After talking about Ebay in part one of our editorial, today we’re going to break down the ups and downs of Amazon.

1. The ups

  • Amazon gets more traffic

With Alexa ranking Ebay the world’s seventh largest website when it comes to traffic, Amazon ranks third. Essentially, this means Amazon has the potential of bringing more visitors while converting them into customers for your business.

However, things are not that simple because you need to put in a lot of effort to stand out with your products – on Amazon and on Ebay.

  • Amazon is great for books

If you’re an author, Amazon is the place to be for you. The platform is the Earth’s biggest bookstore and also, one of the biggest retailers in the game, reporting $43.7 billion in sales in Q4 last year.

  • Shipping

Amazon’s shipping system is very well planned and executed with FBA (Fulfilled By Merchant) being extremely popular among both sellers and buyers. As a matter of fact, most buyers choose to take their business on Amazon due to high quality shipping, especially when they’re able to get it for free with Amazon Premium.

  • Payment

Amazon sellers must use Amazon Payments to accept the payment from their buyers. That means the platform collects the payment, and deposits it into your bank account every two weeks. Both operations are free of charge compared to Ebay, where PayPal charges a fee for every aspect of the payment process.

  • Amazon shoppers spend more money

Shoppers on Amazon tend to spend more than on Ebay even for the same products. Essentially, Amazon has the potential to bring you more profit for your products. However, there are some down sides for this platform, as well.

2. The downs

  • No feedback

Amazon shoppers have a ratio of 1 to 30 when it comes to offering feedback. It’s just something about the platform that doesn’t encourage shoppers to rate their experience.

Unfortunately, sellers found an unorthodox alternative to this problem.

  • Fake feedback

Amazon shoppers quickly found a solution to the lack of feedback and that is fake feedback. This is why on Amazon you’ll face a lot of unfair competition so if you think your product will break in based on quality, other sellers might slow you down due to fake feedback.

  • It’s hard to break in

With Amazon trending among shoppers for quite a while now, it’s almost impossible to break a product without massive investments in online marketing. On average, 100,000 new sellers join Amazon every month so it’s easy to guess that standing out will take a massive effort.

  • Payment

Even if Amazon doesn’t charge you a dime for managing your payments, PayPal will get you paid faster. As we mentioned above, Amazon Payments will only get you paid once every two weeks. This can be a downer if you need the payment faster.

  • Shipping

With shipping being one of the most important reasons why shoppers chose to take their business on Amazon, it can also be a nightmare for you as a seller.  Basically, if you’re a big company and you have a fulfillment center that can take care of shipping, Amazon is your best friend but if you’re a small seller and you take care of everything by yourself, Amazon quickly becomes your enemy.

The platforms has high standards when it comes to shipping and they’re quick to penalize sellers who can’t match them.