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What most people don't realize is that Amazon fees are 15% and most suppliers do FBA which tacks on a more expensive shipping charge than you would have otherwi

What most people don't realize is that Amazon fees are 15% and most suppliers do FBA which tacks on a more expensive shipping charge than you would have otherwise with USPS. eBay on the other hand charges 10% and sellers can ship items the cheapest way. Those same suppliers on Amazon list the their items on eBay for cheaper since they net the same after fees.

rootusrootus 7y ago
I find a lot of things these days are actually slightly more expensive on eBay. I also see a lot of duplicate listings by the same (or apparently the same) seller with wildly varying prices. I still buy stuff on eBay once in a while, but it's not the place to go anymore for the best deal. And after you're accustomed to 1-2 day shipping from Amazon, waiting a couple weeks for an eBay shipment is a non-starter.
- theturtletalks 7y ago
  I think what you are finding are eBay sellers dropshipping the items from Amazon directly. So those items will be more expensive since the sellers have to make up the 10% eBay fee. I'm talking about the Amazon sellers that use something like Channel Advisor and are listing the same products on eBay for less. But finding those sellers takes effort in some cases.
  - rootusrootus 7y ago
    That may be exactly what happens on the back end. I only see it from a consumer point of view. I can't reliably best Amazon prices by going to eBay, I have to go somewhere like Walmart.
    - dawnerd 7y ago
      > I can't reliably best Amazon prices by going to eBay, I have to go somewhere like Walmart. reply A lot of eBay sellers actually source from Walmart. I have. I works pretty great... sometimes. Just gotta be quick about getting their clearance items or pricing mistakes.
      - JohnFen 7y ago
        I intentionally refuse to do business with Walmart. That I may be unintentionally helping them to make money bothers me.
        dawnerd 7y ago
        Better watch out for third party sellers on Amazon then too. I know of a few people that source from Walmart specifically for FBA.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  I'm not particularly price-sensitive (that is, I'm not going to spend any time or energy finding the lowest possible price for something -- I'll just go with the first reasonable price I see). You may differ on this, and that's totally fair. However, this: > And after you're accustomed to 1-2 day shipping from Amazon, waiting a couple weeks for an eBay shipment is a non-starter. Ignores the fact that (at least for the stuff I buy), you can usually get 2 day shipping from eBay sellers. The only time I have to wait more than a few days when ordering on eBay is if what I'm buying is rare enough that I have to buy from an out-of-country supplier -- and those things are rarely or never found on Amazon anyway.
  - rootusrootus 7y ago
    I'm definitely biased more in favor of convenience and shipping speed. But to take a recent example, I just bought something last week on eBay, and regular shipping was free, or I could upgrade to USPS Priority Mail for $9.99. For a $32 boxed set of DVDs, this triggers my rip-off sensor, even if it's not enough to really matter. And it wouldn't be two-day shipping, just priority mail. Good but not the same. I like eBay well enough and I have my quibbles with Amazon (especially the marketplace) but they definitely have the one-click-and-you-have-it-tomorrow game nailed.
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      > they definitely have the one-click-and-you-have-it-tomorrow game nailed. There's no question about that. But personally, this isn't a big deal for me. That's one of the reasons that I've really taken to "Amazon Day" for shipping -- I rarely need something the next day, and am entirely happy to wait up to a week for my Amazon order in exchange for only having one shipment per week. My cutoff for "too long" tends to be a week or two, depending.
