Gadgetory

inflatable elephant swimming pool cellphones 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 ecommerce boom he left his job as the vice president of a Wall Street firm to sell CD's 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 twenty thousand dollars a week and while the largest bookstores and catalogs might be able to offer two hundred thousand 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 feet 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 space 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 travelling 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 one to two 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 Ana's on 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 to 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 line is 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's fee I know this was a bit of an unusual 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-sized pack of marshmallow peeps or whatever and realizing after I'd ordered it but 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 paid directly through fresh books 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 dot-com slash tech quickie and don't forget to enter tech quickie and 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 fast as possible go ahead and leave those in the comments and I think that pretty much wraps it up I will see you again next time