An 8-figure Amazon seller says it’s never been easier to get started and explains how to launch a brand with $2,000

• Dave Dama bootstrapped his e-commerce company in 2010. Today, he does eight figures in annual revenue.
• He believes Amazon is the best place to start a brand on a shoestring budget.
• His formula for success involves launching as many products as you can sustainably.

Dave Dama launched his first Amazon brand in 2010, when e-commerce entrepreneurs were just starting to figure out the platform.

“The competition and saturation weren’t there,” he told Business Insider. “You could really launch products in any category and see some success if you had an understanding of the platform, without ads, because the secret wasn’t out yet.”

The e-commerce veteran admits that selling on Amazon in 2025 is more complex and expensive, but he still believes it’s the best place to start a business.

“The beautiful thing about Amazon and why it allowed us to succeed is that it really lowers the barrier to entry and reduces overall risk,” he said. “If I were to set up a traditional retail store distribution channel, there are tremendous costs that come with building all that infrastructure out and hiring. Those costs are reduced 90%, if not more, by starting on Amazon.”

Dama and his business partner, Arsalan Rahbarpoor, bootstrapped their e-commerce business, which now does eight figures in revenue between their two brands: Pure Daily Care, which offers beauty and wellness devices for at-home use, and Aquasonic, which offers oral care products.

“You can start with 2,000 bucks, so what’s the worst that can happen?” encouraged Dama. “Amazon is a potential gold mine, and the first stop in your brand-building journey.”

He and his CMO, Jonathan Cohen, provided a playbook for succeeding on Amazon in 2025.

‘It’s a numbers game’: Launch multiple products

“If you want to become a hyper successful seller, it’s a numbers game,” said Dama — meaning, launch and list as many products as you can sustainably. Set the expectation that most of your products won’t take off, he added: “There’s a 90% plus chance of failure as you’re learning the platform and the process.”

The key is to at least break even, so you have the capital to continue testing different products.

That’s what worked for Dama and Rahbarpoor, whose first product flopped. Once they realized it wasn’t a winner, they lowered the price enough to sell through their initial inventory and then analyzed customer reviews to figure out what went wrong.

“How do you recoup that investment? How do you continue to have the ability to launch new products? Because if you launch enough new products, you will eventually have a stable of winning products and build a real business,” said Dama.

Optimize your listing page

Your listing page matters.

“It’s become more important just because of fierce competition,” said Dama. “You’re going up against hundreds of other options, so you need to set your listing apart by really investing in quality photos.”

If you don’t have the budget to hire a professional, your iPhone can go a long way. One top Amazon seller, who started her e-commerce business with $2,000 upfront, shot her initial product photos with her phone. She used GIMP, a free image editor, to paste her product images on a white background.

Dama added that eventually, you’ll have to pay for Amazon ads: “When I get on calls to mentor aspiring Amazon entrepreneurs, I tell them two things: A, you have to have an idea for which products you want to launch. And B, you need to master ads. Or, if you have the money, hire someone who knows the ad game. Because Amazon, at this point, is absolutely a pay-to-play platform.”

Think beyond Amazon

Once you’ve found what Dama likes to call “winning products,” it’s smart to think about leveraging other platforms.

“I think all Amazon sellers should be thinking about everything off Amazon — TikTok being one of the top things.”

TikTok Shop is the platform’s built-in e‑commerce feature, which allows users to discover and purchase products within the app. It officially launched in the US in 2023, and top Amazon sellers agree that succeeding in e-commerce in 2025 means at least exploring TikTok Shop.

Not every product is the right fit for the platform. In general, consumers on TikTok Shop are more price-conscious, explained Cohen: “It’s going to be really tough to get a TikTok shopper to buy a moisturizer for over $100 unless it’s the No. 1 spoken about moisturizer.”

While AquaSonic isn’t big on TikTok, Pure Daily Care has exploded on the platform, driven by one specific line of products — the NuDerma High Frequency Wands — that went viral during the COVID pandemic.

“We were in the right category at the right time at the right price point,” said Cohen. “It came at a time when people could not go and visit their facialist or their aesthetician to get a treatment, so everyone was looking to social media and influencers to tell them what to do with their skin.”

It’s worth experimenting with the platform, especially if you’ve started to gain steam on Amazon.

“The creators are making content that they think resonates with their users, but also that they hope and know is going to convert — and that tends to be the stuff that already sells well. So, if you’re an Amazon seller that has a popular product that gets a lot of customer feedback and moves fairly well, you should absolutely be on TikTok and formulating your strategy,” said Cohen. “Even if your TikTok shop is just an experiment to see what happens, you wouldn’t know unless you get on there.”

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