    - Trilkhai 7y ago
      USPS has increased its shipping prices quite a bit in the last several years, enough that I can (unfortunately) easily see it costing $9.99 or even more to send a box set of DVDs. Try checking the USPS shipping calculator, you might be surprised at the results.
- H1Supreme 7y ago
  > And after you're accustomed to 1-2 day shipping from Amazon That's Amazon Prime. Non-prime purchases are, in my experience, deliberately delayed. I'm two days from their New Jersey warehouse, and my last three purchases were all delivered in 7 business days or longer. All items were fulfilled by Amazon. > waiting a couple weeks for an eBay shipment As a former seller on ebay (20-30 items a month), getting things out on time is a priority for lots of people. Especially sellers shipping a lot of packages. Namely, because you want those good ratings from customers. Get a bunch of neutral/bad reviews because of shipping, and your sales will plummet.
ineedasername 7y ago
Using a few fee calculators & testing with a $100 item, it looks like they're comparable if the seller isn't using FBA. But, assuming FBA, then yes you spend a few dollars more than Ebay for the same item. However, selling via FBA can also give you a boost in sales with customers more inclined to buy when it will fit in their Prime subscription, and that increase in sales may outpace the increased cost. Also, at least based on my own buying habits, (I know hardly representative) I'm much more likely to feel "safe" buying something on Amazon. But either way,to hit the most audience and maximize global profit, you can simply sell in both venues. Given some of the sales management tools that let sellers manage inventory & pricing across platforms, it doesn't have to dramatically increase the overhead of a sales & fulfillment operation. As for switching from selling wholesale to Amazon to Marketplace, it may actually result in a net increase in profits because it is probably likely that selling retail via FBA will get more money in the sellers' pockets than the wholesale cost. It really would be nice if Amazon gave sellers more certainty in this process though. It sounds like details & timing have yet to be fully nailed down, and it's the type of change that a business should be given something like 6 months of advance notice.
- leeoniya 7y ago
  > However, selling via FBA can also give you a boost in sales with customers more inclined to buy when it will fit in their Prime subscription, and that increase in sales may outpace the increased cost. FBA is not a prerequisite for Prime eligibility. We sell on Amazon via Seller-Fulfilled Prime. They have pretty strict time tables for fulfillment to maintain eligibility, and you have to print your shipment labels through Seller Central, though you can link your own UPS account so not to pay extra fees.
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    Sure, provided you already have your own fulfillment operation set up for other sales channels that's an excellent way to get the best of both worlds.
derefr 7y ago
> and most suppliers do FBA which tacks on a more expensive shipping charge than you would have otherwise with USPS. That assumes equivalent costs in other parts of your operation. But with FBA, isn't Amazon doing your stock-keeping for you? You can avoid paying for warehouse space if Amazon is your warehouse.
- theturtletalks 7y ago
  Amazon does make you pay to use the warehouse space. If your inventory is not selling, they start charging you for housing the inventory. Their ideal scenario is to force sellers to send inventory that matches sales so warehousing is optimized.
  - sodiumfree 7y ago
