Sharon L. Cohen - Amazon income: $a: how anyone of any age, location, and/or background can build a highly profitable online business with Amazon

Amazon Income:

How Anyone of Any Age, Location, and/or Background Can Build a Highly Profitable Online Business with Amazon

By Sharon L. Cohen

Amazon Income: How Anyone of Any Age, Location, and/or Background Can Build a Highly Profitable Online Business with Amazon

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cohen, Sharon, 1949

Amazon income : how anyone of any age, location, and/or background can build a highly profitable online business with Amazon / by Sharon L.

Cohen.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-60138-299-3 (alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 1-60138-299-5 (alk. paper)

1. Amazon.com (Firm) 2. Electronic commerce. 3. Selling. I. Title.

HF5548.32.C63 2009

658.872--dc22

2009009592

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Table of Contents

Dedication

To my amazing men, Jean, Seth, and Jordan.

Acknowledgments:

Thank you to the spirited e-entrepreneurs, who are included in this book, for their insights, information, and inspiration, and to Melissa Peterson of Atlantic Publishing for her support and patience.

Trademark Disclaimer

General Trademark Disclaimer

All trademarks, trade names, or logos mentioned or used are the property of their respective owners and are used only to directly describe the products being provided. Every effort has been made to properly capitalize, punctuate, identify and attribute trademarks and trade names to their respective owners, including the use of and wherever possible and practical. Atlantic Publishing Group, Inc. is not a partner, affiliate, or licensee with the holders of said trademarks.

Amazon, Amazon.com and the Amazon.com logo are registered trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.

Foreword

D o you remember where you were when you heard wonderful, life-changing news? It was maybe 1996 or so that The Wall Street Journal article that presented the news to me came out. I remember where I was living in a temporary apartment just before the big move into a fabulous hilltop villa overlooking the San Fernando Valley in California. The front page article told about this little company with a funny name. People were buying books like crazy from them; they were growing like a weed. I studied every word of that article. This was something I had to look into because I had been marketing on the Internet since 1994, and this article described some magic called Amazon.com. Over the next few years, Amazon would take an inordinate role in my life. I visited them for the first time around 1999. What a funky company: One side of their building was a hospital. Across the hall was reception, and employees dogs wandered the corridors. They even sold doggy treats at the in-house espresso bar.

The founder, Jeff Bezos, worked from a desk made from an old door placed on sawhorses. Everything was inexpensive, informal, and funky.

But Amazon was not a flippant dot-com here today and gone tomorrow. The people I visited were serious, and the smartest of the smart. They asked penetrating questions of my startup and were cautious as well as astute.

We did our deal, one of several, and by then, I had already bought thousands of dollars worth of books from them. Then, it was cookware, accessories, and electronics. I followed Amazon as they went into the auction business, the used-book business, and the fulfillment business.

Years later, the scene has changed. I still buy books and electronics from Amazon, but I do so much more.

For years, I struggled with the simple task of selling merchandise and having someone reliable ship it for me. Amazon fills that role now. They are masters of getting the goods out the door in a matter of hours. They rush whatever my customers order and never lose a thing. This is no small matter, and not many companies are masters of this the way Amazon is maybe nobody on Earth fulfills better than they do. So, they do all my fulfillment for the products I sell.

They have always run an amazingly reliable and scalable server farm. They have to serve millions of customers at the height of the holiday rush hour, and seldom does their site even slow down.