushering in the new" is approaching, which means that Amazonians want to escape from the current working environment even more eagerly!

Xiao Liu (pseudonym) is one of them. At that time, I heard relatives say that the prospect of this industry is good, so I entered the pit directly. From 2017 to the present, I have been engaged in the operation of Amazon, from the new employees of the company to the current management position. My career has reached the ceiling. If there are no accidents, the days to come will go on without surprises or joys like now.

"I haven't felt a little bit about the peak season until now. I feel that I am in dire straits every day. If there is another way out, I would have changed my career." Xiao Liu recognized the development prospects of this industry. Many companies do well and naturally make a lot of money. The small company she works in cannot be called a "cross-border top student", and sometimes even hovers on the verge of bankruptcy. The company's development status determines the salary of employees. Last year, her average salary could reach 1.3W, and this year it may only be 1W. With less money, the idea of ​​changing careers will become more urgent.

However, for Xiao Liu, changing careers is just a matter of thinking, because she doesn’t know what else she can do after changing careers, and changing to a new industry means starting everything again. She is already 35 years old, and she thinks this is a At an age that recruiting companies dislike at a glance, if they really change careers, they will be uncompetitive, and if they continue to stay in this industry, at least they can make a living.

It is said that the way out for Amazon's operations is to develop into the management, change careers, or go it alone. Xiao Liu, who has already entered the management team, is not suitable for changing careers, and she does not want to start a business alone. She thinks the overall environment is not good now, and she is not doing it alone It’s a good time, and there are too many examples of friends who start businesses “losing money and being frustrated”, which further dissuades me from wanting to go it alone. After much deliberation, maintaining the status quo is the most suitable choice.

Xiao Liu, who is struggling, is one of the typical representatives of Amazon operators. He can't leave if he wants to, so he can only reluctantly stay. Why do you want to ditch Amazon? In addition to working alone, Amazon workers can only change careers? If not Amazon, what else can I do? If you leave your current career, will you develop better? …With a few questions you are concerned about, the editor interviewed and sorted out the "past and present lives" of two Amazonians who "transferred". The B side; the second one will be an Amazon after graduation, and after a few years, they will be operated by Amazon and become a service provider… I hope their life stories can inspire you who are confused.

A former Amazon seller summed up the job content: I didn’t learn much about operational skills, but I learned all kinds of complaints …

R (pseudonym) is currently working in a company that operates the Ali International Station. After all, he has been in the B-side for more than 2 years.

The reason why he left Amazon at the beginning was very simple: he had been working in Amazon for more than three years, and he had been rolling in a gray area. He had learned all kinds of complaints without learning much operational skills … After a few years, he recalled this short and "magic" period. "'s Amazon journey, R still feels that the past is vivid.

In fact, at the beginning, R’s career had nothing to do with cross-border e-commerce. Since he majored in mechanical engineering at university, he naturally became a mechanical engineer after graduation. He was in Dongguan at the time, and his monthly salary was only 4,500 yuan. In October 2016, when R was working hard to draw the blueprint, he received a call from a friend who invited him to start a joint venture to start Amazon. Before that, he had never heard of Amazon.

A friend repeatedly claimed that "Amazon makes more money than part-time jobs." After listening to it, R specifically checked some information related to Amazon and thought it was worth entering the pit. So in December 2016, the two officially partnered to start Amazon. First, the product category The project focuses on data cables and earphones, and mainly sells various infringing products.

When working on Amazon, the two did not follow the white hat route. Instead, they took the initiative to learn black hat technology and wandered between various gray operations. In addition to the usual operations such as listing keywords on the homepage, merging zombie links, and abusing variants, They also carried out brand headline advertisements to cheat money, use VC accounts to make profits, etc. to increase sales. As a sharp tool to quickly increase sales at a small cost, order swiping was also used by the two with ease. These "coquettish operations" are naturally risky. During the period, the two also received various warnings from the Amazon platform, and their accounts were also blocked. After the account was blocked, appealing is a routine operation. It is worth noting that, given the number of appeals during the Amazon period Too many, long-term illness and become a doctor, R has successfully developed the ability to appeal, and his strength is basically comparable to that of professional appeal service providers .

In their view, the threat posed by Amazon's account ban cannot resist the strong temptation of "making quick money" and "gathering a bike to a motorcycle". Every time their account is banned, they do not "reflect", but I am becoming more and more obsessed with making quick money by using gray operations to "overtake on curves".

"There is no skill at all in the process of operating Amazon, just swiping orders and various operations, and infringing products are very easy to sell, such as Apple earphones with a 3.5mm interface, Huaqiangbei can buy them for 10 yuan, and travel across the ocean . Afterwards, their net worth skyrocketed, and they could sell a lot of orders on the Amazon platform with a price of $ 14.99 . " R recalled that when the two of them sold infringing products, the money they earned could not be overstated. For a better link, you can place up to 400 orders a day, and in just three months, you can get a net profit of 250,000 yuan by doing Amazon.

