The Wholesale Forums

[Ph4ZeD]

I thought I'd write a little simplified guide to how selling on Amazon and eBay work, so newer sellers can see straight away what might be right for them

Amazon Marketplace

- No insertion fees of any kind, items stay on there for 60 days then you can just relist for free
- Higher Final Value Fees for most items when compared to eBay
- Very simplified and easy selling
- Shipping costs set by Amazon, ie. no competition over shipping
- No customisation of listings, every listing from the smallest private seller to the biggest company appear the same
- Money handled via Amazon, very simple system
- Unless your a pro-merchant, you cannot 'create' new items, you simply add what you have to sell on an existing item
- Huge market, Amazon are the worlds largest online retailer
- Far more restrictions on what you can sell
- No auctions

eBay

- Costs money to list (insertion fee)
- Cheaper Final Value Fees (the fee for the sale) than Amazon, in some cases massively cheaper
- You set your shipping costs
- Very customisable listings, you can add photos, use HTML, templates etc
- Money handled via Paypal - more powerful yet more complicated
- Have to create new listings for every item
- Again huge market
- Huge array of items to sell and buy, very few restrictions
- A lot of choice how you want to sell, whether with auctions, Buy It Now, etc
- eBay scales well to higher volume selling with various discount schemes for fees like PowerSellers, eBay shops
- Not as user friendly as Amazon


If you feel I've missed something obvious, please post and I'll edit it in

[chris89]

Don't you have to pay monthly for Amazon?

[Ph4ZeD]

Not at all. You only pay monthly to become a pro-merchant seller, just like you pay a monthly fee to setup an eBay shop.

[Anthony]

Thank you for taking the time to share this with the community.

[Inferno House]

Nice info...

Originally Posted by chris89

Don't you have to pay monthly for Amazon?

Basically it's 17.25% plus 80p deducted from the sale, if you become a pro merc it's 17.25% & £25 per month...

If your selling a good amount of items then it's well worth paying the £25 per month save save on the excess 80p's.

[Ph4ZeD]

You get cheaper rates for Consumer Electronics too, 11% to 8.05%. 8.05% is a fairly good rate, being as it covers Laptops, Cameras, Keyboards etc. The thing they really have to change is Games stuff which your charged 17.25% which is a ridiculous amount on Wiis, games etc.

BTW you get more than that for Pro-Merchant membership, you get stock listing tools and stuff like that I think.

[studio1one]

If you are VAT registered you get invoice net of VAT too so electronics are only 7%