My dad has a business manufacturing parts and selling them (replacement parts for fitness equipment) and he is looking to branching out his sales scope. I suggested Amazon Marketplace but would like to know what people’s experience is with that and what all is involved. IE How much time commitment is there in maintaining a storefront there, do they handle things like non-USA shipping, and general feedback on the experience in general. He currently has a website and does ebay sales, but the ebay thing is a lot of work.
Anyone here done anything on Amazon Marketplace and have any answers? It would be much appreciated.
I’ve sold tons of stuff through Amazon. I assume that is the same as Amazon Marketplace.
They pay fairly well, giving you most of the money. They assign the shipping cost for you, but they always(for me) charge enough for shipping to more than cover the actual cost. People can choose higher rates of postage, but Amazon adds more for that for you.
It’s painless, easy, and as long as you are honest, no problem.
Report all conditions of everything you sell 100% honestly and make sure you read the descriptions of how to determine what condition to list for your item. Brand New means…literally brand new and in the wrapping…not just something that is opened, but exactly the same as Brand New.
Selling on Amazon is much more painless than selling on eBay as long as you can find the products already listed. They don’t allow just anyone to add new items to the catalog; you have to be a big enough merchant. But if you’re selling a common item or part, man, it’s so pain-free it’s not funny… just a sentence or two’s description for item condition is all you need to add. The rest of the item description, pictures, etc. are all pre-made for you. And you don’t have to worry about calculating shipping costs either; that’s already set on a per-item-category basis.
And Fulfillment by Amazon is a DREAM come true… you can ship them a big box of your stuff all at once and Amazon warehouses them, sells them for you, ships them for you, and handles all returns and such for you. It’s great for customers too because those items are eligible for free Amazon shipping or Amazon Prime shipping.
Of course, if your dad is making custom parts, getting them into the Amazon catalog might be problematic…
Don’t be scared off by this. “Big enough merchant” means someone willing to pay $40/month to be a “Pro Member”. If you sell at least 40 items a month, it’s worth it.
I’ve done both eBay and Amazon, and Amazon wins in most categories.
Pros:
[ul]
[li]List once and it stays up forever. No relisting every 7-10 days[/li][li]Amazon handles the payments. Which means…[/li][li]Fewer shitty customers - no feedback extortion, no flakes doing chargebacks, no people begging to send you cash. You don’t ship until Amazon says it’s OK to ship, which means Amazon already has their money in hand.[/li][li] Everything being fixed price as opposed to auction in my experience means higher profit. Plus customers expecting fixed price means no endless email haggling like you get with eBay.[/li][li] One bulk payment from Amazon every 2 weeks, instead of lots of individual PayPal transactions. Some people consider this a negative because they have to wait for their money. I like it because it makes the accounting easier. It’s your call if this is a pro or a con.[/li][/ul]
Cons:
[ul]
[li]The fees seem a little higher, but that gets offset by the higher prices you can get.[/li][li]Shipping price is set by Amazon, and any correlation between Amazon’s shipping price and your actual shipping cost is strictly coincidental. I’ve had items that cost me $1-2 to ship and the shipping charge was $5 (yeah!!!) and I’ve had bulky items that cost $10 to ship and the shipping charge was $5 (boo!!!) You learn to not bother with heavy or bulky stuff.[/li][li]Shipping (part 2) - Amazon skims a fee out of the shipping amount. In other words, what they charge the customer is about 50c more than what they give to you to cover your shipping.[/li][/ul]
The quick version:
Amazon is easier to use and you get a better class of customer. An analogy would be Amazon is like having a store in a nice mall; eBay is like having a stall at a swap meet.
I operate an online retail operation on Amazon.
I have one full-time staffer.
You’ve got a lot of questions.
Q: How much time commitment is there in maintaining a storefront?
A: If the item is already in the catalog, it’s very simple to list it. Once per day, as your in-shop inventory changes, update your quantities for sale at Amazon. Otherwise you’ll have double sales, have to cancel your order at Amazon, and eventually lose your account.
Q: How do they handle non-US shipping?
A: This varies by category. Many categories can’t be sold internationally. Books are the major exception, where you can ship to a large portion of the 1st world and a notable portion of the 3rd world.
Q: Overall feedback?
A: It’s a good venue overall, but some categories work better than others. If you’re selling college textbooks… it’s mandatory. If you’re selling some other things, you need your own site. If you’re selling certain classes of collectibles, you can either make your own site or set up an Ebay storefront. For those classes of collectibles, Amazon is unable to move ANY product.
Specific comments:
Before he opens an account, he needs to contact Amazon and make sure that he’s opening THE RIGHT KIND of account.
There are several different types of account.
-One type is appropriate for nothing besides selling books/DVDs/CDs.
-Another type is only appropriate for part-timers selling books/DVDs/CDs who want Amazon to ship the items for them.
-One is perfect for selling auto parts, hardware, electronics, etc. The downside of this type of account is that you get paid every 15 days. The two other account types I’ve listed get paid daily.
If you open the wrong account type, you could even wind up locked out of your preferred category. For instance, a regular book/DVD/CD account could not sell the current version of Microsoft Office, or certain auto parts.
The different account types are explained properly NOWHERE on Amazon.
Additionally, for non-media items, everything listed needs to have a UPC. That might be a problem for him, or it might not.
It sounds like he’d be creating new items in the catalog for everything he sells, since he’s the manufacturer.
Might I ask if he’s selling, perhaps, 5 part numbers or 5000?
There are some software solutions that might make more sense if your answer is 5000 than 5.
One big problem with selling books on Amazon is that the combination of long term listings and lack of completed item search means that a lot of items are listed at ridiculous prices that will never sell.
This does mean that if you are the one guy offering stuff at a reasonable price (don’t just use Amazon to value your stuff, basically) then you can do really well.
As Reply and Mr. Slant indicated, you must have a UPC, or the item is already in the Amazon catalog. We wanted to work more with Amazon, but this one Amazon requirement became a roadblock (we sell art prints, and the publishers generally don’t assign UPCs to them). Assigning our own UPCs was cost-prohibitive.
What he sells are replacement parts for Total Gym systems. Both for broken parts and to upgrade to sturdier parts. He has several sales per day from what I can tell and is doing pretty well. I don’t know about the UPC thing… I do know that he’s just about the only one out there making his product so it isn’t going to be in Amazon already…
Mr. S … great information. Amazon looks like a good place to get going on an online store. Perhaps it is just me (getting confused easily) but are there two platforms? “Sell on Amazon” and “Amazon Marketplace” … or is that what you were referring to above?
In reading Amzn help – the terms seem to be used interchangeably, but an Amazon CS mentioned that there are different platforms.
There used to be two platforms.
Now there is one.
Most Amazon CS agents don’t really understand the platform vs account type distinction.
The guys writing the documentation at Amazon on this topic don’t understand it either.
In some cases, they understand it, but they haven’t kept up with changes.
That’s good to know – should simplify things. But I can imagine the listings and catalog nightmare when they merged the two platforms. Someone probably pulled their hair out.
