TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #030

Jeff Bezos Gets a Permanent Nickname, The Amazon Prime Day-pocolypse, and that’s about all we have time for.

July 23, 2019

Yo -

Did you know that Jeff Bezos’ middle name is “Preston?” Seriously … it’s Jeffrey Preston Bezos, making his initials an anagram of PBJ – a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But I’ve been calling Bezos Mr. Baggy-pants for a few months now due to his … shall we simply call them “indiscretions?” JBP can also stand for Jeffy Baggy Pants. And I think I like that … a LOT.

Why are we talking about Baggy pants? … it can’t be helped. Amazon Prime Day(s) was/were last week and the numbers are staggering. So, this week’s email is pretty much all about Amazon. Not just stats, but also interesting facts and asides … which may only be interesting to me. But since I am writing the email, that’s pretty much all that matters.

Here are this week’s Amazonian stories.

1. The Price of One Human Soul = $10

Did you hear about the “Amazon Assistant?” No? Well, Amazon was offering EVERYONE a $10 credit to try out their new browser extension called – you guessed it – Amazon Assistant. All you had to do was install this little browser plugin and not only would you get a “free” $10 to spend on Amazon, but it would help you find the best deals on stuff all personal assistant-like. Cool, right?

So anywho … that little demonic app-in-waiting is actually a piece of spyware. It will politely and quietly harvest the data of EVERY eCommerce site you visit – including product and pricing information – and beam that info back to Jeffy Baggy Pants. Each user of Amazon Assistant sold their data and complete browsing history AND the product and pricing info of every site they visit for a $10 credit voucher.

Somewhere Satan himself is doing a face-palm wishing he had thought of it first … actually getting people to intentionally install a spyware virus on their own computers is evil genius crap.

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2. At least we know why Bezos is Cranky About It

We’ve had two recent stories about Amazon sticking it to the third-party resellers on their platform. And now I’m pretty sure that now we know why.

Back in the year 2000, third-party sellers accounted for about 2-3% of Amazon’s total sales. And while the total sales have steadily gone up, the increase of third-party sales has grown faster. Those outsiders now account for well over half of all Amazon transactions. It’s an eCommerce platform for them. In a recent letter to shareholders, JBP actually said, “Third-party sellers are kicking our first party butt. Badly.” Given his questionablereputation on such matters, we are left to wonder what, in fact, he meant by “first party butt.”

Anyway … the way that JBP sees it, that there’s money left on the table. Therefore, the interlopers must be squash like bug!

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3. All Hail Amazon Prime Day!

OK amigos … the one thing that no amount of snarkiness – no matter how justified – can diminish is that the numbers are totally Cra-Cra-Crazy. Amazon Prime Day has become a force of retail to be reckoned with. Let’s start with the numbers.

  • Amazon Prime Day 2019 was up a whopping 78% over Prime Day 2018 (Edison Trends).

  • The largest retailers saw a 64% increase in online sales over an average Monday (Adobe Analytics).

  • Amazon picked up a dominant 86.7% of the eCommerce sales (Edison Trends).

  • The total spend on Prime Day(s) this year was estimated at $7.16 b-b-b-b-b-billion, just behind Cyber Monday last year (Internet Retailer).

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4. Amazon – Two Ways to Win, No Way to Lose

But here’s a kicker that most of us didn’t think about in advance. Sure, Amazon gets a cut of all the sales on their site and sometimes distribution/logistics revenue as well. But we all forget that Amazon also sell ads. Retailers pay to get their product ads featured in searches. In addition to the $7.16 b-b-b-b-b-billion in online sales, average ad spend on their platform was up an average of 3.8x this year across all categories as retailers competed for atention, which translates into a 5.8x growth in overall ad revenue.

So I guess this means that Bezos-the-Clown ain’t sweating his alimony payments.

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5. How Amazon Got It’s Name

Did you know that the original name of the company that would become Amazon was Cadabra.com – as in Abracadabra? But folks kept hearing “cadaver” as in dead body, and that’s some bad magic so something had to change. Bezos’ second choice was MakeItSo.com because he liked how it sounded when Captain Picard of Star Trek said it … which is just about as nerdy as you can get. He went through a slew of options, including Aard.com. Seriously, he liked “aard” because it was the Dutch word for “earth” and he wanted to sell every book on earth AND the internet websites were ranked alphabetically at the time (Google didn’t exist yet).

No matter what happens to you in your life, you can hereafter proclaim that at least you didn’t consider naming your business aard. Holy crap that would have been bad.

Then, in a pinch, he literally started literally … he grabbed a dictionary and started at the front. When he got to “Amazon” the definition included the phrase “world’s largest river” and he wanted to create the “world’s largest bookstore.” Boom. That’s the story compadre.

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Believe it or not, there was other eCommerce and marketing news this last week, but I’ll catch up on those next week. I need a drink … and a nap. Being this awesome takes a lot of energy. Awesomeness like this don’t happen on its own you know. I just make it look easy.

Fortunately, it’s super-easy for you to be awesome. All you have to do is click the little “forward” button on the upper right side of your email and send this gem of content wonder to a worthy soul so they can also both witness and experience awesome at the same time.

That would be totally aard of you.

Happy Selling,

Zachary