It’s been 36 hours since Ebay banned me, and I still haven’t heard back about my appeal. It would have been nice to have at least gotten a response to say, “Sorry, we are never ever ever getting back together.” Sorry for the Taylor Swift reference there; must be the Lucky in me coming out. They’ve changed their Contact Us page too where there is no longer a way to message or email them anymore; all you can do is call in these days, which got me nowhere yesterday. For now, it looks like eBay and I are parting ways. This kinda feels like a relationship breakup; a very long term one, all for what? Because I bought 2 extra gift cards that I shouldn’t have? You would think someone with some brains would say, “Hmmm, maybe we should just warn this guy since he’s sold A LOT of stuff in just the first 4 months of the year?” Don’t you think that’s more of a win-win than just losing my ENTIRE business FOREVER? It’s not like you know there isn’t another competitor named Amazon or anything. Maybe they’re getting cocky because their stock price has been so high of late (let’s see what happens after you spin Paypal off.) Let’s just say I would have a huge grin on my face when their stock drops.
Amazon Marketplace or FBA
Anyway, sorry about the soap box. That’ll be my last time bitching about them. Anyway, I read Trevor’s “Beginner’s Guide to Amazon FBA”. It was great until I did all the steps and because I’m so impatient, I took off the training wheels and went rolling down the street without a helmet. Luckily, a reader Charles, who has been selling on Amazon Marketplace for a while, was online and he gave me the rundown on selling through Amazon. Much appreciated Charles. Unfortunately, he’s only done the “marketplace” side of things and haven’t done much on the “FBA” side of things. The difference between the two is that “Marketplace” is similar to eBay, where you still keep the stuff at your house and ship it out yourself. Amazon FBA or “Fulfilled by Amazon” is when you ship the item to Amazon and then it’s “Fulfilled by Amazon;” I’m sure you’ve bought some FBA things on Amazon but didn’t realize it. FBA is great because Prime members are then eligible to get Prime shipping on the item. I usually try to only buy Prime eligible items because like I said, I’m very impatient and I think all Marketplace sellers are scumbags who are out to get me.
Amazon FBA
Trevor will get to this eventually, but let me just say that it’s so much easier to sell on Ebay (or maybe I’m just so used to it). The steps and questions that FBA initially asks sorta went over my head. There’s a question mid-way in the process about whether I want Amazon to put labels on my items or not. I wasn’t sure what that meant because….uhh my item is brand new and it has a UPC code on it. If anyone can explain what this is to me, that’d be great. Anyway, I signed up for both options. If and when you sign up, you’ll know what I mean. By the way, I also didn’t watch the video tutorials because you know, this should be intuitive and I shouldn’t need to watch a video on how to sell! I’m the eBay king! Kidding. Anyway, I went through all the steps and will be listing this bad boy on Amazon – a Cuisinart 12 cup food processor. If you guys need one, please wait a week and buy it from me. =) By the way, I got it on sale last week from my new favorite store Bloomingdale’s for $100 shipped to my house (anyone know if I can just drop ship this to Amazon in the future?) At the very end of the process, Amazon gave me 2 labels to print out and affix to the outside box – an FBA inventory type of label and a UPS printing label for $15 to ship this 24 pound box from WA to TN. It’s been costing me ~$25-$30 to ship this thing via Fedex Ground to the East coast (and that’s WITH the Fedex discount). I did have to go and drop it off at a UPS store because 1) UPS would have charged me $9 to pick it up from my house although UPS practically comes to my house every day and 2) Fedex Ground picks up from your house for FREE. I don’t know why UPS charges for this when Fedex is free.
Amazon Marketplace Territory
After my chat with Charles, I learned I wanted to do more Marketplace than FBA just because it’ll cost me less in fees (I think). So I went ahead and listed 3 things to sell. One of them was my Kohl’s staple – the Roomba 620. I of course made sure my Amazon price was the lowest. However, because I’m a new seller and have no feedback, I’m not the default seller on the main item page. You have to click on the new options to see me. When I listed my next item, funny thing, the same person who was the cheapest on the Roomba 620 is also the cheapest on my other item. This “Felix Legion” person and I must be brothers from another mother or something. I was reselling all my Kohl’s stuff on eBay and he must have staked his claim at Amazon, because as I type this 6 hours later, he’s lowered his price by a buck to be cheaper than me. I of course just dropped mine by $1 to now be the cheapest again. This’ll be a fun cat and mouse game.