    I thought we paid for warehousing regardless. Though I think there are situations where if your selling inventory is turning over quickly, they may waive warehousing fees. The incentive is definitely there to manage inventory at optimal levels. If your inventory sits too long in their warehouse, the fees go from "regular" storage fees to "long-term" storage fees. Those fees are much higher, which incentivizes the seller to put the stuff on sale to blow it out of their warehouses, or you can have the inventory sent back to you. Also, fees vary by category and season. Around the holidays, you'll see them making a push to increase long-term storage fees to make way for the stuff that will actually sell, and on categories which are hot for the holidays, you might see them providing incentives with lower storage fees. I'm not the primary person that deals with Amazon FBA, but he sits next to me. Don't take what I'm saying as the gospel, but this is based on somewhat second hand experiencing and reading some of the emails that come through. My partner pays more attention to those details.
    - theturtletalks 7y ago
      Yes I was talking about the long term storage fees which they used to charge if inventory was rolled over after 30 days. The items we used to sell needed to be purchased in high quantities to get a decent price so we would ship items to FBA on a monthly basis trying to estimate demand. Eventually, Amazon itself started selling the same item and it just wasn't worth it especially with higher fees for FBA.
sodiumfree 7y ago
Are you considering the PayPal fees you pay for payment processing when you sell on eBay? That's on top of the approximately 10% that eBay charges. eBay also charges listing fees and final value fees. I haven't done a deep dive on my own selling data to come up with an accurate comparision, but I think they're comparable.
ikeboy 7y ago
FBA is cheaper than USPS is almost all cases. Once you throw in the fact that FBA fees included pick and pack which you'd otherwise have to pay for yourself, it's quite rare to find items more cost effective to ship directly than to use FBA. Primarily it's either very small items that can be shipped with flats, or very large items where dimensional weight comes into play.
- theturtletalks 7y ago
  This is a good point, but Amazon tacks on even more fees if you want to fulfill those orders outside of Amazon. We used to sell small electronics on Amazon and other channels which used to cost $2.60 to ship USPS. We signed up for FBA and they charged $5.95 to fulfill each order. Even if picking and packing costs $1-$2, you still make more profit shipping it yourself. We used to have 3 workers fulfill 150 orders a day from our warehouse which equals $0.80 to "pick and pack" and can be sent to any channel.
  - ikeboy 7y ago
    Yes, MCF is not competitive with other 3pls or in-house. It's a convenience charge.
sodiumfree 7y ago
> ...most suppliers do FBA which tacks on a more expensive shipping charge than you would have otherwise with USPS. This is not universally true. As a seller on Amazon, using both FBA and seller-fulfillment, there is a lot of "it depends" in all of this. Some items we can ship cheaper, especially to local zones. But as we're on one coast and we have a lot of customers on the other coast, FBA can be a real saver on the shipping charges. Size and weight of the package affect the shipping charge, but on some products we sell, we find the fulfillment fees to sometimes get as low as less than 1/2 of what it would cost us to ship direct, even by the cheapest method we can use. If you're looking at the fulfillment fees compared to what you get charged to ship a package, make sure you're also considering that Amazon helps distribute the products to regional fulfillment centers. It's Amazon's employees that pick and pack the orders. Amazon pays for the box it ships in. Amazon handles customer service and return processing, or reshipment if the item is damaged in transit, amongst other things. Admittedly, this is not easy to consider all of the pros and cons, expenses and savings. FBA can also be a difficult beast to deal with when they don't check in your inventory, temporarily lose 300 units. Having to deal with Seller Support will cost you in terms of stress and its effects on your receding hairline, or your liver if you need to keep a bottle on your desk as you try to get problems resolved.

