Selling on Amazon

[Rich Brady]

A client of mine was asking me about selling on Amazon and I have to admit I know very little about it.

Do any of you sell through Amazon?
How does it compare with/against eBay and your Actinic site?
Is it worth investigating or are there more beneficial avenues to explore?

Thanks in advance,

RiCh

[grantglendinnin]

Tried it before, once you get to a competitive pricing level - after Amazon take off their fees it made the effort virtually worthless.

Not worth the effort IMO - though these were all high-value items, perhaps other industries are different.

[leehack]

Lots of people become busy fools on Amazon, depends what you are selling I feel.

[Darren B]

I have been listing a few items recently, amazon charge me Ł18.50 to sell and item for Ł100

not worth the hassle if you ask me. I'll let my competitors waste there money, i would rather knock Ł15 off my askign price on my site

[kathynewman]

We sell alot on Amazon and yes the fees are heafty but for us it is good. I do wonder how much it takes away from sales directly on our site as Amazon rates very well in search engines.

We very carefully work out the prices taking into account everything and even with the fees on the whole we still make a reasonable profit.

Hardly list anything on Ebay these days as never did very well with it.

IMO Amazon yes is expensive but the volume of sales we get makes it very worthwhile for us.

[Fairyglass]

We sell alot on Amazon and yes the fees are heafty but for us it is good. I do wonder how much it takes away from sales directly on our site as Amazon rates very well in search engines.

We very carefully work out the prices taking into account everything and even with the fees on the whole we still make a reasonable profit.

Hardly list anything on Ebay these days as never did very well with it.

IMO Amazon yes is expensive but the volume of sales we get makes it very worthwhile for us.

In my market the reverse is true- competition on Amazon has driven the price down to a point where it's no longer worthwhile once fees have been taken into account. Our latest Ebay shop (my third attempt at one in three years) is doing well and in some cases we're able to increase prices above those on our site which helps with fees. I find both Amazon and eBay equally useful in terms of promoting customers to our sites, but sadly Amazon is no longer viable financially and I'm about to close our shop.

[pnagames]

we have been selling in Amazon with great success, ebay with decent success and Play with again decent success.

our pricing for all of the above is higher than our store to take into account fees etc.

in our view it would be foolish to disregard these sites as the money they spent on advertising is huge and indirectly it benefits us

we have seen a few customers jump ship from amazon to our site to buy the product as we sell it cheaper on the site

[Rich Brady]

Thanks for all the feedback guys.

I appreciate you taking the time out to comment,

Rich

[Benjamin Dyer]

Do any of you sell through Amazon?

Yes, Emma my wife is an Amazon Seller Central merchant, has been for about 18 months now, ever since they opened up the Sports category.

How does it compare with/against eBay and your Actinic site?

Taking off my Actinic hat for a moment... Firstly, the problems.

Frankly Seller Central is an absolute load of garbage. Almost everything about it feels about 10 years out of date. Inventory control is very difficult and your constantly at the mercy of other merchants. Everything listed is controlled either by ASIN or Barcode, if for whatever reason another merchant has uploaded the wrong image or description your in trouble.

Em has also had huge problems with phantom stock levels, products appearing that have previously been deleted and occasional orders from other merchants.

There is also a desktop product, my advise would be to avoid it, problematic and it tends to screw up your listings.

The most disappointing thing from my perspective is Amazon are absolute trailblazers in web market, they have built some of the most impressive apps and reinvented the infrastructure to host and support it. However, Seller Central is the pits, it has its own API but getting anything out of it very difficult. Frustrating to say the least.

Now for the good!

Yes its worth investigating, as a secondary channel complemented by your own store. The sheer quantities of scale make it almost impossible not to succeed. However from first hand experience some advise if you are planning to use it:

1. Amazon are HOT on buyer feedback, its like eBay on steroids, its very clear who comes first in the Amazon customer / merchant relationship!

2. They are also extremely pro active in monitoring Order Defect Rate, Cancellation Rate, Late Shipment Rate and Policy Violations. My advice in light of the above issues is to have a small product range, a subset of your core channel which you can monitor.

3. Its expensive, and Amazon encourages a culture of undercutting your competitors.

4. The deal is to get your product on the front is to have a combination of best price and a pre-fulfillment cancel rate of <2.5%. If you get this right its a winning combo.

5. Its hard work, it could just the the quantities but Amazon buyers seem to require 75% more effort than people that come direct!

6. THE BIGGEST ISSUE - Your at the mercy of Amazon. I know lots of people who have literally had their stores turned off over night for perceived policy violations or poor performance on some of the metrics. Use it as your sole channel at your peril.

If you want to learn some more about it happy to put you in contact with Em. For her business its worth the cost / effort combo but its taken a long time!

Hope this was helpful.

Ben

[acompton]

Amazon has been discussed before - search the forum.

I have had a lot of success as a Seller Central; and some conversion to site sales. I've said it before: there is a high trust factor for buying on Amazon.

The UI isn't great, but I haven't had the dire (groan!) problems that Ben decribes. If you do a good job, you won't have problems with the performance metrics.

You'll always get some negative feed back from the odd nutter, which can be demoralising. You have to learn to ignore it where its not your fault.

I find the biggest problem is in trying to contact customer. You have to send an email through Amazon, which arrives in a 'standard' form and either gets trapped by spam filters or the customer ignores it - especially at Christmas when they will be getting load of these emails.

[kathynewman]

One point on negative or neutral feedback from Amazon customers. If the feedback is deemed to be a direct product review such as "product no good" or "my dog didn't like this toy" then you can email Amazon and get these removed. The feedback is purely there for customers to review the service provided by the supplier not a product review.

[acompton]

One point on negative or neutral feedback from Amazon customers. If the feedback is deemed to be a direct product review such as "product no good" or "my dog didn't like this toy" then you can email Amazon and get these removed. The feedback is purely there for customers to review the service provided by the supplier not a product review.

Also, if you're a Market Trader, where Amazon set the postage, they will remove bad feedback about postage rates.

I wonder what Amazon would make of this recent gem:

"a little misleading wish i had read the details better"

[Stereo Steve]

Amazon can be very powerful for the right product. All the above is true but we still make serious profitable sales on Amazon Seller Central so it's very well worth it. Amazon are TOUGH on their sellers and won't take any BS. If you get an A-Z claim, you refund there and then, no question. If you are going to spend the rest of the day sulking about such things, it's not for you. If you can take it in your stride and see the bigger picture, go for it.

The problem with Amazon is that some products are effectively off limits. If Amazon sell it, you will never get the buy box while they have stock, regardless of cost. You will also find that some products (for instance TDK blank media) is sold almost at cost. This is because there are so many sellers trying to shift it.

The truth is that probably 60% of our Amazon sales come froma couple products which sell well (20-30 a day) and nobody else has stumbled upon (yet). Of course, you need to keep in mind before ordering 15 pallets of said profit that Amazon can see that you are selling lots of this item, out buy you and list for less at any time.

It's fast moving, it's rife with undercutting idiots but there is gold in there somewhere. Have a go, you never know.

[Stereo Steve]

Also, a good tip is that Amazon is great for end of line stuff. If the disties have stopped moving something and you can buy up the last of the line you will have the market to yourself and can make serious wedge.

[kathynewman]

Steve - did you ever get a definative answer re Amazon & VAT? (did post on Amazon Vat thread but no one replied)!!