"It's so easy to make money, and it's worth the salary of the previous few years." If the time goes back to 2016, R can't even imagine that he will "get rich overnight". The living situation suddenly changes, and R starts to spend extravagantly , Earn more and spend more, he subconsciously felt, "If the money is gone, it will be easy to earn it back."

But as Amazon people often say , sellers can only make money within their own knowledge. If the ambition is too big and the knowledge does not keep up, sooner or later they will lose all the money they earn , and may also be burdened with heavy debts. . The two are typical.

Infringement, black technology, failure also infringement, black technology, in 2019, the dividend period of cross-border e-commerce is far less "exuberant" than the previous two years, at this time, the platform has tightened policies again, and black hat operations are becoming more and more "difficult". , However, the two did not realize that the danger had come, and there was less and less living soil for the "black hat" operation. During the crackdown, a large number of infringing products were directly imported, imagining that they could make a lot of money, and the consequences can be imagined.

"The store is closed when the goods are still on the way, and the balance cannot be returned. " The two calculated, and together with the balance of the goods and the store, they lost more than 1 million yuan.

After the problem happened, it is not that the two did not think of saving themselves, but what they did seriously violated the rules of the Amazon platform. Whether it was spending money to appeal to the service provider, or R himself resorted to all kinds of appeal skills, all methods were used. Can't save the account back!

For a time, the two fell from heaven to hell.

The company was hit hard and couldn't keep going. Since then, R and his friends broke up, and with debts all over his body, he gradually became "disillusioned" with Amazon, and finally started the operation of Ali International Station.

"After I broke up with my friends, I started to look for a job again. At that time, the monthly wages, excluding the necessary expenses, were all used to pay off the debt. Until June 2020, I still owed more than 150,000 yuan." Summarize this paragraph During the trip to Amazon , R said that apart from all kinds of black technology, he has hardly learned any operational skills. Such days are too tiring.

After switching to the operation of Ali International Station, R is quite satisfied with the current situation overall, "Although the boss does not invest much in his own department, the daily work content is acceptable, and the development prospects of the B-side are also very broad. "R also believes that compared with the Amazon platform, at least the Ali International Station platform is controlled by the Chinese. When something happens, he can always find the corresponding Ali investment manager to communicate with. But Amazon is different. The investment manager also replied in seconds when registering the store, and disappeared when he was looking for something later.

Although he has switched from the C-end to the B-end, R has not completely left the previous Amazon circle. With his superb appeal skills trained by frequent dead accounts, he will also accept some Amazon appeals in his spare time to earn some extra money. He also said that whenever the store appeals successfully and receives an email informing the store of the store's performance that the store has returned to normal, there is always a sense of pride at this time.

"Personally, I am a negative teaching material. In fact, Amazon still has a head start, but the requirements for people entering the market are getting higher and higher. Everyone should not try to take shortcuts, but must control the quality of products." R concluded.

After not doing Amazon, the operation will be turned into a service provider!

"If I don't want to be Amazon, I'll be a service provider."

This is one of the retreats that the migrant workers imagined for themselves. In fact, there are indeed many operators who left the sales business and turned around to start service work. Xiao Zhang (pseudonym), who has nearly 4 years of experience as a service provider, joined this group by mistake.

"There are many examples of operations being transferred to service providers. Most operations will not be transferred to business positions when they transfer jobs . I belong to a special situation. At that time , I left the job because I didn't want to do the original operation job . I didn't think about what I should do next. , I was just submitting my resume aimlessly, and then received an interview invitation from the service provider company . The company thought that I had been a salesman for Party A and understood Party A better, so they hired me as a business post. ” The work content is slightly different from before. Every day, I mainly connect with customers, connect with channels, and find resources everywhere.

When he was engaged in operation work before, Xiao Zhang not only came into contact with independent websites, but also worked on eBay, Wal-Mart and Amazon platforms. No matter which sales channel it is, it is becoming more and more difficult to do it now. It is very popular, as soon as the product is on the shelves, you can place an order. Since the past two years, it has become more and more difficult to do every year. The category you are in is a red sea, the competition is getting bigger and bigger, the traffic is getting more and more expensive, and the platform control is getting more and more difficult. The more stringent", on the one hand, it is the increasingly difficult living environment for sellers, and on the other hand, it is the tiredness of the work content of operation.

Xiao Zhang’s cross-border e-commerce company at that time was not large in scale. It was mainly responsible for the promotion of clothing products. He needed to do various miscellaneous tasks such as product selection, materials, advertising promotion, and optimization during work, and the commission was not high. “More than 10 The gross profit is 10,000 yuan, and the commission is actually only more than 2,000 yuan." In addition to the low salary, what really made Xiao Zhang give up the idea of ​​​​giving up the career of operation was the operation that a cross-border person is very familiar with.

