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eBay provides fewer platform support and therefore has lower commission? Also, second-hand doesn't always mean used. A good niche on eBay are New in the Box ite
by pishpash 4y ago
eBay provides fewer platform support and therefore has lower commission? Also, second-hand doesn't always mean used. A good niche on eBay are New in the Box items that somebody wants to get rid of. The marketplace is pretty good there with individual ads with better accountability, vs. the aggregated mess on Amazon.
Bottom line is Amazon tries to hide the complexity of the marketplace and it ends up being the wrong abstraction and becomes straight lying.
- Scoundreller 4y agoeBay commissions are pretty high for how little inventory, delivery and warehouse risk/cost they take ($0). Dunno what I’m getting for their 10% commissions today compared to 5% in the past.
- analog31 4y agoGood point. I pay a roughly 3% commission to PayPal for my tiny side business. I think I do get something. The biggest thing, which I also can't quantify, is probably that I get X percent more sales because people are confident that PP will somehow magically take care of them if I turn out to be a screwball. All it takes is a couple more sales, to completely pay for the commission. Also, I could knock myself out trying to find a cheaper service, or I could spend that time designing the next product. Don't know if a similar calculus applies to eBay.
- Scoundreller 4y agoI wasn't even including the ~3% payment commission. Back in the day before eBay required everything to go through Paypal, I was happy to give a discount for anything but Paypal: COD, cash-in-mail or money order. I earned some add'l sales from the voluntarily and involuntarily un/under-banked. Now eBay is going to automatically charge Canadian sales taxes on my Canadian sales... even though I would be exempt myself as a small supplier. Ugh.