How Amazon became a larger company than Walmart

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Wow. That was…unexpected

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According to their latest earnings report, Amazon is now a highly profitable data center (AWS is raking in billions) fronted by a cheap gift store (including sex toys) that just breaks even.

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Yeah, I also thought he was going to say affiliate links.

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I thought he was going to bring up walmart being a soulless corporation that pays its workers so little they need to get government assistance.

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Well there is the whole Amazon Warehouse thing.

Amazon Warehouse working conditions

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Breakfast Show friction in the work place… maybe they need more lubrication…

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I suspect that Amazon’s lack of physical retail presence allows them to get substantially more production per brutalized peon than Walmart can; which probably helps their numbers.

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I’m currently living in Reno and that is the local culture in a nutshell: endearingly offensive and completely oblivious to social propriety.

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OMG, someone said sex toy while I was eating breakfast, I have to burn all my cornflakes…

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Amazon is no different in that respect. Both companies abuse employees to the point that their employees live in abject poverty and require government assistance. </job creators>

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Note to self: link this to the definition page for schlemiel.

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The best part about Amazon sex toy listings are the reviews like “These silicone anal beads became stained and the seller says I can’t return them!!!”

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If you sell one product on Amazon and use none of their services, you are paying them about 13% of your net profit sales to host what amounts to not much more than a static e-commerce web page. I pay them over $1000 a month.

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So you’re netting over $12K/mo? That’s… Not bad.

just selling sex toys?

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Yep. It’s the Cloud!

Well “net” is just gross sales minus COGS returns, before Amazon and everyone else gets their cut. Amazon gets twice as much as I pay in taxes.

Can we get a boingboing affiliate link on that, pronto?

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There was a story a few years ago about a lawn mower company that Walmart wanted to sell the product…they ended up selling it with a 70% markup from what they paid for it. I know in the past when I was a musician and record stores still existed, we’d wholesale an album for around $6 to a distributor who would turn around and sell it to record stores who would sell it for $12.99. Guess what? I made money from this arrangement, and the lawn mower company made money from its. Doesn’t sound fair…get your product in front of millions of eyes, or you get to keep all the profit and figure out how to get people to find it themselves.

13% is nothing.