The opportunity to build a successful Amazon FBA business continues to grow. On January 18th, Amazon announced in a press release that there were close to 60,000 more Amazon 3rd party sellers that sold over $100,000 in 2018 than there were in 2017. While many (including Viral Launch) see the Amazon 3rd party space as becoming increasingly competitive and difficult to enter, Amazon’s latest press release is evidence that there is also more opportunity than ever before.
Here are some metrics Amazon shared that will hopefully encourage you to work harder for an ever increasing amount of opportunity.
- Nearly 200,000 3rd party accounts sold more than $100,000 in GMV on Amazon in 2018. In 2017, there were around 140,000 sellers that sold this same amount. That’s a ~40% increase YoY!
- 50,000 Amazon 3rd party sellers generated more than $500,000 in sales on Amazon in 2018
- Approximately 24,000 Amazon third party sellers generated over $1,000,000 in sales on Amazon. (Amazon didn’t give an actual number, but stated there was a 20% increase)
- Amazon estimates that more than 900,000 jobs, direct and indirect, have been created from small and medium business (3rd party sellers).
Interesting Notes
3rd Party Seller Growth Overtime
Amazon has made it customary to share the number of third party sellers that surpass the $100,000 mark in annual sales. It just so happens that 2018 brought us a steady increase in percent growth for 3p sellers year over year since Amazon began sharing these stats in 2015.
- 2015 – 70,000 sellers surpass $100k
- 2016 – 100,000 sellers surpass $100k – ~42% growth.
- 2017 – 140,000 sellers surpass $100k – ~40% growth
- 2018 – ~200,000 sellers surpass $100k – ~40% growth
This is only the second year in which Amazon shared the amount of sellers that achieved the $1m mark. It will be very interesting to see how this number continues to trend over time.
Millions of 3rd Party Sellers
Amazon boasts millions of third party sellers offering products on their platform. With millions of sellers offering products on the platform, it is surprising that such a small fraction of those sellers actually produce on average more than $8,334 per month to hit the $100k/year mark. For a small to medium sized business, that is an incredibly low volume.
With more than half of all sales on Amazon’s ecommerce platform generating more than $150 billion coming from third party sellers having just ~24k sellers generating more than $1m per year, the numbers are quite shocking.
Conclusion
You can read the full press release here, or dive into Amazon’s Small Business Impact Report here.
Although selling continues to increase in difficulty, based on this release, there has never been a better time to be an Amazon seller. Here at Viral Launch, we are dedicated to helping all sellers succeed by giving them the tools and strategies needed to successfully source, launch, and dominate on the Amazon marketplace.
To learn more about Viral Launch’s latest strategy to drive sales and keyword ranking, you can check out our latest Amazon sales and ranking webinar.
You can also get started with a free trial of our innovative suite of Amazon optimization tools.
