What Amazon sellers make

[View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hi everybody, Matt Day here. A new report is out on Amazon sellers—does it say what the company wants it to? But first… Today’s top tech news: - PayPal is weighing a [$45 billion acquisition]( of Pinterest - SoftBank could (someday) [make money]( on its massive WeWork bet - Bitcoin hit [new records]( Welcome to the marketplace Amazon.com Inc.’s third-party marketplace is polarizing. In one view, the platform is thriving, minting thousands of lucky millionaires hitching a ride on the e-commerce boom. In another, it’s a brutally competitive bazaar, a small-business scourge full of counterfeits and sniping. This week, Amazon released its new entry in the debate: the latest Small Business Empowerment Report, a [glossy document]( full of photos of smiling entrepreneurs and numbers with lots of zeros. The report is partly recruitment material—meant to draw more independent makers of organic jams and ball bearings to Amazon’s store. But winning the argument over its marketplace is important for Amazon in other ways, too. In Washington, the company has warned that clumsy regulation could force it to cut off those small businesses from the hundreds of millions of customers on its gargantuan retail site. The tactic has been used before by Facebook Inc., which often points to the neighborhood shops that depend on social media, and Apple Inc., which touts the app developers living off the iEconomy. Amazon, for its part, relies on a “small business shield,” as Axios [labelled it]( this week. Inconveniently, though, not all the sellers are[happy](. As Bloomberg reported last week, sellers say counterfeiting remains [a problem](. Amazon also faces new claims that it [unfairly]( [competes]( against sellers. U.S. House lawmakers [wrote to]( Amazon Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy on Monday, raising the prospect of criminal investigation and offering the opportunity to “correct the record” after media reports contradicted testimony from Amazon officials. (Amazon, which denies using individual seller data to benefit its own products, says its executives didn’t mislead Congress). In short, the marketplace is both Amazon’s defense against prospective regulation, as well as the source of many of the horror stories spurring lawmakers and regulators to act in the first place. All that raises the stakes for Amazon’s latest report, which was tailored for a U.S. audience. So what’s in it? Amazon says it has more than 500,000 American sellers, more than 65,000 of whom had annual sales of at least $100,000. Not bad! But flip that on its head. That means 87% of sellers reap sales (not profit) of less than $100,000. For those folks, Amazon probably represents a side hustle or modest sales channel rather than the foundation of a booming enterprise. Another figure: U.S. merchants’ sales averaged $200,000 in the 12 months ending this September. Since the vast majority of sellers take home less than half that, it means a comparatively small pool of companies at the top is raking it in. A similar top-heavy distribution tends to repeat across the digital economy, from live streamers to app developers. There’s reason to approach the whole report with skepticism. Amazon’s disclosures tend to feature rough, approximate numbers and metrics that change year to year—or are ditched entirely. Take sales by U.S. sellers in Amazon’s international stores. In last year’s report, U.S. small- and medium-sized sellers posted $3.1 billion in such sales. But this week’s report showed U.S. sellers’ exports rose a staggering 47% to—$2.2 billion. That’s not a typo. U.S. merchants’ sales went backwards by nearly $1 billion, yet still recorded furious growth. What gives? An Amazon spokesperson says differences come from shifts in the date range and the pool of sellers included. “Amazon is very awkwardly trying to say that, despite all the bad things written about Amazon, there are also sellers that are doing great,” said Juozas Kaziukenas, founder of Marketplace Pulse, which tracks online marketplaces. “But I don’t know why or how, or what is causing it, because they can’t seem to find a way to tell it straight.” Perhaps more substantively, Amazon this week announced two new tools, both coming next year, designed to give sellers better ability to identify promising product areas and understand search results. For sellers, who have long complained that Amazon under-invests in seller software at the same time as Amazon house brands enjoy a God’s eye view over the platform, such advances are welcome. For Amazon, they represent a couple more pieces of evidence that the company is a benevolent owner of its digital mall. Expect to see them in next year’s small business report. But don’t get your hopes up about the data. —[Matt Day](mailto:mday63@bloomberg.net) If you read one thing China’s tech industry is adjusting to a [new reality]( after sweeping government crackdowns. Says one analyst of the country’s technology giants: “They’re becoming hybrid entities that are effectively state-controlled.” Here’s what you need to know There’s a betting market for the possible [new Facebook name](. Apple will force unvaccinated office workers to get [daily Covid tests](. Revenue at Tesla was [up 57%]( in the third quarter.   Follow Us More from Bloomberg Dig gadgets or video games? [Sign up for Power On]( to get Apple scoops, consumer tech news and more in your inbox on Sundays. [Sign up for Game On]( to go deep inside the video game business, delivered on Fridays. 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