This is outside of the topics we normally cover, but we wanted to bring it to the attention of former Sea Org members.
Amazon has launched a major recruiting and ad campaign for people to become Amazon Delivery Partners. This means starting your own business as a dedicated Amazon delivery service. We’ve heard Amazon commercials on the radio here in Los Angeles and thought we would pass it along.
This might be an interesting opportunity for some former Sea Org members to consider investigating on their own or as a team. From our perspective, this opportunity is realistic, doable, and has Amazon’s support behind it. Amazon’s market cap is $1.6 trillion dollars USD.
When Amazon describes what it wants in the brochure below, this type of business plays to the strengths of Sea Org members: A strong work ethic, organization, teamwork, statistics, and deadlines. The difference is that you are getting paid for your hard work and building your own business.
The job description is simple: Deliver goods ordered on Amazon to the buyers on a timely basis. Amazon Prime’s target is 1-2 days. The goal is to deliver in 1 day.
For those not interested in delivery services, one of the best free job boards out there is Indeed.com.
On the consumer side of its business, Amazon is also very simple: Amazon is a sales, warehousing, and logistics company. Amazon allows anyone to sell on its platform and to set their own prices. Amazon sellers can ship their own goods or they can send their goods to Amazon warehouses for delivery to the customer.
“FBA” means “Fulfilled by Amazon.” With the pandemic, the warehousing and logistics demands on Amazon FBA have grown exponentially. Amazon ordered over 100,000 electric delivery vans in 2020 to help meet the demand:
- Amazon’s delivers 2.9 million packages a day to its 100+ million Prime customers.
- Amazon spent about $120 million in 2019 on delivering products to its Prime customers in 2019.
As part of its cost reduction strategy, Amazon wants to set people up as independent delivery contractors. Amazon wants to adopt an Uber type of model for Prime deliveries. This strategy is aimed at reducing Amazon employee costs while freeing Amazon from having to rely on third party carriers Fed-Ex and UPS.
Amazon says start up costs to be a delivery partner can be as low as $10,000. This is where a person can get a Small Business Loan or invest with other people.
A delivery company would not be hard to start and could get off the ground quickly with business from Amazon. Having a dedicated client like Amazon from the beginning eliminates sales and marketing costs. This is exactly where new small business often fail.
This is the Amazon brochure:
Categories: The Scientology Money Project
Like everything Amazon, they will eventually squeeze you in order to increase their own bottom line. Any business dependant on a single customer is susceptible to this kind of abuse. It’s a nice idea on paper and might actually work for a while but…
How many ex-Sea Orgers know how to drive?
“For those not interested in delivery services…”
Welcome, Sea Orgers, to the wog world where it actually matters what you are interesed in!
GrumpyCat, I respectfully don’t agree with you on this one. Here is my thinking and why I posted this Amazon piece on my blog:
1. If I were 25 years old and an unemployed former SO, I would jump on this Amazon opportunity. I could put $10,000-$25,000 together in many different ways to started. Amazon doesn’t require a high school diploma to be a driver. What it requires is that you start a company which is easy to do. Google it. Get an EIN from the IRS. Get a DBA in the State in which you live. Get a business license. This takes some study, so study how to do it. Ask family and friends who own businesses for help and guidance. Don’t be afraid of taking intelligent risks to make money.
2. This is a chance to own and manage your own business with a guaranteed client and income from day one. Amazon had record sales in Q2 of 2020 of $89 billion USD. Amazon is going to keep growing.
3. Amazon provides 3 weeks of training and enormous administrative support in terms of software for delivery routing; payroll; taxes; cost management, etc. You also get Amazon discounts on insurance, supplies, fuel, etc. This is a plug and play package.
4. Even if things change in 5 years, the Amazon brochure says expected profits each year are $75,000 – $300,000. For the sake of argument, let’s assume you work hard and earn $120,000 your first year. This would allow you to pay off your start up loans and write those off your income taxes. So let’s say you gross $90,000 your first year and then gross $125,000 (or more) for the next four years. That is $590,000 before taxes in five years. This income allows you to support a family and have children. You can afford health insurance and write that off a business expense. This is infinitely better in any frame of reference than anything Scientology can offer you.
5. If you’re want to move your Amazon driver business to the suburbs in Arizona, Texas, or the suburbs in others parts of the country, you can buy your own home. You can save and invest money. You can live wherever you want and be close to your family and friends.
6. Amazon now sells and delivers food. Amazon is next moving into selling and delivering pharmaceuticals. Bezos will take on more and more markets in this way. Amazon’s market cap is now $1.5 trillion and will continue to grow.
7. Amazon wants to eliminate its dependence upon UPS and Fedex by doing shipping in-house. Amazon has essentially quit doing business with Fedex, but still allows its sellers to do use Fedex. The way Amazon takes control of its logistics is to do it all in house. Bezos has leveraged Amazon’s massive computing side of the house to manage the massive Amazon Prime logistics machine. As noted, Amazon can deliver 2.9 million packages a day because it has enormous computational resources supporting Amazon Prime.
8. Amazon has invested heavily in driverless trucks to move freight across America. Once those trucks are unloaded at Amazon’s massive fulfillment warehouses, however, drivers are still needed to deliver to Amazon Prime customers. This is why Amazon just ordered 100,000 electric vans for its drivers. Deliveries begin in 2021 and continue through 2030. This shows that Amazon has a long term plan to use delivery drivers. The vans were designed to meet Amazon’s goal to get to zero carbon deliveries by 2040. Subcontractors are a key part of the plan.
Karen and I are long-term Amazon investors. We also sell on Amazon and make great money doing so. Amazon is not getting rid of its sellers as it makes so much money on them. Amazon doesn’t put out any money for the inventory its sellers sell on Amazon. Amazon doesn’t pay for any of the overhead costs of its sellers and takes no financial risks on its sellers. And yet Amazon takes 15% of every sale made by its 2.5 million sellers. If you use Amazon to ship, Amazon makes even more money.
Amazon has to deliver 2.5 billion packages a year. Amazon’s demand for warehouse workers and delivery drivers is huge. Given the scale of Amazon, this opportunity looks great for someone who like this kind of work.
All good points – and I hope it works out for everybody who invests. True, the startup costs are minimal and the opportunity is there for the taking. I’m not suggesting Amazon will squeeze these people out in order to take over their business but rather they will eventually cut the profit-share over time. Isn’t this what happened with book authors some time last year? I heard a lot of complaints back then about not being able to realize profit after the cut.
Oh, and great site btw. I highly respect your work!
I think this is great initiative for delivery service provider. Thanks a lot to knew us.