"At that time, there was a team in the company that sold infringing products, which brought huge economic benefits to the company. They often walked by the river without getting their shoes wet. Soon, the company was terminated for selling illegal products, and the boss was also arrested. I caught it in, but I don’t know if it has come out now.” Fortunately, Xiao Zhang did not do these operations, otherwise he would have to bear the corresponding consequences.

After turning into a service provider, Xiao Zhang found that the difficulty of the work varies depending on Party A. Relatively speaking, if Party A is a brand seller, the work will be more advanced. On the contrary, if Party A is a distributor seller, then he Also face greater work pressure. On the whole, the current job content is definitely not as stressful as before, but the comprehensive salary is not much higher than before.

Several years of operating experience and service provider experience have allowed Xiao Zhang to experience the difference between selling goods and services, and found that service providers do not have a gold-absorbing halo as rumored, and some illusions about this industry began to be shattered, "Everyone It’s all about you looking at me, and I look at you. It’s really difficult to do. It’s said that cross-border sellers are too busy now. In fact, the service provider group is also very busy. We are still a little better, but payment, website building, and logistics services It is more difficult for the merchant group, and the pressure is actually not less than that of the seller. Whether it is a seller or a service provider, if you want to do it for a long time, you have to take the branding route.”

However, Xiao Zhang does not regret changing careers, he thinks the current job content is more suitable for him.

If you don't do Amazon, will you regret it ?

As the largest cross-border e-commerce platform, Amazon has contributed too many "grievances" and bizarre stories to the cross-border circle. More and more R and Xiao Zhang have made the army of "abandoning Amazon" gradually larger, which is certain What's more, in the future, more Amazonians will leave the platform.

Will everyone leave Amazon like Xiao Zhang and R without regret?

The editor found that, unlike Xiao Zhang and others, there are still many people who have returned to the embrace of Amazon after taking the initiative to stay away from Amazon.

"In 2019, it was the most difficult year for me to do Amazon. When I couldn't support it, I was very envious to see my friend who made thousands of orders a day with Pinduoduo. Later, I also followed Pinduoduo, but it was a pity. Months have passed, and there is still no improvement, so I finally had no choice but to give up. After giving up Pinduoduo, I picked up the Amazon platform again and continued to develop Amazon. Until now, I have finally made a little money.” One of the industry insiders said, This incident gave him a deep inspiration. If you can’t even do well in an industry you are very familiar with, then when you switch to an industry you are not familiar with at all, there is a high probability that you will not be able to do well. Instead of spending time and energy on To understand an unfamiliar industry, it is better to continue to delve into the industry you are already familiar with.

This statement has been recognized by many sellers. However, in the eyes of others, life is a process of constant experimentation until they find the career that best suits them. It is understood that many Amazon sellers had no connection with Amazon before. After accidentally contacting this industry, they accidentally found the direction of future struggle. Since then, they have "set up camp" and stabilized.

Xiao Zhou is such a person. He was originally engaged in traditional manufacturing. Since this industry has basically been monopolized, it is difficult for ordinary people to get a share of it, so he switched to Amazon and has been doing it since then. Comparing the two For Amazon, it is obviously much easier. Although the threshold is getting higher and higher, it has not yet reached the ceiling. This can give ordinary people a lot of room to operate, and it is also an opportunity for ordinary people to realize class transition.

"Be content and be happy. Although my brother-in-law abused me thousands of times, at least I can buy a car and a house and live a stable life. In short, I still have to thank Amazon. " A senior Amazon The seller said that it is difficult to do in any industry now. It is not that Amazon makes us anxious, but that the general environmental trend is getting worse and we suddenly cannot adapt. Whether we are doing Amazon or not, we still have to improve our capabilities in the end.

"If I don't want to be Amazon, what else can I do?" Perhaps, everyone can't escape their own final destination. Boys will be security guards when they get old, and girls will be cleaners when they get old…

Looking at the present, now that I am no longer an Amazon worker, I have found a way out for myself, which can be said to be varied.

Some people want an "iron rice bowl" and desperately want to be a teacher or civil servant; some people sell stewed vegetables in a high-profile manner, and the advertisement banner directly reads "Amazon's operation changes to sell stewed vegetables, Amazon guys taste it for free, and enjoy 10% off on purchases"; As the high-level general manager of a cross-border e-commerce company, now he is willing to be a diligent driver of Huolala; some people even went back to their hometown to raise pigs after finishing their "deep drift" life…

Of course, even if there are more people who don’t want to be Amazon, they don’t plan to leave the cross-border circle, but continue to stay in this industry. Apart from not touching Amazon, they can choose other jobs at will!

The originally simple 3 words of Amazon are endowed with different annotations by every Amazonian!