Amazon is one of the largest businesses in the world. Millions of people shop on Amazon every day, and hundreds of thousands of companies are dependent on selling their products on the platform.
And yet, there are many things that people do not know about Amazon. So here’s a list of 22 surprising statistics and facts about selling on Amazon.
What Percentage Of Amazon Sellers Make Money?
From the biggest sellers on Amazon to the smallest, Amazon has been a great way to make money.
Looking at Amazon’s FBA statistics and average monthly sales, we see that 24% makes less than $1000 per month. So pretty much all sellers make at least some money, but a quarter doesn’t come above that $1000 per month threshold.
JungleScout indicates that around half of all sellers make between $5,000 and $50,000 per month, while the last 25% makes over $50,000 per month; all the way up to more than $250,000 monthly (2%).
However, every year, the coveted $1 million in sales is just achieved by less than 1% of sellers.
According to Marketplace Pulse, in 2019, there were around 25,000 sellers with more than $1 million in annual sales.
So how do these numbers translate to total profits?
Well, 38.2% has lifetime profits of under $25,000. That usually isn’t enough to run a business.
That means that most sellers achieve over $25,000 in lifetime sales, all the way up to 6% that make more than 1 million dollars over all the years that they run that business.
I’ve created a visual to show all of this below.
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Even if you make money, that doesn’t mean that your business is profitable.
According to the same source, around 8% of sellers selling on Amazon are not profitable… yet!
Who Are The Biggest Sellers On Amazon?
So who are those big fish, that rake in tens of millions in Amazon revenue each year?
The top 5 consists of companies like Pharmapacks, AnkerDirect, EPFamily Direct, Utopia Deals, and MetroDécor — names you probably have never heard of.
This data comes from our article on the biggest sellers on Amazon, who get thousands of reviews on their products each month.
Consider, for instance, the whopping 1 million reviews that consumers have written for products of the top Amazon seller Pharmapacks.
These top retailers have achieved such growth by selling products that are used often and by anyone. Sure, they also have niche products, but most of their sales come from categories like electronics, cosmetics, apparel, and office supplies.
Funnily enough, when I published the biggest sellers on Amazon article, one of the top 100 Sellers sent me a message.
We got chatting, and I ended up interviewing him (you can watch it below). This is the most I’ve ever learnt from a conversation with an Amazon seller.
Thanks, Aaron!
Anyway, back to the article.
How Many Products Does Amazon Sell Per Day?
It never ceases to amaze how giant Amazon actually is.
As you may know, Amazon US is its biggest marketplace. Amazon’s 2020 SMB Impact Report shows that over 6,500 products are sold every minute on this platform.
In other words, more than 9 million items are sold on Amazon each day.
This massive amount of products also bring in an enormous amount of money. According to Kommando Tech, back in 2019, consumers spent over $410 million on Amazon each day.
Considering it’s a year later, we’re convinced that that number has grown by at least $100 million more.
In the same SMB report, the company also states that American small and medium-sized businesses sold more than 3.4 billion products on the Amazon platform over one year.
Pretty impressive, right?!
What are the Most Popular Amazon Categories?
The most popular Amazon categories differ according to whom you ask.
If we look at the total number of products listed in each category on Amazon US, the top 3 consists of Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry, Books, and Home & Kitchen.
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However, Statista asked consumers the question: “What have you purchased on Amazon.com in the past year? Select all that apply?”.
Looking at the answers, it became clear that the top 3 most popular categories are a bit different for consumers.
According to this data, it’s Electronics; Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry; and Home & Kitchen.
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Interestingly, these Amazon categories’ statistics are very different when we look at the most favorite categories of FBA sellers.
When JungleScout asked them a similar question, they found out that the most popular categories to sell in are Home and Kitchen, Toys and Games, and Sports and Outdoors. So in short, what the most popular category on Amazon is, depends on whom you ask!
Related: What Is The Most Expensive Thing On Amazon?
Where Do Most Amazon Sellers Come From?
Amazon currently has 14 marketplaces. With so many third-party sellers on the platform, it’s no wonder that they come from all over the world.
EComCrew looked at the statistics of the top 2000 products sold on the Amazon platform, and where the sellers of those products came from.
Over 60% of sellers are based in China or Hong Kong, while the United States accounts for 35%.
The rest is divided among countries like Australia, Great Britain, Puerto Rico, Ukraine, Mexico and Vietnam.
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Zooming in on sellers on Amazon US, most sellers come from California (over 100,000), Florida (over 50,000) and New York (nearly 50,000).
However, the same Amazon report paints a different picture when we look at which states are most entrepreneurial.
Specifically, the top 3 states with the most amount of sellers per capita are Iowa, Delaware, and California.
Very interesting indeed!
How Many People Use Amazon?
So how many people use Amazon to shop? If we take Amazon US as an example, Statista shows that the numbers are staggering.
From 2019 to 2020, the website https://amazon.com got anywhere between 2 and 2.8 billion visits per month.
That’s over 66 million visits per day!
This incredible amount of people who shop at Amazon is reflected in the amount of Prime Members that the company has.
In the US alone, over 126 million people pay around $10 per month to access the different perks of Prime.
So Amazon rakes in over $1 billion in revenue from US Prime members alone.
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Amazon Company Facts & Other Statistics
There are currently only four companies in the whole world that are worth more than a trillion dollars (or in other words: $1,000,000,000,000).
You guessed it: Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), and of course, Amazon.
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So who owns the shares of Amazon?
Considering that Amazon is a publicly-traded company, anyone can own a share of the Amazon empire.
However, as Investopedia shows, the top 3 individual shareholders are founder and CEO Jeff Bezos (with 11.1% of shares), CEO of Amazon Web Services Andrew Jassy (0.02%) and Senior Vice President of Business Development Jeffrey Blackburn (0.01%).
The picture is a bit different when it comes to institutional shareholders.
CNN indicates that large investment and pension funds like Vanguard (6.14%), Blackrock (3.66%), SSgA Funds Management (3.26%) and others hold significant percentages of the company’s outstanding shares.
What do these shareholders hold?
They hold the shares of Amazon, which is a conglomerate consisting of many more companies than just the Amazon marketplace.
So here’s a surprising fact that you might not know: Companies like Audible.com, Goodreads, Ring, streaming platform Twitch, Whole Foods Market, IMDb, and even Zappos are part of the Amazon empire.
Are Amazon bigger than you first thought?
Amazon Stats Takeaways
If we look at these 22 statistics or facts about selling on Amazon, it becomes clear how ‘one-of-a-kind’ the company is.
But it’s unique in different ways.
It is a conglomerate with tens of different subsidiaries that are each well-running businesses.
It’s one of the most valuable companies globally, with Jeff Bezos being the richest man in the world. Hundreds of thousands of small businesses worldwide depend on its platform to sell their products.
Billions of people use the website to buy products from all categories you can think of, and the amount of traffic the website gets is unprecedented.
With these facts and figures, it’s clear that the company is taking over the world, and there is no end in sight.
That’s why selling on Amazon is still big business if you’re interested here’s how you can get started.
Tags: amazon facts, amazon seller, amazon seller questions, selling on amazon
