Thoughts

I sold today - my capital gain was looking good, and it's looking a bit uncertain for me right now.

The path to cashflow positive for TPW was looking on track, and possibly only months away (possibly now or soon) and it may well still be on track, but adding Amazon to the mix makes it more difficult to acheive. Amazon is all but certain to add competition to the large and small ad platforms, driving up ad costs for everybody, and taking market share.

However, 1 positive I've noticed, Amazon has not taken over the homepage of OzBargain with deals. Temple and Webster is nowhere to be seen either, but that's not the point. The point is that the OzBargain members are having trouble finding good bargains on Amazon, so thus far Amazon is not being too competitive.

The first listings on the OzBargain homepage last time I looked were:

Good Guys
JB HIFI
Woolworths
Ebay
Ebay
QLD Gov
Wireless1.com.au
Woolworths
Aldi
etc etc

Ebay is taking up 2 slots and Amazon is taking up 0 today. Ebay is the company most similar to Amazon (though every retailer is at risk), but Ebay seems to be fairing okay so far.

However an explanation for why Amazon is not too competitive yet: is their own warehouse even done and full of products yet? They allowed merchants to join (including me) but I can't list anything yet, as my products don't have barcodes. Amazon will allow barcode-less items to list at some point, but not yet. So there is a limited range of merchants listing on Amazon right now.