A few years ago, I talked with a member who’d built a $3M e-commerce brand on Amazon.
Everything was going well. She was launching new products, partnering with wholesalers, and testing new ads.
Then I discovered the truth.
Her business was crumbling.
Chinese sellers entered her market that she once comfortably dominated. They decimated prices—and her margins.
The last time I talked with her, she was in tears. She thought she might have to file for bankruptcy.
If you produce most of your sales on Amazon, your business is at risk.
You’re one policy change, one competitor, or one ranking loss away from getting your business cut in half, or worse.
How to take back control from Amazon
At Lifeboost Coffee, we produced $51M in sales in 2025. Over 60% of our sales come from our Shopify store; less than 40% come from Amazon.
Our business is more valuable, more stable, and more profitable because we have a direct relationship with 688,00 customers.
Build a business you control:
- Upsell and cross-sell products to your customers for more sales and profits
- Each customer is worth 3-4 times more to your business (our 12-month lifetime value is $60 on Amazon versus $200 on Shopify)
- Enjoy higher margins (no more paying Amazon its 15%, promotional fees, and ads just to remind customers who you are)
- Charge higher prices for your products (no more race-to-the-bottom in pricing competitions with Chinese sellers)
- Own a more valuable business worth 50%+ more (Amazon-only brands get low valuation multiples)
Step 1: Learn the direct-to-consumer (DTC) game
Selling on Amazon is about harvesting demand from search terms.
Selling direct-to-consumer—selling on your own website with Shopify directly to customers—is about creating demand from social media ads.
You learned to sell on Amazon. You read, watched, studied, invested, and experimented. Eventually, you figured it out.
Now it’s time to make the same investment in learning to sell on Shopify. Read, watch, study, and ask for help. Your business depends on it.
You’re an intelligent, capable person. You once knew nothing about selling on Amazon, and you figured it out.
You can also learn to sell on Shopify.
Step 2: Pick a Keystone Product
The best way to scale on Shopify is to pick one product, create a good sales funnel, and run ads.
With Amazon, you can sell tons of niche products and do OK (though I don’t think that’s the best model on Amazon either).
With Shopify, you want one product that can scale—I call this a Keystone Product.
Start with whichever product you currently have that:
- Has the most significant market (broadest appeal)
- Is in some way differentiated from competitors’ products
Use your best current product to build your DTC skills.
At the same time, start planning your future Keystone Product, built for Shopify rather than Amazon.
Step 3: Use your Amazon products to increase lifetime value
As an Amazon seller, you have an advantage: you have multiple products.
With multiple products, each customer you acquire on Shopify is worth more to you than a typical one-product Shopify seller.
Use your Amazon products as order bumps, upsells, and back-end offers to make each customer you acquire on Shopify worth much more.
The more valuable a customer is to you on Shopify, the faster you can scale your traffic.
Step 4: Master the art of e-commerce sales funnels
Amazon makes you a lazy marketer. It’s 80% about selecting the right product, 20% about marketing.
Shopify is more like 50/50.
To scale on Shopify, you need a strong funnel and effective ads. Both are learnable skills.
Start by modeling others. Look for others, ideally in your space, that run lots of Meta (Facebook) ads. Model your first sales funnel and ads off of theirs.
Keep learning, testing, and iterating. Eventually, you’ll master e-commerce sales funnels like you mastered Amazon product listing optimization.
From Amazon seller to 8-figure multi-channel brand owner
Ted took our course in 2015 and launched an Amazon-only brand in the automotive category. He soon realized the risks and growth ceiling of selling only on Amazon.
He added Shopify, TikTok, and brick-and-mortar, including Walmart stores.
Today, he owns a stable multi-eight-figure multi-channel brand.
Ted learned DTC just like he learned Amazon, one step at a time.
Keep learning. Keep evolving. Take back control of your business.
—Matt
P.S. If you own a $1M-$5M ecom brand and want to break through your growth ceiling, build a sales channel you control, and remove yourself from 80% of day-to-day operations, then let’s talk. I’m working with a handful of 7-figure ecom brands starting next week to help them scale using everything I’ve learned from building 2x $100M businesses. Click here to learn more.