Warning when selling on Amazon

[disneysteve]

It is funny, that here you are a casual seller, and you have a much better grasp of both the obvious in the fees, but the other things with selling.

I may be a casual seller on Amazon but I'm an experienced seller overall. I started my collectibles business in 1986. I began with a 2-page mailing list that grew into a 45-page catalog back in the pre-internet days. I also sold in person and toy, collectible, and antique shows from New York to Virginia. Once I got online in 1994, I started selling online through chat forums and such. Then in 1997, I got onboard with ebay and my business really took off. By 2000, I was listing 10 items a day for 10-day auctions, so I always had 100 auctions going at a time. My best month I did about $3,000 in sales. I have a business license and a sales tax number and I file taxes on the business every year (and make quarterly sales tax payments).

[Gailete]

I started my business to get rid of clutter when I was so sick we thought I was dying. Somehow it has turned into significant clutter as I have all my inventory here at the house. What a mess, but I'm working on it.

[disneysteve]

Somehow it has turned into significant clutter as I have all my inventory here at the house.

I can relate. One section of our basement is my sale stock. When I was active on ebay, it was my work area, but it's been years since I've been active. I sell here and there but I still have the stock. Over the years, I've donated some items and sold some stuff at our yard sales but there's still plenty down there. Much of it isn't worth selling online as it's low end stuff. We used to move a lot of that merchandise at the toy and collectible shows but those died out about 15 years ago.

[Gailete]

We have probably 20,000 patterns in boxes, plus lots of other craft stuff plus my sewing room stuffed to the rim with more things, but I am working on decluttering for sure. I tried doing an embroidery project the other day and realized that with bifocals i just can't see well enough to do the fine work, so no reason to keep a lot of those things. So I need to cut back to only the things that I can really do and enjoy the most, especially as I know I won't be living for another 548 years which is about the amount of time I need to finish everything!

[~bs]

amazon and ebay have been steadily getting worse with shafting sellers. I really dont understand it. It's like they don't make enough money already with their fees, and continuously want more

[disneysteve]

amazon and ebay have been steadily getting worse with shafting sellers. I really dont understand it. It's like they don't make enough money already with their fees, and continuously want more

I don't understand it either. I guess they want to focus on the big sellers, the people doing hundreds or thousands of sales each month rather than the little guy doing 5 or 10. It's a shame since ebay was built by the little guys like me and thousands of people like me. The corporate sellers didn't come along until much later.

[~bs]

I don't understand it either. I guess they want to focus on the big sellers, the people doing hundreds or thousands of sales each month rather than the little guy doing 5 or 10. It's a shame since ebay was built by the little guys like me and thousands of people like me. The corporate sellers didn't come along until much later.

And you'd think they'd rather have way more little guys at a lower fee rate than raise the rate and get a lot fewer sellers that can afford to keep selling even with the extra 10-15% fee. That squeezes out a lot of small businesses too, as that % is basically their profit margin getting taken out by fees.

[Gailete]

It is frustrating. I have been selling on line for close to 16 years. I am a small seller but I think over the years I have sold $200-250K worth of goods (gross). in 2008 I left eBay for eCRATER when my fees at eBay became more than I was making. Since Meg Wittman was CEO at eBay it has steadily plummeted. One CEO, now gone, called small sellers 'noise'. The site is no more what Pierre started. I have been involved in selling in some way with Amazon for the entire 16 years. The rules have changed so much, it is ridiculous. I, at least, sell in a niche that currently Amazon hasn't taken a close look at, as a source of more fees. I've sold on Hallf, alibris, B&N, and a few other very small no longer around sites as well. I tried listing some things on eBay in the fall of 17 and over the course of 3 months sold 2 things at listing price - no bidding at all.

