Zamir Cajee doesn't believe Amazon is a gold rush. He believes it's a marketplace that rewards graft and quietly punishes wishful thinking — and he's spent more than two decades building digital businesses on knowing the difference.
That conviction was earned the hard way. After running a digital agency, Zamir founded consumer electronics brand iQualTech and scaled it through online marketplaces from the UK into Europe, the US and India — learning first-hand what it takes to build, defend and grow a brand where the algorithm doesn't care about your intentions. That experience made him a specialist in marketplace strategy, digital advertising and international e-commerce.
Today, as co-founder of This Way Up, he has advised more than 1,000 brands on their Amazon strategy and delivers workshops and training for businesses looking to succeed on major online marketplaces. His method starts with the shopper, not the software. Ranking, he argues, isn't a lever you pull — it's a consequence of consumer behaviour, and the only honest way to diagnose performance is to follow the chain: impression share, click share, conversion share, revenue share, profit share. Find where the share breaks, and you've found the problem. Everything else is guesswork with a dashboard attached.
Zamir co-hosts The Upside Podcast and writes regularly on the consumer psychology driving Amazon's search results.
His consistent line: Amazon isn't for everyone. It's for the people willing to do the work.