rootusrootus 7y ago

I find a lot of things these days are actually slightly more expensive on eBay. I also see a lot of duplicate listings by the same (or apparently the same) seller with wildly varying prices. I still buy stuff on eBay once in a while, but it's not the place to go anymore for the best deal. And after you're accustomed to 1-2 day shipping from Amazon, waiting a couple weeks for an eBay shipment is a non-starter.

theturtletalks 7y ago
I think what you are finding are eBay sellers dropshipping the items from Amazon directly. So those items will be more expensive since the sellers have to make up the 10% eBay fee. I'm talking about the Amazon sellers that use something like Channel Advisor and are listing the same products on eBay for less. But finding those sellers takes effort in some cases.
- rootusrootus 7y ago
  That may be exactly what happens on the back end. I only see it from a consumer point of view. I can't reliably best Amazon prices by going to eBay, I have to go somewhere like Walmart.
  - dawnerd 7y ago
    > I can't reliably best Amazon prices by going to eBay, I have to go somewhere like Walmart. reply A lot of eBay sellers actually source from Walmart. I have. I works pretty great... sometimes. Just gotta be quick about getting their clearance items or pricing mistakes.
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      I intentionally refuse to do business with Walmart. That I may be unintentionally helping them to make money bothers me.
      - dawnerd 7y ago
        Better watch out for third party sellers on Amazon then too. I know of a few people that source from Walmart specifically for FBA.
JohnFen 7y ago
I'm not particularly price-sensitive (that is, I'm not going to spend any time or energy finding the lowest possible price for something -- I'll just go with the first reasonable price I see). You may differ on this, and that's totally fair. However, this: > And after you're accustomed to 1-2 day shipping from Amazon, waiting a couple weeks for an eBay shipment is a non-starter. Ignores the fact that (at least for the stuff I buy), you can usually get 2 day shipping from eBay sellers. The only time I have to wait more than a few days when ordering on eBay is if what I'm buying is rare enough that I have to buy from an out-of-country supplier -- and those things are rarely or never found on Amazon anyway.
- rootusrootus 7y ago
  I'm definitely biased more in favor of convenience and shipping speed. But to take a recent example, I just bought something last week on eBay, and regular shipping was free, or I could upgrade to USPS Priority Mail for $9.99. For a $32 boxed set of DVDs, this triggers my rip-off sensor, even if it's not enough to really matter. And it wouldn't be two-day shipping, just priority mail. Good but not the same. I like eBay well enough and I have my quibbles with Amazon (especially the marketplace) but they definitely have the one-click-and-you-have-it-tomorrow game nailed.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > they definitely have the one-click-and-you-have-it-tomorrow game nailed. There's no question about that. But personally, this isn't a big deal for me. That's one of the reasons that I've really taken to "Amazon Day" for shipping -- I rarely need something the next day, and am entirely happy to wait up to a week for my Amazon order in exchange for only having one shipment per week. My cutoff for "too long" tends to be a week or two, depending.
  - Trilkhai 7y ago
    USPS has increased its shipping prices quite a bit in the last several years, enough that I can (unfortunately) easily see it costing $9.99 or even more to send a box set of DVDs. Try checking the USPS shipping calculator, you might be surprised at the results.
H1Supreme 7y ago
> And after you're accustomed to 1-2 day shipping from Amazon That's Amazon Prime. Non-prime purchases are, in my experience, deliberately delayed. I'm two days from their New Jersey warehouse, and my last three purchases were all delivered in 7 business days or longer. All items were fulfilled by Amazon. > waiting a couple weeks for an eBay shipment As a former seller on ebay (20-30 items a month), getting things out on time is a priority for lots of people. Especially sellers shipping a lot of packages. Namely, because you want those good ratings from customers. Get a bunch of neutral/bad reviews because of shipping, and your sales will plummet.

ineedasername 7y ago

Using a few fee calculators & testing with a $100 item, it looks like they're comparable if the seller isn't using FBA. But, assuming FBA, then yes you spend a few dollars more than Ebay for the same item. However, selling via FBA can also give you a boost in sales with customers more inclined to buy when it will fit in their Prime subscription, and that increase in sales may outpace the increased cost. Also, at least based on my own buying habits, (I know hardly representative) I'm much more likely to feel "safe" buying something on Amazon. But either way,to hit the most audience and maximize global profit, you can simply sell in both venues. Given some of the sales management tools that let sellers manage inventory & pricing across platforms, it doesn't have to dramatically increase the overhead of a sales & fulfillment operation. As for switching from selling wholesale to Amazon to Marketplace, it may actually result in a net increase in profits because it is probably likely that selling retail via FBA will get more money in the sellers' pockets than the wholesale cost. It really would be nice if Amazon gave sellers more certainty in this process though. It sounds like details & timing have yet to be fully nailed down, and it's the type of change that a business should be given something like 6 months of advance notice.

leeoniya 7y ago
> However, selling via FBA can also give you a boost in sales with customers more inclined to buy when it will fit in their Prime subscription, and that increase in sales may outpace the increased cost. FBA is not a prerequisite for Prime eligibility. We sell on Amazon via Seller-Fulfilled Prime. They have pretty strict time tables for fulfillment to maintain eligibility, and you have to print your shipment labels through Seller Central, though you can link your own UPS account so not to pay extra fees.
- ineedasername 7y ago
  Sure, provided you already have your own fulfillment operation set up for other sales channels that's an excellent way to get the best of both worlds.

derefr 7y ago

> and most suppliers do FBA which tacks on a more expensive shipping charge than you would have otherwise with USPS. That assumes equivalent costs in other parts of your operation. But with FBA, isn't Amazon doing your stock-keeping for you? You can avoid paying for warehouse space if Amazon is your warehouse.