Pros and Cons so Far
Ebay
- I can pay my seller fees and Fedex shipping fees using an AGC (nice way to cash out)
- Fedex Ground picks up from my house for free
- Can have payments sent to other Paypal accounts
- Can list certain things as NEW that you can’t do on Amazon
- Easy to list (for now)
Amazon Marketplace
- Very easy to list
- Don’t have to take pictures of items (or maybe I want to take pictures to boost my listing; I’ll have to play around with this unless someone already knows)
- Can list things like North Face jackets and use the manuf’s picture. Some of my North Face eBay listings were taken down due to copyright issues
Amazon FBA
- Cheap UPS ground rates (better than Fedex Ground)
- Don’t have to deal with the customer service issues (my stomach churns every time I get an email “You have a new eBay Message.”
At the end of the day though, I want to see who sells faster and cheaper, which I’ll only know in due time. Subscribe to my blog and we’ll learn Amazon vs eBay together!
You can get a fee comparison on the invaluable Amazon FBA calculator. It’ll let you do the comparison – shipping it yourself will definitely hurt costs, as the Amazon discount is massive. The fee difference is also worth it to me to avoid packing individual items for orders, worrying about turnaround/response time (screwing that up will hurt your metrics, lowering your placement), and to avoid customer service – I’d rather focus on finding deals than dealing with whiners.
I think if you sign up for their labeling service, then they just take care of it and bill you 25c or something per item (not sure on the exact cost). If you say you’re going to label but don’t… suspect you’ll get a nastygram from receiving, they may then do it and charge you (or may ship it back to you, don’t know), but making a habit of it will surely lead to consequences. Labeling is super easy though – they tell you when adding an item to inventory if it requires labeling, and give you a pre-populated template for standard label sizes to print and apply yourself. I keep sheets for common items and slap them on. For a new SKU, I just print a whole sheet and keep it on hand.
Cool. Thanks. Yeah, this will be a fun learning experience.
I’m feeling generous this morning, so I’ll answer a few of these (I’ve done quite a lot of FBA for about 1.5 years)
– Labeling products: even though they have a UPC, there are some conflicts in the Amazon system. I label them myself, but I don’t have a ton of SKUs – can also pay Amazon a little bit to do it when they receive a shipment.
– I prefer FBA over marketplace as both a seller (no work!) and a buyer (more reliable). Products via FBA (i.e., Prime) sell faster and for more money IME.
– Most efficient to ship a few units (even multiple SKUs) at a time to allow Amazon to consolidate shipments. That way you’re not paying $15 for a single unit.
– UPS drivers are supposed to pickup for free if they’re already at your location. They might refuse after delivering an AM package because the truck is still full, but later on in the day I’ve never had a problem.
– Don’t worry about being the lowest price on Amazon. Getting into the buy box or the listed seller is about a bunch of other factors. As long as you’re near the bottom, you’ll get there some times. And don’t bother playing that pricing game unless you’re using an autopricing tool – someone else will almost always undercut you.
What else do you need to know?
Thanks for the reply Andrew. Yeah, I’ll have to keep playing around with FBA vs Marketplace. Have you tried to sell an identical item on both Mktplace and FBA? What was the fee difference? Or is it the case you may pay more in fees with FBA, but it makes up in volume? Also, I found out that there is no shipping discount for Marketplace, which does raise costs. I see your point about the multiple shipments in a box.
Lastly, what if you didn’t label a product and shipped it anyway? What does the warehouse do? Just charge you for labeling? And what does labeling your item yourself entail? Print out a label and Scotch tape it on yourself?
Amazon FBA is no fun man. Good luck…
Thanks for the heads up. You’re the first person to have anything really bad to say about FBA (except the return horror stories). What have your experiences been with FBA?
In two words: free returns. eBay has no such problem.