inflatable elephants swimming pools cell phones books adult things you can buy
pretty much anything these days on Amazon but how did this internet
Superstore get to be as huge as it is today in 1994 a guy named Jeff Bezos
wanted to take advantage of the big e-commerce boom he left his job as the
vice president of a Wall Street firm to sell CDs computer hardware and software
videos and books out of his garage it's
a familiar story quite a risk but within
two months Amazon sales were up to
$20,000 a week and while the largest
bookstores and cataloges might be able to offer 200,000 titles an online
bookstore could order in and carry several times more since it has an
almost infinite virtual Warehouse wisdom
that we take for granted these days but was pretty revolutionary at the time as
Amazon grew however the virtual Warehouse was almost completely replaced
with the Fulfillment center model we're talking massive like really massive
brick and mortar facilities with some of their fulfillment centers being as large
as 1.2 million square fet but wait a
second why wouldn't they just keep using the almost infinite virtual warehouses
you see while the Fulfillment center may have its drawbacks it suits Amazon's
needs better now the two main reasons being that they have space to store
large bulk orders meaning they can get products for cheaper and having items in
the building means they can be shipped out faster with this Bas however systems
needed to be put in place to reduce travel time throughout the warehouse
here's an example imagine you're in the grocery store and you need to get items
from each corner of the store wouldn't it be much faster if there was a couple
of every item in the same aisle of course it would and this is how Amazon
dealt with all that space by evenly dispersing
popular items throughout the warehouse rather than having just one place for it
making it easier to find something without traveling long distances
employees are also equipped with special scanners to track items moving
throughout the facility so between this system and a series of strategically
placed conveyor belts items can be checked for damage and ready to ship
within 1 to 2 hours but in the Modern Age shipping an
item out quickly isn't enough to make you choose a retailer so what are some
of the other interesting things that they've done to shape their customer
Behavior one of them introduced about 10 years ago was Amazon Prime the yearly
fee that allows buyers to get two-day shipping at no extra cost on qualifying
items this had the risk for Amazon of reducing profit margins because if
someone ordered a lot of items very frequently but with very small orders
they could end up losing money on the subscription service but had the benefit
of getting their customers in the habit of coming back and at least checking for
an item before shopping somewhere else and they've done a couple other clever
sneaky things as well so number one is anytime you are shopping on Amazon
whether you look at a specific item or a category it captures that data along
with data about things that other people looked at and that other people bought
and starts bombarding you with targeted ads encouraging you to come back and
look at those items again sometimes even going as far as offer a small discount
on them and while this was I think more
critical in the early days when many people didn't have confidence in online
shopping in general their online review system is in my experience pretty much
second to none and almost essential for their site these days because trying to
narrow down to the right product by category is pretty difficult on
amazon.com so being able to just go okay I want the ones with four and a half
stars or more and shopping from that can
be easier a serious concern though is that a seller through Amazon might add
fake reviews to their products to boost their ratings and while Amazon tries to
find and filter these fake reviews a lot of them get through the cracks with
manufacturers paying people to write more convincing fake reviews the good
news is that there's at least the verified purchase tag so you can check
out those ones if you want to make sure that person actually bought the item
another thing that they've done is an incredible job of affiliate marketing
you've probably heard me on our other Linus Tech tips Channel talking about
using our Amazon affiliate code but basically this is a super smart way of
advertising that doesn't require Amazon to do any upfront payment basically they
just have creators like us or influencers sign up for the affiliate
program mention Amazon all the time and then they provide a small Kickback
whenever that code is used at no extra
cost to the consumer basically a finder fee I know this was a bit of an unusual
ual video today but leave your comments below let us know what you thought
because honestly it was inspired by me buying something on Amazon the other day
you know an industrial siiz pack of marshmallow peeps or whatever and
realizing after IID ordered it that I didn't even shop anywhere else and
wondering what exactly black magic it is that they had done to make me do that
speaking of making someone do something
you guys should definitely check out the link in the video description to Fresh
books it's designed for freelance workers or small businesses and it's
basically an online tool that makes invoicing getting paid and tracking your
expenses easier all the little details about cash flow are in one place so you
know where you stand it shows a full history of each invoice and allows you
to check if your client has viewed the invoice and PID directly through
freshbooks by credit card and this is cool they actually just launched their
deposits feature so if you're a house painter or a plumber or any kind of work
where you might do you know a deposit and then half the work and then you know
some more work and then they pay the rest at the end or whatever else those
more complicated payment schemes are Now supported pretty cool stuff so all you
got to do to try out fresh books for free is head over to freshbooks.com
tequi and don't forget to enter Techquickie in the how did You Hear About Us
section so thanks for watching guys if you like this video hit the like button
and get subscribed if you didn't like it hit the dislike button if you have suggestions for future fastest posses go
ahead and leave those in the comments and I think that pretty much wraps it up I will see you again next time