If you're under 30, Amazon's not for you

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Under 30 and planning to crush it on Amazon? Cute. 

Some say you can barely handle a latte, let alone supplier headaches.

• Smarter paid creator marketing 🧠
• Are you too young for Amazon? 🤔
• Amazon undercuts everyone else ⚡
• The fight for page one is OVER 🔚

HOT TOPIC

A seller in the seller forums kicked off with a spicy take: if you’re under 30, you’re probably not ready for Amazon FBA. 

The OP argued that Amazon isn’t the “easy money” machine TikTok makes it look like. It’s supplier headaches, cash flow stress, price wars, policy risks, and constant platform changes. 

Their stance: most younger sellers don’t yet have the capital, experience, or emotional control to survive early mistakes, and $5K won’t stretch very far when things go wrong. 

💸 Capital hurts 

A lot of sellers agreed on one thing: the learning curve is expensive.

• Most first products lose money
• It’s a numbers game, you may need multiple SKUs
• Cut losers fast, scale winners harder
• Expect heavy time and cash investment before stability

One seller shared a two-year grind of failed launches, slow-moving profits, and painful cash cycles. No overnight success story. 

🎓 Experience matters more than age

Not everyone bought the “under 30” rule.

A 26-year-old seller chimed in: maturity comes from reps, not birthdays. They started at 23 with retail arbitrage, moved to wholesale, then private label, learning by doing, not by buying courses.

Their take was simple: Amazon isn’t a get-rich scheme. But age isn’t the real barrier. Discipline, patience, and resilience are.

⚖️ So what’s the real takeaway?

Amazon FBA isn’t passive income. It’s capital-heavy, operationally complex, and mentally tough.

At any age:

• Expect losses before wins
• Respect capital requirements
• Master cash flow and negotiation
• Ignore “guru shortcut” promises
• Play long term

The sellers who last aren’t the youngest or oldest. They’re the ones who manage risk, protect capital, and keep learning when it gets messy.

TOGETHER WITH LEVANTA

Paid creator marketing built for Amazon performance

You found an Amazon creator. You paid them. The post went live.

Screenshots roll in. Impressions, maybe a comment or two.

Weeks go by. Then the question hits: was that actually worth it?

For most Amazon sellers, creator spend ends there – with no clear way to connect creator content to clicks, conversions, or revenue.

NEW from Levanta: Paid creator placements with built-in Amazon attribution.

With Levanta, sellers can run paid creator placements with:

• Upfront pricing through creator rate cards
• Guaranteed posting and clear deliverables
• In-platform proposals, approvals, and secure escrowed payments

And every placement is paired with affiliate-powered Amazon tracking – so sellers can see which creator partnerships actually drive clicks, conversions, and revenue downstream.

No guesswork.

No DM negotiations.

No vanity metrics.

Just paid creator marketing built for Amazon performance, and a smarter way to see what’s worth scaling.

See how it works with a live walkthrough

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AMAZON NEWS

Amazon's secret to low prices isn't products

Amazon still dominates ecommerce headlines, but retail isn’t the profit engine.

By 2025, nearly 60% of revenue came from services, not product sales, a big shift from 2020. Growth now isn’t about selling more, it’s about monetizing everything around it.

📊 Services are running the show

Amazon’s fastest-growing segments aren’t products, they’re services and infrastructure:

• Product sales fell from 56% of revenue in 2020 to roughly 41% in 2025
• Service revenue is approaching 60%
• Services grow faster than retail, almost 15% YoY, with AWS at 20%
• Services include AWS, Advertising, subscriptions, healthcare, and third-party seller support

💰 Retail alone can't carry the weight

Product margins are thin, warehousing, shipping, returns, and labor eat into profits.

Services let Amazon:

• Keep prices low
• Offer faster shipping
• Absorb operational costs
• Maintain market dominance

In short, services subsidize retail. If you sell on Amazon, here’s what matters:

• Ads and seller fees drive high-margin revenue, expect continued focus
• AWS and other services power the ecosystem
• Retail price pressure is here to stay
• Services let Amazon survive thin product margins

The long-term play isn’t just selling products, it’s owning the infrastructure behind the entire ecosystem.

TECH MARKETING

Page one rankings are losing power

AI chatbots drove 28% more shopper referrals to retail apps during Black Friday 2025. That’s a big signal: shoppers are letting AI assistants decide what they see.

For sellers, this means the old rules of “ranking for page one” are evolving fast.

🤖 AI is shrinking discovery

Customers now see 3–5 curated recommendations instead of endless results.

• Discovery funnels are shrinking. AI highlights the top few, so you compete for inclusion, not just ranking.
  • Tip: Optimize for machines, clear metadata and simple language beat clever copy.
• Data is the new shelf space. Strong brand awareness won’t ensure visibility, messy or incomplete product data makes you invisible to AI.
  • Tip: Clean up titles, bullets, specs, warranty info, and reviews.
• Impulse buying is evolving. AI takes shoppers straight to product pages, with add-ons and bundles suggested contextually rather than shown visually.
  • Tip: Create logical cross-sells and complementary offers to help AI link your products.
• Open vs. Proprietary AI storefronts. Open platforms drive volume for easy-to-compare items. Proprietary AI works best for exclusives and high-margin bundles.
  • Tip: Let AI find your brand, but keep high-value experiences on your own channels.
• AI + humans = hybrid retail. AI handles routine recommendations. Humans focus on strategy, governance, and complex support.
  • Tip: Assign internal ownership for AI data and oversight.

🤓 How to keep playing

Retail isn’t just about ranking anymore. Visibility favors the most machine-readable, trustworthy, and context-ready options.

In an AI-driven storefront, clean, structured data beats the loudest brand every time.