theturtletalks 7y ago
Amazon does make you pay to use the warehouse space. If your inventory is not selling, they start charging you for housing the inventory. Their ideal scenario is to force sellers to send inventory that matches sales so warehousing is optimized.
- sodiumfree 7y ago
  I thought we paid for warehousing regardless. Though I think there are situations where if your selling inventory is turning over quickly, they may waive warehousing fees. The incentive is definitely there to manage inventory at optimal levels. If your inventory sits too long in their warehouse, the fees go from "regular" storage fees to "long-term" storage fees. Those fees are much higher, which incentivizes the seller to put the stuff on sale to blow it out of their warehouses, or you can have the inventory sent back to you. Also, fees vary by category and season. Around the holidays, you'll see them making a push to increase long-term storage fees to make way for the stuff that will actually sell, and on categories which are hot for the holidays, you might see them providing incentives with lower storage fees. I'm not the primary person that deals with Amazon FBA, but he sits next to me. Don't take what I'm saying as the gospel, but this is based on somewhat second hand experiencing and reading some of the emails that come through. My partner pays more attention to those details.
  - theturtletalks 7y ago
    Yes I was talking about the long term storage fees which they used to charge if inventory was rolled over after 30 days. The items we used to sell needed to be purchased in high quantities to get a decent price so we would ship items to FBA on a monthly basis trying to estimate demand. Eventually, Amazon itself started selling the same item and it just wasn't worth it especially with higher fees for FBA.

sodiumfree 7y ago

Are you considering the PayPal fees you pay for payment processing when you sell on eBay? That's on top of the approximately 10% that eBay charges. eBay also charges listing fees and final value fees. I haven't done a deep dive on my own selling data to come up with an accurate comparision, but I think they're comparable.

ikeboy 7y ago

FBA is cheaper than USPS is almost all cases. Once you throw in the fact that FBA fees included pick and pack which you'd otherwise have to pay for yourself, it's quite rare to find items more cost effective to ship directly than to use FBA. Primarily it's either very small items that can be shipped with flats, or very large items where dimensional weight comes into play.

theturtletalks 7y ago
This is a good point, but Amazon tacks on even more fees if you want to fulfill those orders outside of Amazon. We used to sell small electronics on Amazon and other channels which used to cost $2.60 to ship USPS. We signed up for FBA and they charged $5.95 to fulfill each order. Even if picking and packing costs $1-$2, you still make more profit shipping it yourself. We used to have 3 workers fulfill 150 orders a day from our warehouse which equals $0.80 to "pick and pack" and can be sent to any channel.
- ikeboy 7y ago
  Yes, MCF is not competitive with other 3pls or in-house. It's a convenience charge.

sodiumfree 7y ago

> ...most suppliers do FBA which tacks on a more expensive shipping charge than you would have otherwise with USPS. This is not universally true. As a seller on Amazon, using both FBA and seller-fulfillment, there is a lot of "it depends" in all of this. Some items we can ship cheaper, especially to local zones. But as we're on one coast and we have a lot of customers on the other coast, FBA can be a real saver on the shipping charges. Size and weight of the package affect the shipping charge, but on some products we sell, we find the fulfillment fees to sometimes get as low as less than 1/2 of what it would cost us to ship direct, even by the cheapest method we can use. If you're looking at the fulfillment fees compared to what you get charged to ship a package, make sure you're also considering that Amazon helps distribute the products to regional fulfillment centers. It's Amazon's employees that pick and pack the orders. Amazon pays for the box it ships in. Amazon handles customer service and return processing, or reshipment if the item is damaged in transit, amongst other things. Admittedly, this is not easy to consider all of the pros and cons, expenses and savings. FBA can also be a difficult beast to deal with when they don't check in your inventory, temporarily lose 300 units. Having to deal with Seller Support will cost you in terms of stress and its effects on your receding hairline, or your liver if you need to keep a bottle on your desk as you try to get problems resolved.