Selling & flipping · debunked
"Done-for-you" Amazon automation stores
Pay a company tens of thousands to set up and run an online store in your name and collect passive profits. Ask why they don't just run it themselves.
- Who pays you
- You pay a large upfront fee plus ongoing costs to an "automation" company that promises to run a store under your account. Regulators have found that most of these stores lose money or are suspended, and the company's income comes from your fee, not from sales.
- Outcomes
- 0 receipts. Nobody's reported back on this one yet. Receipts open when accounts launch.
The pitch
An "e-commerce automation" company offers to build and run an online marketplace store in your name. You provide the capital, the account and the credit; they provide the "team". Profits, they say, are passive. The fee is large, sometimes financed on your credit cards at their suggestion.
Where the money actually goes
- To them, upfront. The fee is the product. Everything after it is cost to them, so their incentive is to sell the next store, not run yours.
- Suspensions. Marketplaces prohibit account operation by third parties in most of these arrangements. Accounts get suspended, and the suspension is on your name.
- Inventory risk. Stores are stocked with your money. When they fail, the stock is yours too.
- The enforcement record. Consumer regulators in several countries have taken action against automation companies for exactly this, with findings that the great majority of buyers lost money.
Money flow test: who pays you? In theory, marketplace customers. In practice, you pay them, and there is no verified case of a buyer earning the fee back that wasn't produced by the seller.
What to do instead
If you have real capital and want a business, buy equipment for a service you'll run yourself, or a trailer, or a pressure washer. Anything where the person collecting the money is you.
Published 1 Aug 2026