Of all the sites I have been on, eCRATER which I joined in 2008, treats it's sellers with respect. The team there is small, but you always get an individual response when writing to them. No totally canned responses, no CSRs in India that can't begin to understand us or we them, extremely minimal fees, or they can be skipped altogether is you want to do all your own promotions, etc. It is frustrating though when we get newbies who have left ebay for eCRATER, within a day at times are complaining of the lack of bells and whistles on the site. They then will generously volunteer us all to paying for whatever they miss from ebay! They haven't even sold a thing yet, and they want us all to be paying more fees. Then the ones that get discouraged get mad because things aren't flying off the shelves, go to other places and say they 'tried' ecrater and nobody there sells a thing! Now I don't know how they know that no one sells anything. At this point, I'm at almost 5100 orders. Yes I do a lot of my own promotion, but when I go there, I don't feel my stomach tying up in knots as I have no idea what they are going to spring on us next. I put a lot of work into my store on ecrater with almost 8000 items listed. Amazon which obviously gets more eyes on it, I have around 5100 items listed and my sales are better there, however, I pay over $100 in Final Value Fees every month. I think the most fees I have paid ecrater is $12/month!

Each year my sales are less and less on line due to more competition, more scammers, more Chinese sellers selling fake goodies, etc. I sell mostly sewing patterns and I'm 'so thrilled' to see sellers list a pattern with a price that is bottom of the barrel and say in the condition box that they don't know anything about patterns, but it looks okay. My son that helps me with grocery runs and helping with errands, will presort patterns for me, and even so, he still thinks a bunch are uncut that have been cut and most of the sellers that at least know that the pattern that is cut, don't bother to say to what size it was cut to. But yet again with way lower prices.

If you are willing to wait for a sale, and willing to make a decent listing with a decent photo, and do some simple promotions to get it seen, I would recommend ecrater to everybody. However if you want the ability to have dancing reindeer on a listing page (although I think ebay finally banned that), and want all the bells and whistles or are not an honest sort, don't come, you won't like the place.

[Gailete]

And you'd think they'd rather have way more little guys at a lower fee rate than raise the rate and get a lot fewer sellers that can afford to keep selling even with the extra 10-15% fee. That squeezes out a lot of small businesses too, as that % is basically their profit margin getting taken out by fees.

Those big giant companies can't offer what the small sellers can, that one of a kind cow vase that your grandma had that got broke and you want another one. Or any kind of individual type thing. When I see a seller come onto a site and list something that is 'handmade' and then list quantity of 10, I scratch my head. I have made enough things in my life and none of them are exactly the same so each would need to be listed separately. The things that made ebay especially famous, are disappearing and giving way to companies that sell paper towels.

I believe that there is a still a way to make money selling things on line, but you have to be very sure of what you are doing. Amazon especially, don't even dip a toe into the water until and unless you have done hours of reading the rules, taking the Seller University course, research of what you want to sell and can you. Amazon has 'gated' many categories that now take special dispensation to sell the good. On the seller forum, we get many people asking why they can't list the bunch of product that they bought. The sad answer is you can't unless given special permission and one of those permissions is from companies themselves saying that you are an authorized reseller. Some of the categories require a non-refundable fee of up to $5000+ to sell in that category. My BIL gave me two pairs of brand new Sketchers shoes to resell. I found out that I couldn't sell them on Amazon as I wasn't allowed to sell in that category. So I ended up having to sell some shoes that were originally $200 elsewhere, even though they had been bought on Amazon.

[~bs]

Don't get me wrong, I still sell on ebay, and got a 1099k for $27k of gross sales. That total is way down from previous years. If the fees were lower, I'd be able to sell more since the fees wouldn't kill the entire profit margin. And with the fee structure so high, even large sellers importing "handmade" goods from china is likely getting squeezed as well.

The main reason to go with ebay rather than other sites is that it still has the buyer viewership that other sites does not have. I looked into selling on amazon, and decided against it. Their rules and regulations are more strict and convuluted than ebay's. And in many cases the fees are as high or higher, and there is less flexibility with the returns. They do have positives, such as warehousing and shipping items for you, which makes sense if you're a large importer.

[Gailete]

Don't get me wrong, I still sell on ebay, and got a 1099k for $27k of gross sales. That total is way down from previous years. If the fees were lower, I'd be able to sell more since the fees wouldn't kill the entire profit margin. And with the fee structure so high, even large sellers importing "handmade" goods from china is likely getting squeezed as well.

The main reason to go with ebay rather than other sites is that it still has the buyer viewership that other sites does not have. I looked into selling on amazon, and decided against it. Their rules and regulations are more strict and convuluted than ebay's. And in many cases the fees are as high or higher, and there is less flexibility with the returns. They do have positives, such as warehousing and shipping items for you, which makes sense if you're a large importer.

If you sold that much, you are doing really good!