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Aug 21, 2026
This article opens with a true story about a young woman we’ll call A, who worked with Amazon and from there built a global business career. A once faced many early difficulties, like having her account suspended and losing a deposit, but after two years she built seven-figure revenue, sold across Europe and the US, bought a $600,000 house in New York, and created opportunities to work alongside family members. This is a huge source of motivation for many people getting into business on the Amazon platform.
Amazon is a giant in e-commerce, and working with this platform requires a long-term, persistent strategy. Success doesn’t just come from direct profit — it also comes from learning team management, brand development, multi-channel marketing, supply chain management, international payments, and how to operate globally. Learning and applying these skills helps a business owner raise their brand’s value and compete fairly in the international market.
Many people starting to sell on Amazon often have no clear strategy — they just take a course on setting up an account, list products, and hope for success. However, going in the wrong direction can easily lead to failure, lost capital, and difficulty recovering. So the first step is to clearly identify your own position in the “global value chain.”
The global value chain can be understood simply through the story of A and B. A grows clean vegetables and sells them to an intermediary, B, who takes the vegetables and distributes them to stores and restaurants, eventually reaching the final customer. Each person in the value chain creates a portion of the product’s added value. When A realized B was profiting more than she was, she decided to sell her vegetables directly to a chain of restaurants. At first she took a loss because her vegetables didn’t meet standard and the procedures were complicated, but gradually she became profitable and grew into a registered household business. B then learned how to sell through Amazon to expand into international markets, and came back to buy A’s vegetables at a better price, but with strict quality requirements. This story demonstrates growth and an elevated value chain achieved through cooperation and integrating sales onto a global platform.
The story shows that each person needs to clearly understand their own strengths and position in the value chain, focus on doing their own job well, and coordinate closely within a team to grow together.
Based on the A-B story, everyone in the industry should assess their own position in the value chain to choose a suitable tactic, as follows:
Should view Amazon as an effective marketing channel that’s far cheaper than opening a representative office. You can combine both FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) and FBM (Fulfilled by Merchant) sales, or set up a dropshipping channel to expand multi-channel, coordinating with your website, fan page, and other social media to boost revenue.
Should partner with experienced businesses already established on Amazon to ship goods, send trainers, and build a marketing and sales department. This partnership helps improve competitiveness and expand into the market more effectively.
Most individual sellers source goods from multiple suppliers to run their business. Newcomers should view this as a startup phase, doing the work themselves and hiring small-scale assistants if needed. Once you have a clear operating process, you can scale up and sell across multiple channels on platforms like eBay, Etsy, Bonanza, or Shopify to reduce reliance on a single channel.
Multi-channel marketing is very important since Amazon doesn’t provide customer information, so advertising tools on Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, and chatbots are all applied to effectively nurture and retain customers. At the same time, using an inventory management system, CRM, and remote team-collaboration software is also essential to improve work efficiency.
Once your business process is stable, you can hire freelancers on platforms like Fiverr or Upwork to help with technical, design, or marketing tasks, reducing your workload and achieving higher efficiency.
Beginners should patiently build an internal process, from job descriptions and KPIs to a sales workflow. At first you may do everything alone, then gradually expand staff and train a team. Once you have a team, you need to set clear rules and roles to avoid internal conflicts that could disrupt business operations.
Can focus on low-capital models such as merch design, Kindle e-book publishing, or dropshipping and POD (Print on Demand) to make the most of personal strengths and quickly generate income.
The investment cost for selling on Amazon varies widely depending on which model you choose: POD, Merch, Kindle, and Dropship models generally need low capital, while FBA or FBM require larger capital — the author personally invested close to a billion VND at the time of writing. One effective approach is to make use of a credit card’s interest-free period of up to 45 days to help rotate capital. While many people are wary of credit cards due to negative associations, in reality it’s a useful financial tool when used correctly, especially for those with limited capital.
In short, success in global e-commerce requires a clear strategy, persistent learning, good team management, and making the most of technology and multi-channel markets. Every business or individual needs to clearly identify their own advantage in the value chain to be effective and grow sustainably together.
